TERRY WOGAN

 

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The lunatics have taken over the corporation, says Wogan in attack on BBC - 21/10/2006

 

For four decades, he has enjoyed a high-profile and lucrative career with the BBC, earning a position as one of its best-known and most-loved stars. But Terry Wogan has launched a savage attack on the corporation for "overpaying" a new generation of television presenters, wasting millions of pounds of licence fee-payers' money in the process.

 

Writing in a new book of essays about the television industry, Wogan, 68, bluntly observes: "You might say the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

 

 

Terry Wogan's portrait

 

Terry Wogan

 

 

"The culture now in television is that the presenter calls the financial and, increasingly, the creative shots. It is comparable to what happened in Hollywood 15 or so years ago. Agents have become far more powerful, and through them the stars are able to dictate their own terms.

 

"As for those much-trumpeted seven-figure deals, I have the suspicion that the corporation is in some cases over-paying. Their excuse is that if they do not offer millions, the opposition will lure the talent away with honeyed words and equally large sums. Frankly the BBC is often giving huge quantities of money to people who would prefer to work for the corporation anyway. We can all name stars who have been persuaded to cross over from BBC to ITV, and it has ended in tears."

 

Although Wogan, who received a knighthood in 2005, does not name individual presenters, there was controversy earlier this year when it emerged that Jonathan Ross, the presenter of Film 2006, Friday Night With Jonathan Ross and programmes on Radio 2, had signed a three-year contract worth £18 million.

 

The deal was agreed after Channel 4 attempted to poach the popular presenter. Ross was yesterday unavailable for comment.

 

Turning to what he perceives to be the disparity between the salaries of today's television stars and the paucity of programme ideas, Wogan adds: "Broadcasting companies are signing up the artistes without any clear idea of what they are getting them to do.

 

"In the past, the BBC or ITV would come up with an idea for a series – a sitcom or a chat show, perhaps – and the head of light entertainment would agree to a pilot on the strength of the idea and only at that point ask who they had in mind to do it.

 

"In other words, the industry is buying talent instead of ideas. The money is being spent in the first instance in the wrong place."

 

Again, while Sir Terry does not name any individual broadcaster, there has been criticism of the choice of programme for some of the corporation's best-paid presenters.

 

Commentators have questioned the wisdom of allowing Graham Norton, whose £3.5 million pay package was increased after ITV tried to lure him away from the BBC, to front Strictly Dance Fever, a spin off from the successful Strictly Come Dancing programme. The new programme failed to attract the kind of audience enjoyed by the original. Norton could not be contacted for comment.

 

Meanwhile, several established BBC stars who have left the corporation have failed to repeat their success on other channels.

 

Des Lynam, the former presenter of BBC's Grandstand, received a muted reaction when he moved to ITV to front its Champions' League football coverage and last week it was announced that he is to quit his job as presenter of Channel 4's Countdown after just 18 months.

 

Sir Terry's comments were yesterday welcomed by viewers' groups. John Beyer, the director of Mediawatch UK, which represents the interests of viewers, said: "I think a lot of people agree with him. Some of these million-pound deals are excessive. Licence fee-payers would agree with Terry entirely that the money should be spent on original programmes rather than those on high remuneration deals."

 

However, critics will point to Wogan's own lucrative contracts with the BBC.

 

Indeed, in his essay he jokes that he is "worth every penny of the small fortune they deign to pay me".

 

Although Wogan, who works on a freelance basis, does not provide details of his own remuneration in the essay, he is reputed to earn £800,000 for presenting his breakfast programme on Radio 2.

 

He has presented a host of successful television programmes, including Blankety Blank, Points of View and his Wogan chat show, and has fronted the corporation's coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest for more than a quarter of a century. He popularised the soap opera Dallas in Britain. He is also a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph.

 

•The essay appears in a new book, Shooting Stars, a Collection of Essays, Musings and Rants on Talent on TV, edited by Mary Collins and published by UKTV on October 25.

 

 

Terry Wogan autobiography BBC books

Terry Wogan's autobiography, Is it Me?

 

 

 

 

With eight million listeners to his Radio 2 breakfast show, Terry Wogan, 68, shows no sign of letting age wither him, but instead is planning a huge open-air concert next month. He talks to Gillian Reynolds

 

Terry Wogan, undisputed king of the morning on British radio, gets up at 5.30am and listens to the wireless. He's fond of Farming Today on Radio 4 at 5.45am, cocks a quizzical ear in the direction of John Humphrys on Today, always listens, on his way in to work, to Sarah Kennedy on Radio 2, the show that precedes his. Of his own programme and its phenomenal success he says, "I love doing it. It's what I do."

 

Not every listener loves him in return. "What is so hard about playing records two hours a day, Monday to Friday?" one writes. "It's not as if he has to wind up the gramophone and change the needle." Says another: "I may have been unlucky, but on the occasions I have tried to listen to him he seems to be incapable of completing a sentence coherently, he interrupts the music he plays and he reads endlessly from the most dire assortment of unfunny e-mails."

