Richard Whiteley
| Richard Whiteley | |
|---|---|
| Presenter | |
 | |
| First appearance | unreleased (filmed 1981) |
| Last appearance | 1 July 2005 |
| Appearances | 4,107 |
| Episodes with Richard Whiteley | |
John Richard Whiteley OBE (better known as Richard Whiteley) was the presenter of Countdown from its inception in 1982 until his sad death in 2005. He was the first face on Channel 4 and with over 10,000 television appearances, he accumulated more broadcast hours than anyone else in the history in British television.
He began his career as a newsreader, before beginning to present Countdown in 1982 to then leaving news reading in 1995. As a newsreader, he had several major incidents that gained him national attention. But his most famous role was being the host of Countdown.
Born during the Second World War to a mill owner, he attended Giggleswick School between 1957 and 1962 before a career in television began after graduating from university in 1965.
Contents
Early life and education
Whiteley was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire on 28 December 1943 to his father of Thomas Whiteley and his mother of Margaret Whiteley. At an early age, he lived in 23 Ferncliffe Drive in Baildon. In the early-1950s, he did paper rounds in the local area before his family moved to a house in the next street that the young Whiteley was already very keen on (on account of its pond in the front garden). Whiteley lived at the house for many years and his parents lived in the house until the early-1990s thus ensuring that until Whiteley managed to find a place of his own, he would stay there into the early-1970s. His father was a businessman who owned a mill named "Thomas Whiteley & Co.". The mill ran through three generations of the Whiteley family before being closed in 1963.
At the age of 13, Whiteley won a scholarship to Giggleswick School in North Yorkshire in January 1957. His father attended that school in the 1920s though not the most athletic student, claiming that he never touched the ball during an entire term's worth of rugby matches (36). He would often win prizes at the school's speech day and was an impassioned public speaker and debater. Whiteley's love affair with television was such that during sermons at school, he envisaged the positioning of cameras for an outside broadcast (should one ever occur from the Giggleswick chapel) – an eventuality that did happen although Whiteley claimed that his advice on camera positioning was rejected. He was taught by Russell Harty and later acted in comedy sketches with him, before later inviting Harty on to Countdown. After leaving school and going to university, Whiteley later became a governor of the school. Upon his death, Giggleswick built a theatre that costed £1.3m and opened in late-2010. Gyles Brandreth described Giggleswick as being the single most important factor in Whiteley's life.
Between 1962 and 1965, Whiteley read English at Christ's College, Cambridge.
Television career
Calendar
Whiteley's interest in television began when he saw a BBC van on the top of Baildon Moor on the way back from primary school on a Saturday. Whiteley himself described it as "a defining moment" in a 2003 documentary in his life.
Whiteley spent three years at ITN before moving to YTV. Whiteley was initially offered £2,500 per year: this was higher than Whiteley's expectations of around £1,850 and thus stunned him into silence. With his employer thinking that his silence was a rejection, Whiteley was then offered £2,600 that he accepted and joined in 1968. As a Calendar newsreader on YTV, Whiteley hardly missed an edition. And although not one of the most well-known journalists in the country, he had three major incidents that gained him national attention (the first of which was being bitten by a ferret in 1977, often repeated on out-take programmes).
He interviewed every Prime Minister between Harold Wilson and Tony Blair (the incumbent at the time of Whiteley's death) as well as Alec Douglas-Home after his election defeat. His interview with Margaret Thatcher angered Thatcher's Conservative Party colleagues after he noted during the interview that her husband, Denis, was a divorcee although Thatcher herself was not deeply offended. It was another incident involving Thatcher that gained him further national attention in October 1984 when the IRA attempted to assassinate Thatcher in Brighton and Whiteley covered the Conservative Party Conference that Thatcher attended, when he was still awake at the time of the incident and was in the foyer of the hotel at the time of the blast. He thus was the first person that Thatcher spoke to after the bomb. Whiteley described it as "the biggest story" that he was ever involved in.
In 1993, he achieved his third and final major news scoop when he broadcasted live from the site of Holbeck Hall Hotel which was collapsing into the sea and the dramatic moment of a chimney collapsing occurred whilst Whiteley was live on camera in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Whiteley left Calendar in 1995, thus ending thirteen years of moonlighting on Countdown and Calendar that earned him the nickname of "Twice Nightly Whiteley". Whiteley claimed that a more accurate version of the innuendo would be "once yearly, nearly" and Kathryn Apanowicz described "Twice Nightly Whiteley" as an accurate comment on Whiteley's bladder on 24 October 2001.
Countdown
Whiteley was asked to present another Calendar spin-off programme in Summer 1982, having already done many spin-off shows for Calendar called "Calendar Countdown". After two pilots and a laborious eight episodes, the show was commissioned for the new Channel 4 and had the unusual distinction of being the very first show to be broadcast. After initially featuring a cast of several others, the cast was whittled down to just Whiteley and Carol Vorderman by Series 18. And the show was given a relaunch with a new set, new titles and new clock music that after some minor tweaks in 1991, it proved to be very successful as the show eventually became one of the most popular shows of the 1990s. His rapport with Vorderman was considered as a major factor in the popularity of the show. One week of Countdown in the mid-1990s, occupied the top five most-watched shows for Channel 4 for that week.
