Top 40 Terry Wogan Quotes

I’ve always been the kind of person who leaves parties early to catch the last bus home.

You have to be aware of your own shortcomings. The main thing I try not to do is lose my temper. Doing live interviews on television, you learn not to say the first thing that comes into your head.

Oh, I’m a great believer in the power of the pause. Radio is a bit brasher now. My style was slower. I just used to go in, open the microphone and say the first thing that came into my head.

Da was a real fisherman. But it wasn’t the catch that mattered, it was the skill of the cast, the preparation of the flies. I often think my inability to prepare, my desire to get going, are a direct result of watching my father making all those painstaking preparations before he cast his line.

Age, they say, is only important if you’re cheese. or a wine. They also say, if you are stuck behind one on a golf course, that a tree is 90 per cent air. How come, then, that you invariably send your ball crashing into the remaining 10 per cent?

I’m not very good with cars. They rebel against me.

I’d walked away from ‘Come Dancing’ and gave ‘Blankety Blank’ the elbow when I felt the public had had enough. But I didn’t follow my instinct to escape from ‘Wogan,’ and was persuaded to continue for another two years. I kind of regret that.

I’ve never stayed in a tent or a caravan in my life, and I never joined the Boy Scouts. I don’t see the point of going on holiday to enjoy less comfort than I have at home.

There’s more to life than passing exams, and paper qualifications can only take you so far. A lot depends on luck, and on being in the right place at the right time, which was certainly true in my case.

Most television could be presented by a dachshund. Radio can’t, although there are a lot of dachshunds in there.

Go out and face the world secure in the knowledge that everybody else thinks they are better looking than they are as well.

A talk show is about having a look at a famous face, a bit of stand-up comedy, knockabout stuff – an interview is what Barbara Walters or Connie Chung does in the States, in-depth, done properly.

I have great fun with the Togs – Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals. They’re a group that formed around me over the years of my radio shows. They are loyal to me and I’m loyal to them, so I’ve been to their conventions – Leicester University gives us their campus.

What used to be called ‘good manners’ is now regarded as mere affectation. Open a door for a young woman, and she’s likely to call security.

I’m terribly shallow. I don’t miss things once I have stopped doing them, and I don’t miss people when I stop seeing them.

I’m not big on the pasty because they say the pastry in the pasty can bring on indigestion.

I have to say, without getting up on a soapbox, I find these reality shows absolutely disgusting.

The high spot of my day has always been getting home to have my dinner with my family. It still is: to have my dinner with Helen. It’s a cocktail and dinner. I know I’m a tired old geezer, but there you are.

Sadly, I can’t avoid being 75. Like many people of my age, we are all heading towards the grim reaper, and I am clinging on. I just to have to sharpen my fingernails a little so that I can hang on for longer!

The BBC is the greatest broadcaster in the world. It’s the standard that everyone measures themselves against. If we lose the BBC, it won’t be quite as bad as losing the royal family, but an integral part of this country will have gone. But then, I’m an old guy.

Places like India can give you a real culture shock because of the poverty you see, and it brings you up sharply.

Time flies like an arrow – but fruit flies like a banana.

My life has been a happy accident. Anybody who succeeds in anything should count their lucky stars, because that’s the biggest element. It’s not hard work; it’s not necessarily talent.

I’ve seen my fair share of drama over the years of Children In Need. I had a close brush with mortality in 2009 when a chain collapsed from the studio rigging. I was in mid-spout to camera when I heard an enormous crash behind me – a ton of steel had come hurtling down and smashed to the ground a few feet away.

I get a lot of letters from people saying, ‘How do I get into radio, how do I get into telly?’ and I wish there was an answer, because there’s no ladder. There are no parameters. You’ve just got to go in wherever you can, make the tea, and slowly make your way up the ladder.

My parents spent an awful lot of money sending me to the best possible schools, and I came out of my exams and thought, ‘I don’t really want to do a degree.’ I did philosophy with the Jesuits for about a year, and then I joined a bank. While I was there, I saw an ad in an Irish paper for radio announcers.

The BBC knew I was successful from early on, but they weren’t sure why, and they still aren’t sure. What I do has been unconventional from the beginning, so they’ve never been sure. It just works. It just does.

Nobody really knows what they look like. The mirror shows you only what you want to see.

A television chat show is light entertainment, so it is trivial by its very nature. It is hardly the place to get people to reveal their innermost thoughts. Then it becomes sensationalism, and you lower yourself to the level of the popular newspapers.

I’d have liked to have been a bit more intellectual. I’d have liked to have had more brains.

People are not impressed by watching interviewees cry. People recognize chat shows with personalities as the trivial things that they are. They’re not designed to be deep. Quite frankly, people in show business don’t stand up to in-depth scrutiny.

My father was always slightly bemused by my success. Although he knew that I had reasonable intelligence, he always thought that I was a little bit lazy.

I don’t like seeing myself on screen. Whenever I see or hear myself, I think, ‘What is that eejet doing now?’ I’m in the wrong business. I don’t like the limelight.

BBC TV gets hold of an idea and beats it to death until we’re all heartily sick of it. They buy people without thinking what they’re going to do with them. It’s the wrong way around. What they should be doing is employing really good ideas people to come up with good ideas.

I’m never going to write a book like Anthony Sher did, you know, ‘The Broadcaster Prepares.’ I’m only talking to myself. I’d have liked to be a writer, or a journalist, but if things don’t come easy to me I don’t do them. I think if you’re always thinking how difficult something is, you shouldn’t be doing it.

I’m asked to do ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ on a regular basis, but I always say no.

There’s nothing to be said for being famous. It’s a pain. You can’t be rude to people – it’s inexcusable not to be nice. Anyway, it’s not in my nature. I was trained to be nice.

We’ll watch ‘Britain’s Got Talent,’ ‘X Factor,’ ‘Come Dine with Me’ and ‘Masterchef.’ But we don’t watch ‘Big Brother,’ which is rubbish. I certainly won’t be tuning into the new series of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ either. I think it’s awful, exploitative and vulgar.

Nobody ever texts me, because they know what I’m like. I’m a constant frustration to my children because I never switch my mobile phone on. I only use it when I need to make a call or when I’m stuck somewhere or lost, then I switch it off again. I’ve never texted anyone in my life, and I’m not sure I even know how to.

‘Senior Citizen’ and ‘Silver Surfer’ are the new euphemisms. Unless you’re a female presenter on TV, in which case you’re ready for the knacker’s yard at 35.