After Dinner Speakers: Terry Wogan, Horst Schulze, Jim Tavare

Terry was born in Limerick, Ireland and was educated at Crescent College, Limerick. He is married with two sons and one daughter. After leaving college, Terry joined the Royal Bank of Ireland, where his innate ability to separate half crowns from two bob bits soon marked him down for greater things. Five years later, he joined Radio Telefis Eirann (the Irish national radio and TV service) as a newsreader/announcer. In 1967, Terry sent a tape to the BBC and was then invited to do "Late Night Extra". He commuted to London each week until, in 1969, he moved his family to England. He was asked one day to stand in for Jimmy Young and after that, was given a regular afternoon slot. In 1972, Terry took over "The Breakfast Show" on Radio Two. BBC Television's "Blankety Blank" was to prove the perfect vehicle for him. Unlike the original American TV show "The Match Game", from which the idea was taken, the interest did not lie in the big cash prizes but in the humours exchanges between Terry, his panellists and guests. In 1982, his career took a new turn, with a Saturday evening peak-time chat show entitled "Wogan". By the time the Saturday series ended in December 1984, Terry was established as the country's top TV chat show host, having "chatted" successfully to politicians, pundits, authors, actors, comedians and international stars. As a result of "Wogan's" success, from February 1985 it was transmitted live three times a week - Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights at 1900 hours on BBC1 for a staggering seven years. This was followed by a weekly show on BBC1 "Friday Night With Terry Wogan". The one regret that Terry had was that because of the success of "Wogan", he had to retire gracefully from his daily radio show on BBC Radio Two at the end of 1984. However, he is now back in his old radio seat, five mornings a week from 0730 - 0930 hours, hoping once again to enjoy the same kind of popularity that elected him the title "Outstanding Radio Personality of the Past 25 Years". Terry has received many awards over the years, including TV Times' "TV Personality of the Year" for ten consecutive years, and more recently, "The Sony Music Radio Award" for Best Breakfast Programme and the "TRIC Award" for Radio Programme of the Year. Ask Terry to sum up the secret of his success as one of UK entertainment's top personalities and he replies, "I put it all down to clean living and plenty of roughage". He was delighted to be awarded an honorary OBE in the 1997 New Year Honours List. His auto-biography "Is It Me?" was published in September 2000. Terry's television programmes have included "Do The Right Thing", "Wogan's Island", "The National Lottery Live" and "Wogan's Web" as well as regularly presenting "The Eurovision Song Contest", "Children In Need", "Auntie's Bloomers" and "Points of View".