LONDON LIVES: Voice of the Irish

Seamus Enright

For the past 20 years Kingscourt man Gerry Byrne has switched on his studio microphone, and for a few hours at least, reached out in his own way to the sizeable Irish diaspora who tune in to listen to him play his blend of Irish Country music and deliver the news on what’s going on back home.
He achieved the two-decade milestone last year and despite boasting more listeners than the likes of Ryan Tubridy, Hector, Ray D’Arcy or Ian Dempsey, Gerry is humble about his estimated 300,000 listeners.
Broadcasting on Spectrum Radio, the only multi-ethnic and foreign-language commercial radio station in the UK, Gerry’s twice-weekly show - Saturday and Sunday - goes out to the Irish living in Greater London. It occasionally broadcasts The Irish Link on BBC Radio, while more recently Gerry himself launched his own online channel on www.irishradio.org.
But more than just playing the likes of Nathan Carter, Declan Nerney, Big Tom or Daniel O’Donnell, Gerry is aware that his place on UK radio plays a much greater part in maintaining the Irish connection.
In the early ‘90s, when Gerry first travelled to London, having previously lived and worked in the border region for many years, he saw a niche. Previous attempts by others at starting up an Irish radio show in the UK came to nothing, having not connected with the Irish diaspora. Starting up Irish Spectrum, wasn’t easy but with support from his sponsors and the community there Gerry succeeded where others had failed.
“I knew there was a market and a need for Irish radio, but you have to know how the business works. It’s not a case where you stick on a record and away you go, everything’s hunky dory.
“It was damn hard when I started off, but we made it work”, he says.
But the ‘80s and early ‘90s were a “completely different time” he recalls. “At that time there was huge immigration of Irish into London. When I started off, The Galtymore was going, The National, The Hibernian, all of those dance halls, not to mention the number of Irish pubs going. People were going out more. It was a very different time but that’s changed. That generation is now older, things have moved on and so have a lot of them.”

A pirate’s life
Based in Battersea, broadcasting from one of the two Crystal Palace radio towers, which help dominate the south city skyline, Gerry still remembers where his career and love of radio all started off.
From the townland of Cornamagh, Kingscourt, where his mother, Rose, still lives today, Gerry’s dalliance with radio began at 18 and from there he “went on to be a happy pirate for many years”. It soon developed into a career.
Working with the likes of Radio Carousel and Telstar Radio in Dundalk and Big M radio and Radio Star in Monaghan, Gerry could see even then how important a part radio played in both informing and entertaining the community who tuned in.
He sees people like Terry Wogan as having paved an important path in the media industry for people like Gerry and, more recently, Graham Norton in staking their claim across the Irish Sea.

Glory days
“I had a passion for the magic of radio and what it could do. At that stage, you were coming into the glory days of pirate radio, and that’s where I learned everything.
“I remember CCR, Breifne Radio, Erneside and all the rest. I always had a passion for radio. When I went to London I could see the demand for dedicated Irish radio at the time but there was nobody doing significantly enough to cater for it.”
The launch of his own www.irishradio.org is a hark back to the good ol’ pirate radio days. He streams an online 24-seven music station, giving him an expanded platform beyond his two-day-a-week Spectrum show to speak on Irish issues and spread his reach further afield to Irish hubs such as Birmingham, Brighton, Liverpool and Manchester.
“Every day I find more and more people of all ages going on the internet to listen to radio. People in their 70s and 80s now realise how accessible it is.
“The reaction is incredible, too, and people are listening literally from all over the world. I see a huge future there.”

Voice of the Irish
While Gerry might not physically interact with marginalised Irish living in the UK, he acknowledges that through his work, he does engage with many of them.
“I never see myself as a person speaking for people, but I would speak for the way I see things.
“I respect that I am a link in the overall communication chain to the Irish community. I’d like to think I’m helping Irish people living over here on some level,” he says.
“I’ve always tried, wherever I can to help people.
While I might not be out there on the mean streets working hand-in-hand with marginalised people, on many occasions I’ve had Irish people who listen to the show come to me or contact me with various queries or problems.
“I always help them or at least put them onto someone who can. Maybe it’s because they hear my voice so often they feel they know me and, at the very least, as someone they can approach. I have no problem with that.”
Forgotten Gathering
In the year of The Gathering, however, Gerry has mixed feelings about the concept. He says he’s not alone on this; many aren’t even aware it exists.
Despite the audience reach of Gerry’s show, and the fact that it is the biggest tourism drive ever staged in Ireland, organisers behind The Gathering event have yet to contact him or Spectrum Radio about promoting its events on air.
“I’ve covered it on the radio on a few occasions but not directly.
But I find nobody ever mentions anything about it to me. For those who’ve heard about it on the street it doesn’t mean anything to them.
“People knew the G8 was going on, I do the news from Ireland and people write into me about bits and pieces and I flag them, as well, but nobody’s talking about The Gathering.”
He says this is because some people in the UK are perhaps “cynical about it”.
“I’ve heard both sides. Some say it’ll be great for events for people when they go home. Others, though, say ‘Ah, yeah, they didn’t want to know us under the Celtic Tiger. They grabbed and they grabbed and they thought they were above everybody and they didn’t give a damn about anybody else. They’d spit on us as the poor relation. Now though they’re in trouble they’re looking for our money’.
“But I get the impression people have been hurt, and funny enough, where The Gathering is maybe seen as a celebration in Ireland, for others it’s flying in the face of when they felt they were being forgotten and left behind,” he adds. “There’s a tremendous air of that and it’s a very sad thing to see happen. It’s certainly not as big a deal here in London as maybe back in Ireland are putting it out to be. I’ve heard people laugh about it. It hasn’t captured the imagination over here, it just hasn’t caught on.”