'You might be falling apart, but if the voice is good . . . '

Having been moved to a lesser slot without explanation by previous 2FM management, Larry Gogan finds himself back on the prime-time weekday beat as the station looks to woo an older demographic, writes JIM CARROLL

IT WOULD HAVE made quite a photo. At the Eurovision Song Contest a few years back, Larry Gogan ran into his old mucker, Terry Wogan. The Beeb’s favourite Limerick man was with someone the 2FM DJ didn’t recognise at first.

“Gogan,” asked Wogan, “do you know John Peel?”

Introductions were made and these three wise men of broadcasting had a pleasant chat in the middle of the hubbub. What did you talk about, Larry? He pauses for a moment. “Probably music and the radio.”

It's always been about music and the radio with Gogan, the man the RTÉ press office says is "ageless" and that Wikipedia, that source of occasionally accurate information, claims is 71. When this interview is over, he'll spend a few hours before his 2FM show listening to the latest batch of CDs, which surround and cover his desk. "I still listen to all the records I get," he says. "I buy Billboardand Music Weekmagazines every week. I check out what new bands are coming up, what new records are on the way."

The ears still recognise a hit pop record, too. “I remember hearing Lady Gaga for the first time and you knew right away that this was a great pop tune,” he says. “It was catchy, it was three minutes long and it was fun – and that’s what pop should be all about.

“The same with Pink. I remember trying to get them to put Pink on the playlist and they didn’t do it until she was No 1. Sometimes you see someone like Lady Gaga and she’s mad-looking and all of that, but that’s what pop music is supposed to be – a bit of fun.”

After being bumped to the weekend schedule by previous station management, Gogan now finds himself back on the prime time Monday-to-Friday beat.

Someone as modest as Gogan does not crow about this turnaround or cock a snook at his detractors. Still, there’s a broad smile on his face when the subject comes up.

“Look, it’s the nature of the business to get moved around,” he says. “I think some in here thought when they moved me to the weekend that they were pushing me aside, but it didn’t work out like that.”

Gogan was never told to his face why he was being moved. “They never gave me a reason, they didn’t really say anything, to be honest. They sent out a press release at the time, which said I was taking it easy.” He smiles at this notion. “Me taking it easy? But that’s the kind of business it is, and sure, here I am, back on weekdays.”

THERE ARE A few reasons why he’s back in the thick of the action. For a start, the audience for his weekend shows kept on increasing. “John McMahon, the new boss, was only in the job a few days when the latest listenership figures came in. He called me and said the figures were amazing and would I like to go back to weekdays,” Gogan says.

Then there’s the fact that 2FM is now pursuing an older audience. After a few wasted years chasing the 15- to 34-year-old demographic, the station has now adopted what is probably a more realistic strategy.

“I don’t think radio is as important now as it was to young people,” says Gogan. “2FM was going after the 15- to 34-year-olds before, and now it’s going after the 25- to 45-year-olds. But the funny thing is that it kept saying that young people weren’t listening to radio or 2FM, but both my weekend shows were in the top 20 shows for both age groups.

“But it’s clear that there are just way more ways for people to listen to music now than 20 years ago, or when 2FM was starting. I think we are right to go for an older audience, because that’s where the audience is for radio.”

IT WASN’T LIKE this when Gogan started with 2FM (then RTÉ Radio 2) back in 1979. “Back then, it was far broader than a pop station would be now,” he says. “You’d play Christy Moore and ballads as well as the chart stuff. It was a music station, a pop music station, somewhere in between a Radio 1 and a Radio 2 in the UK.”

At the start, RTÉ Radio 2 was the only place on the dial to go for pop music. Sure, there were pirate stations – all the station’s DJs, bar the late Vincent Hanley, were ex-pirates – but Radio 2 was a nationwide affair.

“We were absolutely colossal, because there was no competition,” says Gogan. “I remember doing gigs in the roadcaster in Patrick Street in Cork and there’d be thousands of people as far as the eye could see. Or you’d do some disco in Wexford or somewhere and the place would be mobbed. There was great morale because of all that. It was a fantastic station to be on at the start.”

THOSE GOOD TIMES, though, would not last and there was soon competition for listeners. “Around the early 1990s, all these other stations emerged and there was a defining of the music policy in that you’d hear ‘we shouldn’t play ballads’ and ‘we should play more pop’.”

Gogan has stuck it out through thick and thin with RTÉ and 2FM. There were approaches from abroad in the past (from both the BBC and Radio Luxembourg) and new Irish station 4FM also attempted to lure him away from Montrose, but Gogan resisted all offers. “I just wanted to play records and be a DJ,” he says. “That’s where I wanted to be, and to be able to do what I wanted to do and do it for so long in one place has been great.”

IT HAS BEEN a long run. “I started doing shows here in 1961, so I’ll be 50 years in RTÉ next year. When I came in, I was the youngest. Now, the only ones older than me are Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin, Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh and Jimmy Magee.”

The notion of retirement is dismissed with a shrug and a chuckle. Sure, what else would he do? “No one ever retires in England. I mean, there’s fellows I used to listen to when I was a boy, like David Jacobs, and they’re still going on Radio 2 at the weekend. Brian Matthew is still on air and I used to listen to him when I was in school, and he must be eightysomething.

“If your voice keeps going, you’re all right. The rest of you might be falling apart, but if the voice is good and you’ve still the enthusiasm to want to play records on the radio, you’re fine.”