Service to Sir Terry Wogan to include singing from Katie Melua

Melua, 32, who shot to fame after being championed on Sir Terry’s long-running breakfast show, will perform The Closest Thing To Crazy at the service at Westminster Abbey.

Gabriel, 66, will sing That’ll Do, one of the tracks Sir Terry picked as a castaway on Desert Island Discs and played before signing off after 27 years on his Radio 2 breakfast show.

Actress Joanna Lumley will read a new poem, which she co-wrote with songwriter Sir Richard Stilgoe, entitled For The Former Greatest Living Irishman.

She compares Limerick-born Sir Terry’s voice to an “aural newly-ripened peach/That never spoke to all, but spoke to each” in the poem, written especially for the service.

“I think he was the tops, the cat’s miaow,” she will say.

“For pity’s sake, who else would you allow/To mutter in your ear each dawn of days/Just rambling on, with nothing on his mind?/A brainy burbling, charming us to shreds/When we should long have risen from our beds.”

Lumley, who provided one of Children In Need’s most memorable moments when she stripped off to her underwear on live television in 1983 as host Sir Terry pretended to yawn, will add: “If he was here I’d kiss his handsome face/And tell him that they simply broke the mould/ When he was made.”

Today’s Service of Thanksgiving For the Life and Work of Sir Terry Wogan will be conducted by the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, who will say that the broadcaster “was a legend in his own lifetime.”

The much-loved star, known for his velvety voice on radio and television, died at the age of 77 on January 31 this year following a battle with cancer.

Sir Terry, whose career spanned more than four decades, was known for his long-running BBC Radio 2 breakfast show, his chat shows, Children In Need and his often blistering commentary on the Eurovision Song Contest.

There will be a collection for BBC Children In Need at the service.

Chris Evans, who took over the Radio 2 breakfast show from Sir Terry, will give a tribute at the service.

Sir Terry’s decision to retire from the breakfast show, following 27 years, sparked an outcry from his eight million listeners, known as TOGs, Terry’s Old Geezers or Terry’s Old Gals, and even the Queen and Margaret Thatcher were said to be fans.

Fellow Radio 2 broadcaster Ken Bruce will read WB Yeats’ The Song Of Wandering Aengus at the special service, which marks the 50th anniversary of his first radio broadcast for the BBC.

The Abbey worked with the BBC and the family of Sir Terry in planning today’s event.

Sir Terry’s children Alan Wogan, Mark Wogan and Katherine Cripps will pay tribute to their father’s “love of our mother, his children and grandchildren”...”his true understanding of charity” and his “empathy and selfless wisdom” and his “life’s work, warmth and humour...his gentleness and for his love of people”.

The broadcaster’s marriage was one of the most solid in showbusiness and Sir Terry affectionately called his wife Helen “the present Lady Wogan” on air.

Music by George Frideric Handel, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar among others will be played by the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Dubbed a “national treasure”, Sir Terry was last on air on BBC Radio 2 on November 8 last year.

Days later, he was forced to pull out of presenting Children In Need at the last minute owing to health issues.

It was later announced that he had died, with a family statement saying: “Sir Terry Wogan died after a short but brave battle with cancer. He passed away surrounded by his family.”