Even after the mountainous coverage of his death and funeral, it is still hard to believe that Gerry Ryan is gone – his final Ryan Confidential betrayed no signs of what lay so closely ahead.

He was still the same G Ryan – probing, cajoling, opinionated, funny – and in rugby pundit and radio presenter George Hook he had a willing subject.
But this programme wasn’t poignant because George cried for his parents or his marriage or his debts – it was because we knew now this was Gerry’s last hurrah.

And without being melodramatic about it all, it is hard to look at Gerry's face listening intently – hard to hear his so familiar voice again when it will never be heard live again.

It’s a feeling that people endure all the time when a loved one dies, but we sort of understand that. Here was a man we didn’t really know at all who signed off on his radio show on a Thursday and never came back.

The programme itself unfortunately wasn’t up there with his best ever and there was a heavy reliance on footage of George adjusting his tie in studio, having his face spray painted brown for the lights and exchanging in banter with his fellow panellists and analysts.

All very fascinating but hardly relevant – we knew that Hooky appeared with Popey and they gave Eddie O’Sullivan or BOD or ROG more than the occasion piece of their mind.

Hooky is an open book – so much so he wrote one, but because he had told us all about his life ad nauseum already, there was little by way of surprise between the covers.

And still he tells a story as only a rugger bugger can; loudly, with humour and, in George’s case, self-deprecation.

He saved his best anecdotes for stories about his wife; he married the long suffering Ingrid, an Austrian, after a courtship that saw him write to her every day for two years and then cancelled the wedding for a St Mary's rugby match – although they married 48 hours later.
 

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.