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'The ultimate achievement for a broadcaster is to be | 0:00:24 | 0:00:28 | |
'in equal demand on both sides of the microphone, as host and guest.' | 0:00:28 | 0:00:32 | |
Since the 1960s, when he left Ireland to do | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
his first radio shows for the BBC, | 0:00:36 | 0:00:38 | |
Sir Terry Wogan has been one of the most recognisable voices and faces in Britain. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:43 | |
Presenting the Radio 2 Breakfast Show for 28 years in two spells | 0:00:43 | 0:00:47 | |
divided by a full-time TV career that included Blankety Blank | 0:00:47 | 0:00:52 | |
and the thrice-weekly Wogan chat show on BBC One. | 0:00:52 | 0:00:56 | |
His radio work in particular set new standards of fluency, | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
verbal inventiveness and, long before social networking technology, | 0:01:00 | 0:01:05 | |
interaction with the audience. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:07 | |
The two autobiographies which I've read, a frequent theme is that | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
you are incredibly lazy, always took the path of least resistance | 0:01:11 | 0:01:16 | |
and yet this always amazes people, because for long periods | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
you were on radio and TV simultaneously, continuously, constantly. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:27 | |
My conclusion is that you disguise the drive and ambition | 0:01:27 | 0:01:31 | |
beneath this affable demeanour. | 0:01:31 | 0:01:33 | |
That probably credits me with a bit more intelligence than I have, | 0:01:35 | 0:01:39 | |
to be honest, Mark. Yeah, maybe. Years ago, I went back to Ireland | 0:01:39 | 0:01:46 | |
and was talking to a friend with whom I'd worked in the bank and he said, | 0:01:46 | 0:01:50 | |
"People are always saying to me that you must have had | 0:01:50 | 0:01:55 | |
"some kind of determination, but I never saw it." | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
And he was right. I don't really have enormous drive. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
I've never knocked on anybody's door and asked them for a job. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:05 | |
What I've had is a kind of blessed life, if you like. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:10 | |
I've been enormously lucky. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:12 | |
Doors have opened for me without my knocking on them. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
But you haven't been cautious though, because looking at | 0:02:15 | 0:02:17 | |
periods in your life, there was a time when you were broadcasting | 0:02:17 | 0:02:21 | |
in both Ireland and London, commuting. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:23 | |
The Wogan chat show, it's three nights a week, first person, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:27 | |
these are not the decisions of a cautious person. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:29 | |
There is some drive there. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:31 | |
Yeah, whether it can be identified as drive... | 0:02:31 | 0:02:34 | |
I'm not cautious about my career. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:37 | |
I'm cautious about my family, I'm cautious about my life, | 0:02:37 | 0:02:41 | |
but I've always taken risks in my career. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:44 | |
I often say to Helen, my wife, that if I were older, or if it was now, | 0:02:44 | 0:02:49 | |
I probably wouldn't have taken the chance of leaving Ireland, | 0:02:49 | 0:02:53 | |
where I had a reasonable career and making a bit of money, | 0:02:53 | 0:02:58 | |
to come across to Britain and work for the BBC | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
for less money than I was making in Ireland. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
When I came here to work first for BBC on daily radio, | 0:03:04 | 0:03:08 | |
it was £135 a week, that was for a daily radio show. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:13 | |
It's a far cry! | 0:03:13 | 0:03:16 | |
So I used to go back every second weekend and do some commercial | 0:03:16 | 0:03:20 | |
radio programmes in Ireland to keep me income boosting, | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
and for a while when I was actually working on Late Night Extra | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
for Radio 1, I'd be living in Ireland, | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
I was the most travelled DJ in the world. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:35 | |
I used to fly back and forth from Ireland to London once, twice a week, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:41 | |
even during the foot and mouth outbreak, in which case | 0:03:41 | 0:03:45 | |
I used to have to walk through fine sprays of disinfectant | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
to get back to Ireland. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
I've always been struck from the outside and knew there is | 0:03:51 | 0:03:54 | |
a basic stubbornness and a determination to show people, | 0:03:54 | 0:03:57 | |
because my theory is one reason, when you came back to Radio 2, | 0:03:57 | 0:04:01 | |
it did become the huge success it became is that you were determined to show people, | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
because a lot of people wrote you off after the Wogan TV show. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:09 | |
Similarly, when the BBC cancelled your TV contract, | 0:04:09 | 0:04:12 | |
you turned up on Channel 4. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:13 | |
There is something in you that wants to show them, isn't there? | 0:04:13 | 0:04:17 | |
There is something in me, not necessarily... | 0:04:17 | 0:04:20 | |
I have enough confidence. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
I don't really feel the need to show anybody anything, | 0:04:22 | 0:04:27 | |
but I'm not going to be defeated. I don't recognise failure, | 0:04:27 | 0:04:32 | |
or I bypass it, if you like. I don't dwell on it, I get on with it. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:38 | |
You once said something to me when I was a young broadcaster, | 0:04:38 | 0:04:41 | |
I met you at one of those so-called BBC talent events in Wimbledon. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:45 | |
And you said something which I've always thought, | 0:04:45 | 0:04:48 | |
and as time has gone on is one of the wisest things I ever heard about broadcasting, | 0:04:48 | 0:04:52 | |
you said television is about novelty | 0:04:52 | 0:04:55 | |
and radio is about familiarity and repetition. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:59 | |
For that reason it is easier to have a longer career in radio | 0:04:59 | 0:05:03 | |
than TV, but that is borne out. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:06 | |
Absolutely true. I mean, I said something that is absolutely true. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:12 | |
It is not entirely my fault. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:14 | |
But, yeah, I love radio because I can impose my own pausing on it, | 0:05:14 | 0:05:20 | |
I can impose my own timing on it, | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
and because people think while they're listening to the radio. | 0:05:23 | 0:05:28 | |
Television is used thought - | 0:05:28 | 0:05:30 | |
your thinking is done for you, your imagination is done for you | 0:05:30 | 0:05:34 | |
and you can't really pause too much, otherwise the director will take | 0:05:34 | 0:05:40 | |
the camera off you thinking you've had a heart attack. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:44 | |
So you don't have the same degree of freedom. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:46 | |
It was always a sort of forlorn hope of mine | 0:05:46 | 0:05:49 | |
that I could somehow transcend the picture, | 0:05:49 | 0:05:56 | |
get into people's minds, heads, in the same way, on television, | 0:05:56 | 0:06:01 | |
in the same way that I could on radio, | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
but I don't think it's possible. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
I was thinking about this, I think this is why | 0:06:06 | 0:06:08 | |
the Eurovision Song Contest became such a big thing for you. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:12 | |
It was a curious hybrid that, it was as if you were doing a radio show on television. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:16 | |
Very occasionally we'd get a shot of you in the box | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
with your headphones on, but essentially you were | 0:06:20 | 0:06:24 | |
the disembodied voice but anchoring a TV show, which is very unusual. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:28 | |
Yeah and I think that's why it worked | 0:06:28 | 0:06:29 | |
because it did not have my face all over it. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:31 | |
# ..Reggae OK | 0:06:31 | 0:06:35 | |
# OK | 0:06:35 | 0:06:36 | |
# Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
# OK. # | 0:06:39 | 0:06:40 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:06:41 | 0:06:43 | |
Well, you can't say you're not getting a variety of costume here. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:50 | |
Good to see the old accordion coming into reggae music, isn't it? | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
That's for Finland. Reggae O.K. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:57 | |
A couple of years ago, when Graham took over, | 0:06:58 | 0:07:01 | |
it was the first time in 35 years that Helen and I were able to sit | 0:07:01 | 0:07:05 | |
together and watch the Eurovision Song Contest. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
Slightly unnerving experience. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:12 | |
