Thank heavens: Wogan is back. I don't simply mean that his Sunday morning programme, Weekend Wogan (Radio 2), has returned for a new series. Instead, after a much-needed rethink of a programme that never worked on air – with its live audience, interviews and boomy sound, it felt like a television programme without pictures – there is an unmistakable and welcome turning back to basics.
Wogan is in the studio, bouncing off of emails from his beloved Togs (Terry's Old Geezers or Gals) and indulging in self-deprecating banter with Alan Dedicoat. There's talk of grub (Wogan lamenting that he hadn't had any of the chocolate cake sent in by a listener), and the sweetest music, with many old breakfast-show favourites making an appearance on Sunday. The familiar music, which includes Eva Cassidy, Dolly Parton, Neil Diamond and Alison Kraus, suits the Sunday-morning slot and is the clearest hint that a decision was made to go back to what made the old show so popular.
Live music still features, but in the form of session tracks played in-house, and interviews are one-to-one, which works much better than in front of an audience. What you get now is a brunch version of the old breakfast show that is relaxed and funny (on phone hacking he joked: "They didn't think it was worth listening in to my little phone calls"), intimate and quietly sentimental.
The famous connection with his listeners steered much of the endearing chat, with their silly names (Ben D Toy; May Tron) and long-held affection for the presenter. Reading out an email from one couple, he described them as "two lovely people with the pluck to call a horse Wogan". It was, unlike the earlier manifestation of Sunday Wogan, an amiable listen well pitched for the slot. "How well you know me," he said to one correspondent. That's what this show now exudes: a sense of being at ease with itself, with Wogan back on form.
