Old Tel

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

I don't know how your parents got you out of bed for school when you were a kid. My dad deployed unalloyed and NOT AT ALL EFFING IRRITATING enthusiasm. "Time to get uuuuuuup!" he would trill. "Come on! It's morning! Yaaaaaaaaaay!"

My dad was under the ENTIRELY EFFING BONKERS conviction that actually getting up was the worst part of the day, and once you were out of bed, a brand new day of exciting opportunities awaited. 

Clearly this wasn't a man who had a double-period of third-form German with Mrs. Effing-Johnston* right after registration this morning.

On Fridays it was worse. That was the day he sang his "Friday" song. "Woooah, it's Friday," he shrieked, "Yay it's Friiiiiday!" 

My dad, I should explain, is NOT a singer. He sounds like a cat who has just been stepped on. And who smokes 20 a day. 

So my sister and I would blearily, resentfully, get up and get given breakfast. Looking back we were so unappreciative I am embarrassed by it and want to give 13 year old me a clip. My parents would typically serve up a mug of tea and a bacon and egg roll, which is actually AMAZING. But back then I thought bacon and egg rolls pinged magically into appearance and I doubt I ever expressed any appreciation. 

Instead we would suck resentfully on our sandwiches and listen to Terry Wogan on the radio. My parents had him on every morning. I grew up listening to him, from the age of 5 up until I left home. 

The reason it comes up today is that I found this site yesterday. As far as I can determine, it's a place where people can upload their old C90 recordings of radio shows and there's a couple of Terry Wogan breakfast shows on there. I decided to download them and put them in my Dropbox, so today at work I listened to Terry circa 1980.

My parents actually didn't care for his musical taste at all. What they loved was the banter, whether it was Terry heckling "If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me?" by The Bellamy Brothers (Terry: "We'll have none of that FILTH here, thank you") or answering back to Randy Van Warmer singing "You Left Me Just When I Needed You Most" (Terry: "Oh Randy, Randy, I never left you. I just popped out to the shops").

Song titles were routinely mangled. "Forever In Blue Jeans" became "The Reverend Blue Jeans", a song about a swinging vicar. And singers were similarly mocked. Dusty Springfield was "Spristy Dungfield", Barry Manilow was "Manly Barrilow" and today I heard him introduce "Art Garfarkel" singing "Since I Don't Have You".

The song ended with Art singing "Since I don't have yoooo... yoooo-oooo... yoooo-oooo. yoooo-ooooo".

"Yoo-hoo!" answered Terry. "Thank you for the silliest ending to a song in 1979."

Then there was his observation about The Nolan Sisters - "I'm sure there's no truth to the rumour that there's a factory in Stourbridge, cranking out a new Nolan sister every ten minutes..."

If you listened his show up to the end you'd hear him mocking Jimmy Young, who had the 10am slot. "Here he comes... that venerable old broadcaster, being wheeled into the studio in his bath-chair by his faithful nurse... She just needs to apply the sponge to his cracked old lips before the show can start..."

Mind you, his mockery of others was nothing compared to his self-deprecating humour. I remember when he played "True" by Spandau Ballet. It was number one at the time. "That's killed THEIR career," he announced with some satisfaction, "There's teenagers tearing down their posters all over the country now that I've played that record."

On the downside, Terry was to blame for some of the worst charting records ever. He seemed to take a fiendish delight in making HIDEOUS records popular. I'm pretty sure he was responsible for "Captain Beaky", "I've Never Been To Me" and "The Floral Dance" making it into the charts. He also popularised the tv show "Dallas" in the UK by making up silly names for the characters and taking the p*ss. I remember he cracked Victoria Principal up when she appeared on his show and he pointed out how ugly the child playing her son was. "I'm sure his mother loves him... but you're just an actress PLAYING his mother... It must be difficult for you..."

Daft old bugger that he was. I was so sad when I heard he had died. He was like a member of the family. 

It was very hard to suppress giggles listening to him this morning. And it left me craving a bacon and egg sandwich. 

Daaaaaaaaaad! Fire up the skillet!!

S.

* Not actual name.