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Henry Kelly, the Irish journalist and presenter best known for hosting UK TV shows such as Going for Gold and Game for a Laugh, has died aged 78.
His family said he “died peacefully” on Tuesday “after a period of ill health”. Their statement said: “Henry will be sorely missed by his friends and family, including his partner Karolyn Shindler, their son, Alexander, Henry’s daughter, Siobhan and her mother, Marjorie.”
Kelly, born in Athlone but brought up in Dublin, started his career as a journalist on the Irish Times. He became the paper’s northern editor in 1970 at the height of the Troubles, after being sent there on a week’s holiday cover in 1969 as a reporter.
The following four years in Northern Ireland were among his “proudest”, his daughter told the paper on Wednesday. “He always held the Irish Times very firmly in his heart and was very proud of the work he did in Northern Ireland and the time he spent there. I think probably looking back that was his proudest time.”
Kelly left the Irish Times and joined the BBC in 1976, working as a reporter and presenter for Radio 4’s The World Tonight, but he still wrote occasionally for the paper.
He also wrote books, including the 1970s work How Stormont Fell, about the events that had hit the Northern Irish parliament, and co-authored the 1990s collection Classic FM Musical Anecdotes, Notes And Quotes with John Foley.
But 10 years and several books later, he made a career switch into light entertainment and followed other stars including Terry Wogan and Eamonn Andrews across the Irish Sea to London.
There he landed a job co-hosting Game for a Laugh, made by London Weekend Television, which was then the powerhouse of Saturday night entertainment and a springboard for many TV and political figures including Peter Mandelson, Greg Dyke and John Birt, who went on to be BBC director generals, and the veteran political interviewer David Frost.
He then got the opportunity to join the new breakfast TV show TV-am, taking over Michael Parkinson’s weekend duties in early 1983.
After four years he left TV-am and returned to gameshows, hosting Going for Gold, a lunchtime quizshow on the BBC, where he remained for almost a decade.
During the 1990s he was one of the stalwarts of the radio station Classic FM and later LBC, where he presented the drivetime show, one of the most listened-to slots in a radio station’s schedule.
He lived in Hampstead in north London with his partner, Karolyn, a historian, and loved strolling in the heath and visiting his local Bull and Bush pub.
His sense of humour was one of his hallmarks, along with his sense of place and modesty. When an interviewer in the Ham & High newspaper asked him what he would say if he had to write his own epitaph, he responded: “Who was he?”
