TV Cream's liked Richard more and more ever since we've read his autobiography, where he admits to being obsessed by telly when he was young and as such always used to watch out for BBC outside broadcast vans around his town - much like us. Unlike us, though, he went off to Cambridge and edited the university's newspaper Varsity for a while. This led to an appearance on ABOUT ANGLIA to talk about it, where he was advised by one of the staff to apply for a traineeship at ITN. This he did, and he was accepted. What he wanted more than anything was to get an ITN car sticker to put in his car, though ITN didn't produce these and thus he made one himself out of a bit of headed notepaper. In 1968, he left London after getting a job on the newly-formed Yorkshire Television, and was a reporter on the very first episode of CALENDAR, fronted by one Jonathan Aitken. His first appearance was somewhat unusual, though - they didn't have the facilities yet to reverse the film, so he came out in negative.

After a few years as a reporter, Richard worked his way up to the job of presenter on the teatime miscellaney. This invariably led to him fronting a number of spin-offs as a matter of course, including the chat show CALENDAR TUESDAY where he encountered the ferret that got him his first national exposure, thanks to Denis Norden. One day in 1982 he was asked to front a trial run for a new word game that YTV had purchased from France. CALENDAR COUNTDOWN was a crudely made, functional little series that ran for six weeks in the summer, and that was it as far as Rich was concerned. But YTV approached Channel Four about turning it into a series. Thus it was on 2nd November 1982 that he became the first face on the new network. The early days of COUNTDOWN, like much of Channel Four, were not brilliant, and in 1984 Rich joined the production team on a trip to Monte Carlo. What he didn't know was that this was a ruse to get him out of the way while they fired him. Naive as ever, Rich had seen a memo around the office saying "New presenter?", and blithely assumed they were talking about Carol - going as far as asking if they had any vacancies for weathergirls.

During the beano in Monaco, though, Countdown's viewing figures had increased, and as such Rich was saved, not knowing any the wiser - until Frank Smith the producer got pissed a few years later and told him. For the next decade, Richard was seen twice most nights in the north, fronting both Calendar and Countdown, before giving up the former in the mid-90s - though he still fronts the odd show for YTV. He's tried a few other formats - in 1999 he fronted two editions of the chat show RICHARD WHITELEY UNBRIEFED for the BBC, where he'd interview guests without being told who they were. Basically, this involved asking Patsy Palmer who she was, which was quite good fun. He's still on the teatime shift, of course, and looks to stay there for many more years to come - but of course we won't be watching until it goes back to half an hour again.

Another regional face, Tony Wilson started off as a junior reporter at Granada in the 1970s, reporting on new bus shelters in Rochdale and school fetes in Congleton. He first came to the North West's attention with a regular spot on GRANADA REPORTS when he'd try out a death-defying stunt; a slot the producer admitted was known in the office as 'Let's Try And Kill Tony Wilson'. After a few years of this, Tony applied for a job as presenter of the local arts show WHAT'S ON, and for the first time was able to show off his knowledge of music and film. He'd regularly go and see new bands - famously he was at the Free Trade Hall when the Sex Pistols came to Manchester - and this led to him fronting a new music show, SO IT GOES ("You'll find us in the record racks as 'literate rock show', which gives you some idea of our intentions, and pretensions!"). This became hugely influential, giving a number of acts their first breaks and featuring Clive James and Peter Cook providing humorous vignettes. However a nototious appearance by Iggy Pop led to Granada dropping the show and Tony being confined to current affairs for a while.

Hence he spent the next few years anchoring Granada Reports in his own idiosyncratic way. He'd previously presented WORLD IN ACTION for a while, but he was dropped after being nicked for smoking dope in public. All the while, of course, he was running Factory Records in his spare time. After leaving day-to-day newsreading, he then hosted virtually everything to come out of Quay Street, talking about the arts, sport, religion, politics and, well, anything else they asked him to. Somewhere along the line he stopped being Tony and became Anthony H, he claimed just to piss off people even more. One of his best gigs, though, was REMOTE CONTROL, the student quiz on teatime Channel Four, where Tony was assisted by such people as Frank Sidebottom, John Thomson and Phil Cornwell. There was also Friday night moanathon GRANADA UP FRONT for many years. Eventually in 2002 he returned to Granada Reports, and now reads the news each evening, again like no other newsreader on earth. Already during this stint he's been suspended for swearing on air, and it's great to have him around and on our telly every night. Unfortunately he's paired with Lucy Meacock, who's terrible, and he's up against Gordon Burns, who's brilliant. But he's certainly the only regional news presenter to be the subject of a major feature film - until TV Cream's script for Fred Dinenage - The Movie gets the greenlight, of course.

Dale's route into showbiz was not, perhaps, the most conventional one, and as such when he appeared on THIS IS YOUR LIFE, the biggest name from his past to appear was Alistair Divall off of KEYNOTES. He started off as a DJ on the United Biscuits in-house radio station, a network that is apparently spoken of in hushed tones around those who know about this sort of thing. From here he graduated to Radio Trent, and stayed there for many years - during his 'great face for radio' years, where he was pretty large and unhappy. He desperately wanted to get into telly, and his first 'break' came in 1986 when he was hired as one of the presenters of BBC1's Sunday afternoon series PET WATCH. He fronted this in a succession of revolting cardigans, and later claimed his image was supposed to be 'a cross between Gyles Brandreth and Russell Grant', and perhaps inevitably, he went straight back to the radio after it. It wasn't until 1992 that he got back on screen, appearing as the stooge in Bobby Davro's hiden camera sketches for his useless Saturday night series PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE. Most people probably thought this would be the peak of his entire career.

