"Muuum. What's the pill? The man on the radio keeps talking about the pill." "He's talking about contraception, Sheena. I'll tell you about it when you're older." She didn't. I had to get my older sister to tell me. But I'd like to thank Gerry Ryan for introducing me, and a legion of other prying prepubescent ears, to the birds and the bees.

Listening to The Gerry Ryan Show growing up in the 80s was always an education, an illicit one at that. We could only ever turn him on when Dad wasn't around, otherwise we'd be met with a bark of "Get that rubberlips off! All he does is talk about sex!" Indeed, that was why we enjoyed listening to him. The Ryan Line was always open, inviting all manner of mad yokes into our kitchen while we chowed down on bacon butties.

He talked openly about so many other taboo topics at the time, too. Extreme bodily functions. The menopause. HRT. Explicit language. Domestic abuse. Homosexuality. Alcoholism. And, more recently, abuse. He also pondered more philosophical issues on air, like "is God a bollocks?" In addition to this, he brought us The Master of the Universe, Aidan Walsh, made mullets marginally acceptable via RTE's (as it turns out *looks around office suspiciously* little known) pop music quiz show Number 1, and made us consider if we'd kill a lamb with our bare hands in the wilds of Connemara.

One of this shining moments, however, was when he renaged on an interview with then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 2004: "Ahern had agreed to appear on The Gerry Ryan Show after the delivery of that year's government budget but moments before he set off for RTÉ's Donnybrook headquarters, the show's producers rang his office and informed aides that they no longer wished to interview him. Associates of the Taoiseach were said to be 'fuming' over the affair, saying 'you can't just ask for an interview with the most powerful man in the country and then ditch him as if he was some stand-in celebrity.' Ahern was replaced by RTÉ's economics reporter George Lee."

And, let's not forget, he also got to call Gordon Ramsay "a c**t" to his face.

The man who, quite literally, introduced Riverdance to the world has died at an unfortunately young age. It's extremely difficult to lose a parent at any stage of life, but it's particularly arduous when you're only starting out.

Our thoughts are with his children.