Larry Ryan, Behaviour & Attitudes
Larry Ryan has been asking questions since he was a small boy and is a director and part-owner of Behaviour & Attitudes. B&A has won 18 research excellence awards in the past six years, with 2015 prizes for RTE and AIB studies. He helped to expand B&A’s global network, International Research Institutes, to 34 countries.
01 When are you happiest?
On holidays somewhere hot with my wife Barbara and four kids and watching the kids play football
02 Apart from loved ones, what’s your most treasured possession?
My dad died in 1997 and was never very acquisitive or flash, but did buy himself a great watch when he lived in Brazil in the 1940s. It’s a Tudor Oyster Crown – an early Rolex’s brand extension. I wear it with care a few times a week
03 Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn?
Question mark indeed! I don’t get them at all. Shazam if you must.
04 What’s the worst job you’ve ever done?
Three months as a chimneysweep in 1987
05 Favourite writers?
Mario Vargas Llosa, Alex Turner, Paul Durcan, Morrissey (but only the music)
06 Last music you bought?
Everything you’ve come to expect/last shadow puppets (5/10), Moon Shaped Pool/Radiohead (6ish), Blackstar/David Bowie (9/10)
07 A film you’d watch again tonight?
Pulp Fiction or The Third Man
08 What do some people think about you that isn’t true?
I unwittingly blanked lots of people I knew until I had my eyes lasered at 30. Never sure if I was assumed blind, rude or both
09 What keeps you awake at night?
I go running early in the morning and try to wake up before the alarm, so that I don’t wake herself too. That and sundry demons/unwritten presentations
10 Which words do you overuse?
Rude ones
11 Favourite ad?
Currently, Three’s Brewing Up a Storm. Italia ’90 is reborn. Way to go Boys & Girls
12 Favourite gadget?
I was caught in the desperate snow of 2012 – all six days of it – and went out and bought myself an Audi Quattro, which ‘can climb up the curtains like a cat’.
Hasn’t snowed since, of course
13 A brand experience that disappointed you?
NTL/UPC etc. Lots of boxes, wires, IVRs and initials
14 What living person do you most admire?
David Norris and Barrack Obama
15 Most embarrassing experience?
Meeting an elderly neighbour while accompanying- and filming – a lady, ‘clearly not your wife’, who was doing her weekly shopping, as you do. That I pay women to let me do this didn’t allay her concerns at all
16 Someone or something that strikes you as beautiful?
Wooded river valleys, preferably seen from a canoe
17 In what other era would you like to have been born?
Living in Camden about 1976, chosing between playing guitar for the Clash or the Pretenders. Chrissie Hynde would likely have won out
18 Best advice you’ve heard?
My boss at Diageo, Peter Nash, a great man for advice: Nash’s laws indeed. “Never make someone else’s problems your own” and “Always reserve the right to take a completely irrational dislike to about one person in every ten” are two favourites
19 What would be your fantasy act of heroism?
Handing Trump over to the Mexicans who’ll be building that wall for him
20 You’re on Death Row, what’s your last meal?
An antidote to the lethal injection would be good. Failing that, it would have to be the liver with fava beans and a nice chianti
