Terry Wogan on Come Dancing
Paul Balmer was a sound engineer on Come Dancing in the 1970s and reflects on his experiences working with Sir Terry Wogan.
It was a privilege last month to attend Terry Wogan’s ‘Service of Thanksgiving’ in Westminster Abbey. To hear his wonderful voice reverberating around the building – Terry would have demurred!
Self-effacement was his stock in trade. He described himself as ‘a humble jobbing broadcaster’. As a nation we all felt we knew Terry and in a way we did. What you saw on the television or heard on the radio was what you met in the studio, tempered perhaps by ever slightly more irreverence.
Terry Wogan on Radio 2 1976
For Wogan’s World in the 1970s he sat outside Studio 1 Pebble Mill and tried to mumble his planned introduction from Jock Gallagher’s script. He soon realised he couldn’t do it. He ad-libbed and became the master of spontaneous broadcasting.
Other days he would slump exhausted outside Pebble Mill’s Studio A and sip Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ tea from a polystyrene cup. “It’s fine” he’d assure me, “just don’t get it on yer skin”. His exhaustion was from the third gig of that repeating 24- hour cycle: up at dawn, present the breakfast show, then motor down to Blackpool and finish Come Dancing at 11pm. He’d still be smiling and politely attentive to the whims of ‘Miss England’, her tiara flashing in competition with his Irish smile.
In the 1980s and as an aspiring producer, Jock sent me to London to put together the ‘strips’ for Wake Up with Wogan. It was a thankless task. Terry played what he liked and if he didn’t like it, he played something else. In doing so he became a star-maker, spotting talent we had missed and giving due air play to artists that touched his heart and ours. The record company ‘pluggers’ could go and run.
Paul Balmer and colleagues at Pebble Mill in the 1980s
I would regularly be dazzled by his virtuosity in the radio studio. He’d happily chat to the cleaner, asking after a sick child or a missing cat, while a record played quietly in the background. When the record ended and silence descended on the studio, quietly and unhurried he’d raise a fader and smile. “I suppose you thought I’d gone? No, sadly still here.”
As I sat in the Abbey, awed by its splendour and blanketed in the warmth of some gorgeous music, I nodded at Chris Evan’s advice from Terry; “They either like you or they don’t!”
We liked Sir Terry Wogan and we shall miss him.
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