By the spring of 2002 I had spent over a decade as a successful stand-up comedian in the UK. This job not only gave me a creative outlet, it provided immediate feedback from my audience and, above all, complete autonomy. So why exactly would I chuck in such freedoms for a job, which would give me a good deal less control? Where I would be answerable to a lengthy chain of management and feedback would be minimal at best and the audience reaction was something we would not discover for eighteen months? As I look back at things now, this is a question that I wish I had asked myself a lot sooner in life. But even if I’d had the prescience to ask it back then, the answer would have been the same then as it would be now. I love radio and I was reminded of that fact a week before Christmas in 2009.
18 December was quite a busy day one way and another. I woke up weary and a bit achy as I’d been singing and dancing while dressed as a lady in the musical Hairspray the night before. I had a day off scheduled in order to go up to the NEC to do a gig with The Blockheads and on the way there I was going to do all my Christmas shopping. It was also the day that Terry Wogan would broadcast his last-ever breakfast show, Wake Up to Wogan.
In September of that year Terry finally announced the day that his be-cardiganned legions of fans had been dreading. He would be pulling down the final fader on his breakfast show just before Christmas after twenty-seven years. The outcry was almost immediate at his replacement, the titian-haired host of Radio 2’s drivetime show Chris Evans. Listeners had been irate enough when he was brought in to replace Johnny Walker, but replacing Sir Terry? Yet to be honest, whenever anybody stops doing anything there is an immediate outcry from somebody who’s not happy about it. The British as a race are resistant to change. We felt it more so in Wogan’s case because there were a few million of them.
When I first heard that Terry was going, I thought back to our rare snatched conversations on the pavement outside Western House or in the lift to the studios. Occasionally I would work up the courage to ask him the question. ‘How long are you going to give it?’ He’d always briefly ponder before saying: ‘I don’t know. Maybe next year. But I’m still enjoying it…’ Then after a beat: ‘You don’t want to overstay your welcome…’
We shared a knowing glance. Sir Jimmy Young had overegged his Radio 2 pudding by at least a decade, finally departing his lunchtime show with about as much ill humour and as little grace as anybody could possibly muster. Then in his Sunday Express column he proceeded to retrospectively bite the hand that fed him – quite nicely, thank you – for over thirty-five years. I frankly think if he’d kept doing the recipes and left the politics to the professionals, he’d have been alright. But one gets the sense that he genuinely thought he was the new Robin Day. As I listened open-mouthed to his grumpy and bilious final show in December 2002, I do remember thinking, ‘Make sure to jump before you are pushed…’
With the loss of Terry, people were going to have to make a huge adjustment. Indeed the effect on many would not be unlike a bereavement. Terry had been a huge part of their lives for decades. They’d had almost thirty years where they would get up, stretch, reach out and turn on their radios and hear the very same voice from Monday to Friday. Without really meaning to, he subtly wove himself into the fabric of the lives of millions. His easy-going manner, ready wit and soothing voice had been heard in the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and cars of the nation for decades. This wasn’t going to be some bloke quitting a job. This was like losing a member of the family.
But surely the comings and goings of who presents what at which radio station are insignificant in the grand scheme of things? Indeed so, yet it’s worth bearing in mind that avid radio listeners somehow take it more personally. They develop a kind of symbiotic relationship with favoured presenters. And when that relationship, as is customary, ends abruptly, they have no control over it. They feel powerless against such sudden unwanted change. Conversely, those who manage radio stations do have power, but think about their networks as a whole. They strive to find the right chemistry between their many diverse presenters who fill the schedules. Usually this involves tinkering around until they get just the right mix. Unfortunately they often forget that their tinkering affects the listening routines of thousands, and as a listener this can be frustrating. It’s not like football, when the manager takes off your favourite player and you get to scream and shout at him for ninety minutes. If your favourite deejay gets bounced, your only recourse is to fire off a surly email or phone Feedback.
When I heard the news about Terry, I thought back to my own somewhat smaller-scale departure from the breakfast show for BBC 6 Music at the end of March 2007. I pondered our respective statistics. Wogan had a commanding twenty-seven years behind the mic to his name, while I had only managed a paltry five years and three weeks. His audience was a stunning 8 million while at my final peak I’d hit just under 500,000 with a following wind. Terry was a national institution while I remained the big bloke who was always rude about Van Morrison on that pop quiz thing.
With each passing record that Terry played on that last morning, I found myself getting quite misty. Even though it was a rare occasion when I’d turn over from Today on Radio 4 to tune in to him, I simply felt better just knowing he was there just a few kilohertz down the dial. I knew my mother would be listening to him, just as she had done ever since the 1970s. Oddly enough she listened to his last show on the DAB radio I had bought her so she could listen to me on 6 Music. To the best of my knowledge she only ever listened to my show a few times, if that, but like my relationship with Wogan I assume she felt better just knowing I was on air, so didn’t feel the need to actually tune in.
On that final Friday, Terry was obviously only playing songs from his own collection, but each one seemed just that bit more mournful that the last. Even though he was mostly cheerful and upbeat during his links, you could feel the audience were in tears from the moment he went on air. When he played Peter Gabriel and the Black Dyke Mills Band’s haunting ‘That’ll Do’ even I found myself welling up. As he launched into his final link on the show, a tear rolled down my cheek…
‘This is it, then. This is the day I have been dreading – the inevitable morning when you and I come to the parting of the ways, the last Wake Up to Wogan. It wasn’t always thus. For the first twelve years it was the plain old Terry Wogan Show and you were all Twits, the Terry Wogan Is Tops Society. When I returned to the bosom of our family, it became Wake Up to Wogan and you all became TOGs, Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals. It’s always been a source of enormous pride to me that you have come together in my name, that you are proud to call yourself my listeners, that you think of me as a friend, someone that you are close enough to laugh with, to poke fun at and occasionally, when the world seemed just a little too cruel, to shed a tear with.’
Halfway through this poignant final moment I pulled into a lay-by as I felt sure that my constant eye wiping might pose a hazard to other drivers. It was the perfect goodbye from a perfect gentleman. It’s difficult to explain to someone unless they’ve grown up with Wogan as part of the cultural landscape how important he was, but I’ll give it a go. Imagine that you have a favourite uncle. (Perhaps you don’t have to imagine.) He’s the slightly wild one who would take you shark fishing, or out in his sports car with the top down in the rain, or let you have a go on the aerial runway over that bonfire, or insist you stay up late on a school night, and he was always hilarious at weddings so you desperately wanted to sit next to him, and he was kind and polite and only ever swore by leaning towards you in that conspiratorial way so auntie couldn’t hear. That is how I saw Terry Wogan, and now he was gone.
As the Jeep churned through the December morning slush, I realised that this was truly