Terry Wogan

Biography: Sir Michael Terence "Terry" Wogan is a veteran Irish radio and television broadcaster who holds dual Irish and British citizenship. Wogan has worked for the BBC in the United Kingdom for most of his career. Before he retired from the weekday breakfast programme Wake Up to Wogan on BBC Radio 2 on 18 December 2009, Sir Terry had a regular 8 million listeners, making him the most listened-to radio broadcaster of any European nation. He began his career at Raidio Teilifis Eireann where he presented shows such as Jackpot in the 1960s.

Wogan has been a leading media personality in the UK since the late 1960s and is often referred to as a national treasure. He is perhaps best known in the United Kingdom for his BBC1 chat show Wogan, for his work presenting Children in Need, as the host of Wake Up to Wogan, the original host of the BBC game show Blankety Blank (before being replaced by Les Dawson), a presenter of Come Dancing in the 1970s, and as the BBC?s commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest on radio and television from 1971 to 2008. Wogan started a primetime weekend show on Radio 2 from 14 February 2010.

Terry Wogan, the son of a grocery store manager in Limerick City, was educated at the Jesuit school of Crescent College from the age of eight. He experienced a strongly religious upbringing, later commenting that "There were hundreds of churches, all these missions breathing fire and brimstone, telling you how easy it was to sin, how you?d be in hell. We were brainwashed into believing." Despite this, he has often expressed his fondness for the city of his birth, commenting on one occasion that "Limerick never left me, whatever it is, my identity is Limerick."

At the age of 15, after his father was promoted to general manager, Wogan moved to Dublin with his family. While living in Dublin, he attended Crescent College?s sister school, Belvedere College. He participated in amateur dramatics and discovered a love of rock music. After graduating from Belvedere in 1956, Wogan had a brief career in the banking profession, joining the Royal Bank of Ireland. He later joined the national broadcaster of Ireland, RTE (Raidio Teilifis Eireann) as a newsreader and announcer, after seeing an advert in a newspaper advertising announcer positions. On 16 September 2011, Wogan revealed on the BBC television show Would I Lie To You? that when he worked at RTE, he used to burn fellow presenters? scripts as a typical Wogan prank.

On 25 April 1965, Wogan married Helen Joyce, with whom he has three children: Alan (born 1967); Mark (born 1970); and Katherine (born 1972). Wogan and his wife Helen currently live in Taplow, south Buckinghamshire, near Maidenhead. The couple have a holiday home in Gascony, south-west France.

Wogan conducted interviews and presented documentary features during his first two years at Raidio Teilifis Eireann, before moving to the light entertainment department as a disc jockey and host of TV quiz and variety shows such as Jackpot, a top rated quiz show on RTE in the 1960s. When the show was dropped by RTE TV in 1967, Wogan approached the BBC for extra work. He began working for BBC Radio, initially ?down the line? from London, first broadcasting on The Light Progamme on Tuesday 27 September 1966. On the inauguration of BBC Radio 1, he presented the Tuesday edition of Late Night Extra for two years, commuting weekly from Dublin to London. After covering Jimmy Young?s mid-morning show throughout July 1969, he was offered a regular afternoon slot from 3 to 5 p.m. This was officially on BBC Radio 1, but lack of funding meant that it was also broadcast on BBC Radio 2.

In April 1972, he took over the breakfast show on BBC Radio 2, swapping places with John Dunn, who briefly hosted the afternoon show. By this time, Radio 1 and Radio 2 had diverged sufficiently to allow separate programming, and Wogan enjoyed unprecedented popularity, achieving audiences of up to 7.6 million. His seemingly ubiquitous presence across the media meant that he frequently became the butt of jokes by comedians of the time, among them The Goodies and The Barron Knights. Wogan was eminently capable of self-parody too, releasing a vocal version of the song "The Floral Dance" during this time, by popular request from listeners who enjoyed hearing him sing over the instrumental hit by the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band. His version reached number 21 in the UK Singles Chart. A follow-up single, entitled "Me and the Elephant", and an eponymous album were also released, but did not chart.

In December 1984, Wogan left his breakfast show to pursue a full-time career in television.

Wogan was given his own chat show, Wogan, which after a trial run on a midweek evening, was recommissioned for broadcast on Saturday nights from 1982 to 1984. Between 1985 and 1992, the show became thrice-weekly on early weekday evenings. Notable moments of the series included interviews with a drunk George Best, a silent Chevy Chase, a nervous Anne Bancroft who was so petrified she gave monosyllabic answers and counted to ten before descending the entrance steps to the studio, Ronnie Barker announcing his retirement on the show, and David Icke claiming to be the "Son of God", to whom Wogan famously stated "They?re not laughing with you, they?re laughing at you."

In 1992, a poll apparently revealed Wogan to be simultaneously the most and the least popular person in Britain

In 1980, the BBC?s charity appeal for children was first broadcast as a telethon called Children In Need, with Wogan presenting alongside Sue Lawley and Esther Rantzen. Wogan has been the presenter of this annual event ever since.

He has campaigned extensively for the charity and often involves himself via auctions on his radio show, or more directly by taking part in well-publicised sponsored activities. The BBC Children In Need 2006 programme trailer featured Wogan in a wrestling ring, supported by various television personalities. His opponent (Ken Bruce) appeared confident in defeating him, until Terry removes his shirt to reveal the physique of a bodybuilder. He has since joked on his BBC Radio 2 programme that the media had got it wrong, and that his body was superimposed on somebody else?s head.

He is reported to be the only celebrity paid for his participation in Children in Need, having received a fee every year since 1980 (�9,065 in 2005). Wogan, however, has stated that he would "quite happily do it for nothing" and that he "never asked for a fee". The BBC stated that the fee had "never been negotiated". Wogan?s fee has been paid from BBC resources and not from the Children in Need charity fund. There is no record, however, of Wogan ever having repaid his fee from previous years