The day that changed my life

The veteran broadcaster, 74, reflects on the simple act of kindness by a BBC producer that helped him achieve his ambition

The day that changed my life came late in 1966. I was 28 years old and working as a senior announcer on Radio Eireann, Ireland’s national radio station, which later became RTE. I’d spent my early life growing up in Limerick. My father had wanted me to become a doctor, but I hadn’t worked hard enough and only did enough to pass exams. I briefly had a job in a bank in Dublin, but quit to work in radio. My main ambition was to work for the BBC.

Looking back I realise the most important day of my life was when I sent a tape of a programme I’d done for Radio Eireann to Mark White, who had the grand title at the BBC of Assistant Head of the Gramophone Records Department. Those were the days. He had a handlebar moustache and – like many of the BBC producers of the time – a distinct military bearing. Back then many BBC producers on radio still came from ENSA, the British forces entertainment unit. Unfortunately, I’d sent the tape – a cumbersome, old-fashioned reel-to-reel recording of one of my Irish shows – to Mark without rewinding it. So of course, when it arrived on his desk it was all back to front.

Unbelievably, Mark took the trouble to patiently rewind the tape, listen to it and subsequently offer me a job. It would never happen now. If I was a young chap coming over from Ireland today, they probably wouldn’t even listen to my tape, let alone rewind it. Somehow, that old-fashioned thoroughness and commitment has disappeared. I must be one of the luckiest people in the business. If he’d written back returning my back-to-front demo tape saying I was a complete idiot, I’d probably still be at RTE. As it was, that day turned out to be the beginning of my BBC career. Without Mark’s patience and consideration I simply wouldn’t be where I am today. He wrote to me and offered me some part-time work presenting a show called Midday Spin on Radio 1. I used to record it down the telephone from the studios in Dublin, the music being added in London.

Three years later, in 1969, I resigned from Radio Eireann and came to London. It’s not something I’d do today, but when you’re young you take chances. I had a wife and a baby, but we moved to a little house in Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire. Soon I was asked to join the other BBC disc jockeys in London, and I still remember having my photograph taken with presenters who’d come off Radio Caroline and the other pirate stations that had been made illegal and stopped broadcasting.

Mark and I became great friends after that. He was a lovely, lovely man. It’s extraordinary he went to the trouble of doing that for me. My wife Helen and I saw a lot of him and his wife in the subsequent years. He eventually retired to the Isle of Man and sadly died from cancer some years back. But I remain eternally grateful to him and think about him a lot.

As told to John McEntee Weekend Wogan is on Sundays, 11am-1pm, Radio 2.

Sir Terry in his early Radio 1 days and (inset) today