I hadn't realised exactly how bad it was | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
because when you're there, | 0:07:15 | 0:07:16 | |
you're taken up in the whole excitement of it. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:19 | |
Although, again you were a pioneer in this respect. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:22 | |
There is lots of talk about ironic broadcasting | 0:07:22 | 0:07:24 | |
and so much of it goes on that actually Blankety Blank | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
and the Eurovision Song Contest were examples of ironic broadcasting, | 0:07:27 | 0:07:31 | |
that you were sending it up even while being part of it. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:35 | |
That's right. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:36 | |
As you know, the Europeans don't understand irony | 0:07:36 | 0:07:40 | |
any more than Americans do. They don't get it. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
Some of the European countries would get really quite angry about your attitude, wouldn't they? | 0:07:43 | 0:07:47 | |
Yes, they thought we weren't, or that the British, | 0:07:47 | 0:07:51 | |
were not giving sufficient respect to this major, and it is a major show. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:55 | |
It's extraordinary! | 0:07:55 | 0:07:57 | |
Three and a half hours of perfect television, brilliantly staged. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:02 | |
We perhaps don't give them enough credit for that, | 0:08:02 | 0:08:05 | |
but what I did find was that | 0:08:05 | 0:08:07 | |
I became very unpopular in Denmark a few years ago | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
because the two presenters on Danish television, | 0:08:11 | 0:08:15 | |
staging the Eurovision, | 0:08:15 | 0:08:18 | |
did every introduction as a rhyming couplet, | 0:08:18 | 0:08:22 | |
which, frankly, I thought was a mistake. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
Let's go on with the show. | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
-Let's start the music. -Let's start the fun. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:30 | |
BOTH: The Eurovision Song Contest 2001. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:34 | |
Not before time. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
I nicknamed them Dr Death and the Tooth Fairy | 0:08:37 | 0:08:42 | |
and so really, if I go through Copenhagen nowadays | 0:08:42 | 0:08:46 | |
I have to go with a paper bag over my head. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:50 | |
But, yes, whenever I used to go to various places in Europe, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:53 | |
they would all say, "If you don't like the Eurovision Song Contest, why do you do it?" | 0:08:53 | 0:08:59 | |
As you say, they miss irony, sarcasm, different sense of humour. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:04 | |
They'd cheer anything here. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:06 | |
38,000 people here, half of whom can't see anything. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:11 | |
And I'm in that majority. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:14 | |
I'm watching it on a television like the rest of you. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
We need to talk about Ireland. The first thing is the language, | 0:09:17 | 0:09:20 | |
which has been a large part of your career. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
People use that shorthand blarney and this comes out | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
in your autobiographies, there is something about speech in Ireland. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
It is very colourful, it is self-mocking, mocking others | 0:09:30 | 0:09:35 | |
and yet you can get away with a lot as an Irish person, | 0:09:35 | 0:09:40 | |
because the overall tone is friendly. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
Yes, the Irish have that piquant...mixture | 0:09:43 | 0:09:48 | |
of cynicism and sentimentality. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:53 | |
But the language comes because we're taught two languages, | 0:09:53 | 0:09:57 | |
because Gaelic which you had to speak, or at least learn, when I went to school, | 0:09:57 | 0:10:03 | |
is full of flowery expressions | 0:10:03 | 0:10:06 | |
and that has seeped into the Irish use of English, | 0:10:06 | 0:10:11 | |
which is why I suppose we get so many wonderful writers and poets. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:14 | |
But you have that double thing growing up in Ireland | 0:10:14 | 0:10:17 | |
that there was the literature Flann O'Brien that everyone loved and read, | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
then there was this other literature that was dangerous and banned, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
James Joyce in particular, because the Catholic Church had | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
a huge list of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
-all these books that were banned. -Exactly. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:33 | |
I went to the same school as James Joyce, the Belvedere in Dublin, | 0:10:33 | 0:10:37 | |
and almost directly opposite in Great Denmark Street was where the family used to live, | 0:10:37 | 0:10:44 | |
but nobody in Belvedere ever spoke of James Joyce. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:49 | |
There was one priest who used to say, | 0:10:49 | 0:10:51 | |
"He's a wonderful writer, you should read him if you can." | 0:10:51 | 0:10:54 | |
But, of course, he fell foul of the Index as so many. | 0:10:54 | 0:11:00 | |
It was extraordinary but it was indicative of the kind of power that the Roman Catholic Church | 0:11:00 | 0:11:04 | |
had in Ireland and that has since largely dissipated. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:09 | |
You say in the autobiographies that the only comparison | 0:11:09 | 0:11:13 | |
for the power that the Catholic Church had in Ireland | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
when you were growing up there was the Ayatollahs. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:18 | |
Absolutely. | 0:11:18 | 0:11:20 | |
Absolutely, and that was true, has been true right up to the '80s. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:25 | |
Ireland was in thrall to the Roman Catholic Church. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:29 | |
The government, because it had no money, | 0:11:29 | 0:11:32 | |
abrogated its responsibility in education, so it left education | 0:11:32 | 0:11:37 | |
at the common level to the Christian Brothers | 0:11:37 | 0:11:41 | |
and the middle-class level to the various orders like the Jesuits, | 0:11:41 | 0:11:45 | |
Holy Ghost Fathers, Dominicans, Redemptorists. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:49 | |
You have spoken and written about beatings, | 0:11:49 | 0:11:51 | |
it was quite a savage environment. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:53 | |
It wasn't that savage. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:54 | |
It was savage if you were educated by the Christian Brothers, | 0:11:54 | 0:11:57 | |
but you were protected slightly by a middle-class upbringing. | 0:11:57 | 0:12:01 | |
The Jesuits didn't beat you insensible or give you a thump around the ear with a fist. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:07 | |
They had a more sophisticated way of doing it. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:13 | |
You go home, do your homework, make a mistake in your Latin homework, | 0:12:13 | 0:12:18 | |
priest would say, "OK," and then give you a little chit | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
which said, "Six biffs," | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
for doing wrong in your homework. It's tough, come on. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:31 | |
And you had to wait, this would be the first lesson in the morning | 0:12:31 | 0:12:34 | |
and you would have to wait until lunchtime before you had to line up, | 0:12:34 | 0:12:38 | |
anticipating all morning, before you had to line up with your little chit | 0:12:38 | 0:12:43 | |
and then you put your hand out and got six leathers. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:49 | |
But then in one of the books, you talk about going home with your hand swollen. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:52 | |
Exactly, on your little bicycle. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:56 | |
It wasn't a boarding school, it was a day school, | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
so I used to cycle home for my lunch. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
But, you know, I suppose it is only in retrospect that | 0:13:02 | 0:13:07 | |
I think that that was in any way damaging, because it wasn't. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:13 | |
It was what you expected, it was what school was about. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:18 | |
It made you work harder, it made you work harder at your Latin. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:23 | |
In fact, I got fantastic marks in my Latin in the intermediate exams | 0:13:23 | 0:13:27 | |
and then when I went up to Dublin and things were a little gentler, | 0:13:27 | 0:13:31 | |
I didn't really achieve anything like it. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:34 | |
But at a religious level, the Jesuits failed with you | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
because you were an agnostic or an atheist by quite a young age. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:41 | |
I can never really distinguish between the two. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:47 | |
I'm not against all knowledge, so I'm not agnostic | 0:13:47 | 0:13:52 | |
but I have difficulty with the idea of an almighty God keeping his eye on me. | 0:13:52 | 0:14:00 | |
It came... I suppose the watershed for me came | 0:14:00 | 0:14:05 | |
