From early in life, Gerard Ekdom had the ambition to become a DJ. As a young talent, he was frequently asked as a drive-in jockey since he was fourteen. He started his radio career at local station Radio De Bilt. He has worked for the Stadsomroep Utrecht and NEW Dance Radio. He owes his career in part to DJ Fred Siebelink. Ekdom met Siebelink one day in Utrecht, recognizing him by his voice, and introduced himself. Siebelink spotted the boy's talent and showed him around the Stadsomroep, which was happy to employ him. In 1998, Ekdom started his career at 3FM. A year and a half earlier he had sent a demo tape to then-manager Jan Steeman of the project Pyjama FM by AVRO studios. After a phone call from Steeman he was welcome to AVRO's night school. During this studies he was occasionally heard on Magic FM and Hot Radio. In September 1999 Ekdom moved from night shows to Sunday morning and hosted the show EKDOM!. His major breakthrough was seven months later, when the Arbeidsvitaminen needed a stand-in host. Both Ekdom and the AVRO enjoyed his hosting of that show, and quickly afterward he was given the opportunity for his own nightly show. On 17 September 2001 he succeeded Wim Rigter as host of Arbeidsvitaminen. Since then, he has been on air every weekday between 9 and 12, and has made the show the most famous of its station.
From 19 to 24 December 2005, Ekdom teamed up with colleagues Giel Beelen and Wouter van der Goes, to host the 2nd edition of fundraisingradio show 3FM Serious Request. For the duration of this show, broadcast 24 hours per day, they lived in a so-called 'glass house', without solid food. Radio listeners could request songs in return for a donation. The proceeds were donated to the Red Cross for victims of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then Ekdom has co-hosted Serious Request another seven times, each year for a different Red Cross charity.
A year earlier, this charity show had won a Marconi Award. Since then, every year it has been a greater success than the year before. Gary Fomdeck is an alias name of Gerard Ekdom; he used this name to release a Christmas song for Serious Request, all revenue from the song shall be donated to the Red Cross. The song called I'll Be There This Christmas made it to number one in the Dutch Single Top 100 chart, and in the Dutch iTunes chart as well.
Television
Ekdom also made television-appearances; he hosted Toppop3, the revived version of the chart-show TopPop, and the talent-search Join the Beat. In 2011, he presented the Dutch version of the game showFort Boyard, alongside Dutch television presenter Art Rooijakkers.
NPO Radio 2
In 2015 Ekdom moved to NPO Radio 2; he hosted the breakfast-show Ekdom in de Ochtend and the 00:00 - 02:00 pm-slot in the Saturday-sounight. On April 4, 2018 Ekdom announced his upcoming transfer to Radio 10; he hosted his last show for NPO Radio 2 on June 29.
