The Mayor of Wetwang, RIP

So Richard Whiteley is no more. The tea-time icon of Yorkshire has died of complications from pneumonia and, having spent four years of my life subtitling Countdown on a regular basis, I have to permit myself this brief moment of nostalgia. I’d watched Countdown on occasions as a student who had nothing better to do in the late afternoon, but I never really came to appreciate its terribleness until I graduated into the world of work and started subtitling it for a living. “Right, well, okay, so, well, yes, erm…” would be a typical bumbling Richard introduction. Nonetheless typing in “Consonant, please, Carol” for the very first time did carry with it a certain frisson of excitement: the show had by that point elevated itself into Channel 4’s most popular programme and therefore had the highest viewer ratings of our work. The subtitles were watched like hawks by several hard-of-hearing elderly ladies, one of whom was head of the Deaf Broadcasting Council and she would not hesitate to haul us up in front of the powers-that-be at Horseferry Road if she spotted a mistake.

Of course, once the frisson of excitement subsided, subtitling Countdown became a monotonous task, only made worse when they increased the programme length from 30 to 45 minutes. I set myself up a series of shortforms: cpc for “Consonant, please, Carol”, vp for “Vowel, please”, tp5 for “One from the top and any other five, please”. The only advantage was that you could at least play the game as that irritating music played and the clock ticked round – for Countdown’s counterpart, 15 to 1, we received text files containing the questions and answers to import into our subtitles so were always one step ahead of the contestants. But you knew what you were getting, and there was something cosy and comforting about its familiarity, from Geoffrey Durham’s magic tricks, Susie Dent’s pinched face and Blowers’ cricket ramblings in Dictionary Dell to Carol and Richard’s increasingly outrageous flirting.

But all credit to the man: Richard was one of few television presenters who actually watched our subtitles and he used to comment on them regularly. “We salute you, oh people of page 888” he once cried. One of our number wrote him a poem in reply, which he read out on air. He was especially tickled by the fact that we used to highlight his dreadful puns in green text – so dreadful that I can’t even recall a single one right now. I do remember Richard claiming that Robert Mugabe must be a Yorkshireman because his name was “E-ba-gum” spelt backwards. I could never figure out just how much poor taste that particular joke was in.

So they’ve taken Whiteley out of Yorkshire, but no one ever succeeded in taking the Yorkshire out of Whiteley. He really was the face of Yorkshire Television: but then I do believe that he owned most of it by the end. But given his diet, weight and lifestyle, it’s no wonder that he died at an early age (though he was still older than my mother when he went). Colleagues who subtitled at Yorkshire television in Leeds said he would often pop into their office to use the water cooler and they were shocked by how terrible he looked in real life – hair on end, red skin peeling off his face and even wider than he appeared on screen. Perhaps he should have taken more leaves out of Carol’s book – as he broadened, she slimmed, as he aged, she botoxed, though you couldn’t really say that either of them had any dress sense.

Whatever happens to Countdown, one thing is certain: it will never be the same again. One fears that they will attempt to clone Richard like the David Dickinson wannabes who’ve taken over presenting Bargain Hunt during the day. You just simply couldn’t pretend to be that naff: Richard’s hopelessness came all too naturally to him. And let’s not mention the ferret.

REBECCA