when I was in Belvedere in Dublin and we finished, did all our exams, | 0:14:05 | 0:14:11 | |
and then we went on a retreat outside Dublin, to a farm or something, to a Jesuit retreat | 0:14:11 | 0:14:18 | |
and a priest got up on the first night and he said, | 0:14:18 | 0:14:22 | |
"Remember, boys, it's almost impossible to commit immortal sin." | 0:14:22 | 0:14:27 | |
And I thought, "Why didn't somebody tell me this five years ago?!" | 0:14:27 | 0:14:32 | |
As far as I'm concerned, | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
I've been committing mortal sins every ten minutes. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:37 | |
You were brought up with this idea of sin. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:40 | |
Sin was never very far in the corner | 0:14:40 | 0:14:42 | |
and the main sins, of course, were sex and vanity. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:46 | |
Vanity was a big sin. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:49 | |
How any of us in Ireland grew up with self-esteem, I'll never know. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:53 | |
One of the legends of Catholicism, particularly Irish Catholicism, is they say, | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
"He'll come back to it, he'll call for the priest at the end." | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
Yes. Yes they do say that. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
And maybe I will because, you know, let's keep all the exits open. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:09 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:15:09 | 0:15:10 | |
I don't... Maybe it's arrogance but when you think that St Augstine | 0:15:10 | 0:15:16 | |
the great saints, the fathers of the Church, highly intelligent men, all believed in God, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:23 | |
erm, it would be... It's arrogant for somebody like me of my limited intelligence | 0:15:23 | 0:15:31 | |
to just think that I don't. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:32 | |
But I have a difficulty in accepting it. | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
I don't have what they call the gift of faith. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:38 | |
I was amazed one of the first times I went to Ireland, I watched the Gay Byrne Show, | 0:15:38 | 0:15:42 | |
who was, in a way, the Irish Terry Wogan. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:44 | |
He's the one that stayed and did those chat shows. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
There would be priests and cardinals in the front row on his TV show. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:52 | |
If you had stayed, you couldn't have been the broadcaster you've been. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
He did an immense amount of good. He broke a lot of moulds, which wasn't easy. | 0:15:55 | 0:16:03 | |
Indeed because there was no forum for opinion in Ireland, actually, television and radio | 0:16:03 | 0:16:11 | |
over the years, created a kind of forum where opinions that people had been afraid to express, | 0:16:11 | 0:16:18 | |
suddenly were being expressed. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
But as far as working in Ireland, | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
I worked in Ireland for eight years on radio and television | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
and successfully. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:29 | |
But I suppose I was a bit of a West Brit. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:34 | |
When I was growing up in Limerick, I didn't listen to Irish radio, I used to listen to the live programme. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:39 | |
The Goon Show, Take It From Here, all those things. | 0:16:39 | 0:16:41 | |
Most of my reading material, which my Auntie May used to send me every week, | 0:16:41 | 0:16:48 | |
was Just William, Billy Bunter, moving up that English thing. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:55 | |
So I suppose, in a way, I had more in common with British radio and television | 0:16:55 | 0:17:03 | |
than I had with Irish. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:04 | |
Your Auntie May, she was another great contributor to the language that you used as a broadcaster. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:10 | |
-She was sending you those books. She gave you an education. -She did. She gave me another world. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:16 | |
She would send me a couple of books every couple of weeks. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
She was the manager of a bookshop in Dublin. She was my godmother. It was a Catholic bookshop | 0:17:19 | 0:17:25 | |
so I didn't get any racy stuff. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:28 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:17:28 | 0:17:29 | |
But there are always in life these pieces of luck | 0:17:29 | 0:17:32 | |
and that was one of the pieces of luck that you had an auntie | 0:17:32 | 0:17:35 | |
-who not only run a bookshop but wanted to send you the stuff. -That's right. Yeah. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:40 | |
But luck has played enormous in my life and anybody who is successful, | 0:17:40 | 0:17:45 | |
and who denies that they were lucky to get where they are, | 0:17:45 | 0:17:51 | |
is a fool, in my opinion. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:53 | |
because it plays a disproportionate role in all our lives. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:58 | |
Parents - Rose and Michael Wogan. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:00 | |
Your father - this is a good parable. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:04 | |
A very hard worker, he was eventually rewarded for his hard work and diligence. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:11 | |
He had an enormous capacity for hard work. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:15 | |
He would come home from running the grocery store in Limerick | 0:18:15 | 0:18:20 | |
He would spend most of the evening doing his books. He was meticulous. His handwriting was meticulous. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:26 | |
He took pains and he was a fisherman. He took more joy out of preparing to fish, | 0:18:26 | 0:18:33 | |
tying flies for the fly-fishing, than he did in actual fishing. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:39 | |
I would sit with him in a field, listening to the corncrake, eating my sandwiches, | 0:18:39 | 0:18:45 | |
and he'd still be tying the flies and just as the sun was beginning to dip behind the hedge, | 0:18:45 | 0:18:51 | |
he'd decide he was going to fish! | 0:18:51 | 0:18:54 | |
That put me off fishing for life, really. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:56 | |
And, erm... Obviously, although I loved him, | 0:18:56 | 0:19:02 | |
It made me the kind of person I am because I am impatient. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:08 | |
I like to do things immediately, possibly too quickly. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:11 | |
My whole broadcasting career is about opening the microphone without a thought in your head | 0:19:11 | 0:19:18 | |
and just risking it. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
You say in one of the books that if he'd been an accountant, you might have become an accountant, | 0:19:22 | 0:19:26 | |
but because he wasn't a professional, he did a variety of things and eventually | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
he was successful in trade. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:33 | |
It was lucky for me. Certainly in Belvedere College in Dublin, most of the people, | 0:19:33 | 0:19:41 | |
most of my peers, were the sons of doctors, accountants, | 0:19:41 | 0:19:47 | |
executives, quantity surveyors, architects, | 0:19:47 | 0:19:51 | |
and they all became architects. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
I went back to a reunion a couple of years ago and they were, in fact, | 0:19:54 | 0:20:00 | |
all accountants, architects, quantity surveyors doctors and surgeons. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:06 | |
My father would have liked me to be a doctor but I'm lazy. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:10 | |
I did seven years of actual study and work. No! | 0:20:10 | 0:20:12 | |
So I went to work in a bank, the Royal Bank Of Ireland, | 0:20:12 | 0:20:18 | |
which was a small bank, | 0:20:18 | 0:20:22 | |
largely a Protestant bank. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:24 | |
I worked in the bank for four years, happily. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
Good people. Nice people, being paid nothing. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:33 | |
Erm... I do tell a story that when I worked at the bank, twice a week | 0:20:33 | 0:20:40 | |
I would have to carry £5,000 in used notes on the back of the number 19 bus | 0:20:40 | 0:20:48 | |
down to head office, where they would be switched for new notes, | 0:20:48 | 0:20:54 | |
another £5,000, which I would then take back on the back of the bus again, back to the branch! | 0:20:54 | 0:20:59 | |
How we were never knocked over I will never know because sometimes | 0:20:59 | 0:21:05 | |
I'd think, "Let's go to the port." I'd say, "Let's go for a walk." | 0:21:05 | 0:21:10 | |
We'd have the new notes in the bag | 0:21:10 | 0:21:12 | |
and we'd stop off at Bewley's Oriental Cafe and pop in there, put it under the table | 0:21:12 | 0:21:17 | |
and have a cup of coffee! | 0:21:17 | 0:21:20 | |
Extraordinary! | 0:21:20 | 0:21:22 | |
The impressive benefit of your upbringing, you were never tempted to take a few of the fivers? | 0:21:22 | 0:21:26 | |
No and there was very little pilfering went on, | 0:21:26 | 0:21:32 | |
although there was a fella who came in to do an inspection, a senior man, | 0:21:32 | 0:21:39 | |
who DID run off with the money! | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
