Ronan has been a DJ on RTE radio One for 27 years, and he presents a weekday show from 121pm daily. He has just finished up a 15 year stint presenting the Lotto draw, and having played in the Dickie Rock band, Ronan has recently released the 30-track Ronan Collins Showband Hits Collection on Dolphin Records. Ronan lives in Co.

Meath and is married to Woody. They have two daughters, Jessica and Lisa, and a son Damien.

Paddy is from Co Monaghan, and he started off his ever-popular career in the 1960s with the Capitol Showband, who divided their time performing between Ireland and Las Vegas. He will be returning to his showband roots, when he performs in Ireland's Showbands: Do You Come Here Often, with Dickie Rock, Dana, Geraldine Branagan, and Tony Kenny over Christmas at The Helix, Dublin, the Waterfront, Belfast, and the Millennium Forum in Derry. Paddy is married to Helen, and has three children, Pearse, Patrick and Karen.

Paddy on Ronan I first met Ronan about 30 years ago, when he was drumming with Dickie Rock's band at a gig in the Maple ballroom in Rock Corry, Co Monaghan. I got talking to Ronan after the gig, and the funny thing was that it just clicked instantly with us.

Helen and I have become very friendly with Ronan and his wife Woody over the years, and apart from Ronan and I being friends, the girls would also meet for coffee. Ronan and I regularly meet for lunch or dinner, and go to shows and gigs, and we always have great times together.

Ronan is a great family man . . . he eats, sleeps and drinks his family. He's a guy I tell things to in complete confidence, and know they go no further. Integrity means a lot to him, and he's very straight and direct, and with Ronan, what you see is what you get. He always tells things as they are, and is very truthful . . . sometimes too much so! He's also very generous, and has done so much for charity that people don't even realise.

Ronan loves the music business, and he loves hearing about the things that happened on the road, like when I was in Las Vegas. He's a great supporter of Irish music, and was always very fair about giving Irish artistes a chance. It's well known there is a lack of Irish music content in general on the radio, but Irish musicians always credit Ronan with giving them a chance and playing their albums. He actually won the IMRO Special Recognition award in 2005 for it.

Ronan's a really good guy, and we always have a lot of fun together. He takes his golf very seriously, and he's better than me, although I can take him the very odd time! We used to go on regular golfing holidays, which were a great bit of fun, and inevitably there would be a bit of music at night. Ronan's a really good drummer, and he drummed with me for a while at a jazz gig I was doing at the Harcourt Hotel, but I ended up sacking him! He was on holidays, and when he came back, I told him that I'd got a new drummer in, and he said, "Let me get this straight . . . are you sacking me?" I can't repeat what he called me when I said I was, but then he took a fit of laughing. It didn't affect our friendship one bit, though he's still telling the story today!

Ronan on Paddy When I first met Paddy, I was in my 20s and he was in his 30s, so he was a kind of senior figure to me. I would probably have looked on him as an iconic figure at the beginning, because he was a highly rated musician, but he was also a very nice fella and we became really close friends.

Paddy is much more 'showbusiness' than I am, and he's always very bright and happy, and I'd be slightly sourer when we're working on things together, because I'll say the things that nobody else will say . . . I'll come out with it straight! He's very professional and I'm very pernickety!

When Paddy retired from the showband scene, he invited me to play with him in the Harcourt Hotel, but I wasn't fully focused, so I was a bit grumpy about the gigs. When I came home from holidays, I rang Paddy, because he's always one of the first calls I make when I come home, and he told me that Dessie Reynolds was in instead of me, and I was fired! He doesn't fire people lightly so I'm sure it wasn't pleasurable for him, but I understood perfectly, because he was trying to move back into a music circle, and I was just playing for my own enjoyment, and that wasn't what he really needed. We still laugh about it 25 years later!

As most people will know, Paddy got some bad publicity over a tax bill this year, and I thought he was very hard done by some things that were said at the time.

Whatever money he had to pay to the Revenue Commissioners for mistakes that were made along the way, he has well made up for it in his extraordinary generosity to other people. Paddy has an amazing heart, and apart from all the charity work he does, he always looks after people and animals in need. I hope that one day someone writes the story of all the money that Paddy has given away, because he's one of the best people I know for looking after lame ducks and helping out people who have fallen on hard times.

Paddy's a very warm type of character, and I know a lot about him and he knows a lot about me, but we would never betray a confidence. Being that little bit older means that he has always been able to give me great advice on family matters.

Family values are very strong with him, and even though he kind of lets on that his house has now been infiltrated by his grandchildren, I was there recently and you can see that he's delighted with them and loves them as much as he loves his own children.