Wake up to Wogan – wake up to reality

13 November 2009

Frank Sinatra fans will recognise the lyric, “Don’t you know you fool, you never can win. Use your mentality, wake up to reality” (‘I’ve got you under my skin’). These lines sprang to mind when IOSH President John Holden got a reply to his recent complaint to the BBC, over comments made by radio presenter Terry Wogan.

John’s actually a fan of the show, though we’re not sure if he classes himself as a TOG (one of Terry’s Old Geezers). Like many other health and safety people, however, he felt Terry went a bit too far on his November 5th show. So he wrote to complain:

“Your presenter, Terry Wogan, is playing with fire. While we realise he has a reputation for whimsical humour to live up to on his radio show, ‘Wake up to Wogan’, we also believe he has a responsibility to uphold people’s safety and a sense of decency. On his November 5th show, he suggested that instead of putting Guy Fawkes on top of our bonfires that evening, we should replace him with a health and safety official and all their regulations and paperwork. We feel this overstepped the mark.

In Britain, over the last two years, 413 people have lost their lives in the workplace; 58,081 have been injured. A total 63.2 million working days were lost to injury and ill health in this same period. Health and safety professionals are working extremely hard to improve this situation, to help protect us all from the everyday dangers to our safety and our health. They are certainly not helped in meeting this critical challenge by the general devaluing of health and safety issues, fuelled by Mr Wogan’s cheap and unthinking ‘humour.’ The BBC should remind him of his responsibilities to the public, not just his ratings.”

BBC Radio 2 came back with:

"I'm sorry you were offended by Terry Wogan's comments. They were of course meant to be light-hearted (the whole programme is intended and usually taken in that vein). He is, of course, aware of the dangers of fireworks and that Health and Safety officials are indeed doing their best to protect workers and members of the public.
Terry does use the subject as the butt of jokes and I think most listeners understand that. I will however pass you comments to his producer and we will remind Terry of his responsibilities."

Heartening to know that he’s only having a laugh then, regardless of the long term impact on people’s health and safety. He might be set to retire but it looks like our Terry’s going to stay under our skins for a while yet.