We are often asked if Gerry ever knew or met Terry Wogan. As they were so similar. Funny, talented and irreverent. We are delighted to say that they did know each other!

We love this interview that Gerry did with Terry Wogan in Radio Foyle in 2010. They are like two firecrackers sparking off each other and daring each other into deeper water. But it is clear that they are kindred spirits preferring to rely on their ingenuity and razor sharp wit rather than rehearsing!

They also poke fun and laugh at the thought of leaving the party early which is bittersweet and prophetic.

Tune in and/or read the transcription below and enjoy……

Gerry Anderson
Today I’ve got a young man with me attempting to make his way in the world of broadcasting. He’s the beneficiary of the BBC non graduate training programme which is available to aspiring broadcasters from disadvantaged backgrounds. Of course, he is from Limerick. Mr. Terence Wogan. Good morning, Terry. How are you?

Terry Wogan
A very Good Morning to you Gerry. I was wondering if there were any opportunities? Could I tread on the tail of a coat?

Gerry Anderson
I believe your have time on your hands!

Terry Wogan
I could have brought you a little bit of my Ulster Fry that I got for breakfast in the honeymoon suite of the Grianan Hotel in Speenogue.

Gerry Anderson
A place unknown to me I have to say, I believe it’s very, very good.

Terry Wogan
You could have joined me in the jacuzzi, which is just beside the bed.

Gerry Anderson
I draw the line there.

Terry Wogan
Come on.

Doctor, Doctor, Sir Terry

Gerry Anderson
Listen, one of the things I said during the course of the introduction I mentioned that you’re on the non graduate programme. But that’s not strictly correct. Because last week, you became a Doctor.

Terry Wogan
But this is nothing new to me, Gerry. For lesser mortals, like yourself, I expect it’s something to aspire to. But I’ve been a Doctor twice.

Gerry Anderson
I didn’t realise that.

Terry Wogan
If you really want to show a bit of manners. It’s Doctor, Doctor, Sir Terry,

Gerry Anderson
Doctor, Doctor, Sir Terry?

Terry Wogan
Or possibly Doctor, Sir, Doctor Terry. Because I have a doctorate in literature from the University of Limerick. And one of the laws from the University of Leicester.

And let me tell you, there’s nothing more embarrassing than standing up while somebody delivers a panegyric about you. In front of a whole load of people who have been studying for years and years on end to become doctors. And then you get up and get an honorary doctorate for nothing.

And the thing that always amused me about the Republic was that, I think it was a man called Todd Andrews who started this. He got an honorary doctorate and insisted on being called Dr. Todd Andrews. From then on if you get an honorary doctorate in Ireland you are called Doctor. Now I really won’t insist.

Gerry Anderson
I didn’t know that. So there’s hope for me yet!

Terry Wogan
Well no, very little!

Gerry Anderson
People in the South of Ireland can be called Doctor and insist on being called Doctor if they are honorary doctors.

Terry Wogan
Yes exactly. Which is ridiculous. It’s the same thing in Italy. You have ‘Dottores’ all over the place.

Gerry Anderson
And what about Sir? Will they call you Sir Terry across the border?

Terry Wogan
I should hope so. For goodness sake, you know, why did the Queen go to all that trouble? I’m not going to have Her Majesty flaunted in this way. As I say, I always apply Michael Caine’s, sorry, Sir Michael Caine’s great rule. Which is he doesn’t insist that people call him Sir. But if anybody writes a letter to him addressed to Mr. Michael Caine, it goes straight into the waste paper basket.

Gerry Anderson
If you get an honorary doctorate, you have to sit, as you say, and listen to the panegyric. And you have to wear a funny hat while you’re doing it.

Terry Wogan
The University of Limerick allowed me to keep my titfer and me cloak. I have it in a glass case. And I throw sugar at it every so often.

Gerry Anderson
Vermin?

Terry Wogan
No, no, that comes a little later. That hasn’t happened yet. But I’m always hopeful. But Leceister took the cape and the cap away from me. And said: ‘Sorry. that’s for the next fella!’

Gerry Anderson
For the likes of Jimmy Nesbitt.

There is indeed a suspicion that perhaps some of these honorary doctorates are going to people just because they’re well known.

Terry Wogan
Where did that disgraceful and appalling rumour start? I discount that immediately.

Gerry Anderson
Never mind your honours! I’m jealous because I’ve never had any. Although I wait. The Queen seems to have ignored me for some strange reason. It’s because I live too far away.

Terry Wogan
No I sat and had lunch with her lately. And she said, do you know Gerry Anderson? I said, Yes, I do. And she said, I can’t stand the sight of him!

Gerry Anderson
But she met me once. I put my arm around her. And I said, I better stop doing that. I think the last person who did that lost his job. The Prime Minister of Australia. And she said, as a matter of fact I remember that!

Terry Wogan
And she said to me, no, he put his arm around me.

Gerry Anderson
He tried it on.

Terry Wogan
She said, who the heck does he think he is?

Terry Wogan’s Ireland

Gerry Anderson
My husband and I are most upset. Terry, what are you doing on our fair country?

Terry Wogan
I can’t tell you that. If I told you that they’d have to shoot you.

Gerry Anderson
Don’t tell them what you’re doing.

Terry Wogan
What I’m doing is a documentary. And I hate talking about stuff like that because you never know how it’s going to turn out. And I don’t love doing it. It’s the antithesis of everything that I do.

Everything I’ve ever done on radio and television, as I’ve grown older and lazier is done off the cuff. I make it up as I go along. I open up the microphone like yourself without an idea what’s in me about what I’m gonna say. And that’s part of what we do. And so I don’t rehearse.

