Heads: A Day in the Life is a memoir which gives a very personal, and sometimes scandalous, account of the presenter’s experiences as a journeyman musician.

Some of the situations described, and the language used, might shock those who know Gerry from his morning show on Radio Ulster.

“You have to remember that I was 23 years old at the time,” he said with a smile.

“This is what I’m going to tell anyone who’s shocked by it – it’s not me writing this book, it’s a 23-year-old guy who used to be me.”

The book begins with the popular presenter trying to get his hands on a large quantity of prescription drugs while on the road in rural Ireland.

“I don’t think people think I’m nice at all,” Gerry says. “They realise that I’ve been round a few corners, they won’t be all that surprised.

“The only people it will shock are the very innocent, who don’t get out much, anyway.”

Heads looks back on a time that is disappearing over the horizon of modern culture, to an era of hugely popular live music which will seem alien to anyone who didn’t live through the 1960s and 70s.

The personalities and predicaments of the lifestyle are examined in a fashion which will be familiar to fans of Gerry’s radio show.

Back in its heyday, the otherwise forgotten city of Londonderry was at the centre of this cultural movement.

“On Sunday morning, if you stood at the Craigavon Bridge in Derry, you could see the vans going out one after the other – it was like a wagon train of showbands,” Gerry said.

As the bass player with Brown and O’Brien, he was a young man in Londonderry with big dreams in the early 1970s.

And music was an outlet, and an escape route, for many in the city.

“For a start, it got me out of Derry,” Gerry said.

“I left two years before the Troubles started.