To everybody's astonishment because that wasn't the way. That wasn't the way we were brought up. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:47 | |
We were honest, diligent, er, middle class people | 0:21:47 | 0:21:53 | |
who didn't boast. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:54 | |
And didn't have much sex. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:58 | |
The move to broadcasting came via amateur dramatics. | 0:21:58 | 0:22:02 | |
I did a bit of that. Nearly everybody in Ireland did am dram. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
I joined the Rathmines And Rathgar Musical And Dramatical Society | 0:22:05 | 0:22:10 | |
and we used to sing on the stage of the Gaiety Theatre | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
where subsequently I went to do a Eurovision Song Contest once. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
So that was the outlet for whatever creative spirit you had | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
or showing off. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
You were allowed to show off on stage. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:25 | |
But that wasn't it. I just picked up the Irish Independent newspaper one day | 0:22:25 | 0:22:32 | |
and there was an ad and it said, "Raidio Eireann seeks announcer/newsreader | 0:22:32 | 0:22:39 | |
"continuity announcers/newsreaders. | 0:22:39 | 0:22:41 | |
"The requirements are, English, Irish, a familiarity with continental languages" | 0:22:41 | 0:22:48 | |
And I wrote off, for some reason that still escapes me, | 0:22:48 | 0:22:53 | |
filled out a form because, you know, half of the country was out of work. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:59 | |
So I would fill out this form with about 10,000 briefless barristers, out of work people, | 0:22:59 | 0:23:07 | |
and extraordinarily enough, with the little qualifications I had, | 0:23:07 | 0:23:12 | |
was called for an audition, did the audition because I'm a bit of a mimic, faked the Italian, | 0:23:12 | 0:23:19 | |
the German, the French, got by on the Irish and the English | 0:23:19 | 0:23:22 | |
and I was called for a training course! | 0:23:22 | 0:23:26 | |
So I'd work in a bank all day and then I'd go to | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
Raidio Eireann, the GPO in Dublin and do a training course as an announcer | 0:23:30 | 0:23:36 | |
and, blow me down, they offered me a job. | 0:23:36 | 0:23:39 | |
-And that was the beginning. -That's another of these pieces of luck that the thing | 0:23:39 | 0:23:45 | |
you'd been good at at school was languages so that was why you were able to answer that ad. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:50 | |
Yeah. I still don't know why. because | 0:23:50 | 0:23:55 | |
there would be fellas with PhDs applying for this job. | 0:23:55 | 0:24:00 | |
This was a desirable job. You were something if you were a continuity announcer, a newsreader | 0:24:00 | 0:24:06 | |
on Irish radio. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:08 | |
It's amazing. I'm still astounded by the fact that I got called for an audition, | 0:24:08 | 0:24:15 | |
and then got offered the job. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:19 | |
Irish broadcasting, it was a good preparation for what was going to happen later, in that | 0:24:19 | 0:24:24 | |
it's the famous thing that you are very very famous, at least at that stage, | 0:24:24 | 0:24:29 | |
you were as a broadcaster in Ireland. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:32 | |
So you were exposed to fame, judging beauty contests very early on. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:37 | |
I was indeed. No sooner had I joined Irish radio, Irish television started, round about 1961. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:44 | |
That was fantastic. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:49 | |
They opened with an outside broadcast, | 0:24:49 | 0:24:53 | |
which was a tremendously plucky thing to do. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:57 | |
If one of the batteries had fused, | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
that was the end of it. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:01 | |
Irish television got by on a wing and a prayer because | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
all sorts of people came across claiming to be directors, who, in fact, were roadsweepers, | 0:25:04 | 0:25:11 | |
in Canada and Australia and places like that. | 0:25:11 | 0:25:14 | |
It happened and Irish flair for doing things on their toes worked. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:18 | |
When people say to me, "You must find Children In Need, seven hours of live television..." | 0:25:18 | 0:25:25 | |
doing what I do, which is always live, making it up as I go along - | 0:25:25 | 0:25:30 | |
"..you must find that very wearing and nerve-wracking!" | 0:25:30 | 0:25:36 | |
You wanted to be with Irish television in the early days! | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
Goodness sake! | 0:25:39 | 0:25:41 | |
You did one of the most disastrous live programmes in history, which is a game show called Jackpot. | 0:25:41 | 0:25:45 | |
I wouldn't put it that strongly! But it was a bit troublesome, yes. | 0:25:45 | 0:25:51 | |
The very first one I did, nobody had really bothered to tell me | 0:25:51 | 0:25:55 | |
what was going on and, of course, my nature was to say I'll do it anyway. | 0:25:55 | 0:26:01 | |
Of course, a buzzer went and I hadn't realised that was the end of the show. | 0:26:01 | 0:26:06 | |
The show was over before I knew it. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:09 | |
There were other occasions where contestants had to delete or dip so they could delete | 0:26:09 | 0:26:15 | |
their opponent's point or dip into a box in front of them and pull out a prize. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:22 | |
So Mary says... I said, "Well done, Mary, do you want to delete or dip?" | 0:26:22 | 0:26:29 | |
And she said, "I'll dip." "Fair enough," I said, "Go ahead." | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
So she said, "There's nothing in here." | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:26:36 | 0:26:38 | |
"There's nothing in here." | 0:26:38 | 0:26:40 | |
There were so many other occasions. Somebody had the bright idea of doing what was called the vertical plan, | 0:26:40 | 0:26:46 | |
which meant that various presenters were in charge of an evening. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
I was in charge of Friday. One evening, I'm sitting down. I'm introducing | 0:26:49 | 0:26:55 | |
this girl, who's perched prettily on a stool with a guitar. | 0:26:55 | 0:27:00 | |
I said, "And now here she is with... | 0:27:00 | 0:27:03 | |
HE SPEAKS SPANISH | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
Joan...Vaughan or whatever her name was. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:09 | |
This was followed by a crash because she'd fallen off the stool. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:14 | |
with the guitar. | 0:27:14 | 0:27:16 | |
There are few things more frightening than when that happens and a floor manager goes | 0:27:16 | 0:27:23 | |
in front of you and goes... | 0:27:23 | 0:27:25 | |
-"..Three minutes." -Three minutes! | 0:27:27 | 0:27:29 | |
There isn't a thought in your head. You don't know what you're going to say. | 0:27:29 | 0:27:32 | |
So you faff on for about three minutes | 0:27:32 | 0:27:35 | |
and then he goes... There's two more, | 0:27:35 | 0:27:39 | |
because the girl had obviously done herself a mischief. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:42 | |
These are nerve-wracking moments. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:44 | |
These do... Irish television, I'll always be grateful for it. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:47 | |
It prepared me for the vicissitudes of what I endured when I came across to Britain. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:54 | |
-There was no autocue. -And no earpieces, either. -No earpieces. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:59 | |
You were always at the behest of the floor manager. Fair enough but | 0:27:59 | 0:28:03 | |
when you're addressing a camera and you're trying to remember what your next lines are | 0:28:03 | 0:28:10 | |
and you're not in character, as an actor, you take on the appearance of | 0:28:10 | 0:28:16 | |
a frightened seagull. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:17 | |
Your eyes glaze over. So there's no room for expression. There's no room to interpret. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:24 | |
You're desperately trying to remember what you've got to say next. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:28 | |
So it was a godsend when I came across to British television and found that we have autocues | 0:28:28 | 0:28:33 | |
and all the rest of it. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:35 | |
Was it assumed at that time because Eamonn Andrews had made the journey from Ireland to... | 0:28:35 | 0:28:40 | |
Was it assumed that to make it big in the way that clearly it was in Scotland, | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
in the '70s and '80s, that you had to leave, you had to go to London? | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
Er, no. I don't think so. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:49 | |
What drew me was the fact that I had grown up with the BBC | 0:28:49 | 0:28:56 | |
and I'd wanted to see if I could make it. | 0:28:56 | 0:29:00 | |
I really wanted to see, "Can I do it on the BBC?" | 0:29:00 | 0:29:06 | |
Irish television and radio, at that time, I was doing fine and all the rest of it | 0:29:06 | 0:29:12 | |
but I wasn't going any place quickly. | 0:29:12 | 0:29:17 | |
So I sent off a tape to the BBC, | 0:29:17 | 0:29:21 | |
of a radio show I did and luckily it was picked up by a man | 0:29:21 | 0:29:27 | |
with a handlebar moustache who's name was Mark White. | 0:29:27 | 0:29:30 | |
He was assistant head of gramophone department, | 0:29:30 | 0:29:35 | |
