SIBLINGS: Dave (50) and Gerard Fanning (52) grew up in Mount Merrion, Co Dublin and now both live a few minutes away from each other in nearby Blackrock.
Dave presents a daily drive-time radio show on 2FM, a rock show called The Last Broadcast on RTÉ2 on Saturday nights and is a judge in the upcoming You're A Star talent contest which, despite his participation, he slagged off in a recent interview. Gerard is a civil servant, poet and, like Dave, a film buff. The title of his soon-to-be-published book of poems, Water & Power, published by Dedalus Press, is taken from one of his all-time favourite films, Chinatown. He is married to Bríd Ní Chuilinn. Dave is married to Ursula Courtney and they have three children: Jack (11), Robert (9) and Hayley (1). Dave and Gerard are the two youngest in a family of five boys and one girl.
GERARD
Being the two youngest, Dave and I always got lumped together because we were close in age. We mostly played soccer down in Belfield and given the chance we both still believe we would have made superb professional soccer players, but sadly we never even made a team. In the summer we would have swam down in the Blackrock Baths and our Dad Barney was always bringing us to the Stella cinema to watch Westerns which we both still love.
You would have started noticing differences between Dave and me as we came into our teens. I was really into Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Dave liked things such as Led Zeppelin which I couldn't stand. As teenagers, we had separate sets of friends even though we both went to Blackrock College, where Bob Geldof was in my class.
All of us did arts degrees in UCD but after spending as much time as I could in college, I got a job in the civil service and Dave was doing his DJ work. He used to work for a pirate radio station in the 1970s which was handy as you could get him to play a record for a girl when you were driving her home which at the time had a bit of caché.
We sometimes bump into each other in Blackrock village and go for a pint. We never row. Maybe we don't see each other enough for that to happen. It might annoy me maybe that his mobile phone goes off too much and I find it amusing when people recognise him. Sometimes he gets me into concerts. Five minutes before Bob Dylan was due onstage in Vicar Street, the call came - Dave saying: "you're in".
I don't think he has ever grown up and neither have I. I definitely have no concept of being the age I am. People pass me in the street and they see a bald, fat, middle-aged man and I think, who are they looking at? Of course Dave, being in TV, is much more concerned about his appearance. He recently came out as being openly 50 but for a while there he was doing a Geldof and shaving a few years off his age.
If Dave has a list of babysitters I am probably number 10 on that list. I like the way he doesn't intrude in my life. He is not judgmental. We are not ringing each other up every five minutes for barbecues and holidays away together. In some ways Dave is as conservative as our middle-class upbringing in Mount Merrion might suggest, but he just defined himself in different ways.
DAVE
I got a lot of my musical interests from Gerard and my older brothers. Early Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Planxty, The Incredible String Band. There was always a queue for the record player. It was only really me and Gerard in the queue because by the time we were teenagers, the rest of them had all moved away from home. When my father retired we made him get a stereo as his retirement present because at that time it was the height of cool.
In our house it was all about books - books, music, theatre and books. Gerard was the editor of the St Stephen's literary magazine in UCD for a while. He was friends with Colm Tóibín when he was a journalist doing a TV column for Magill. But Colm didn't have a television at the time and I remember him coming around to our house and Gerard explaining the concept and the characters of The Rockford Files to him.
Gerard is very laid back and doesn't get too excited about anything. He is the quiet guy who likes a pint and loves poetry. When his poems appeared in "New Irish Writing" in The Irish Press my mother was so proud of him. I am sure his poetry books sell around five copies, I don't think people are queuing around the block to snap them up.
I would say he would see certain parts of what I do as extremely vulgar. Today he said to me "have you been going around the country doing that thing?". And that's as much as he has said to me about You're A Star. He would have more interest in a new Heaney poem that had been unearthed in the Smithsonian or somewhere and in learning how to use the Internet to find it.
We don't fight because we don't live in each other's ears enough to fight. We just meet for a pint and talk about music and movies. Being "cool" is not something that would interest Gerard at all. He likes movies, mostly what you might call arthouse movies, whereas I like any movies at all, even bad ones; he wouldn't dream of watching some of the films I watch. My wife Ursula says Gerard is the nicest guy she ever met. He is just very easy going, there is no looking for anything more than he has already got. Ursula would spend a lot more time with her family than I do, which I think is healthy but it is no more healthy than our set-up in terms of the love and regard I have for my family. I think the relationship Gerard and I have is absolutely perfect.