RIP Terry Wogan

[Peter]

This charity thing is a hoot.  It's a job.

I always remember reading what Woody Guthrie said when a very rich woman asked him to sing for a charity.  "It'll be ten dollars, maam."  "Oh but Mr Guthrie, it's for a good cause!"  "Lady, I don't do bad causes."

RIP Terry Wogan.

[Redlight]

Trouble is, if you're employed by an organisation that has decided to get involved with any charity or "corporate social responsibility" wheeze, there is usually considerable pressure to give up your time to do whatever is required, with no recompense.  Fine if you support the charity in question, but it's a bit annoying when it's (as in the case of one company I worked for) the charity of which the chief exec's wife just happens to be a trustee. Unless you're a stroppy bastard / very resilient, it's hard to say no.

[Wowbagger]

I first became aware of Terry Wogan in about 1975. My final teaching practice was at Our Lady Star of the Sea primary school in Lytham and the very affable deputy head drove in every day from somewhere near Fleetwood IIRC, passing through Poulton le Fylde on his way. He gave me a lift every day, which enabled me to keep the travelling expenses I claimed for my daily travel*. Terry Wogan was the de rigueur morning listening. I forever associate him with a field full of donkeys near some sand dunes near the airport.

The return journey in the evening was punctuated with Waggoner's Walk.

*I bought Mrs. Wow's engagement ring with these ill-gotten gains.

[Kim]

To me Terry Wogan was just a man on the telly.  Like Bruce Forsyth, he appeared to be famous for being famous.  A sort of Cardassian Kardashian for the older generation.  CiN is surely just another aspect of that - it's not like he came up with the idea.

At some point I discovered he was famous for being Irish, which I hadn't noticed.  Some time later, as I became more involved with the QUILTBAG community, I discovered that people actually watched the Eurovision Song Contest, and that he was an integral part of that experience.  Can't say I ever saw the attraction.

Meh.  Maybe he was a bigger deal if you'd listened to his radio career or something?

[Exit Stage Left]

That's possibly because you didn't live through a prolonged IRA bombing campaign. When it was a good idea to be reminded of the Irish contribution of wit, in the everyday life of Britain.

[Kim]

That's possibly because you didn't live through a prolonged IRA bombing campaign.

Just enough of the tail end of it to consider modern terrorists a bit rubbish.

When it was a good idea to be reminded of the Irish contribution of wit, in the everyday life of Britain.

I had my mum's side of the family for that.

[caerau]

Yeah, I heard him on the radio a lot - mostly because of my Mum when I was a kid.  He was very very good on the radio. Although my 12 year old self would probably not have admitted that at the time. 


We got my mum tickets to see him live on his chat show in the 80s for her birthday -she was very pleased.

[Exit Stage Left]

That's possibly because you didn't live through a prolonged IRA bombing campaign.

Just enough of the tail end of it to consider modern terrorists a bit rubbish.

That's odd, because the IRA had 4 of the top 10 of the most expensive terrorist attacks in history in the 1990s.

http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-price-of-terrorism-the-most-expensive-terrorist-attacks-in-the-world.html

[Kim]

Oddly, as a child using the railways around London, that didn't really come into it.

[Vince]

I listened to his radio program once. His inability to shut up lead him to talk through the entire first verse of Sultans of Swing.
I won't be missing him.

[ian]

The IRA was pretty much lift muzak music to my childhood. Stuff blew up every now and again and they sometimes made the trains late. I think the biggest success was making it difficult to find a litter bin. I suspect this is why they gave up, they couldn't find a bin either.

[Exit Stage Left]

The successful bit of the IRA's campaign was between 1991 and 1996 when they caused £2.3 billions worth of damage in London and Manchester with very few casualties. That caused less public animosity than the pub bombings of the 70s.

Wogan was one of the three main faces of the Irish in Britain in the 1970s, the others being Val Doonican and Dave Allen. Wogan was between those two extremes, and was certainly more comfortable with authority than Dave Allen ever was.