and I owe him everything, | 0:29:35 | 0:29:38 | |
because this tape, when he got it, | 0:29:38 | 0:29:40 | |
hadn't been respooled so it was backwards. | 0:29:40 | 0:29:44 | |
He actually took the time and trouble to respool the tape and listen to it. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:50 | |
That could never happen nowadays. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
That would never ever happen now. | 0:29:53 | 0:29:55 | |
But looking back at your career, I was very struck that interactivity, | 0:29:55 | 0:29:58 | |
which is the huge thing now because of the internet and... | 0:29:58 | 0:30:02 | |
Well, they have this phrase, don't they, in broadcasting now, | 0:30:02 | 0:30:05 | |
"user- or audience-driven content." | 0:30:05 | 0:30:08 | |
But you were on to that very early. I mean, even in Ireland... | 0:30:08 | 0:30:12 | |
You did a show in Ireland, "Terry A While" - | 0:30:12 | 0:30:14 | |
perhaps one of the worst titles ever! | 0:30:14 | 0:30:16 | |
Get away with you! I thought that was very catchy. | 0:30:16 | 0:30:19 | |
Ah, but it was, it was properly interactive. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:21 | |
You were one of the first people to do this, | 0:30:21 | 0:30:23 | |
to encourage the audience to respond and you would ring them up. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
I suppose, one of the first to use the phone. I mean, the phone is... | 0:30:26 | 0:30:31 | |
totally abused now. | 0:30:31 | 0:30:33 | |
It's ridiculous - it's the forum for every eccentric and lunatic, | 0:30:33 | 0:30:37 | |
and so I absolutely abhor that now. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:41 | |
Phone-in programmes? Forget them. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:43 | |
But at the time, it was quite fresh and new. | 0:30:43 | 0:30:47 | |
And again, it was risky, of course. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:49 | |
So I was relying on myself to actually carry that off. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:53 | |
And I sent a tape of that to the BBC | 0:30:53 | 0:30:56 | |
when the BBC was starting - or about to start - Radio 1. | 0:30:56 | 0:30:59 | |
And that's what got me the job on Late Night Extra. | 0:30:59 | 0:31:02 | |
So I used to fly back and forward between Dublin and London | 0:31:02 | 0:31:06 | |
to do that on a Wednesday and/or a Friday. | 0:31:06 | 0:31:09 | |
And that was a terrific programme, I loved doing that, | 0:31:09 | 0:31:12 | |
cos I worked with journalists, news coming in, music, comment. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:18 | |
It was a very, very good radio magazine programme. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:21 | |
I was struck by something you used to say | 0:31:21 | 0:31:23 | |
in the '80s and '90s, which always... | 0:31:23 | 0:31:25 | |
Which I'd never thought about until you said it, | 0:31:25 | 0:31:28 | |
which is that you were an Irish broadcaster in the UK | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
at a time when, in Northern Ireland, | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
there was more or less a war going on | 0:31:34 | 0:31:36 | |
and there were bombs going off in the streets of London. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:39 | |
And you said that it showed great maturity of the audience here | 0:31:39 | 0:31:45 | |
that it was never an issue. But I was interested - | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
you thought there might be some sensitivity over that? | 0:31:47 | 0:31:50 | |
Well, I was amazed that there wasn't. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:53 | |
I mean, after a bomb goes off at a pub in Birmingham, | 0:31:53 | 0:31:57 | |
kills innocent British people... | 0:31:57 | 0:32:01 | |
The following morning, on a popular music network, | 0:32:01 | 0:32:05 | |
an Irish voice comes up... | 0:32:05 | 0:32:07 | |
..trying to be cheerful, | 0:32:09 | 0:32:11 | |
and whose job it was to make people cheerful in the early morning - | 0:32:11 | 0:32:15 | |
I was very conscious of that. | 0:32:15 | 0:32:17 | |
But at the same time, | 0:32:18 | 0:32:20 | |
I never felt it necessary to deny the fact that I was Irish. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
And subsequently, people - Irish people - | 0:32:25 | 0:32:27 | |
who had lived as I did in Britain | 0:32:27 | 0:32:30 | |
during the worst of the excesses in Northern Ireland, | 0:32:30 | 0:32:34 | |
have come up to me and said that... | 0:32:34 | 0:32:36 | |
I was a kind of help to them. | 0:32:36 | 0:32:39 | |
Or I... But, you see... | 0:32:39 | 0:32:42 | |
nearly everybody in Britain knew an Irish person, | 0:32:42 | 0:32:46 | |
was friends with an Irish person... | 0:32:46 | 0:32:48 | |
and knew that, as I have said quite clearly, | 0:32:48 | 0:32:51 | |
that this has not been done in my name. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:53 | |
There is a tolerance here that was quite extraordinary, | 0:32:53 | 0:32:56 | |
given the circumstances of people dying in bomb... | 0:32:56 | 0:33:00 | |
you know, IRA bomb activities. It's extraordinary. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
But when you first came to London, there must still have been... | 0:33:03 | 0:33:06 | |
That notorious sign that used to be seen - | 0:33:06 | 0:33:09 | |
"No blacks, no Irish" - in boarding houses | 0:33:09 | 0:33:12 | |
was almost certainly still there in some parts of Britain. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:15 | |
Did you ever feel...? Did you ever suffer any anti-Irish feeling here? | 0:33:15 | 0:33:18 | |
No. Never suffered. Cos I was in a privileged position. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:21 | |
And in a sense, if you like, | 0:33:21 | 0:33:23 | |
Eamonn Andrews had beaten a path for people like me. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:27 | |
So I was never, ever conscious - ever - of any anti-Irish feeling. | 0:33:28 | 0:33:34 | |
There IS no anti-Irish feeling in this country. | 0:33:34 | 0:33:37 | |
Even given the terrible things | 0:33:37 | 0:33:39 | |
that happened in the name of freedom in Northern Ireland. | 0:33:39 | 0:33:43 | |
And, indeed, it's reciprocated. | 0:33:46 | 0:33:48 | |
It's extraordinary, in view of the 800 years of terrible history, | 0:33:48 | 0:33:53 | |
that that tolerance, mutual respect, still exists. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:58 | |
And that first Radio 2 show. | 0:33:58 | 0:34:00 | |
Again, there interactivity - you had the Fight The Flab campaign | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
and then, when Dallas took off on TV, again, | 0:34:04 | 0:34:07 | |
that was talking about something the audience were talking about. | 0:34:07 | 0:34:11 | |
The most important programme on any radio network | 0:34:11 | 0:34:14 | |
is the morning show, the breakfast show. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
It identifies the network | 0:34:17 | 0:34:19 | |
and it's at the time when people are more susceptible | 0:34:19 | 0:34:22 | |
or more receptive, if you like, to what's going on. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:26 | |
And so you have to reflect, I think, | 0:34:26 | 0:34:29 | |
what they're actually looking at, or what they're listening to, | 0:34:29 | 0:34:33 | |
or what they're involved with. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:35 | |
And so all I did was try and reflect that. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:37 | |
So when Dallas came on, I watched it, I found it insanely funny | 0:34:37 | 0:34:44 | |
and, you know, walk-in wardrobes with wire coat hangers, | 0:34:44 | 0:34:48 | |
the richest family in Texas... | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
with only one phone. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:52 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:34:53 | 0:34:54 | |
All those extraordinary anomalies where... | 0:34:54 | 0:34:57 | |
Again, rich beyond the dreams of avarice | 0:34:57 | 0:35:00 | |
and they had all their weddings and, indeed, parties | 0:35:00 | 0:35:05 | |
in front of the garage on the drive. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:08 | |
There are my folks. I'd better go say hello. | 0:35:08 | 0:35:11 | |
This is where the element of acting comes in. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:14 | |
Particularly doing a breakfast show, | 0:35:14 | 0:35:15 | |
if your knee hurt or you had a cold | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
or you were worried about one of your children at school or whatever, | 0:35:18 | 0:35:21 | |
you could never show that - you had to be cheerful. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:24 | |
Absolutely. But I don't have a problem with that. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
My wife says I'm a bit of a bore in the early morning, because I'm up. | 0:35:28 | 0:35:33 | |
Maybe, maybe it's life imitating art, I don't know. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:38 | |
But I never had any trouble. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:40 | |
Again, it's the way you're brought up, it's the way you're educated. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:44 | |
It's your job. | 0:35:44 | 0:35:46 | |
You get up in the morning, it's your job to go in and cheer people up. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:52 | |
If you walked into a doctor's... | 0:35:52 | 0:35:54 | |
..with some kind of ailment | 0:35:56 | 0:35:57 | |
and the first thing the doctor says to you is, | 0:35:57 | 0:36:00 | |
"Oh, I've a terrible pain in my stomach, myself," | 0:36:00 | 0:36:03 | |
that's no good to anybody! THEY BOTH LAUGH | 0:36:03 | 0:36:06 | |
What I had to do was be cheerful. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:10 | |
Insofar as I could, be myself. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:12 | |
But I'm lucky that, temperamentally, I'm OK in the morning. | 0:36:12 | 0:36:17 | |
In fact, boring. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:18 | |
Actually, the only time I heard you sound unhappy on air, | 0:36:18 | 0:36:21 | |
