Ryan Tubridy has opened up about the huge influence Sir Terry Wogan had on his career in a moving tribute to the broadcaster.
The Late Late Show host opened up about how his love for TV chat shows started when he was a young boy on a school tour and sat in on filming of The Wogan Show.
Speaking on his RTE Radio 1 show, he revealed: “My story very briefly is that I was on a school tour and I was about 15-years-old and bizarrely we went to sit in a chat show, and the chat show they chose for us as young fellas was The Wogan Show – which was on three times a week at that stage!
“I sat there having been used to sitting watching Star Wars and movies like that and I hadn’t really been to the theatre before – so I was like ‘what is this thing?'”
“It was this Irish guy in Shepherd’s Bush on stage doing this weird thing called a chat show – and I was in love.”
“I was in love with the whole idea of it. I just loved the idea that you could be on this strange stage talking to interesting people from all over the world and he made it look like it was just a chat as it should have been.
“He did it with such skill and ease.”
Ryan also spoke about the special place Wogan had in the lives of the Irish both at home and in the UK.
He continued:
“He was a very important person to so many of you listening in this morning, but also to so many people who travelled and went across the water to the UK down through the years.
“He was a voice I think that remained in the background but was actually very important to you as you went to work on the tubes and on the buses around Britain.”
Seventy-seven-year-old TV veteran Wogan passed away this weekend after a short battle with cancer.