In 1993 he pleaded with Central to hire him as the host of their new daytime quiz SUPERMARKET SWEEP, and after everyone else turned them down, Dale got the job. At the start he was told to present the show completely straight (oo-er), and it was completely awful. After a while, though, they allowed him to present it in his own inimitable fashion, and it was still completely awful - but at least it seemed to know it. Enough students got into it to make his a David Dickinson-style cult favourite, and suddenly he was a star in his mid-thirties. His first foray into primetime, though, was the utterly useless Friday night series THE WEEKEND SHOW, a hopeless proto-Liquid News where the hapless Dale (catchphrase: "Hahahahahahaha!") was saddled with Daley Thompson as a sidekick. Then he replaced Danny Baker on PETS WIN PRIZES - which he wasn't bad at, but compared to the Bake he couldn't help but come out second best. Better was to come when he stood in on the lottery for a few weeks, and he was popular enough (what with him not being Anthea Turner) to be installed as a regular host. More LE shows followed, including THE OTHER HALF and Des O'Connor Tonight-style chat show DALE'S ALL STARS. He's now fronting the pretty useless IN IT TO WIN IT on Saturday nights. Still, he's a likeable enough host, and we particularly enjoyed him fronting the lottery draw on Christmas Eve, which involved about a dozen machines, and Dale had to say 'Good luck!' before pressing the button on every single one. Anyone who can be that enthusaistic demands our respect.

Lord Terence of Woganshire was originally a bank clerk before getting a job as an announcer on RTE. When Irish telly started up in the early 60s, everyone had a go in front of the cameras, so Tel found himself as a TV newsreader. He was popular enough to convince RTE to give him some other presenting work, starting off with an embryonic (as all programmes were at the time) quiz show called Jackpot. However a combination of poor production values and a nervous Tel meant that it wasn't a huge success. Nevertheless, he was pissed off when it was dropped and decided to send some tapes to the Beeb in London. They offered him the odd show on the Light Programme which he'd do down the line from Dublin, and when Radio 1 started up, he was one of the DJs lined up on the steps of All Souls Church. Originally he'd commute from Dublin to present an evening show once a week, while still working for RTE. In 1969, he was asked to fill in for Jimmy Young for a bit, and was so successful he was given a regular weekday afternoon show on Radios 1 and 2. Then in 1972, as part of a move to strengthen Radio 2, he got the breakfast gig on the network and stayed there for twelve years.

His first British TV appearances involved presenting the odd beauty contest and then COME DANCING ("This is how they do the cha-cha-cha in Cearphilly!"). He did this for seven years but gave it up when he realised that virtually nobody remembered who the presenter was. There was also LUNCHTIME WITH WOGAN on ATV, which he co-hosted with an Old English sheepdog, which wasn't great but did lead to a 'Christmas With Wogan' sketch on ITV's ALL STAR COMEDY CARNIIVAL on Christmas Day 1972, though what that involved we have no idea. However despite the odd one-off (like A SONG FOR EUROPE) and, of course, EUROVISION (which he did on and off for TV and radio throughout the seventies, then permanently from 1980), he failed to find a TV vehicle that really worked for him. Then in 1979 two things happened. Firstly Alan Boyd bought the rights to The Match Game from America, nicked the name BLANKETY BLANK off the Australian version and signed up Terry as host. This was a tongue-in-cheek, subversive quiz years before the likes of SHOOTING STARS, and was an instant hit. Then he guest presented FRIDAY NIGHT...SATURDAY MORNING one week (following in the footsteps of Harold Wilson, for one) and his interview with guest Larry Hagman was well received.

After a few Saturday teatime efforts (WHAT'S ON WOGAN and YOU MUST BE JOKING, amongst others), in 1982 he presented the first series of WOGAN on Tuesday nights, originally with co-host Paula Yates. He then did the same thing on Saturday nights for a few years, and in 1985 a decision was made to run the show three nights a week at about 10pm. Michael Grade, however, announced that he wanted it at 7pm to liven up the early evening schedules, so Tel gave up the wireless and worked from London's verdant Shepherd's Bush Green for the next seven years. It wasn't perhaps the greatest series, but it normally made for amiable entertainment if nothing else was on, and Tel could always keep the show going regardless of what was in front of him - whether a nervous Anne Bancroft or a pissed George Best. However it later went into decline, and the end in 1992 was a little messy, with Tel wanting to leave, the Beeb refusing to let him, and then the Beeb axing it anyway. Almost immediately he got another chat show on Friday nights, with guest hosts (including Frank 'I smoke Rothmans!' Skinner) and special reports, but it wasn't a success, and a planned high-profile interview show, WOGAN MEETS..., was scrapped after one edition.

In 1993 he returned to the breakfast shift on Radio 2, where he soon returned to his glorious best. On the telly there was still the odd show, like CHILDREN IN NEED, which he's presented since 1980. Perhaps his best TV outing in recent years was the deranged lunchtime show WOGAN'S WEB, which ran for a few weeks in 1998 and was just his radio show on telly, done from a mock-up radio studio. And it was fantastic. In recent years he's been content to stick to the wireless, and as such a few years back BBC Television didn't bother renewing his exclusive contract with them. Hence he can now be found fronting a daily morning show on Channel Five with Gaby Roslin. He may have been over-exposed in the past, and he may come across as a bit miserable in his autobiography, but Terry is one of the best broadcasters we've got in this country. And few others can make a lifelong career out of talking about traffic cones.