I subsequently discovered that Paul Walters was ill, | 0:36:21 | 0:36:25 | |
very ill - your producer. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:26 | |
And it was the only time that I've ever heard that. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:29 | |
But are you able, generally, | 0:36:29 | 0:36:31 | |
to remain optimistic in the face of that kind of thing? | 0:36:31 | 0:36:34 | |
Yeah. Yeah, I am an optimist. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:36 | |
Yeah, I am. And, anyway, you have to compartmentalise. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:39 | |
You can't allow personal worries to intrude in the broadcasting. | 0:36:39 | 0:36:45 | |
The public are not interested - | 0:36:45 | 0:36:47 | |
they want to hear the same person doing the same thing every morning. | 0:36:47 | 0:36:51 | |
A lot of people do go mad with success - | 0:36:51 | 0:36:54 | |
your successor on Radio 2, Chris Evans, has been quite clear | 0:36:54 | 0:36:57 | |
that there was a period where he completely lost it. | 0:36:57 | 0:37:00 | |
-He did. -In every way possible. | 0:37:00 | 0:37:01 | |
But he's clearly turned himself round now. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:03 | |
I was very lucky. | 0:37:03 | 0:37:05 | |
I had a career in Ireland - I was very famous in a small community. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:10 | |
Because I was one of the first faces on Irish television. | 0:37:10 | 0:37:14 | |
And, for the first time, Ireland had its own public heroes, | 0:37:14 | 0:37:19 | |
and I was one of them. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:20 | |
So, you know... | 0:37:20 | 0:37:22 | |
..it stopped me going to a pub - I couldn't got to pubs any more. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:27 | |
It stopped me playing rugby. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:29 | |
Because people were out to... | 0:37:29 | 0:37:31 | |
"You see that fella reading the news there? I gave him that black eye!" | 0:37:31 | 0:37:34 | |
And so I just stopped doing that. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:37 | |
So it changed my life, but I did learn how to cope with it. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:41 | |
As I was walking down Henry Street in Dublin, somebody shouted, | 0:37:41 | 0:37:47 | |
"There's Terry Wogan!" | 0:37:47 | 0:37:48 | |
And somebody else was saying, "Very fat, isn't he?" | 0:37:48 | 0:37:51 | |
These are the things that arm you against going mad, | 0:37:51 | 0:37:57 | |
and so when I came to Britain, | 0:37:57 | 0:38:00 | |
I'd been through that already, so I was able to cope with it. | 0:38:00 | 0:38:04 | |
As far as we can tell, you seem to have avoided | 0:38:04 | 0:38:06 | |
the showgirls and cocaine side of show business. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
Ah, you see, but I'm not telling you! MARK CHUCKLES | 0:38:09 | 0:38:12 | |
But were there ever, um... Were there what your Jesuit teachers | 0:38:12 | 0:38:16 | |
would have called, "occasions of sin"? | 0:38:16 | 0:38:18 | |
"Occasions of sin." Ah, yes. Impure thoughts. | 0:38:18 | 0:38:21 | |
Um... Well, there was certainly... And it went on without my knowing it, | 0:38:21 | 0:38:25 | |
because when I started to work for the BBC, within two or three years, | 0:38:25 | 0:38:30 | |
there became a huge payola scandal on radio, | 0:38:30 | 0:38:34 | |
where people were playing records for sexual favours, | 0:38:34 | 0:38:38 | |
or for a drink, or for parties, | 0:38:38 | 0:38:41 | |
or for loose women, or for all that kind of stuff. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:44 | |
Now, I was doing one of the major shows of the afternoon, | 0:38:44 | 0:38:49 | |
with an audience of about, what, six, seven million. | 0:38:49 | 0:38:53 | |
Nobody ever, ever came up and offered me a sexual favour. | 0:38:53 | 0:38:58 | |
Nobody. | 0:38:58 | 0:39:00 | |
And I'm... | 0:39:00 | 0:39:01 | |
I don't know whether complimented or offended by that, really. | 0:39:01 | 0:39:06 | |
Your Jesuit teachers would be pleased. | 0:39:06 | 0:39:08 | |
It's obviously your character or your upbringing or something. | 0:39:08 | 0:39:11 | |
Maybe I look boring, that's what it is. | 0:39:11 | 0:39:14 | |
They got very into this thing in the '80s called "bi-media," | 0:39:14 | 0:39:17 | |
and people used to go around saying, "Are you bi yet?" | 0:39:17 | 0:39:20 | |
And all that kind of thing. | 0:39:20 | 0:39:21 | |
But you always were, weren't you, really. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:23 | |
I mean, in Ireland, but then also in Britain, | 0:39:23 | 0:39:26 | |
you tended to have radio and TV on the go at the same time. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:29 | |
Yeah, I think it's important. | 0:39:29 | 0:39:30 | |
I always felt that if you wanted to really make a career... | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
or a living, you had to do both. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:37 | |
You had to cross over. | 0:39:37 | 0:39:39 | |
I was a natural, I suppose, at radio, | 0:39:39 | 0:39:41 | |
but television is a much more difficult medium. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:44 | |
And you can't be a natural at television - nobody is. | 0:39:44 | 0:39:47 | |
And so when I came across here, it took a while, | 0:39:47 | 0:39:51 | |
and then Blankety Blank started. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:52 | |
And that was the very first instance for me where I could achieve | 0:39:52 | 0:39:57 | |
the same degree of freedom of television as I could on radio. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
Good evening and welcome again to our warm and homely little quiz game. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:07 | |
I could talk and walk | 0:40:07 | 0:40:09 | |
without wondering whether I was in the correct light, | 0:40:09 | 0:40:12 | |
and I could make it up as I go along. | 0:40:12 | 0:40:14 | |
And that was a watershed for me as far as television was concerned. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
What's small and green and covered with red spots? | 0:40:18 | 0:40:22 | |
With measles. | 0:40:22 | 0:40:23 | |
An unripe... | 0:40:23 | 0:40:25 | |
raspberry. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:26 | |
An unripe...? | 0:40:26 | 0:40:28 | |
-Raspberry. -Raspberry. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:30 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:40:30 | 0:40:33 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:40:33 | 0:40:35 | |
Well, let's see how many points David gets with this one(!) | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:40:44 | 0:40:48 | |
Wogan On TV... | 0:40:48 | 0:40:49 | |
Still sometimes in profiles of you, | 0:40:49 | 0:40:51 | |
people refer to it as a failure or a flop. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:54 | |
It's important to establish, I think, | 0:40:54 | 0:40:56 | |
it was getting a huge number of viewers for a large number of years. | 0:40:56 | 0:41:00 | |
It used to get eight million viewers! | 0:41:00 | 0:41:03 | |
But those were in the quondam days. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:05 | |
Yeah, I think, probably... | 0:41:05 | 0:41:07 | |
..it got a certain amount of criticism | 0:41:09 | 0:41:12 | |
because they felt that the questions were a bit banal. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:16 | |
That's always levelled at all talk show hosts, but... | 0:41:16 | 0:41:19 | |
talk shows, chat shows, are cheap entertainment - | 0:41:19 | 0:41:24 | |
they don't cost a lot to do, they're light entertainment. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:27 | |
And the one I was doing, | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
which perhaps was not fully appreciated, was live! | 0:41:29 | 0:41:33 | |
And really, you were on your toes all the time. You didn't have... | 0:41:33 | 0:41:37 | |
There was no space to edit, | 0:41:37 | 0:41:39 | |
there was no room to take out somebody who wouldn't speak, | 0:41:39 | 0:41:43 | |
there was no room to take out drunken behaviour. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:45 | |
Which you had with George Best. | 0:41:45 | 0:41:47 | |
Yes. And, indeed, with Anne Bancroft, who came out in a catatonic trance. | 0:41:47 | 0:41:53 | |
'And I said to her, "You're not enjoying this much, are you?"' | 0:41:53 | 0:41:56 | |
And she said, "No." | 0:41:56 | 0:41:58 | |
Why do you hate this kind of thing so much? Is it me? | 0:41:58 | 0:42:01 | |
-Probably. -It's probably me. LAUGHTER | 0:42:01 | 0:42:04 | |
It's not the dried flowers or anything. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:07 | |
That too, yes. | 0:42:07 | 0:42:08 | |
And dear George...he'd had a few. | 0:42:09 | 0:42:11 | |
'You'd think the whole world had been watching it, | 0:42:12 | 0:42:15 | |
'rather than eight million - it was all over the papers.' | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
But he didn't mean any harm by it - he'd just had a few drinks and, um... | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
He was a nice man. Didn't mean me any harm. | 0:42:22 | 0:42:26 | |
Terry, I like screwing, all right? | 0:42:26 | 0:42:29 | |
STUNNED LAUGHTER | 0:42:29 | 0:42:31 | |
Oh. Oh, right. So what do you do with your times these days? | 0:42:31 | 0:42:34 | |
-I screw. -I see. LAUGHTER | 0:42:34 | 0:42:36 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, George Best! | 0:42:36 | 0:42:38 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:42:38 | 0:42:40 | |
One of the interesting bits is when you were spoke to David Icke, | 0:42:42 | 0:42:45 | |
this man who clearly was not in the best way mentally, | 0:42:45 | 0:42:49 | |
I think we can probably say. | 0:42:49 | 0:42:50 | |
I imagine now, on most talk shows, | 0:42:50 | 0:42:52 | |
the audience would be turned against him. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:55 | |
Now you didn't do that - you say to him very gently, | 0:42:55 | 0:42:58 | |
"They're not laughing WITH you, they're laughing AT you." | 0:42:58 | 0:43:02 | |
