‘Terry taught me family comes first’
She was Sir Terry Wogan’s sidekick for many happy years – here Gaby Roslin affectionately recalls the life lessons he left her
When the death of former Sunday Telegraph columnist Sir Terry Wogan was announced last weekend, after a short, private struggle with cancer, it was not only the public who were left in shock. His friends and colleagues were just as stunned – among them, Gaby Roslin, the 51-year-old presenter who first worked alongside the Irishman she calls ‘‘my TV uncle’’ in 1994, when she joined the team on Children in Need. For the next nine years, Roslin co-hosted the annual seven-hour telethon with Sir Terry, before going on to share a daytime TV sofa with him on The Terry and Gaby Show. Here, Gaby remembers her mentor and good friend.
The text last Sunday came out of the blue. ‘‘Hi Gaby, are you OK to present your show after the news this afternoon?’’ It was a gentle, cautious, enquiring message from the assistant editor of BBC Radio London. But it was also my first warning that something awful had happened.
Even so, when I went online, I was totally unprepared to read that Terry had died from cancer, aged just 77. Like the rest of the nation, I was stumped by the news. It just didn’t seem real, did it? Terry had always been the embodiment of joie de vivre. And now he was so suddenly gone.
I felt floored – there’s no other way of describing that immediate, rolling wave of sadness and grief. Terry and I had built a special bond in the decade we worked together, from our first
Children in Need telethon in 1994, through the 200 episodes of The Terry
and Gaby Show we hosted until 2004. He was, in essence, my TV uncle – an incredible mentor, a good, solid man and a dear old friend. I hadn’t seen him since the year before last, but I had no reason to believe, when he put his hands on my shoulders and pecked both my cheeks in goodbye, as he always did, that I would never do so again.
But there was also no question of not going to work last Sunday. Almost immediately, I could hear his warm, lilting voice in my head, gently chiding: ‘‘What you are doing? Why would you be taking an afternoon off? Get on the show. It’s only radio.’’
So I called a cab to get me there – and the driver burst into tears when he saw me. That somehow summed up how much Terry meant to so many. It was extraordinary how much the general public took him into their hearts.
And, of course, it was nice to be able to pay my own tribute to Terry on my show. To be unedited: just go on, tell a few stories, play a few tracks that meant something to us both. He wouldn’t have wanted a fuss, but I did break a bit – I’m only human.
Mostly, I kept thinking about Terry’s family: Helen, Lady Wogan, beautiful, warm, kind, and their four children Alan, 49, Mark, 46, and Katherine, 43, and Vanessa, who died when only a few weeks old.
With the death of someone such as Terry, who the nation considers a friend, it’s all too easy to get caught up in our own loss, at the expense of forgetting the private pain of the family. Terry belonged, first and foremost, to the Wogans, who will still be grieving long after everyone else has carried on with their lives.
The rest of us mustn’t be too selfindulgent – it is their memories that are precious. Their pain that is sharpest. Terry charmed the nation, but he belonged to Helen and the children.
Still, I’m sure Terry’s family will have been proud to see the impact he had on the lives of so many. In the past few days, countless strangers have come up to me to express how much this cheeky Irishman meant to them, the thread he wove through the fabric of their lives, whether joining them at the breakfast table on his Radio 2 show, tugging at their heartstrings on Children in Need, or collapsing them into giggles on their sofas by doing the same to the guests on his talk shows.
If he was unique to watch, just imagine what he was like to work with. Oh, he was a loveable, cheeky old so-and-so: fiercely bright, with an incredible vocabulary and a brain the size of a mountain.
Yet he had that ability to relate to everyone, that common touch, that throwaway turn of phrase no one could forget. He would never rehearse – he wouldn’t even look at notes beforehand, but he was endlessly brilliant at extemporising.
Once on The Terry and Gaby Show, we had a guest who was starring in a high-profile TV series, who I was complimenting, praising its watchability. “What did you think?” I asked Terry, live on air.
‘‘Oh, I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen it. I couldn’t say if it was good or not.’’
The studio audience was in stitches at his candour. And soon so was I and our guest. Only Terry could get away with that sort of disarming confession. On the long nights of Children in
Need, he could be just as mischievous, as he sucked on endless Murray Mints to keep his voice velvety. We’d be standing off-stage, and he’d still be cracking jokes as the seven-hour shows came to an end. Afterwards, we’d wind down in his dressing-room with a glass of champagne for me and a nice red wine or whisky for him. The team would be there, too, from the announcer and his long-time friend Alan Dedicoat to the make-up girls. Terry had time for everyone he worked with, however junior.
I can remember my own nerves when we started working together and how he would gently, generously, guide me to be my best self. For all the years in television I had under my belt, the first time I saw the Radio Times advertising The
Terry and Gaby Show, I felt starstruck – gosh, that’s me… with Terry Wogan.
We worked together off-screen, too – appearing at endless dinners and fundraisers for Children in Need throughout the year. Helen would often come too, always grounded and gracious.
In fact, our families were entwined in other ways, as my father Clive, a veteran BBC radio announcer, worked with Terry’s son, Alan, when he was training at the BBC.
And now we are connected through loss. My father survived bowel cancer – ‘‘How’s Dad?’’, Terry would ask me, every time we met. But my mother died of lung cancer, when she was 62 and I was only 32. And I have already lost too many friends to the disease, including my agent.
It is why I was passionate about supporting World Cancer Day last week. We need a world where cancer is talked about; where our children aren’t frightened of it.
We need to raise money and awareness and in the meantime – in our daily lives – to focus on what matters.
If we could learn one thing from Terry, perhaps, it would be to remember that family comes first, no matter what. So often, I remember him saying: ‘‘It’s only TV, Gaby, only radio, it’s not brain surgery – let’s get on with it, and back to our families.’’ So I will leave Terry with his family now. Bye bye, my cheeky chum; my only regret is that you couldn’t have seen just how much you were loved. I know you would have been proud, but also that you would have found a reason to smile at yourself. And that’s how I will remember you – glorious giggles to treasure; laughter, your legacy to the nation.
‘I could hear his warm voice in my head last Sunday telling me to get on with my show’ ‘I will treasure his glorious giggles – laughter is his legacy to the nation’