Whether enjoying discreet chats with glamorous celebrities, dreaming up schemes in the corridors of the Sunday Times or relaxing on the piste with friends, dashing journalist and publisher John Ryan (30) is a dynamic element in a constantly shifting media storm. "Keep on moving" is this drop-dead gorgeous guy's motto.
Playfully dubbed Monks town Man by buddies, he is a media empire in the making and his latest project is a high quality full colour celebrity-driven magazine called VIP. In fact it is a cheekily unapologetic rip off of that other high quality full colour celebrity-driven magazine Hello! and the justification for all the trademark glossy mag style gushing being employed here.
In fact Ryan's life and career so far have contained quite enough exclamation-markworthy developments to abandon the tedious quelle horreur/surprise journalism.
Right up there in this category is the Terry Keane scoop-of-the-century which he and Sunday Times Irish editor Rory Godson recently organised and which has prompted a particularly virulent strain of Ryan-bashing breaking out in a petulant rival newspaper.
The constant public slagging has hurt the skinny six-footer who burns off so much nervous energy that he has been told by his doctor to put on weight. He is said to have felt "queasy" for much of the Keane serialisation. Add to that regular vilification in the Phoenix and by those who resent what they see as his blatantly ambitious, superficial outlook on life. "There is something really nasty about it all because it is anonymous and leaves him wondering who are friends and who are enemies," said his girlfriend, TV presenter Fiona McShane (28).
Fellow journalist Eamon Dunphy believes the sneering is predictable. "It is endemic to the business in Dublin and it happens to anyone who dares to be different and declares their ambition like John has done," he says.
Ryan's CV, if he had ever drawn one up (he says he never has), would make an effective doorstop. Born into a solidly upper middle class family in Monkstown, he played rugby, was active in debating at the local Christian Brothers' college and read British newspapers voraciously.
He had something of a bohemian childhood; his father was a member of the wealthy Monument Creameries family but became a well-known patron of the arts, publishing writers such as Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan.
His later teenage years were difficult, with the usual adolescent tribulations compounded by the fact that his parents were splitting up. The night the Leaving Cert ended he took the mail-boat to London and worked on building sites for much of the summer of 1987.
His first journalism job was in the Hornsey Journal, a North London paper whose editor took Ryan under his wing and where he stayed for four years. They sent him to college and from there he moved on to the Islington Gazette, and then to the Evening Standard.
In 1993 he went to cover the war in Bosnia because, he says, he wanted to prove to himself that he could work in such terrible conditions. He wrote his first articles for Irish newspapers during his trips to Bosnia and later covered Rwanda.
The death of his father and a desire to look after his mother, who now lived in Cork, prompted a move back to Dublin. He was put on a retainer by the Sunday Independent and wrote articles which he now looks back on with embarrassment. He came up with the idea for the Dear Mary letters (a fictional letter from a woman who couldn't afford to send her child to Santa sent to a variety of prominent people) and left the paper after a row with one of the secretaries.
His current job as culture editor of the Sunday Times, on which he has wrought a significant improvement, is the longest he has kept since then. He has worked in the Sunday Times as a reporter (four months), as the editor of In Dublin (one year), the editor of Magill (one year) and features editor of the Irish Independent (four months). "He has an extremely low boredom threshold," said a friend. "He is not a person with huge reservoirs of patience." Another said that his personal manner can be off-putting to some people, because while he is infinitely charming in conversation he will withdraw either mentally or physically if the dreaded ennui sinks in.
His biggest motivator is not money but "his need to be in touch with the zeitgeist. People who are not in touch don't interest him." His most dismissive put-downs are reserved for such people who he describes as being "so f---ing eighties".
If successful the monthly VIP magazine (talk that it will soon be called RIP seems mistaken) will go fortnightly in September and other titles will be added to the Ryan/Michael O'Doherty stable. Ryan will need around £10 million to set in motion his ultimate ambition, to establish an evening paper in Dublin and eventually a national daily. Those who like and admire him, such as Michael Ross of the Sunday Times, say he is "a fabulous guy, tremendously dynamic, enterprising and ambitious . . . courteous and genuinely caring. The most important thing with Ryan is that he makes things happen."
But with John Ryan opinion will always be divided. On Wednesday night at the launch of his new magazine he passed a group of people who began telling him how wonderful VIP was. As he passed them again seconds later one of the group was saying " . . . what an arsehole". Quelle surprise. Or something.