 

Eight million listeners disagree. They write to him by pen, e-mail and mobile phone text, in verse and parodic circumlocutory prose, setting him straight, adding occasional Latin tags. They get his jokes about sports commentators, pick up allusions to Flann O'Brien or Finnegans Wake and quote more back. They sup daily from his cups of cheerful irony in such numbers as to make his the most popular single show on British radio. If it sounds easy, it is because he works at making it seem so.

 

What is his secret? "I am a happy person," he says. "I wake up content. My upbringing and education gave me a sense of self-esteem. I've never been out of work. I knew I could do radio from the first moment I sat in front of a microphone. I'm never short of something to say."

 

This is simple truth, not arrogance. On air and off, he talks about writers, rugby, wine, golf, television, opera, great radio shows, classic movies, human folly in general and (with particular acuity) the failings of the BBC. Of this last he says, with some passion, "I owe it a great deal of loyalty and I give it a great deal of loyalty. It is the greatest broadcaster in the world. I want it to be the same great, confident broadcaster it was."

 

Was? "I wish it had a decent sitcom. I wish they could get away from the tyranny of the focus groups. I wish they could get ahead of the game instead of giving people gardening and makeover and reality. You see people reading the autocue, not thinking about what they're saying, their eyes like seagulls'."

 

Perhaps he is thinking about the BBC television thruster who recently inquired why Children In Need, which Wogan has presented on BBC1 from its start in 1980 and every year since, couldn't be more "cool". The twinkling Wogan eyes narrow. "Cool," he repeats, as if addressing a dead rat.

 

He came to the BBC from Ireland's national broadcaster RTE in 1967 and took over Radio 2's breakfast show in 1972. It went well, so well BBC television began luring him away for Children In Need, Eurovision, Blankety Blank and one or two very good documentaries. A thrice-weekly early evening chat show meant leaving radio. It was 7½ years before he came back, in 1993. Radio 2's breakfast show ratings haven't stopped growing since.

 

Every radio station in the country would love to have someone who has so comprehensively mastered this elusive art. The couple of hours when people are waking up, getting ready, going off or staying in are, by all radio runes, vital in laying the foundation for the rest of the day's listening and crucial to the listener's return, day in, day out. Jonathan Ross may have brought Radio 2 a new audience but it's nowhere near as big as Wogan's. Chris Evans hasn't yet found the knack for drivetime. As for direct competition, the ratings reveal Radio 1's Chris Moyles isn't in the running, Radios 4 and Five Live slipped a bit last quarter and there's no one in commercial radio, local or national, who can do what Wogan, aged 68, goes on doing.

 

It even seems, after a bit of a blunder with a Channel Five chat show co-presented with Gaby Roslin ("What did I learn from it? What I learned was that I shouldn't have done it"), he now has a TV hit with Wogan Then and Now on UK Gold. If the idea for this sounds obvious, people looking at their 1980s interviews then talking about what's changed since, it works because of his artful way in laying down the conversational bait on which his subjects - John Humphrys, Janet Street Porter, the original cast of Dallas - readily and sometimes fiercely swoop. There will be more later this year.

 

There is also a second volume of autobiography, Mustn't Grumble, due this autumn, and a new venture, presenting a family Proms Spectacular concert produced by his son Alan, with favourite songs, an aerial display and fireworks, at the Hop Farm Country Park in Kent on Sunday September 10. The night before he will, as usual, be fronting the BBC's Proms in the Park. Does he dread bad weather? "The British public prefers it. It brings out that old Dunkirk spirit, we're all in it together."

 

Here, perhaps, is his real secret. He creates the illusion he's there with you, rain or shine, between the real world and its ridiculous side, constantly good humoured, mannerly, shrewd. No wonder we seek his company. But when I say, rather carried away, that there has never been an audience like his, he gives me a level look. "That's not a situation that can continue indefinitely," he says. "I get up with a light heart. I need somebody to tell me when it's time to go." So I thought of that sentence from Ulysses, "Plenty to see and hear and feel yet."

 

  • 'Proms in the Park' is in Hyde Park, London, on Sept 9. Tickets: www.seetickets.com. For tickets to Wogan's 'Prom's Spectacular', call 0845 225 6020

    Wogan's Run

  • Born Michael Terence Wogan in Limerick, Ireland on August 3, 1938.

     

  • Worked as a bank clerk in Dublin for five years before moving into broadcasting.

     

  • Interviewed a vast array of celebrities on Wogan, including a drunk George Best, a catatonic Anne Bancroft, and the former BBC sports presenter David Icke, who declared himself the Son of God on air.

     

  • Began his sardonic coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1980. Caused outrage in 2001 when he described the Danish presenters as "Dr Death and the Tooth Fairy".

     

  • Once contributed his own underpants to a Children in Need auction. They fetched £7,500.

     

  • Is the best-paid radio DJ in the country, reportedly commanding a salary of £800,000.

     

  • Has been awarded a knighthood, an OBE, an honorary doctorate, and a gold Blue Peter badge.

