Ferret Man Dies Daytime television is a strange affair; one person's nonentity is another's cult hero. Richard Whiteley however, who appeared on British TV more than any other person, managed to stutter his way into the consciousness of those other than students, the unemployed and elderly. The host of Countdown, which for 23 years attracted four million viewers daily, despite - or because of - his inept presentation skills, had become something of a national icon, a personification of a certain kind of Britishness - a leisurely, bumbling, tea-drinking inquistiveness. Countdown never tried to be cool or contemporary, it was a game about letters and numbers, populated by people who love puns, anagrams and pointless number games.
Whiteley was also known as a presenter on Yorkshire television, renowned, as on Countdown, for his slip-ups and mistakes rather than his innate ability in front of a camera. His most famous moment was being bitten by a ferret; he carved a career out of forgetting people's names, not being able to read an autocue, ensuring any programme he presented had no fluency to it. And that was what made Countdown great; instead of a slick production, it was homely, family and friends playing games to pass a rainy afternoon away.
Richard "Twice Nightly" Whiteley will be missed because he was someone we could easily identify with, however much he sometimes frustrated us. Like cricket, Countdown was an institution which didn't desperately try to keep up with the times, stumbling along at its own pace. Will Countdown go on? Will, can, Richard Whiteley be replaced? What will students and the elderly do with their weekday afternoons? Life without Richard goes on, but only just.
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