John Scally remembers the legendary Larry Gogan who passed away in January 2020

It is often said that you should never meet your heroes. Meeting Larry Gogan disproved that adage for me. Three things struck me about him. He never said a bad word about anyone; he had great personal warmth and he was a great storyteller. I can still remember two stories he told me the first time we met.

A young Ryan Tubridy learning his craft in radio was sent for a day to shadow Micheál O’Muircheartaigh. The Kerry legend brought him to Croke Park where he was commentating on a big Meath match. When he made his customary pre-match visit to the Meath dressing-room the players had rarely seen anyone as thin as Tubridy in Croke Park. Mick Lyons shouted at Micheál as he stared at Ryan, “Where did you get Muscles from?”

Larry’s second story was about Jimmy Magee. He had a few mishaps in his broadcasting career. A caller on his radio show rang in with a question. The only problem was that he started speaking in Irish and Jimmy’s Irish was not up to a conversation with a fluent Gaelic speaker on the national airwaves. He knew he had to say something so as not to appear rude or ignorant, so he said, “Agus ainm?” The reply was, “Seán …”

Jimmy didn’t know what ‘address’ was in Irish, so he asked “As Corcaigh?” The reply was: “Ní hea, as Luimneach.” Then he asked a question, but Jimmy hadn’t a clue what he was saying. He had to think on his feet, so he began saying, “Hello! Seán? Seán? … We seem to have lost him there …’ But Seán was saying, “No, you haven’t! I’m here.”
But Jimmy shot him down, “No, we’ve lost Seán. We’ll try him again.” So he took him off the air, because he could think of no other way of getting out of it.

As a boy I fell under the spell of “the man with the golden voice”. It was Larry Gogan, who introduced me to pop music. It was a time when we only had access to one station and RTÉ radio was at the time a virtual desert for pop music and Larry was the sole oasis.

One of eight children, he was born Lorcan Gogan and grew up on Maxwell Road in Rathgar. His father, John, who owned a chain of newsagents and sweetmakers, died when Larry was 10 years old. At that point his mother, Mary, took over the family business. Attending school at St. Mary’s College in Rathmines, Larry resolved to become an actor, inspired by the example of his uncle Paddy, a theatre manager.

As a teenager, he performed in shows at the Gaiety and the Olympia theatres, sharing the stage with a young Gay Byrne.
His ambition changed after listening to Radio Luxembourg, the only station where pop music could be heard by Irish audiences in the 1950s and decided to become a DJ.

By happy coincidence one of the regular customers at his family’s Fairview newsagent shop was Maura Fox, an advertising executive who worked on sponsored shows prevalent on what was then called Radió Éireann.

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