TV presenter and journalist Henry Kelly dies

Journalist and TV presenter Henry Kelly has died aged 78, his family has announced.

Kelly was a journalist who later pivoted to light entertainment, hosting TV gameshow Game For A Laugh and Going For Gold in the 1980s and 90s.

He also presented programmes on BBC Radio 4, LBC and Classic FM.

In a statement, Kelly’s family said he “died peacefully” on Tuesday “after a period of ill health”.

“Henry will be sorely missed by his friends and family,” it continued, “including his partner Karolyn Shindler, their son Alexander, Henry’s daughter Siobhan and her mother Marjorie”.

Born in Dublin on 17 April 1946, Kelly started his journalistic career in newspapers.

He worked for The Irish Times in the 1970s during civil unrest and the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

He left the newspaper and moved to London to join the BBC in 1976, working as a reporter and presenter for Radio 4’s The World Tonight.

But in 1980, aged 34, he left journalism to become a light entertainment presenter.

He went on to front ITV’s Game For A Laugh, and the first iteration of Good Morning Britain on TV-am, alongside Toni Arthur.

Game For A Laugh largely involved practical jokes and elaborate set-ups, often on members of the studio audience or filmed on location on unsuspecting members of the public.

Kelly also fronted lunchtime quiz show Going For Gold for 10 seasons from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.

The theme tune for Going For Gold was composed by Hans Zimmer, who went on to become a hugely successful film and TV composer.

The show saw contestants from different European countries compete against each other to answer questions to win prizes.

Going For Gold was briefly revived in the late 2000s by Channel 5, presented by John Suchet.

Kelly later became one of the launch presenters of Classic FM and also hosted shows on speech station LBC, BBC Radio London.

He hosted a show on BBC Radio Berkshire for 10 years from 2005.

Speaking to Challenge TV about his memories of Going for Gold, Kelly – who almost missed the hosting audition as he was planning to play golf – noted how “the whole point” of the show “was that it was Pan-European”.

“We were the only people in this country at the time, and probably since, who were really European, and so we had contestants from all over Europe,” he said.

Recalling one example of comedic cross cultural confusion on episode one of the new show, he added: “The question for all the contestants was, what is the name of the piece of least value on a chessboard?

“Bang, goes [Swedish contestant] Ida-Britt, and looked at me and said: ‘the farmer’.

“‘Right, I think not’ [he replied]. But we checked, only to discover that in Sweden, a pawn is in the shape of a little Swedish farmer. So she was right!”

Kelly also appeared in Victoria Wood’s comedy show Dinnerladies, and hosted journalistic talk show After Dark.

In 1994 he was voted national broadcaster of the year in the Sony Radio Awards.

Additional reporting by Paul Glynn.