Sir Terry Wogan always vowed he’d battle cancer in private.
The 77-year-old broadcaster – who passed away yesterday (31.01.16) following a short battle with the disease – had previously told his friend Gloria Hunniford how much he admired her presenter daughter Caron Keating, who died of cancer in 2004, for keeping her health problems out of the public eye.
Gloria said: "What was really poignant to me this weekend, it brought something back to me very strongly…
"He said ‘I admire Caron so much because she kept her cancer private and she dealt with it all with dignity’, he said, ‘If that ever happens to me that’s the way I’ll do it.’ And that’s exactly the way he did it."
Gloria, 75, admitted she was left "shocked" by the passing of her friend and mentor.
Speaking on ‘Loose Women’, she said: "It is very sad. He was a really good friend, a mentor really. I’ve known him for decades. When I heard the news I was so shocked, I just wept and made myself a cup of tea and sat for a while.
"I think because we all loved Terry so much, we thought he would always be here, so it was a shock to find out that he wasn’t."
Meanwhile, Terry’s ‘Children in Need’ co-host Gaby Roslin has remembered him as a "properly funny man" and admitted thinking of his reactions helped her with her radio show yesterday (31.01.16).
Speaking on ‘Lorraine’, she said: "He was a properly funny man. He was very, very cheeky and I think that’s the thing, my abiding memory of working with him, and yesterday I had to do my radio show and the first 15 minutes I found so difficult and I was doing my tribute to him, but then I realised he’d be sitting behind me, poking me in the ribs as he used to do and saying, ‘what are you doing? It’s only radio, get on with it. Make people happy, make people laugh.’
"Because that was his big thing, he loved to entertain, he loved to make people laugh. He had an enormous brain I mean he was fiercely clever, very bright man. He used to say if something went wrong in one of the shows we did…he used to say ‘Gaby, it’s only TV’ and he was right."
Terry Wogan vowed to keep health woes private