I’m the only person on Weekend Wogan, the live music show I do on a Sunday on BBC Two from 11 to 1, who doesn’t turn up for rehearsals till I get there about half 10. And start the programme in front of the audience. That’s the way I like to do it.

Gerry Anderson
There are people who are listening who don’t believe that. They think you’re joking but I know you’re telling me the truth.

Terry Wogan
It is the truth. And that’s why doing this is the antithesis of everything I’ve ever done. Because filming and making documentaries is an unutterably tedious job. You are doing things three and four times. Because of course, the camera men and sound men, who are near me now are bumbling usually. And say, oh I didn’t get that sound. Hare in the gate! The usual excuses of I missed that one. Oh, we better try a wide shot. And all that kind of thing.

Gerry Anderson
Can you do that spontaneous thing again? But you did a series like this before, but it was only for Northern Ireland, wasn’t it? This is a network thing.

Terry Wogan
It wasn’t for Northern Ireland. It was called Wogan’s Ireland. But you know the way you think that was about five years ago. And it was probably about 20 years ago. So this is just Wogan’s Ireland. And of course, Wogan’s Ireland of my past remains the same.

But Ireland is a completely different place than it was 20 years ago. And I’m lucky in a sense that I’m coming to Ireland when it’s in a period of transition and change. Depression, you might say following the enormous success of the Celtic Tiger.

What I’m doing is 2 one hour documentaries for BBC One. And it’s just going to be my take on Ireland. My interpretation of the difference between the British and the Irish. What makes us different, what we understand about each other what we don’t understand about each other. And of course, if the commentary and comments are rubbish, which they almost certainly will be, the scenery is lovely.

Gerry Anderson
You were luck to get your money out before the crash.

Terry Wogan
I didn’t have any money in Ireland. I wasn’t that big an eegit! All the Irish have their money in England.

Gerry Anderson
But are you enjoying this? Where have you been so far?

Terry Wogan
We came off the old hydrofoil, which of course only travels between Holyhead and Dun Laoghaire or Done La Care when the weather is clement. Luckily we had a bit of clement. And then we had sea fog in the middle and we had to stop. But eventually we got to Dun Laoghaire.

Then we came down and did a bit in Dublin. And came down to where my father was born Enniskerry, Wicklow. And did Powerscourt and all those places. We then travelled on down to Cork and went to various pubs and met various people. And we went to Cobh, obviously very much part of our tragic history. And then around and up to Kerry and Killarney, which is not a place I’d recommend.

Gerry Anderson
Killarney of course! Why not, it’s a beautiful place.

Terry Wogan
It’s beautiful, yes. But there’s more huge hotels in Killarney than you can shake a stick at. And a lot of them, I’m afraid in the present circumstances, are empty.

So we go up there and then we end up in Limerick. Now the sun is splitting the paving stones all over these islands. My wife is complaining back home every time I phone her about the appalling heat. And I walk into Limerick and I might as well have walked into Angela’s Ashes. The rain is lashing down.

And so it was appropriate because I was born in the rain in Limerick. I was born with catarrh which made me the broadcaster I am because I talk through my nose. And so we come through Limerick. And then this week, we made our way up to Galway and Sligo.

Public nudity and turning a blind eye

Gerry Anderson
I beleive there were naked women in Sligo. And I believe you were surrounded by them.

Terry Wogan
You do know that public nudity is illegal in Ireland.

Gerry Anderson
Not yesterday apparently.

Terry Wogan
Well no, because the Garda Siochana turn a blind eye to it! And in fact, encourages it. They do it for breast cancer research obviously. They are tremendously brave and wonderful women. And a lot of them are suffering from exactly that.

Gerry Anderson
A kind of a calendar girls thing?

Terry Wogan
They’ve done a calendar girl thing. They’re doing a book this year. And then they have this ‘Dip in the Nip’. 200 of them darted into the Atlantic Ocean. And they gave me a rerun. Because I announced it from London. I announced the dive: ‘three, two, one’, to all my audience. And they dashed into the sea. But they did a little rerun, as it were, for me this time.

And I was prepared to watch them run into the sea. But quite frankly, I retired before they ran out.

Gerry Anderson
I think you did the right thing.

Terry Wogan
I’m delicately brought up.

Gerry Anderson
I don’t like women when they’re naked and blue.

Time to make for the exit

I’m going to say one thing to you Terry before you go. When you left The Morning Show on Radio 2, were you surprised at the incredible wave of emotion that covered the entire place. I have never seen anything like that.

Terry Wogan
I would have expected no less. What are you talking about Gerry? When they drag you out og here you will be surprised at the number of people who couldn’t care less.

Gerry Anderson
There was a man trying to get in here with a tranquilliser dart the other day. But I got him stopped.

Terry Wogan
I left because I thought I’d become familiar to everybody. It’s like an old kettle or a piece of wallpaper in the kitchen that has been there for hundreds of years. And I just felt there’s a time to live and a time to die.

There’s a time to make for the exit before somebody starts to lead you to it. I could of course, have continued on because there were no indicators that that anybody was fed up with me or anything. But I’ve always tended to leave parties before everybody else.

Gerry Anderson
That’s only because nobody fancies you.

Terry Wogan
Terry no mates.

Gerry Anderson
Well Terry it’s lovely to see you.

Terry Wogan
Good to see you again, my friend.

Gerry Anderson
Look at how young we look.

Terry Wogan
You know, I feel I’m looking at a kind of mirrored image. Do you know another thing? The mirror never tells the truth. Otherwise, would you see so many eegits walking the streets looking the way they do.

Gerry Anderson
One thing you said disturbed me. You knew when to go? How come I don’t know.

Terry Wogan
I’ll ring you and tell you. What about now?