“You either like the way I get on or you don’t, I can’t change myself.”
Ryan Quinn is an enigmatic character. After being given a four-year prison sentence for manslaughter following a one punch killing in Cookstown in 2003, the Co Tyrone man went on to launch a successful gym franchise.
Now he has branched out into selling his own ready meals with his face on them using the persona he has built for himself through social media. Throw in a brush with alcoholism which he has learned to deal with, there is a lot to unpack with the 41-year-old Ardboe man.
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Quinn was sentenced to four years after a fatal one punch killing nineteen years ago. He said he regrets what happened to this day.
“It’s something that’s never going to go away. That’s not going to go away, ever,” Ryan told Belfast Live.
“You think about that every day. It has taken me a long time to get over it and I likely never will.
“I was 21 and when I first got arrested, I remember going on to a video link with my father and I said, ‘Daddy I want to go home’.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Son I have done many things for you but I can do nothing for you now’.
“My 20s were spent either under house arrest or in prison, but I could have been worse off if the shoe was on the other foot. So you would always be very wary of that.”
After coming out of prison in 2008 having served his time, Ryan got a loan from the bank to help set up LS Results, a gym in his native Ardboe. The business grew and soon there were franchises in Cookstown and Dungiven.
But business success did not always translate into happiness for him, and he has recently attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to deal with a problem with alcohol.
He added: “Mike Tyson said that prison was the best days of his life, and people asked him why he said that. He said it was because he had peace and I felt that as well.
“I went in and couldn’t cook and couldn’t clean – couldn’t wash clothes. I couldn’t do anything for myself. I had to learn all those things very quickly.
“I managed to get a job in the gym in the prison. I always knew when I was growing up I wanted to do something in that industry.
“When I went into that gym I had to clean it and make sure everything was tidy. That was my introduction to the gym.
“Alcohol has been a big problem in my life, a massive problem. It controlled me, I didn’t control it. It was an addiction for me but I didn’t know why it was an addiction.
“When I drank I wanted to be someone else. I didn’t want to know anybody, wanted to be on my own and sit in the bar on my own.
“I would have used to have a drink at the weekend, but when lockdown came we were all stuck in the house and I would just be drinking every night.
“Even when the pubs opened again I found myself going there every night. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me, I hadn’t a clue.
“I went to an AA meeting and I didn’t mean to, but the floodgates just opened. I put 20 odd years of stuff out of me and once I did that then they were able to help me.
“Will I drink again? Yes but I’ll never go back to the way I was.”
The gym owner has become well-known up and down Co Tyrone and further afield for his social media presence and catchphrases, including ‘Keep ‘er LS’. While he says he plays up to the audience, he says it’s just getting across to his followers his real personality.
His face now features prominently on ready meals stocked in several convenience stores across Northern Ireland.
“People see me on social media and that’s not me putting that on, that’s the way I get on. But you could walk into a restaurant and I’d be hiding in the corner.
“What I do on social media - that’s me. The ‘Keep ‘er LS’ and the way I talk, that’s just me.
“You either like the way I get on or you don’t, I can’t change myself. There are a lot of people on social media faking it, I know who they are and I don’t like it.
“I used to get a lot of hate from people and I made the mistake of biting back. I try to be as careful as I can now, I was doing things that were annoying people back then.
“My father said to me one day that I was on social media too much. I went off it for two weeks and my sales dropped by 90%. He’s never given me a bit of bother since.”
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