Terry Wogan - Mustnt Grumble

Sir Terry Wogan KBE was born in Limerick, Ireland. After leaving college he went into banking and five years later joined RTE as a newsreader/announcer. In 1969 Terry stood in for BBC Radio's Jimmy Young and later that year was given his own daily shows on BBC Radio 1 and 2. In 1972 he took over the prestigious morning show slot and it's been downhill since then.

Terry's extensive television credits include his live chat show series Wogan, The Eurovision Song Contest, Come Dancing, Blankety Blank and Children in Need, to name but a few. In 1993 Terry rejoined Radio 2 to present Wake up to Wogan, the most listened to breakfast show in the UK with over 8 million people tuning in every morning. In a moment of weakness, the Queen honoured him with a knighthood in 2005.

He is married to the sainted Lady Helen, the present Mrs Wogan, and has two sons and a daughter.

Mustn't Grumble

The Autobiography

TERRY WOGAN

An Orion paperback

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Orion This paperback edition published in 2007 by Orion Books Ltd,

Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA

1 3579 10 8642 Copyright Terry Wogan 2006

The right of Terry Wogan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording of otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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For my son, Mark, and Luigi Bonomi, without whose drive and enthusiasm I might have spent most of the year just lying about enjoying myself... For my ever expanding family: Alan, Katherine, Henry, Susan, Kate, Freddie and the Queen of my heart, Helen, without whom none of it would be worth a tinker's curse...

Acknowledgements

Thanks will never be enough for the irreplaceable Jo Gurnett, the wonderful Amanda Harris and all at Orion, my dear friend Paul Walters, the 'team', Deadly, Boggy and Fran, Alan Boyd, Lesley Douglas and all the great people with whom it's been such a pleasure to work on the Coffin-Dodgers network, BBC Radio 2. Would that I could mention my loyal TOGs by name, but all I know is their pseudonyms; they're my joy, my constant friends and inspiration. I know that they won't mind if I single out the brillant Mick Sturbs, whose inspired 'Janet and John' tales regularly reduce million to tears and mild hysteria, and have been instrumental in raising almost a million pounds for Children in Need.

This finely honed little tome, through which you are thumbing before returning it, unbought, to the bookstore shelf, is by way of what they call in Dublin a 'follier-uppier' to my last oeuvre, Is It Me? That went surprisingly well, except with a little old man in Belfast. I'd gone there, in the grand tradition of bookselling, as part of a tour of the UK, hawking my little book shamelessly from Reading to Cambridge, from Norwich to Bristol, from Bath to Belfast. Jolly crowds greeted me everywhere, some even bought the book. A man in Reading rushed to my side in the bookstore there, and asked me fervently to sign his prayerbook. I did so, with an even-handed flourish. He looked a little puzzled, smiling wanly as he left. The sales assistant was most sympathetic: 'He thought you were Terry Waite,' she explained.

For reasons that now escape me, unless it was the usual one of a boys' night out, two of my underlings from Wake Up to Wogan, an obscure radio show that need not detain us here, accompanied me to Northern Ireland for the book tour. Paul Walters, my producer, otherwise known as Dr Wallington P. de Wynter Courtney Claibourne Magillicuddy Walters, or, for short, 'Doctor Wally', was one, and hanging on, like grim death, to our coat tails, Alan Dedicoat, otherwise known as Deadly Alancoat, the Wealdstone Weather-Boy, the Voice of the Balls, or, to keep it short, 'Deadly', was the other.

Naturally, Deadly was not allowed to travel with us across the Irish Sea, but magically materialised at our hotel outside Belfast. Walters and I had made the mistake of travelling with him once before, on British Midland. Appropriately enough, the Voice of the Balls was seated on the other side of the blue curtain which, in all aeroplanes, separates the well-to-do from the riff-raff. As Paul and I toasted each other in lukewarm champagne, on the other side of the curtain the unfortunates were being doled out dishwater and rolls wrapped in clingfilm. Deadly made the mistake of thinking the customer might choose the filling in his stale roll. 'Ham?' he mildly inquired. 'Have you got ham?' The impertinence of the request struck the ancient stewardess dumb, but when she found her voice, the whole plane heard it: "Am?!' she shrieked. "Am? There's no 'am 'ere! That's on the other side of the curtain! There's cheese or tuna, which d'ya want? 'Am! Honestly, some people...'

The great Michael Devine had come up from Dublin to drive us around Belfast. Michael Devine is one of those rare beings, who, quietly and without fuss, can do anything, make all your dreams come true. This is a quiet-spoken, gentle Dublin man, who looks after all the celebrities and stars who come to Ireland. Julia Roberts stays in his little house in the Dublin suburbs when she craves anonymity. A few years ago when Julia wanted to be alone, Michael borrowed The Edge's (of U2) house on the banks of Lough Corrib in Galway, and looked after the superstar there. Julia gave him her apartment in New York when Ireland were playing in the World Cup in the Big Apple. When Julia got married a year or so ago, she flew Michael and his family to the

West Coast to attend the joyous nuptials. And guess who, in loco parentis, gave away the biggest female film star in the world? A Dublin taxi driver named Michael Devine. Whenever Ireland won the Eurovision, which it seemed to do every second year in the nineties, I'd get in touch with the great Michael. He catered for our every whim in Dublin, but his tour de force was the Big Night. Up to our hotel would roar a full police escort. Into Michael's limos we'd get and off we'd go, at breakneck speed, to the Point, where the Contest was being staged. Through the narrow streets and backroads of Dublin we'd scream, ignoring red lights and roundabouts, pedestrians, cyclists and other road-users, as first one and then another police motorcyclist roared ahead of us to hold back the traffic. You can keep your roller coaster and your Wall of Death - these were white-knuckle rides I will never forget. At the end of it, we were deposited at the front door of the Point, and Michael slipped the sergeant-in-charge a handful of crisp oncers. 'Right, lads,' said Michael, 'off you go to the Park.' And off the bikes would roar to the residence of the President of Ireland. I often wonder if she knew that we had first use of her escort...

As we travelled from one book-signing to another, Michael tried to explain the intricacies of Northern Ireland to the eejits from England.

'This is green,' he would say, 'a Republican, Nationalist area.'

'How do you know?' asked Deadly.

'You just do,' explained Michael, 'and this is an Orange street.'

'How do you know?'

Michael gave a sigh: 'You just do. A couple of streets over there, it's all Black.'