Obituary: Sir Terry Wogan

Died: January 31, 2016

SIR Terry Wogan, who has died of cancer aged 77, was one of the most skilled, popular and enduring broadcasters of his generation, with more than 40 years at the top of his profession.

As the presenter of Children in Need, a genial chat show host for many years on BBC1, and a breakfast DJ on Radio 2, he earned a reputation as one of Britain’s wittiest and warmest broadcasters and had a large and loyal audience - his Radio 2 fans came to be known as TOGs (Terry's Old Gits and Gals).

He was hugely popular too for his ironic and sometimes blistering - but always amusing - commentary at the Eurovision Song Contest. In all, he spent 35 years ripping into the often bizarre performances in the show, only giving up in 2008.

He also got a chance to present the programme proper in 1998, taking to the stage alongside Ulrika Jonsson in Birmingham after the UK's Katrina and The Waves won Eurovision the previous year in Dublin.

The show was just one of Sir Terry’s many roles at the BBC though. He may have started his career at Irish broadcaster RTE, but he was always a BBC man through and through, although that did not stop him criticising Auntie - he lampooned former BBC chairman Marmaduke Hussey on his Radio 2 show, claiming "Dukie" lived in a cardboard box by the gate.

Sir Terry was born in Limerick and first headed into the world of banking after leaving college in 1956 but, after answering an advertisement, joined RTE where he worked as a newsreader and announcer.

He moved on to become a DJ and hosted quiz and variety shows. Moving to the BBC he hosted a mid-'60s programme called Midday Spin and when the corporation reorganised its output, he began working on the new Late Night Extra slot on Radio 1, for which he commuted from Dublin.

He then proved himself during a stint as holiday cover for Sir Jimmy Young, and was rewarded with his own show. He landed the afternoon show (which was broadcast simultaneously on Radios 1 and 2 in those days) and then from April 1972, he was given the Radio 2 morning show.

Television work also flourished and at the height of his popularity, he fronted the long-running humorous panel show Blankety Blank, complete with his famous wand microphone. He would also appear as a guest on shows such as Celebrity Squares and New Faces.

He even found time to have a novelty hit single in 1978 when he released a version of the Floral Dance. The same year he started his association with the BBC's Children In Need appeal, which grew from a short Christmas Day appeal to a live TV special.

A regular presenter of the fundraiser for many years, he missed last November's appeal at the last minute on the advice of doctors following a procedure on his back, being replaced by Dermot O'Leary.

Sir Terry left his breakfast show at the end of 1984 in anticipation of the launch of his thrice-weekly BBC1 chat show Wogan which ran until 1992 and saw him interview everyone from royalty to Hollywood A-listers, with a drunken appearance by George Best providing one of many memorable moments.

Sir Terry then returned to Radio 2 in 1993, and his popularity and worth to the BBC was accompanied by one of the corporation's biggest presenter salaries, said to be around £800,000. His influence helped to make stars of Katie Melua and posthumously Eva Cassidy among others.

His easygoing manner on-air and his cheery natters with colleagues also made his studio team part of his listeners' extended family with his late producer Paul Walters and newsreaders "Deadly" Alan Dedicoat, Fran Godfrey and John "Boggy" Marsh all part of the Wogan experience.

Sir Terry - who was granted joint British and Irish citizenship in 2005 - saw his audience pass the eight million mark in 2005. On hearing the news, he joked: "Hang on, there's 60 million people in the country - what are the other 52 million listening to?"

In 1997 he was awarded an honorary OBE and was knighted in 2005.

Sir Terry was last on air on BBC Radio 2 just under three months ago, on Sunday November 8, just before it was announced that he was having to pull out of Children in Need.

Among many tributes, Irish president Michael D Higgins said Sir Terry had been one one of the great figures of broadcasting.

"Always proud of his origins in Limerick, he made many returns to his native country for television and radio projects,” he said. “His rise to the top of radio listenership in the United Kingdom was a great tribute to his breadth of knowledge and in particular his unique, very personal sense of humour."

Sir Terry married Helen Joyce in 1965 (he jokingly referred to her on his radio show as the “present Mrs Wogan”). She survives him, with their two sons and a daughter.