Lottie Ryan has revealed Dave Fanning ended up in hospital, after falling over a cliff the night before her wedding.
The RTÉ 2fm host, who was best friends with Lottie’s late father Gerry, was invited to her wedding to Fabio Aprile in Italy back in 2017.
Speaking to Jennifer Zamparelli on 2FM, Lottie said: “I’m proud of this story, goddammit, and I think Dave Fanning is proud of it as well. Well I hope he is, because I’m going to tell it anyway.”
“Dave was at my wedding, very close family friend, and his kids who are really close with myself and my brothers and sisters…”
“And I did this thing the night before my wedding called a serenata, which is where my soon-to-be husband comes and serenades me at a bedroom window,” Lottie explained.
“The story gets better. There’s the serenata, Fabio is there singing away to me at the bottom of a balcony with all the Irish people going ‘What the hell is going on?'”
“Everyone is merry and then as the night goes on the Irish are really getting into it, going ‘Jesus this Italian tradition stuff, it’s amazing.”
Lottie continued: “And Dave was enjoying himself. Fabio lives in a tiny village on the side of a mountain. It’s very picturesque but it’s mountainous, there are little cliffs and ledges everywhere.”
“And Dave was walking around and decided he was going to relieve himself off the side of a little cliff, and he fell over the cliff.”
“So while he was taking a whizz he just went forward. Sorry it’s not funny, he actually really really hurt himself.”
“And nobody told me, everybody hid this from me because nobody wanted me to be worrying because it was my wedding the next day…”
At the time, Dave didn’t realise he was injured – but the next day he woke in a lot of pain.
“The next day he woke up in quite a bit of pain, and I think when he came home he had to go to hospital,” she confessed.
Lottie admitted they look back and laugh at the incident now, and said: “Actually, in Fabio’s village they have renamed that spot, ‘Dave’s Corner’.”
“Whenever we walk by, we look by and think ‘how did he not kill himself.’ But you know what he is the best craic, he’s a legend, I absolutely love him.”
