The Humour Of Wogan

Wogan's radio show was a shared joke based on the sort of shared reference points that binds a nation together.

16:48 02 February 2016

Terry Wogan has clearly enjoyed himself in the studio of his BBC Radio Two programme where he was definitely in charge of a slightly strange and very, very British sect – a sort of Akela to a pack of radio-listening, whimsical, ageing cub scouts.

 

Jeeves, Bertie Wooster, Gussie Fink-Nottle, the characters of PG Wodehouse Society have all echoed the mood of a morning with Wogan. His humour was also influence by Brian O’Nolan and his books written under the name Flann O’Brien. The mood is light, silly, surreal but the comedy is deeply clever.

 

The Wogan mood was set fast in an imaginative world created by a childhood steeped in Billy Bunter, Just William, half-remembered Latin, the Goons, Round the Horne and Janet and John books.

 

Wogan's radio show was a shared joke based on the sort of shared reference points that binds a nation together.

 

Wogan was the master of the shared joke and now there's one less person to share the joke with.