BROADCASTER GERRY KELLY, who presented the UTV chat show Kelly for 17 years, has died at the age of 77.<\/p>\n
The Northern Irish man presented his eponymous show from 1989 to 2005 on Friday nights. He then took up presenting on BBC Radio Ulster from 2009 to 2019.<\/p>\n
UTV\u2019s head of news and programmes Simon Clemison described Kelly\u2019s show as a \u201cmust-watch on Friday nights, featuring some of the biggest names in entertainment\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cGerry Kelly was one of Northern Ireland\u2019s best known and much-loved broadcasters,\u201d Clemison said, adding that UTV wished to offer its condolences to Kelly\u2019s wife, family and friends.<\/p>\n
The chat show saw scores of high-profile appearances, although a 1999 segment in which an 8-year-old Rory McIlroy appeared chipping golf balls into a washing machine is one of the best-known moments.<\/p>\n
In 2018, Kelly revealed he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer two years previously.<\/p>\n
Deputy first minister for Northern Ireland Emma Little-Pengelly said in a post to X: \u201cSo sorry to hear of the death of Gerry Kelly, a face and a voice that so many generations across Northern Ireland were familiar with. A much loved presenter with a huge character.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BROADCASTER GERRY KELLY, who presented the UTV chat show Kelly for 17 years, has died at the age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[240559,319,93,120767,61,60,2443,904,9388],"class_list":["post-570209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bbc-radio-ulster","tag-broadcasting","tag-entertainment","tag-gerry-kelly","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-northern-ireland","tag-television","tag-utv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}