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Henry Kelly, who has died aged 78, was a hard-nosed Irish journalist who reported on the Troubles in Northern Ireland before finding television fame as a presenter of ITV’s Saturday evening light-entertainment programme Game for a Laugh, which fashioned itself as a “people show”.
Viewers and the studio audience were declared to be the stars – game for a laugh and at the centre of the action, which included challenges and pranks. A regular game had an audience member sitting in the “pie chair” and given an almost impossible task – if they failed, they would be on the receiving end of extra-foamy custard pies delivered by extendable mechanical arms with hands on the end.
Fans of the programme were also featured displaying their talents, among them a vicar giving a believable impression of Liberace, a laundry worker building a magnificent robot and a man devoted to decorating the inside of his house with old master-style paintings.
The four original hosts – Kelly, Jeremy Beadle, Sarah Kennedy and Matthew Kelly (no relation) – presented the show seated on tall stools and were remembered for signing off each episode, inviting viewers to tune in the following week, with the catchphrase “Watching us … watching you … watching us … watching you” while the camera switched between each presenter and the audience as they delivered the words.
Within two months of its launch in 1981, Game for a Laugh attracted more than 15 million viewers. Kelly, described by TV Times magazine as “the fair, skinny one with the Terry Wogan accent”, eventually left two years later after three series, along with Kennedy and Matthew Kelly.
“I realised that comedy really is a serious business,” he told the Daily Express in 2016. “We had no script, no Autocue and no earpieces. It was a brilliant show. It changed my life … it opened doors for me.”
Opportunities included the chance to host a BBC daytime quiz show, Going for Gold, featuring contestants from across Europe. When it was initially suggested, Kelly recalled, he regarded the idea as “nonsense”, but he took on the programme and it became a hit. The show was particularly popular with students, and Kelly was made honorary president of one student union. Going for Gold ran for 10 series (1987-96) and was later revived by Channel 5 with John Suchet presenting.
Halfway through his run on Going for Gold, Kelly – who had been a BBC radio reporter before moving into television – returned to radio to become one of the launch presenters of the Classic FM station. From 1992 to 2003, he hosted the mid-morning programme, then the breakfast show, building up an audience of more than 3 million listeners with a format that included recipes and racing tips as well as music, and he was named national broadcaster of the year in the 1994 Sony radio awards.
Born in Dublin, Henry was the youngest of five children. His father, also Henry, was a civil servant who had been private secretary to Kevin O’Higgins, the 1920s Irish politician responsible for the execution of 77 IRA members. “He once showed me notes he had written about 20 minutes after O’Higgins was assassinated,” said Kelly, who pronounced his father a “warm, lovable, generous man” while admitting to not having a close relationship with his mother.
The family moved to Athlone when he was a baby and seven years later returned to Dublin. Henry was educated at the Jesuit school Belvedere college, where he was a friend of Terry Wogan’s brother, Brian, and a frequent visitor to the Wogan family home. “I was good at Latin and Greek and English, and talking, and not necessarily in that order,” he said.
While studying English at University College Dublin, he wrote theatre reviews for the Irish Times. On graduation in 1968, he joined the paper as a reporter. When he became its northern editor in Belfast, Kelly reported on the violence that had reignited there. “I was privileged enough to be one of that small group who knew the north was a serious story long before it became fashionable,” he told the Irish Times. “It was a very exciting time. I loved it … I absolutely loved it.” Those years on the paper also included assignments in the Middle East and south-east Asia.
Kelly’s book How Stormont Fell, an authoritative account of the dissolution of Northern Ireland’s parliament, was published in 1972. Four years later, he moved to London, joining BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight as a reporter for a five-year stint. He was also a regular reporter on Woman’s Hour in 1979-80 before leaving to present Game for a Laugh.
“My colleagues at Radio 4 thought I was mad when I moved to light entertainment,” he said. Nevertheless, he continued on Radio 4 to host the Midweek morning show (1982-83) and co-presented the second and third series of the BBC TV programme Food and Drink (1983-84).
In 1983, he joined the ITV breakfast service TV-am during its first year, to take over the Saturday edition of Good Morning Britain from Michael Parkinson. He also sometimes presented the weekday show before leaving in 1987.
Kelly’s regular return to radio came with his shows on Classic FM in the 1990s – and there was a storm of complaints from listeners after his breakfast programme was handed over to Simon Bates. He went back to the station to host a Sunday morning show (2006-08) after a stint presenting the drivetime programme on LBC (2003-04), which returned him to his news roots. He also had his own mid-morning programme on BBC Radio Berkshire (2005-15).
He and his partner, Karolyn Shindler, a former BBC producer, wrote a travel guide to Connemara, titled Henry Kelly in the West of Ireland with Karolyn Shindler, published in 1996.
Kelly’s marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Margery Conway, ended in divorce. He is survived by Karolyn, their son, Alexander, and a daughter, Siobhan, from his marriage.
