Tonight, hundreds of journalists will be preparing tributes to a man they’ve probably heard more about than properly heard on the radio for themselves.

They’ll write of a ‘veteran broadcaster’ and his avuncular tones - and knowing little about what makes either thing, they’ll reduce him to a mere ‘radio legend’, using all the clichés he’s spent a lifetime sending up.

So here’s an encomium from someone who, throughout my many years as his ‘other listener’, has hardly missed a word.

Since I was a boy, friends have known not to bother calling before half-past-nine; University lecturers came to learn why nine o’clock tutorials were completely out of the question, and employers found a reluctance to take on breakfast-time shifts unless Radio 2 could be closely monitored during toil (a trick that became increasingly difficult, though not impossible, when I got into radio myself).

Wake Up to Wogan (or “Wake Up with Wogan”, as it’s often been called by those who should know better) - the “Gupta Wogan Show” - means more to its followers than others can really understand, and it was ever thus to me.

For a nine million-strong band, it feels remarkably select, though it’s by no means a club – clubs are exclusive and limited in their appeal, a disaster for radio - it’s quite the opposite to that. Instead, it’s a corner of the world from which you can enjoy the absurdity of it all, a daily bombardment of life’s universal truths, the things you’d previously thought peculiar to your own life but mercifully find do extend way beyond.

But pish to this analysis – the journalists will have plenty of that in the morning. The appeal is down to one man and his exceptional ability to communicate, and to build a whole world from nothing each morning.

I feel privileged to have played my own small part in fuelling some of the running jokes over the years. I wrote to the show for more than eight years, and to my eternal surprise, had my letters read to the nation most days. To my knowledge, I was one of the very first to have addressed the great Pauly Walters as “Dr Wally”, having written for some advice on my schoolboy acne as a way of ribbing the master producer for a huge pustule which had developed on his nose overnight (yes – lest we should forget in the future, this was the most popular breakfast show in the world).

Ribbing’s the word. “Wake Up to Wogan” has always been like a playground for its name calling. Alan ‘Deadly’ Dedicoat became ‘Silver Sleeves’ simply because every playground had a boy who wiped his nose on his sleeve, and therefore we needed one too. One listener noted that John ‘Boggy’ Marsh looked distinctly yellow in the team photograph of 1999, and he was therefore teased relentlessly about suffering with jaundice. (My first toaster, an off-cream colour, was named ‘Boggy’ by like-minded students during my time at Oxford.) And on it went…

Listening closely to him as a child gave me such an intense appreciation of his craft, like countless others I’m sure, it made me want to have a go myself.

It taught me that making good radio is not about having uber personalities, comedians and stage acts, telling you what’s going on in front of a microphone. It’s about being gracious enough to remember the important bit takes place at the other end, where things are interpreted.

If you, in your bizarre padded cell, can connect with somebody who’s already in their own comfort zone, then that’s when the magic starts. As easy as it sounds, both as a concept and when you hear it being done well in practice, there are precious few broadcasters left who can do it.

And tomorrow we lose the master.

As a tribute from me - a man who's received his own sympathy cards since Wogan announced his intention to go, and who owes so much more than just his career to the great man – I’m aware this doesn’t even scratch the surface. But then, I’m not sure if I ever could; let's hope it does better than most.

Thank you for everything - you're a Lickspittle.

Post title borrowed from the song by Lulu (who, as Wogan and the late Dr Wally would tell you, “does a good sandwich”), featuring the line “How do you thank someone who has taken you from crayons to perfume?”. It seemed appropriate.