Gerry Anderson (broadcaster)

For the producer of Thunderbirds, see Sylvia and Gerry Anderson

Gerald Michael Anderson, known as Gerry Anderson (born 1944) is a radio and television broadcaster working for BBC Northern Ireland.

Originally a touring rock musician in Ireland, he started in radio at the local station in the north west of Northern Ireland, BBC Radio Foyle, starting with music but then also moving onto talk shows. His programme was picked up by BBC Radio Ulster and given a wider audience.

From this he was selected to present a light and cheap weekday afternoon programme in 1995 for BBC Radio 4 called Anderson Country, using phone-ins and broadening the regional accents heard on the station. The audience reaction was vociferous and negative, and Anderson Country was taken off the air. However the BBC essentially continued the programme under the name The Afternoon Shift, with two alternating presenters, the Irish broadcaster Daire Brehan and the sociologist Professor Laurie Taylor. He returned to Ireland where he remained popular, sometime presenting television as well as radio, and even made new programmes for Radio 4 such as Gerry's Bar.

His contribution to solving the Derry/Londonderry name dispute was to popularise the jocular name "Stroke City" (from the stroke/slash in the city's officially neutral designation), which became the title of one of his radio programmes from 1992. It led some of his friends to rename him "Gerry/Londongerry".