Wake Up To Wogan
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| Genre | Talk |
|---|---|
| Running time | Weekdays 7.30am-9.30am |
| Country | UK |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station | BBC Radio 2 |
| Starring | Terry Wogan |
| Produced by | Alan Boyd Paul Walters |
| Recording studio | Western House, London |
| Air dates | 4 January 1993 to 18 December 2009 |
| Audio format | FM and Digital radio |
| Website | Official Website |
| Podcast | Official podcast (archived) |
Wake Up to Wogan (WUTW) was the most listened to radio show in the United Kingdom and the flagship breakfast programme broadcast on BBC Radio 2. The show was presented by Terry Wogan who fronted WUTW from 4 January 1993; he had previously presented the breakfast show between 1972 and 1984, but the title WUTW was only added at the start of his second term.
On 7 September 2009, Wogan confirmed to his listeners that he would be leaving the show at the end of the year, with Chris Evans taking over the breakfast show from 11 January 2010. The final show was broadcast on 18 December 2009. Regular stand-in presenter Johnnie Walker would become interim host of the breakfast show for the three-week period between Wogan's departure and Evans' arrival.
Wogan took over the airwaves from Sarah Kennedy at 7.30am (following the news headlines) and finished with a hand over to Ken Bruce at 9.30am. WUTW was a music based programme that included listeners' views and comments which were often light-hearted and whimsical. Traffic bulletins interrupted the programme at half hour intervals and had until February 2007 been presented by that morning's newsreader. Similar to other programmes during the day the traffic bulletins are now delivered by a travel announcer.
The show was produced by Paul Walters for many years and in addition to these duties Walters often traded banter with Wogan and the newsreaders on-air until illness took him away from the studio at the start of 2006. He did, however, continue to programme WUTW until his death on 21 October 2006. Alan Boyd took over production duties in Walters' absence and remained for the remainder of the show's run. "Barrowlands" Boyd was at first rarely heard on-air, but often played a part in Wogan's "mini-dramas", usually as the dour Scottish soundalike for a Taggart character.
The newsreaders who contributed to the show are Alan Dedicoat ("Deadly"), Fran Godfrey ("Mimi"), John Marsh ("Boggy") who retired in February 2007 but who presented news bulletins on a freelance basis and Charles Nove ("Super/Bossa") who joined the team following Marsh's "retirement". Each newsreader became a star in their own right and John Marsh, along with his wife Janet, had their life "stories" told in four "Janet and John" CDs. All have been released to raise funds for the Children in Need appeal. The regular travel announcer was Lynn Bowles (known as the 'Traffic Totty'), who, prior to Marsh's retirement and a change in format, had only presented the travel on the programmes either side of WUTW. Sir Terry would often refer to Lynn and the newsreaders as his "underlings", "peons" and "numpties". This was a long-standing gag, used to make light of the fact that listeners who write into other Radio 2 shows (such as Steve Wright in the Afternoon) often address "the Team."
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