-LAUGHTER -Fine! | 0:43:02 | 0:43:05 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:43:05 | 0:43:08 | |
I didn't mean that to be hurtful, I don't want you to misinterpret it - | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
they're not laughing in sympathy with you. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:15 | |
That was an uncomfortable moment, | 0:43:15 | 0:43:17 | |
as you didn't want to be talking to someone who was in that state. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:20 | |
That was the risk you took with live television. | 0:43:20 | 0:43:23 | |
I mean, I used to find myself looking at people who wouldn't speak, | 0:43:23 | 0:43:26 | |
thinking, "What the hell are you doing on this show | 0:43:26 | 0:43:28 | |
"if you're not prepared to talk?" | 0:43:28 | 0:43:31 | |
Americans always found it difficult that it was live. | 0:43:31 | 0:43:33 | |
Nothing on American television is live. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:36 | |
They have this odd phrase, don't they, "taped as live." | 0:43:36 | 0:43:38 | |
Yeah, come on. Yeah, you can edit out all the stuff. | 0:43:38 | 0:43:42 | |
But that was the risk I took | 0:43:42 | 0:43:44 | |
and it worked for about eight, eight and a half years. | 0:43:44 | 0:43:47 | |
And it wasn't as good a fit for you as radio shows, | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
-because I think you prefer not to prepare, don't you? -Mm. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:54 | |
I know a producer who worked for you | 0:43:54 | 0:43:55 | |
and he said he felt you were uncomfortable. | 0:43:55 | 0:43:58 | |
They'd have briefs and they'd want to go through the questions | 0:43:58 | 0:44:01 | |
and that's not how you'd want to work. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:04 | |
No. But, of course, | 0:44:04 | 0:44:05 | |
I wasn't in a strong enough position to assert that at the time. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:08 | |
If I was doing it now, it would be different. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:11 | |
I do have a belief that you should have enough intelligence | 0:44:11 | 0:44:15 | |
or general knowledge to be able to conduct an interview | 0:44:15 | 0:44:18 | |
with anybody who comes on - you should know your stuff. | 0:44:18 | 0:44:21 | |
Obviously, with the BBC there wasn't enough trust in me | 0:44:21 | 0:44:26 | |
to carry on an interview longer. | 0:44:26 | 0:44:29 | |
We could get an interesting interview but you would have to cut it short | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
because there was a musical item coming up and two more guests. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
And then sometimes, you would get really famous guest on last, | 0:44:35 | 0:44:39 | |
and you would only get three minutes to talk to them. I always find that frustrating. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:43 | |
I also found it frustrating that it wasn't on every night. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:47 | |
Not that I wanted to be on every night but I couldn't preserve any continuity | 0:44:47 | 0:44:51 | |
and that, I think, was the difference between that and the region. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:56 | |
If I had been able to do it every day and run and interview | 0:44:56 | 0:45:03 | |
and say to stay for a few minutes, that is what I wanted. | 0:45:03 | 0:45:08 | |
I wanted more freedom and I didn't have it. | 0:45:08 | 0:45:11 | |
But, I mean it was successful. I love doing it. | 0:45:11 | 0:45:17 | |
The problem was that it was time to give it a rest. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:22 | |
They said, no you are doing splendidly for us | 0:45:22 | 0:45:26 | |
at 150 hours of television and it makes a difference and we need it desperately | 0:45:26 | 0:45:31 | |
-and in the meantime, they were building this village in Spain to replace me. -For Eldorado? | 0:45:31 | 0:45:37 | |
They never said a word to me about. | 0:45:37 | 0:45:40 | |
I think that's what moulds you. | 0:45:40 | 0:45:42 | |
You think, that that is never going to happen again. | 0:45:42 | 0:45:47 | |
I'll make my own timings. I'll leave when I want to leave. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:54 | |
But in the end, you were happiest as a broadcaster doing interrupted monologues, | 0:45:54 | 0:45:58 | |
monologues interrupted by the audience, rather than interviewing. | 0:45:58 | 0:46:05 | |
I thought I was OK as an interviewer. I mean, I took it lightly. | 0:46:05 | 0:46:10 | |
I didn't think it was a serious form. | 0:46:10 | 0:46:13 | |
Not what we were doing, it was a half an hour live, | 0:46:13 | 0:46:17 | |
you had three guests, music item, you are not going to get awful lot of time. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:21 | |
You try and make it as light as you can. | 0:46:21 | 0:46:23 | |
We had some wonderful guests, Leslie Nielsen, Dudley Moore, | 0:46:23 | 0:46:28 | |
and I got to meet Gregory Peck, June Allyson, Stuart Granger, | 0:46:28 | 0:46:34 | |
James Stewart. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:39 | |
I wouldn't have met those if I hadn't done this show, | 0:46:39 | 0:46:44 | |
so I don't regret doing it. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:46 | |
In a sense I regret that it finished as it did. | 0:46:46 | 0:46:49 | |
You were angry with television, weren't you? | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
I was angry with what had happened as you would be. | 0:46:52 | 0:46:56 | |
But I was able to re-established. | 0:46:56 | 0:46:59 | |
My credential was the daily radio show, I got back into it. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:03 | |
The public came back and my credibility was re-established. | 0:47:03 | 0:47:08 | |
If hadn't been for that, I could've been doing countdown! | 0:47:08 | 0:47:12 | |
But also those years on the Wogan TV show, | 0:47:12 | 0:47:17 | |
you had an astonishing level of fame. | 0:47:17 | 0:47:20 | |
It was difficult to go to restaurants, | 0:47:20 | 0:47:22 | |
it was difficult for your children. It was terrible. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:26 | |
People hadn't been exposed on TV as much is that. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:31 | |
No, that's true. It passed me as the idle wind. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:36 | |
-But it was difficult for your family. -It wasn't easy for my children. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:41 | |
I always feel, the old cliche, if it doesn't kill you, | 0:47:41 | 0:47:47 | |
it's going to make you stronger. So, they came out unscathed. | 0:47:47 | 0:47:52 | |
But I did appreciate at the time. Nowadays, I think they are more appreciative of me. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:59 | |
But they are middle-aged people now. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:03 | |
You gave a very interesting piece of advice was which if anyone attacked you at school, | 0:48:03 | 0:48:08 | |
-about your dad and just agree with them. -Agree with them. Absolutely. Turn away wrath. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:14 | |
There is no point arguing. 'You're absolutely right, you should try living with him.' That's what I said. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:20 | |
That is what I was to say. | 0:48:20 | 0:48:22 | |
A lot is said about the dangers of celebrity. | 0:48:22 | 0:48:25 | |
An American writer had a great phrase about fame | 0:48:25 | 0:48:30 | |
that it's a mask that eats into the face. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:34 | |
-That's brilliant. -Were you ever aware of been damaged by it all? | 0:48:34 | 0:48:40 | |
No. I always had my family. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:44 | |
My philosophy has always been this is what I do, | 0:48:45 | 0:48:49 | |
I have been very lucky to find something I can do that suited me | 0:48:49 | 0:48:55 | |
and I suppose I was naturally gifted to do. | 0:48:55 | 0:49:00 | |
I never look at myself. I never listen to myself. It's what I do. | 0:49:02 | 0:49:07 | |
Then, I do it and them I'd go home and have my dinner. | 0:49:07 | 0:49:14 | |
That's it, the most important thing in your life is your family. That is my rock. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:21 | |
My wife and my children and nothing else. The rest, as they say, is peripheral. | 0:49:21 | 0:49:29 | |
You talk about that time in Ireland, when someone shouted, "Isn't he fat?" | 0:49:37 | 0:49:42 | |
You were commented on by people that were commenting on your hair. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:48 | |
Were you ever hurt by that? | 0:49:48 | 0:49:50 | |
No, you've got to move on. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:54 | |
I mean, if that's the worst thing they can say about you, that's OK. | 0:49:54 | 0:49:59 | |
I'm obsessed with this, for clear reasons. Can we settle this? | 0:49:59 | 0:50:05 | |
It's the kind of thing, | 0:50:05 | 0:50:08 | |
If they can't think of anything else to say, | 0:50:08 | 0:50:14 | |
they say this. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:19 | |
You've been ruder towards BBC management than any other broadcaster has been. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:24 | |
Nonsense. No, I haven't, Mark. I've only the highest respect for you. | 0:50:24 | 0:50:28 | |
I'll tell you what we have got away with on Radio 2 is Janet and John. | 0:50:28 | 0:50:33 | |
Which were the filthiest things ever to be broadcast. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:37 | |
Absolutely. I never understood them, of course. | 0:50:38 | 0:50:40 | |
Janet is just about to serve his food. Janet said, "Did you have a nice time in the park?" "Yes, I did. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:47 | |
"On the way, I fell off my scooter and Mrs Park saw me, | 0:50:47 | 0:50:52 | |
"took me to the shop and sorted me out. She got the wood out and saw I had a nasty scuff. | 0:50:52 | 0:50:56 | |
"She got on her knees, rubbed some cream in it, up and down until I could see my face in it." | 0:50:56 | 0:51:03 | |
