Gerry Kelly had 'rough start in life' but it made him a compassionate man and broadcaster with UTV, says biographer
Popular broadcaster Gerry Kelly had a difficult upbringing, but it very much made him into the compassionate broadcaster and man he later became, his biographer said after his death at the weekend.
The popular broadcaster, whose career spanned four decades, died at his Ardglass home on Sunday.
A family notice said he was the dearly beloved husband of Helena, loving father of Sarah and Claire, dear father-in-law of William and cherished grandfather to Bronwyn, Tadhg and Rory.
Gerry had spoken publicly about his long battle with cancer.
He was probably best known for his weekly talk show with UTV from 1989 until 2005.
Later, from 2009, he hosted a weekly programme on BBC Radio Ulster. More recently, he mentored students at Belfast Met through a new chat show series, broadcast on NVTV.
Don Anderson collaborated with Gerry to produce his autobiography, describing him as "a Northern Ireland national treasure" and "one of the giants of Irish broadcasting".
He told the News Letter: "Gerry actually had a pretty rough start in life and I think that this helped his career.”
Gerry was born in Ballymena but left the town at the age of three to live on an estate on the edge of Downpatrick.
"His father was an alcoholic and he abandoned the family when Gerry was 10 years old. He never really forgave him for that."
Gerry never sought out his father, Isaac, in later life and had no idea what became of him.
He told Don: "What kind of man leaves a mother In a low-paid job as a cleaner to look after a family of five and walks off without looking back?"
Don added: "It was a pretty sad episode in his life but it made him certain that he was going to be the best father that he could be."
Gerry's mother, Kathleen, left school at 14 without doing an exam and worked as a cleaner. But she studied to become an auxiliary nurse in order to support her five children.
"Gerry had a profound respect for her, but he also knew what life on the lower rungs of society was actually like.
"And that coloured his broadcasting and it affected the way he dealt with people. It was one of the reasons why he was such a compassionate man."
He trained to become a primary school teacher in Manchester. And he played guitar and in his younger days played the keyboard for a band called The Outer Limits.
"He used all that to teach the kids. He learned early on how you could use entertainment in a primary school classroom."
He loved entertaining, which is why he left teaching to go into the media, starting as a reporter with the Down Recorder.
Don said he did enjoy teaching, and considered going back at one time when he wasn't really progressing in television as much as he wanted, and was still a contract journalist. "He left a pensionable job for something that was precarious but he still persisted."
He learned how to research every interviewee very thoroughly, a habit he picked up from Gloria Hunniford when working as a reporter on her UTV show.
He made it all look so effortless because he put so much work into his preparation, he said.
"Gerry read prodigiously, he read every newspaper, he went to theatres, he went to films. So he knew about the people he was interviewing. That meant that he could switch from A, B, C, D in terms of topics as he listened to them."
In the days when violent broadcast images made it difficult to persuade people to come to Belfast, Gerry personally worked hard using his contacts to bring big stars to Belfast.
"His production team worked very hard too, but very often, the big names wanted to speak to the man who was going to do the interview to get a sense of the person he was and how it might go before deciding whether to come."
Per head of population his shows were very often beyond those of the Parkinson Show, which was the talk show to beat, he added.
He lived with his family in the coastal hamlet of Coney Island in Co Down, an area made famous by the Van Morrison song, who visited the area as a child.
Even during the darkest days of the Troubles, late at night after his show ended, he would drive back home from Belfast when most people would avoid going out.
“He was very much a man of the Downpatrick, Ardglass and Coney Island Area."
:: Gerry’s funeral takes place from his late residence on Wednesday 29 July 2026 at 12.30pm for 1pm Requiem Mass in St Nicholas’ Church, Ardglass.