"The hierarchy of everything in my life has always bothered me," Allen said in 1998. "I'm bothered by power. People, whoever they might be, whether it's the government, or the policeman in the uniform, or the man on the door - they still irk me a bit. From school, from the first nun that belted me.

'People used to think of the nice sweet little ladies ... they used to knock the fuck out of you, in the most cruel way that they could. They'd find bits of your body that were vulnerable to intense pain - grabbing you by the ear, or by the nose, and lift you, and say 'Don't cry!' It's very hard not to cry. I mean, not from emotion, but pain. The priests were the same. And I sit and watch politicians with great cynicism, total cynicism."

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/mar/12/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

[clarion]

That's possibly because you didn't live through a prolonged IRA bombing campaign. When it was a good idea to be reminded of the Irish contribution of wit, in the everyday life of Britain.

PM (IIRC) interviewed Henry Kelly and Gloria Hunniford on exactly this aspect.  They had an interesting insight.

[Exit Stage Left]

The Guardian had an article about that aspect. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/01/terry-wogan-irish-troubles-prejudice-britain


I went to a Catholic primary school run by a Convent in the 1960s in Lancashire, so it's a miracle I pronounce 'any' in the English manner. North West England is part of of an 'Irish Sea Culture', and we have closer historic links with Ireland than with the rest of England.

I was also at the University of Kent in the late 1970s, and a fair number of students from Northern Ireland had worked out that it was the furthest away they could get away from the troubles in Belfast and Derry on a student grant.

[Kim]

I listened to his radio program once. His inability to shut up lead him to talk through the entire first verse of Sultans of Swing.
I won't be missing him.

Could have been worse.  Could have talked over the end...

[Mr Larrington]

The successful bit of the IRA's campaign was between 1991 and 1996 when they caused £2.3 billions worth of damage in London and Manchester with very few casualties. That caused less public animosity than the pub bombings of the 70s.

And how we laughed at the fuss our USAnian colleagues made over one little bomb under the World Trade Center...

[Exit Stage Left]

I laughed when the organisers of Euro 96 stated that the whole tournament had gone off without incident. Apart from the detonation of the largest UK bomb since WW2 the night before the Russia Germany game, obviously.

I like the 'Background' section of the Wiki entry, which starts thus.

Following the 12th century Norman invasion of Ireland and the Tudor conquest of Ireland beginning in the 1530s, Ireland was largely under English rule by the end of the Nine Years' War in 1603.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing#Background

[hillbilly]

Wogan was a pioneer of UK garage and DNB. Dark and nasty leader of the underside of beats n ting.

http://youtu.be/3z9uLdARaNU

[Martin]

I listened to his radio program once. His inability to shut up lead him to talk through the entire first verse of Sultans of Swing.

He should have kept going for 4....

Dire Straits; the only group where the lead singer insisted all the other members wore headbands so he didn't stand out as a slaphead

[caerau]

I listened to his radio program once. His inability to shut up lead him to talk through the entire first verse of Sultans of Swing.

He should have kept going for 4....

Dire Straits; the only group where the lead singer insisted all the other members wore headbands so he didn't stand out as a slaphead

    I have been restraining myself from such a reply.

[Peter]

Dire Straits, the only group to have a guitarist so good he could play jazz and country sessions with the legendary Chet Atkins, become one of the most successsful musicians in the history of the business and certainly the creator of what is frequently cited as one of the great solos to date.  Sheesh, what a loser.

RIP Terry Wogan.

[TimC]

Well said, Peter!

[caerau]

I dunno, maybe if you come into a thread started about condolences for someone and slag him off, maybe you shouldn't get precious about your own particular person getting slagged off too 


1986, the year you couldn't get the hell away from Brothers in Arms. 

[Peter]

I dunno, maybe if you come into a thread started about condolences for someone and slag him off, maybe you shouldn't get precious about your own particular person getting slagged off too 


1986, the year you couldn't get the hell away from Brothers in Arms. 

Sorry?  Where have I slagged off Terry Wogan?

[caerau]

You didn't 


But you did get precious about Dire Straits.  Wander how you the originator would react if we all trolled the Mark Knopfler RIP thread when he pops it.