She said it was a pleasure to find a man who wasn't afraid to | 0:51:03 | 0:51:06 | |
splash out on a decent pair. | 0:51:06 | 0:51:08 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:51:08 | 0:51:13 | |
We could never had got away with it on Radio 4. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
It's just that, as far as the BBC's concerned, Radio 2, Radio 1, | 0:51:16 | 0:51:20 | |
just popular broadcasting, you know? | 0:51:20 | 0:51:23 | |
Not important. No opinion-makers ever listen to it. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:27 | |
It's also something about you, though, isn't it? If Jonathan Ross | 0:51:27 | 0:51:30 | |
had read out those stories, the BBC would have been closed down. | 0:51:30 | 0:51:33 | |
But there was something about the fact that it was you that, | 0:51:33 | 0:51:37 | |
um, diluted it somehow. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:38 | |
Well, yeah, but it...it all depends on the delivery. | 0:51:38 | 0:51:43 | |
Um...I always read them absolutely straight. | 0:51:43 | 0:51:47 | |
And...uh...half the time in complete ignorance of what was going on. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:53 | |
What used to astound me | 0:51:53 | 0:51:54 | |
was the number of old ladies who got the jokes! | 0:51:54 | 0:51:57 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
A broadcaster has to face the fact that it just vanishes, the stuff you've done. | 0:52:02 | 0:52:06 | |
All those thousands of hours on Radio 2 which people greatly love, | 0:52:06 | 0:52:10 | |
they're all just gone. | 0:52:10 | 0:52:11 | |
Do you just accept that, | 0:52:11 | 0:52:13 | |
or do you regret that you didn't do something more permanent? | 0:52:13 | 0:52:16 | |
Dear old Paulie Walters, who was my...great friend of mine and my producer, | 0:52:16 | 0:52:20 | |
at the end of every show, he used to say, "Well, there it is. | 0:52:20 | 0:52:23 | |
"It's gone. On its way to Venus," he'd say. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:26 | |
And you have to keep that attitude about what we do, | 0:52:26 | 0:52:32 | |
because it's transient. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:34 | |
Nothing is forever. And it's ephemeral, it's light entertainment. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:39 | |
It's not meant to dwell. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:42 | |
And equally, you have to accept the fact that | 0:52:42 | 0:52:45 | |
when you're working in it, it's not a permanent pensionable position. | 0:52:45 | 0:52:50 | |
If I'd wanted that, I would have stayed in the bank. | 0:52:50 | 0:52:52 | |
Um, so, you move on. You don't look back. | 0:52:52 | 0:52:58 | |
You just carry on, hope for the best. | 0:52:58 | 0:53:01 | |
There is this whole question of adjustment. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:03 | |
You're not retired, | 0:53:03 | 0:53:04 | |
but you gave up the morning radio show on Radio 2. | 0:53:04 | 0:53:08 | |
Now, be honest about this. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:09 | |
Was there a difficult period of adjustment when you gave it up? | 0:53:09 | 0:53:14 | |
I would be nothing else but brutally frank with you. No. | 0:53:14 | 0:53:19 | |
To be honest, no. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:21 | |
Because, um, as you said earlier, I'm a risk-taker with my career. | 0:53:21 | 0:53:27 | |
The only permanence I require is in my family. And so... | 0:53:27 | 0:53:33 | |
..of course I miss the morning show. I miss the camaraderie. | 0:53:34 | 0:53:37 | |
I miss the contact, the interfacing with the public, you know? | 0:53:37 | 0:53:42 | |
500 or 600 emails every morning. | 0:53:42 | 0:53:45 | |
I knew what the public wanted, | 0:53:45 | 0:53:47 | |
I knew what the public thought about...about everything, if you like. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:51 | |
And I was able to build on that kind of correspondence. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:56 | |
I do miss that. I miss that fun. But...you know, you can't... | 0:53:56 | 0:54:03 | |
I've always been the kind of person that leaves parties early. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:07 | |
My mother always said that I used to come in in Elm Park, Limerick, | 0:54:07 | 0:54:13 | |
when I'd finish playing and lock the gate behind me | 0:54:13 | 0:54:18 | |
and go in the front door. And that's the way I've always been. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:22 | |
And so, I do try and go, | 0:54:22 | 0:54:27 | |
make for the exit before people start leading me to it. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:30 | |
And that is very unusual and I think it's important. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:32 | |
It's virtually unique in broadcasting that you left the morning show | 0:54:32 | 0:54:36 | |
at the time of your own choosing. | 0:54:36 | 0:54:38 | |
Most people we know are dragged out kicking and screaming, aren't they? | 0:54:38 | 0:54:42 | |
-Yes! -And resenting it and writing articles in the papers. -I know. | 0:54:42 | 0:54:44 | |
It's pathetic, isn't it? | 0:54:44 | 0:54:46 | |
Yeah, but you're one of the very few people who was | 0:54:46 | 0:54:48 | |
able to leave in the way you wanted. | 0:54:48 | 0:54:51 | |
I think, Mark, that's because I didn't come from a showbiz background. | 0:54:51 | 0:54:55 | |
I haven't had to battle my way up from the bottom of the bill. | 0:54:55 | 0:55:00 | |
I haven't had the classic insecurity of our business. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:07 | |
I've always been secure. I've always had reasonable self esteem. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:11 | |
And I've never starved. | 0:55:11 | 0:55:12 | |
And so, I have enough confidence to walk away | 0:55:12 | 0:55:16 | |
when I think the time is right. | 0:55:16 | 0:55:18 | |
And this is it, then. This is the day I've been dreading. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:22 | |
The inevitable morning when you and I come to the parting of the ways. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:26 | |
And that final morning on Radio 2, again, | 0:55:26 | 0:55:29 | |
I think, symbolic of your career in the BBC. | 0:55:29 | 0:55:32 | |
There was a little bit of barney there with BBC management, | 0:55:32 | 0:55:35 | |
because you said on air that one of them said, | 0:55:35 | 0:55:37 | |
"Aren't you over-doing the sentimentality a bit?" | 0:55:37 | 0:55:39 | |
No, I don't remember that at all. | 0:55:39 | 0:55:41 | |
I'm not saying I don't remember, I just don't remember that. | 0:55:41 | 0:55:45 | |
Um, yeah, obviously that was a thing I prepared. I wrote that down. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:51 | |
I don't really write anything else down, | 0:55:51 | 0:55:54 | |
but I wrote that down because I wanted to get that right. | 0:55:54 | 0:55:56 | |
It was important to me to say goodbye in the right way. | 0:55:56 | 0:56:00 | |
And, um, it was a sad morning for me. Very sad. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:04 | |
What you told me beforehand, because I asked you, you said | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
you definitely weren't going to cry, but you did, didn't you? | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
There was a slight choke, Mark, I wouldn't put it higher than that. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:16 | |
A little fogging of the eyes, yes. But, uh, yeah... | 0:56:16 | 0:56:21 | |
You know, I'd invested an awful lot of time | 0:56:21 | 0:56:25 | |
and an awful lot of broadcasting in years and years of morning radio. | 0:56:25 | 0:56:29 | |
Uh...but it was time to say, you know... | 0:56:30 | 0:56:34 | |
Time to go, uh, before everybody gets fed up with you. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:38 | |
So, I'm going to miss you. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:40 | |
Until we're together again in February, | 0:56:40 | 0:56:42 | |
have a happy Christmas and thank you. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:46 | |
Thank you for being my friend. | 0:56:46 | 0:56:48 | |
When you look at Sir Bruce Forsyth now, um, | 0:56:51 | 0:56:54 | |
this huge show either side of his 80th birthday... | 0:56:54 | 0:56:58 | |
-Bless him. -..do you, um... do you sort of hanker after that? | 0:56:58 | 0:57:02 | |
Would you like there to be another huge show? | 0:57:02 | 0:57:05 | |
I don't care. It'll...it'll happen or it won't. It'll probably not happen. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:13 | |
It's... I'm an old geezer now. Mind you, so is Bruce! | 0:57:13 | 0:57:18 | |
But he can dance, trip the light fantastic, | 0:57:18 | 0:57:22 | |
a lot better than I can and he's remarkable. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:26 | |
It's wonderful to see and I'm sure he'll go on and on and, | 0:57:26 | 0:57:31 | |
uh...I'll probably go on and on doing little things. | 0:57:31 | 0:57:36 | |
And maybe somebody will offer me something to do that's popular. | 0:57:36 | 0:57:42 | |
And maybe it'll succeed and maybe it won't. | 0:57:42 | 0:57:45 | |
Finally, the other traditional temptation to the Irish | 0:57:45 | 0:57:48 | |
is to return in their declining years, | 0:57:48 | 0:57:51 | |
but you must have discussed that with Lady Wogan? | 0:57:51 | 0:57:54 | |
"Maybe some day I'll go back to Ireland. | 0:57:54 | 0:57:57 | |
"Only at the closing of my day." Uh, no. No. I love Ireland, | 0:57:58 | 0:58:03 | |
but you want to be where your family is. All my family live in Britain. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:09 | |
So, yeah, we'll go back - we'll see my family, | 0:58:09 | 0:58:12 | |
we'll see Helen's family and they'll come to us, | 0:58:12 | 0:58:16 | |
but I'm not sure that we'd ever want to live back there again. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:20 | |
Um... This is where we live. This is where our family lives. | 0:58:20 | 0:58:23 | |
-Sir Terry Wogan, thank you. -Thank you, Mark. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:28 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:34 | 0:58:36 |