Chuffer Dandridge was a fictional Shakespearean actor-manager,[1] whose emails were frequently read out by Terry Wogan on his BBC Radio 2 breakfast show Wake Up to Wogan, which aired from 1993 until 2009.[2][3]
Dandridge was created by fans of the show, Roger Byrne and Charles Slane, who described him as a "semi-retired Actor-Manager in search of a big break".[4][5] Like several other contributors, they chose a humorous pseudonym after many listeners had used double entendres in names to catch Wogan out.[5] The pair emailed new material on a daily basis, which Wogan would then read out on his show, sometimes corpsing with laughter along with colleagues Paul Walters, Alan Dedicoat and John "Boggy" Marsh.[2] The character was retired along with Wogan leaving the Radio 2 breakfast slot in 2009, although the character did return briefly the following year on Wogan's weekend show, Weekend Wogan.[6]
Dandridge misreported news and travel stories, interspersing them with a humorous monologue of his acting career.[7] He frequently name dropped colleagues he claimed to meet in the theatre,[8] and a regular in-joke was him complaining about being owed a white fiver (pre-1957 £5 note) he lent a colleague when both were in repertory theatre.[2] Wogan subsequently published some of the email transcripts in his autobiographies; in one, Dandridge compared the Eurovision Song Contest, which Wogan had presented for many years, to "a cabaret in pre-war Berlin, where I was naked, painted in zebra stripes and sitting bareback on a horse".[9]
David Sillito, Arts Correspondent for the BBC, suggested Dandridge was created to appeal to Wogan's love of author P. G. Wodehouse.[10] Wogan thought Dandridge's monologues parodied Donald Sinden and his character, optimistically hoping to revive his showbusiness career, was based on Charles Dickens' Samuel Pickwick.[2] Byrne and Slane eventually met Wogan at a bookstore signing in Dublin, surprising the latter who expected the pair to be significantly older.[2]