Richard Whiteley RIP

Posted by Red Sam

Richard Whiteley RIP
Date: June 26, 2005 10:47PM
Posted by: Red Sam

Registered: 20 years ago

Countdown Presenter Richard Whiteley has died aged 61 (BBC).

Richard Whiteley, who has died aged 61, endeared himself to millions of television viewers as the avuncular host of Countdown, the cult word game show whose fans include the Queen. A veteran TV journalist, he was once savaged, live and on-air, by a ferret.

The first programme to be shown on Channel Four when it launched in November 1982, Countdown outlasted every one of the station's other programmes, bar the news.

The 45-minute show was only meant to have a limited shelf life: 22 years later it is still going strong.

Its genial, punning and bumbling host is believed to have clocked-up more hours on television screens - and more than 10,000 appearances - than anyone else alive, apart from the girl on the test card.

Born in December 1943 in Bradford, Yorkshire, the son of a mill-owner, Richard Whiteley was educated at Giggleswick public school, where he was taught English by another celebrity, Russell Harty.

"With Russell, lessons were a theatrical performance and he was a wonderful teacher," Whiteley recalled.

Setting his sights on a career in television, Whiteley took, as he later admitted. "a crappy Third" in English at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he also edited Varsity, the university newspaper.

In 1965 he was recruited into the ITN graduate scheme, joining Yorkshire Television (YTV) as a news reporter and, later, anchorman on the early evening regional news magazine programme, Calendar.

He was present on the show's opening night in 1968, a TV disaster of legendary proportions.

Recorded in advance, so cast and crew could watch it at a swanky party in Leeds, the programme was a shambles, one highlight being Whiteley's piece to camera, which was broadcast in negative, showing him with a black face and white hair.

But there were notable triumphs, too. A polished and incisive political reporter with a good nose for a scoop, Whiteley was the first journalist to interview the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, after the Brighton bombing in 1984.

However, all of this paled into insignificance beside a 1977 Calendar appearance alongside a ferret.

Unconvinced by Whiteley's charms, the beast sunk its needle-like teeth into his finger and held him there, in increasing agony, until being prized-off by its owner.

Such was the popularity of Whiteley's televisual Calvary that it became a ubiquitous fixture in out-take shows around the world.

But it was Countdown - originally Calendar Countdown - first broadcast on YTV in the summer of 1982, that turned Richard Whiteley from a regionally-known figure into a household name.

The show was originally screened in France, where it was called Des Chiffres et Des Lettres and it was brought to the UK by a YTV producer who had seen it during a visit to the country.

Natty dresser

The simple, yet compelling, nature of the game, in which contestants attempt to make words out of nine random vowels or consonants and solve number puzzles, proved an instant hit among early evening viewers, who ranged from pensioners to university students.

Whiteley's glamorous co-star, Carol Vorderman, wowed audiences with her mathematical skills and eventually became a celebrity in her own right.

Dictionary Corner featured luminaries from Gyles Brandreth and Richard Stilgoe to Joan Bakewell and Jo Brand.

But it was Whiteley, resplendent in one of his 200-odd vivid jackets or 500-plus loud ties, who held it all together.

Self-deprecating, with an outrageous ability to make a pun out of almost nothing, he was a relaxed alternative to the driven characters who usually preside over such fayre.

Countdown's many fans, who included the Queen and Hollywood star George Clooney, could be obsessive in their passion for what Whiteley once proudly called a "low-tech parlour game".

In 2002 one of them was cremated to the strains of the 30-second version of the Countdown signature tune which accompanies the daily "conundrum" round.

Whiteley had been married, briefly, during the 1960s. More recently, his long-term girlfriend was Kathryn Apanowicz, the radio presenter and actress who played Dirty Den's mistress, Mags, in EastEnders.

But the man nicknamed Twice Nightly Whiteley - not for his amatory skills but because he often appeared on both Countdown and Calendar on the same day - was revealed in the tabloids to have had a number of other girlfriends, including one with whom he had a son during the 1980s.

Rest In Peace Richard - Channel 4 and countless homes across the country are lesser for having lost you

RedSam
Winner: Not the Nickv Comment of the Year 2009
Due to the voting system in Germany, Governments are always made up of coalitions of different parties. At the last election, an almost unprecidented result saw the CDU/CSU (rough equivilant of the Conservatives) go into Government with the SPD (rough equivilant of Labour)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2005 11:06PM by Red Sam.