It is a sad but true fact that I nearly got to work with Terry Wogan.
Back in the days when I was producing radio shows for in-flight listening on the airlines, though I was working with some top names our presenters were only paid with the shavings of fivers from wads still held in the death-clasp fists of the company MD, but just once I had a charter client who was willing to pay Wogan whatever he required. Long conversations with Terry's agent, Jo Gurnett, followed but while the principle was fine there were just too many other commitments in the way.
So, it was not to be, but I do have the slightest of connections that bring me within sight of the hem of the GLI (Greatest Living Irishman, as Private Eye had him).
In a 'born in a trunk' kind of way, my father was hosting an early morning sequence for Radio Eireann of morning melodies in '62/'63, just at the point at which I was arriving on the planet.
Anyway, on the morning of 28th December 1962 (I had been due on the 25th itself) my mother enjoyed an early morning fag in the bed while my father readied himself with his ablutions. (Yes, I do enjoy drawing on life's more poetic moments.)
Bearing in mind, I was Honourable Child No.4 and there was no great drama attending this scene. I was just another baby.
Almost out the door, my mother called to my father and said, 'Ah, sure it's as good as time. You may as well drop me at the hospital.'
I was born just a couple of hours later, around about the time (in my Hollywood biopic version at least) a young, fresh faced lad put his head around the door of my father's studio and hesitantly declared, 'I'm the new announcer, I've come to read the news. My name's Terry Wogan'.
For yeah it was he!
It is a great mercy that his suffering was brief. There'll be a hole in our lives, that's for sure, but what memories.
As Irving Berlin wrote: 'The song is ended but the melody lingers on'.
Back in the days when I was producing radio shows for in-flight listening on the airlines, though I was working with some top names our presenters were only paid with the shavings of fivers from wads still held in the death-clasp fists of the company MD, but just once I had a charter client who was willing to pay Wogan whatever he required. Long conversations with Terry's agent, Jo Gurnett, followed but while the principle was fine there were just too many other commitments in the way.
So, it was not to be, but I do have the slightest of connections that bring me within sight of the hem of the GLI (Greatest Living Irishman, as Private Eye had him).
In a 'born in a trunk' kind of way, my father was hosting an early morning sequence for Radio Eireann of morning melodies in '62/'63, just at the point at which I was arriving on the planet.
Anyway, on the morning of 28th December 1962 (I had been due on the 25th itself) my mother enjoyed an early morning fag in the bed while my father readied himself with his ablutions. (Yes, I do enjoy drawing on life's more poetic moments.)
Bearing in mind, I was Honourable Child No.4 and there was no great drama attending this scene. I was just another baby.
Almost out the door, my mother called to my father and said, 'Ah, sure it's as good as time. You may as well drop me at the hospital.'
I was born just a couple of hours later, around about the time (in my Hollywood biopic version at least) a young, fresh faced lad put his head around the door of my father's studio and hesitantly declared, 'I'm the new announcer, I've come to read the news. My name's Terry Wogan'.
For yeah it was he!
It is a great mercy that his suffering was brief. There'll be a hole in our lives, that's for sure, but what memories.
As Irving Berlin wrote: 'The song is ended but the melody lingers on'.
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