The village that became radio star’s sanctuary
HIS Irish upbringing gave him the gift of the gab that turned him into a broadcasting icon.
But it was a very English village that provided Sir Terry Wogan with a ‘sanctuary’ where he could escape the public gaze.
The star came to cherish his role as a community stalwart in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, where he lived for 40 years.
Aware that the locals respected his family’s privacy in his riverside mansion, the Limerick-born DJ became a key feature of village life.
He was featured twice in a mural inside the village hall that depicts the daily lives of its inhabitants, he was vice president of the cricket club – where he enjoyed a vodka and tonic – and turned up for Christmas carols on the village green.
But while he tried his best to keep his celebrity status separate from his home life, locals were often left amused when a RollsRoyce or helicopter arrived at his home to pick him up.
While fiercely proud of Irish roots, the grocer’s son made no secret of his love affair with the adoptive nation he came to appreciate while listening to English radio broadcasts in his bedroom.
Indeed, in 2005 Sir Terry decided to take joint British and Irish citizenship allowing him to receive a normal knighthood rather than an honorary one.
Despite spending the vast majority of his life in England, Taplow was the only place that he knew as home in the UK.
Sir Terry first fell in love with the village, which has around 2,000 residents, in 1969 while visiting a friend, Kits Browning – the son of Daphne du Maurier – and his wife Olive.
Sir Terry and his wife Helen then moved to the village permanently in 1975 to raise their children when the success of his Radio 2 breakfast show had already catapulted him to national stardom.
The family was so keen to engage with local life that Lady Wogan sat on a village committee for ten years.
Her husband, raised a Catholic, occasionally accompanied her to mass at a local church – despite being an outspoken atheist following the death of his first-born daughter Vanessa at three weeks old in 1966.
Priest Father Andy Richardson said he would quietly slip into to services at Our Lady of Peace church in the nearby village of Burnham after they had started. Keen to avoid attracting attention as his wife prayed, he would then leave just before the services ended.
Nigel Smales, author of a history book on Taplow for which Sir Terry wrote the foreword, said that villagers warmed to the broadcaster because he ‘never flaunted his fame’.
‘This was a sanctuary to him and Helen in that he was a big, famous person but he came here to be private, and everybody respected that,’ he said. ‘While he had some very good friends and some slightly less well-known people like me, he was always very friendly, very convivial and always willing to talk.’
Money raised from the sale of the book was donated to a campaign to repair the roof at the village church where Sir Terry’s daughter, Katherine, was married in 2003.
While keen not to indulge his celebrity status, Sir Terry did occasionally bring the world of showbusiness to Taplow if it meant supporting a good cause. He invited Radio 2 colleagues to take part i n charity cricket matches at the local club, lending his famous voice to commentary duties and lining up to bat.
Recalling one match, Gerry Mills, the current chairman of Taplow Cricket Club, said: ‘We batted first and then they batted second and looked like they were going to lose. Of course, Sir Terry came in as 13th or 14th man and hit the winning runs. There were upwards of 1,000 people in the ground.’
The events were arranged by the broadcaster to raise money for the Thames Valley Adventure Playground, a centre for disabled children and adults located near the club of which he was a patron.
Sir Terry was made a deputy lieutenant of Buckinghamshire – and revelled in the official role so much that he even took part in citizenship ceremonies, said Lord Lieutenant Sir Henry Aubrey-Fletcher.
‘Terry was one of those rare people who was completely unaffected by his fame, treating everyone the same,’ he said. ‘Despite his busy schedule Terry frequently undertook citizenship ceremonies, welcoming people from other countries just as he, himself, had been welcomed to these shores.’
‘He came here to be private’