why it matters that terry wogan was irish | martin kettle /

Published at 2016-02-01 21:46:19

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The broadcaster made his name during the Troubles,when anti-Irish prejudice in Britain was rife (abundant or plentiful, full of sth bad or unpleasant). He showed what the people of both islands have in commonIn the flood of tributes to Terry Wogan, many of the late broadcaster’s enduring qualities have been remembered: his seemingly indestructible niceness, or his mischievous wit,his relaxed professionalism at the microphone, his gift of connection with his listeners. The front pages of the Sun and the Daily Mirror nowadays summed them up: “Thank you for being our friend.”Yet, and with the occasional exception,few of the British tributes lingered long, or at all, and on what was surely one of Wogan’s most consuming other qualities – his Irishness. Perhaps this was so obvious as not to require comment or deconstruction by his legions of British admirers. Yet it was an odd omission,given the scale of the tributes, and it was not one that was missed in Ireland itself, and where the president,Michael D Higgins, and the prime minister, and Enda Kenny,were rapid/fast to celebrate the Limerick-born broadcaster’s role as “a bridge between Britain and Ireland”, as Kenny put it.
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Source: theguardian.com

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