Wogan on Wogan: ‘I never saw any reason not to be Irish’

Thousands of tributes have been paid to Sir Terry Wogan, whose death at the age of 77, following a short battle with cancer, was announced yesterday.

Over the course of five decades he was responsible for radio and television hit shows that attracted tens of millions of viewers and listeners, making him the most successful Irish broadcaster ever. His immediately recognisable accent was familiar in every household in the UK and Ireland, and his surreal and often subversive sense of humour, delivered apparently off the cuff, made him a uniquely appealing star.

On television he presented some of the biggest game shows and chat shows of the 1970s and 1980s, but he is probably most famous now for his annual commentary on the Eurovision Song Contest, where he caused outrage among some competing countries for his irreverent and hilarious summing up of the outlandish and often dreadful acts on view. He always made sure he had a bottle of wine with him on Eurovision night, but advised his successor, Graham Norton, not to start drinking "until song nine".

Gifted

Always happier without a script, he was no fan of intensive planning or pre-production meetings. He was gifted instead with the remarkable and highly unusual ability to speak fluidly live on air with self-deprecating wit and erudition on whatever subject happened to come up.

Born in Limerick, Michael Terence Wogan began his broadcasting career with RTÉ in the early 1960s but quickly started working in the UK. He was very clear throughout his life that he had come to consider England as his home. He was also conscious, though, of the tensions felt by his fellow Irish immigrants during the Provisional IRA bombing campaign,

“Some people told me I made a difference by being a familiar Irish voice,” he told one interviewer. “That would be very important to me if I did that. I never did it consciously but I never saw any reason not to be Irish.”