Whiteley was also known for his garish outfits, brightly-coloured jackets and ties. One clothing-related incident fondly remembered by Vorderman on Piers Morgan's Life Stories occurred during the Series 46 grand final whereupon Whiteley was sent in a tie by a viewer with "C O U N T D O W N" on it and having decided to wear it for the Christmas Day final, the "D O W N" disappeared underneath the desk whilst his microphone covered the first "O" thus leaving a certain four-letter word.
His habit of appearing on out-take shows continued when on Countdown, notable incidents such as glossing over WANKERS and noting that he did not want to appear on such shows with Kate Ogilvie's memorable declaration of ERECTION came and went. Known for his dreadful puns with many of whom were scripted by Rick Vanes, he usually tried to incorporate a pun into the contestants' introductions; Chris Philpot even got to read his own one out.
He appeared in every single edition of Countdown prior to his death, and all but one was as the host (the only episode he didn't host was the 1997 Christmas special where he was a contestant). In addition to 3,959 regular episodes of Countdown, he presented all the special episodes up to his death (except for the 1997 Christmas special): all the Calendar Countdown editions, all the Countdown Masters editions and eight Celebrity Countdown editions thus totalling over 4,000 appearances (currently the fourth to Susie Dent, Vorderman and Rachel Riley).
Other appearances
Due to his links with Countdown, he appeared on Star Spell in 2005 (a programme that tested celebrities on spelling) and won. He also presented the ITV Telethon for the Yorkshire region in 1988 and two chat shows in the late-1990s, the latter of which was that he was not informed about his guests beforehand. He also made guest appearances on Celebrity Fifteen to One, Top Gear, Have I Got News for You and The Big Breakfast. Archive clips of Whiteley had been reused in several feature films such as About a Boy in 2002 (showing a clip of 19 March 2001) and posthumously, Pride in 2014.
A TV documentary on his life, Richard Whiteley: Television Man, was released in 2003 and re-released with some minor changes in 2005.
Archive clips featuring Whiteley were occasionally reused on Countdown, such as 4 November 2022 with a clip from 13 February 2004 of Vorderman presenting him with a Valentine's Day present.
Personal life and death
Whiteley married the interior designer, Candy Watson, in June 1973. But their marriage did not last very long (only for about fifteen months) in which Whiteley felt unhappy about and only wore a black tie for the following year. He later had a long-term relationship with Kathryn Apanowicz who survived Whiteley, having been together for eleven years despite Apanowicz being seventeen years younger than him. Despite this, Whiteley also admitted to having an affair with Angela Grant in 2003. In 1987, he had a son with Lesley Ebbetts named "James". Whiteley was very close to his son, and they both enjoyed watching cricket together.
In the late-1990s to early-2000s, Whiteley claimed to be the mayor of Wetwang (an honorary village in the East Riding of Yorkshire that had no mayor). He borrowed chains of a local mayor but after an incident where he claimed to "know how it feels" to be a mayor when saying goodbye to Les Noble (whose brother-in-law was the mayor of Sunderland), he mentioned less of the term.
Whiteley's younger sister of Helen, died from liver cancer at just 48 in the late-1990s. Shortly afterwards, he lost his parents and niece as the latter of whom was just 28.
He was awarded the OBE in 2004 with some speculating that he took the opportunity to ask Queen Elizabeth II, whether or not she watched Countdown as was rumoured.
In May 2005, Whiteley was taken ill with septicaemia and sadly died in hospital on 26 June after an unsuccessful heart operation. The scheduling for the finals week was changed at short notice, following Whiteley's death. No edition was shown on 27 June, with the third and fourth quarter-finals being pushed back by a day to then the two semi-finals being double-billed on 30 June. Channel 4 cleared its afternoon schedule on 1 July to show Richard Whiteley: Television Man at 2:30pm, Whiteley's last grand final and episode at 3:15pm and Mr Countdown: A Tribute to Richard Whiteley at 4:00pm. At the time of his death, it was thought that he accumulated more hours than anyone else on British television (other than the BBC test card) with over 10,000 hours of broadcasting (more than 4,000 of which were on Countdown alone).
His death resulted in the show taking a four-month hiatus. Des Lynam took over from him at the start of Series 54 on 31 October 2005.
Whiteley left behind an estate of £4m in his will.
Spy claims
In 2017, Ricky Tomlinson claimed that Whiteley was a spy after presenting a programme that led to Tomlinson's conviction in 1973 for conspiracy to intimidate. Kathryn Apanowicz described the claims as "a load of tripe", whilst Carol Vorderman was not so brutish in her assessment but still cast doubt over it.
Other works
Whiteley wrote the book of Letters Play! A Treasury of Words and Wordplay in 1995 (republished in 2000 as A Treasury of Words & Wordplay) and an autobiography of Himoff!: Memoirs of a TV Matinée Idle. Posthumously, he was the subject of a biography named "Richard by Kathryn" by Kathryn Apanowicz.
Episodes
| # | Date | Type | Contestant 1 | Score | Contestant 2 | Presenters | Guest | Lex | Max | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CS1997 | 25/12/1997 | X | Richard Whiteley | 30 – 43 | Carol King | William G Stewart | Susie Dent | Magnus Magnusson | Mark Nyman | 59 | ||
