Eight times Terry Wogan made us cry with laughter

From 1971 until he passed the baton to Graham Norton in 2009, Terry Wogan's gently mocking commentary became central to our enjoyment of the Eurovision Song Contest. While his irreverent approach raised hackles at the po-faced Eurovision HQ - even this year, one of the contest's producers was still claiming that Wogan “totally spoiled Eurovision” - Sir Terry was in tune with most of the British public's view of the contest as an enjoyable extravaganza of kitsch. "I love the Eurovision Song Contest ... Just please don't ask me to take it seriously," he said.

Some of Wogan's best Eurovision quips are contained in the montage below, although his barbs seemed to get sharper by the year (especially when, in his view, tactical voting began to sour the contest). "Who knows what hellish future lies ahead?" he said when introducing the 2007 edition live from Helsinki. "Actually, I do. I've seen the rehearsals."

Based on the long-running American show Match Game, Blankety Blank debuted on BBC1 in 1979 with Wogan as host. A flimsy piece of celebrity-assisted quiz show fluff, with anyone else at the helm it might have quickly foundered. But Wogan's knowing style poked fun at the show from within, unafraid to ridicule his celebrity guests for their daft answers. “You’ve already met the creatures from the black lagoon here,” he quipped memorably at the beginning of the first programme.

Previously the treatment of celebrities on television had often been overly deferential. Wogan helped change that.

Handed his own titular chat show in 1982, Wogan turned out to be the perfect host. When his guests were dull or guarded, he could fill the gaps with amusing anecdotes of his own. When they were dazzling, he let them dazzle. But if required, Wogan could go toe-to-toe with the sharpest wits in the world. Here he is carefully biding his time to eventually wrestle back the momentum from brilliant American comedian and film-maker Mel Brooks.

Terry Wogan presented the Children In Need telethon every year since its launch in 1980. His wry, calming style was the perfect counterweight to the live television mayhem going on around him, although every so often he found himself persuaded to join in with one of the skits, whether it was singing Sonny & Cher's I Got You Babe with Gloria Hunniford (complete with ridiculous wig and moustache) or playing Obi Wan Kenobi in a Star Wars parody.

He was even game for a bit of Gangnam Style in 2012; his unimpressed look just makes the whole thing funnier.

As shown by his Eurovision and Blankety Blank stints, Sir Terry's style has always been gently subversive. And in his later years, this subversion took the form of refusing to go along with the blaring, mile-a-minute, whizz-bang style of modern broadcasting. Wogan continued to do everything at his own leisurely pace - including the time when he took on Top Gear's 'Star in a Reasonably Priced Car' challenge.

With his window wound down, insisting that "slow and steady wins the race", you can perhaps detect a certain pride in the way that he genuinely seems to have riled Jeremy Clarkson by driving so cautiously. In the end, only Richard Whiteley was slower - a victory for the Sunday driver.

Proving that he could hold his own amid the cut-and-thrust of modern panel shows, Wogan's appearance on Would I Lie to You was a masterclass in comic timing. His look of exasperation as he is forced to try to convince the other team that he signals the start of Christmas dinner by firing a starting pistol is absolutely priceless.

Back on home turf, one of the most beloved features of Terry Wogan's Radio 2 shows were the regular Janet and John stories - basically an excuse for silly voices and lashings of innuendo. Part of the fun was that everyone knew that the jokes were corny and predictable, so Wogan increasingly wrung humour from plotting the most tortuous route possible to the punchline, as in this episode about Mrs Gregory's schnauzer.

Not everybody understands the concept of innuendo, however, as Sir Terry discovered when hosting an impromptu revival of Blankety Blank on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in 2009. Pop trio N-Dubz - who admittedly weren't even born when Terry was hosting the show - fail to grasp the idea and write on their card precisely the rude word that they weren't meant to mention. At which point Wogan looks despairingly into the camera and delivers one of his famous withering put-downs: "What a happy reflection on the work the Ministry of Education has done."

Still king of all he surveyed, right 'til the very end.