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Richard Whiteley

John Richard Whiteley OBE (28th December 1943 – 26th June 2005) was a British television presenter and journalist, most famous for presenting Countdown, a letters and numbers arrangement game show on Channel 4. Countdown was the first programme to be broadcast on Channel 4, and Richard was on record as saying he wanted to be remembered for being the first person to be seen on the channel.

Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman, presenters of Countdown

Born in Bradford, Whiteley was educated at Giggleswick School in Yorkshire, and at Christ's College, Cambridge. The suits and ties he wore for Countdown had a reputation for their garishness, and it was fairly frequent for his co-presenter, Carol Vorderman, to comment on this. Whiteley also told many anecdotes and puns, which were often met by groans from other presenters and members of the audience. He had a cameo role as himself in the film About a Boy.

He was nicknamed Twice Nightly Whiteley, in reference to the time when he would present Yorkshire Television's Calendar News and the Countdown programme in the same evening. In a self-deprecating joke, he often altered this to Once Yearly, Nearly.

Richard Whiteley's autobiography, "Himoff!: The Memoirs of a TV Matinee Idle"

Whiteley had moderate international fame from a much-used clip of him being bitten by a ferret in a TV interview. He was also one of the first journalists at the scene of the 1984 Brighton bombing, having been in Brighton's Grand Hotel at the time of the explosion. He secured the scoop of being the first journalist to interview the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, after the bombing.

He held the honorary title of "Mayor of Wetwang".

Whiteley was awarded an OBE in the June 2004 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to Broadcasting.

He died on 26 June 2005 at Leeds General Infirmary shortly after an operation to combat an infection in a heart valve following a serious case of pneumonia. Shortly beforehand he had missed his first show on Countdown in 23 years.

External Links

Obituaries

• BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4102712.stm)
• The Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1671624,00.html)
• Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/28/db2801.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/06/28/ixportal.html)

Some or all material in this page has been adapted from the Richard Whiteley entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Whiteley), or others, in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org), the free encyclopedia.