Sir Terry Wogan said the secret of his success was down to him being an “introverted egomaniac”.
In a previously unheard interview, the legendary broadcaster reveals how he rose to become one of the biggest names in light entertainment.
Speaking on a live local TV news report at the height of his fame in August 1980, Wogan says the biggest trap anyone in the business can fall into is “trying to be popular with everybody”.
To mark 50 years since his first ever Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2, the station will be playing Wogan: In His Own Words this Sunday.
The lost tapes will offer an insight into why he was one of the Beeb’s best loved talents up until his death in 2016 at the age of 77.
Here are some of the best bits...
On his talent...
I don’t have a specific talent.
I tend to be a little introverted and shy but an awful lot of people in our business are introverted and shy or have an illusion that they are introverted and shy.
But radio and television is the medium for the introverted egomaniac.
Anyway, that’s I suppose what I am.
A lot of shy people are artists, you know, and radio gives you an opportunity to talk to yourself endlessly and show off like I’m doing now in front of the camera without anybody slapping your wrist and saying, ‘You’re terrible’.
On moving to England from Ireland...
I had started as a newsreader doing documentary features when I was 23. And then I got fed up reading the news because I found it very boring.
I think it’s the easiest job in the world to be a newsreader on television. Because you can’t fail.
You’re a combination of a father figure and a sex symbol. You can’t miss.
I was the Anna Ford of my day. And I stopped being an Anna Ford and then became extremely foolish doing quiz programmes and that, which I never did awfully well.
I had a great deal of difficulty with television right from the beginning,
I think possibly I had a number of horrendous experiences on Irish television, which was in its formative years, and I was there in my formative years.
And I never found it as easy to achieve the same degree of relaxation, or communication on TV as I did on radio.
It’s only in the past couple of years that I’ve achieved that.
There is nothing more intrinsically worthwhile in reading the news than there is in presenting a quiz programme.
There’s nothing more worthwhile being Robin Day than there is being me, just because what Robin day does is serious and what I do is trivial.
I mean, if one thinks in terms of how much one has contributed to the sum of human happiness, or something as pretentious as that, I would say Robert Day and I come out about level!
On popularity...
When you’re communicating on the radio on the television, you can only talk to one person at a time.
You’re not communicating at a mass level and the big hole you can fall down as a popular entertainer is trying to be popular with everybody trying to get everybody to identify with it.
You must be prepared to be yourself. Say what you would say yourself.
Now if the public responds to that, in sufficient numbers you become popular. If they don’t, you will not succeed, but you must do it.
You cannot start out from the premise ‘I’m now going to say something that everybody will find acceptable, I’m now going to take a position that everybody will find acceptable’.
You shouldn’t apologise for anything.
On fame and his family...
I’m in the business. They’re not. They didn’t choose to be in this business. I did.
And they have enough to put up with being my children or my wife without exposing them to a great deal of publicity.
Hardly a week goes by that some woman’s magazine just want to do pictures of the family...Again, that’s part of the price you pay but your family often has to pay that price.
It’s rough on them (children). Children go straight for the jugular. If I’m on the television, I’m useful as a weapon with which to beat my children.
They’re little animals children, they’re going to use whatever weapons they can. And I happen to be the weapon.
Wogan: In His Own Words will be on BBC Radio 2 on Sunday at 9pm.
