Mason mcqueen and terry wogan biography

As Taplow and the world says goodbye to Sir Terry Wogan, Emily Horton hails a cabbie with affectionate knowledge of the man behind the myth

Stop all the clocks, urged The Times back in 2009, when Wake Up to Wogan lost its eponymous presenter. “Cut off the telephone, for Sir Terry has farewelled the microphone.”

Indeed he had; and now, to a national chorus of lament, he has farewelled this life altogether: the gentle knight of Taplow scythed down by cancer in a joust that was secret and short.

Everyone, it seems, is feeling the loss, from the Queen in her palace to all the common men and women for whom, down the stealthy years, Terry Wogan was the fanfare of the dawn. 

Ask Mason McQueen. As the London cab driver who worked with Terry on his final TV series, Terry and Mason’s Great Food Trip, he knows better than most the quality of the man whose velvet tones held generations in thrall.

“He was a great friend to the nation,” he reflects. “He possessed the great knack of talking to the masses while giving the impression that he was speaking to you personally. His passing has been like a death in the family.”

Mason and Terry teamed up last summer for the BBC2 show, which saw Mason drive his famous passenger to 20 different British towns to sample the local specialities. Their mutual capacity for getting on with the great and the good created a bond that made for irresistible TV. Banter flowed between them like water, with perhaps a hint of something stronger thrown in. 

“He was such a youthful man with a really sunny disposition,” recalls Mason. “In the five months we worked together we had so much fun. How could you not, when he was so witty, funny and warm?

“I would say to him: ‘Gosh Terry, you were on the telly three days a week back in the day – brainwashing us you were!’ But I couldn’t outdo him – he’d always come straight

Irish-British radio and television broadcaster (1938–2016)

Sir Michael Terence WoganKBE DL (; 3 August 1938 – 31 January 2016) was an Irish–British radio and television broadcaster who worked for the BBC in the UK for most of his career. Between 1993 and his semi-retirement in December 2009, his BBC Radio 2 weekday breakfast programme Wake Up to Wogan regularly drew an estimated eight million listeners. He was believed to be the most listened-to radio broadcaster in Europe.

Wogan was a leading media personality in Ireland and Britain from the late 1960s and was often referred to as a "national treasure". In addition to his weekday radio show, he was known for his work on television, including the BBC1 chat show Wogan, presenting Children in Need, the game show Blankety Blank and Come Dancing. He was the BBC's commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest from 1971 to 2008 (radio: 1971, 1974–1977; television: 1973, 1978, 1980–2008) and the Contest's co-host in 1998. From 2010 to 2015 he presented Weekend Wogan, a two-hour Sunday morning show on Radio 2.

In 2005, Wogan acquired British citizenship in addition to his Irish nationality and was awarded a knighthood in the same year and was therefore entitled to use the title "Sir". He died on 31 January 2016, aged 77.

Early life

Wogan was born on 3 August 1938 at Cleary's Nursing Home, Elm Park, Limerick, Ireland, the elder of two children. He was the son of the manager of Leverett & Frye, a high-class grocery store in Limerick, and was educated at Crescent College, a Jesuit school, from the age of eight. He experienced a strongly religious upbringing, later commenting that he had been brainwashed into believing by the threat of going to hell. Despite this, he often expressed his fondness for the city of his birth, commenting on one occasion that "Limerick neve

An English Breakfast With Sir Terry Wogan

Back in September 2015, I had great pleasure of breakfasting with the late and great Sir Terry Wogan, I wanted to share my story with you as a tribute to him, my way of sharing his memory.

I am delighted to tell you that Sir Terry was a huge fan of the English breakfast, he told me that in his fifty year career he had eaten English breakfasts from all over the country, far too many to count. He said that he had one whenever he could and that he loved every one of them, then thought about it for a few seconds, laughed and said "well almost all of them, some of them were terrible".

For me, it was a wonderful moment to learn that Sir Terry was such a fan of the English breakfast and interested enough in the history and tradition to invite me onto television for breakfast !

I did not know Sir Terry before I had breakfasted with him that morning, even though I know of him and I only really had vague memories of seeing him on television, he came from another generation.

My mother loves him, she told me to tell him that the Eurovision Song Contest was never the same since he stopped hosting it and I know that my late grandmother loved him dearly too.

I was invited by the BBC to breakfast with him at the wonderfully historic Bear Hotel in Devizes, a famous Coaching Inn dating back to 1559. Thomas Lawrence, the famous portrait painter, was the innkeepers son and once lived there, examples of his work are displayed around the building.

Sir Terry told me that he was in the delightful little market town of Devizes, because he had once read a book called Epicurean Tour Of Britain, written by a food writer called Sam Chamberlain who had previously embarked on a great culinary adventure around the British Isles and who had previously eaten this same English breakfast at the Bear Hotel more than fifty years ago.

Sir Terry told me that since then he always wanted to conduct a culinary tour of Great Britain himsel

But their fancy-free meanderings did have a few downsides. “I wasn’t impressed by the traffic jams everywhere,” Terry adds. 

The duo’s tour kicks off in the seaside town of Weymouth in Dorset, where 50 years ago Chamberlain found the fish “disappointing”. Not so for Terry and Mason, who gorge on freshly caught lobster, oysters and crab. 

Their taste buds were put to more of a test during a visit to a farm growing Dorset Naga chillies, which are ranked as the world’s hottest. Terry has a mouthful of curry containing this eye-watering ingredient and is just able to croak, “I can truly say that the best part of eating the world’s hottest chilli is never having to do it again.”

Happily, the men’s subsequent epicurean jaunts weren’t nearly as difficult on the palate and it is clear that Terry had a whale of a time. 

“We ate beef stew in Dorchester in the very place that Thomas Hardy used to work,” says Terry, adding slyly: “Although there’s a bit too much about Thomas Hardy in Dorchester.”

He fared better in the north. “I had the best Thai food I’ve ever had in Harrogate,” he adds. “I saw ice cream being made in Scarborough and we went to a fantastic Viking feast.”

But did the eating escapades of Food Trip put Terry’s waistline to the test? “That’s the strange thing – it wasn’t too bad, considering we ate all day,” he smiles.

And daytime tipples were off the agenda. “We didn’t drink much, since Mason wasn’t drinking as he was driving, and we all came out in sympathy. So people would cook elaborate meals for us served with glasses of water.”

Each 30-minute instalment of Food Trip is a bite-sized chunk of enjoyment, with Terry’s dry asides injecting humour into the laid-back tour. And he already has his eye on series two. 

“France would be the obvious idea,” says Terry, who explains that Chamberlain also did a gastro-tour of the country and adds he would love to team up with Mason again. 

“Mason an