 

 

Terry Wogan laughing

 

 

 

MUSIC INDEX A - Z

 

 

Abba

AC-DC

Aerosmith

A H Rahman

A-ha

Alabama

Alanis Morisette

Alison Kraus

All Saints

American Idol

American Music Awards

Amy Macdonald

Amy Winehouse

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Annie Lennox

Aqua

Arctic Monkeys

Atomic Kitten

Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend Wedding

Bananarama

Band Aid

Backstreet Boys

Babra Streisand

Barry Manilow

Barry White

Bay City Rollers

Beach Boys

Beyonce

Billy Joel

Bing Crosby

Black Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne

Blondie

Bob Dylan

Bob Geldof

Bob Marley & Wailers

Bon Jovi

Boney M

Boyz II Men

Brenda Lee

Britney Spears - Shaved

Bruce Springsteen

Bryan Adams

Bucks Fizz

Buddy Holly

B'z

Cascada

Celine Dion

Charles Aznavour

Charlotte Church

Chacago

Cheeky Girls

Chemical Brothers

Childrens Songs

Christina Aguilera - Basics

Christina Milian

Chuck Berry

Cindy Lauper

Cliff Richard

Coldplay

Comic Relief

David Bowie

Def Leoppard

Depeche Mode

Destiny's Child

Dire Straits

Dixie Chicks

Dolly Parton

Donna Summer

Duran Duran

Earth Wind and Fire

East Magazine - Eastbounre

Eddie Arnold

Elena Paparizou - Eurovision

Elkie Brooks

Elton John

Elvis Presley

Eminem

Enrique Iglesias

Enya

Eurovision Song Contest

Evanescence

Events - Tents - Moroccan

Fergie

Fleetwood Mac

Flipp's - Pop Funk collection

Foreigner

Frank Sinatra

Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Frankie Laine

Garth Brooks

Gary Numan

Genesis

George Michael

Geri Halliwell

Girl Bands

Girl Groups

Girls Aloud

Glade alternative music festival

Glastonbury

Gloria Estefan

Grace Jones

Grammy Awards

Grant Navy Fireman

Groove Armada

Guns and Roses

Gunther + Sunshine Girls

Gwen Stefani

Haircut 100

Hank Thompson

Hellogoodbye

Her Name in Blood

Hoosiers

Intraverse

Iron Maiden

James Blunt

James Morrison

Janet Jackson

Jean Michel Jarre

Jennifer Lopez

Jessica Simpson

Jethro Tull

Jimi Hendrix

Joel White

John Denver

Johnny Cash

Johnny Mathis

Joni James

Joss Stone

Journey

Juan Thyme

Julia Figueroa

Julio Iglesias

Justin Timberlake

Karaoke    A - Z of UK venues

Kate Bush

Kate Nash

Katie Melua

Kenny Rogers

Kristina Bradford

Kylie Minogue - cancer

Led Zeppelin

Lily Allen

Linda Ronstadt

Lionel Richie

Live Aid

Live Earth Concerts

Live 8

Louis Walsh

Luciano Pavarotti

KISS

Madonna - Films and Video

Mama Hoochie Bang

Mando - Manto

Mariah Carey

Marillion

Max Jasper - Mezzowave

McFly

Meatloaf

Metallica

Michael Bolton

Michael Jackson

Mireille Mathieu

Modern Talking

MTV

My Chemical Romance

Myspace.com - Networking

Nat King Cole

Natasha Bedingfield

National Anthems

Neil Diamond

Nelly Furtado

Nirvana

Oasis

Olivia Newton-John

Paris Hilton

Patti Page

Pearl Jam

Perry Como

Peter Waterman

Petition the Prime Minister

Petula Clarke

Phil Collins

Photography

Pink - Pink Orchid Ltd

Pink Floyd

Pop Idol

Pop Music

Prince

Queen

Reading Music Festival

Record Companies

Record Producers

Ricky Nelson

Rihanna

Robbie Williams

Rod Stewart

Roxette

Roxy Music

Rule Britannia

Santana

Shakira

Shania Twain

Sharon Osbourne

Simon Cowell

Simply Red

Snoop Dog

Songwriting

Spice Girls

Stars in Their Eyes

Steps

Stevie Wonder

Sting - The Police

Stock Aitken Waterman SAW

Sugababes

Terry Wogan

The Bangles

The Beatles

The Bee Gees

The Brit Awards

The Carpenters

The Clash

The Doobie Brothers

The Doors

The Eagles

The Jacksons

The Pussycat Dolls

The Ramones

The Rolling Stones

The Royal Canadians

The Seekers

The Sunshine Girls

The Ventures

The Who

The X Factor

The X Factor 2005

The X Factor 2006

Three Dog Night

Timbaland

Tina Turner

TOP TEN - FORTY CHARTS

Tupac

U2

UB40

USA For Africa

Van Halen

Vibes From the Vine - Concert 06

Vicky Leandros

Victoria Beckham

VW tour bus - Sunshine Girls

Wei Wei

Whitney Houston

Wicked New Year Party - Alps 07

Woodstock

World Idol

X Factor Battle of Stars

YouTube.com

ZZ Top

 

 

 

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