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In Play is a new column taking a weekly sideways look at new game releases. It's a bit like our old series Game of the Week, if you remember that.If you're a person who collects a lot of heroes as they wander through life, January 2016 was a tough month indeed. The Thin White Duke is gone! I couldn't believe it when I woke up to see the notification from the Guardian app (I still can't work out how to turn those off). Everybody I spoke to said almost the same incoherent thing: never thought David Bowie would, you know, die. A few days passed, and another Guardian notification. This time I'm in the queue at Co-op, and this time it's Hans Gruber. Something peculiarly cruel was going on here. Death had suddenly developed exquisite taste in music and character actors. (The benefits of a classical education?) I wanted to phone Elvis Costello to make sure he wasn't planning on doing any risky DIY over the next few days. Instead I just listened to Spike on repeat and sulked.
You know how this ends, of course: Wogan. And it's Wogan I'd like to dwell on for a little. Terry Wogan was, above all else, a master of comfort - a warm, often slyly subversive chat genius who always seemed to be on your side. A few of us were talking about him in the office the other day, and the conclusion we reached - although it may have been the conclusion I reached, and everyone else just had to go along with it - was that his lasting gift to the world of broadcasting was the idea that a presenter didn't have to be lofty, and didn't have to be patronising. Wogan - like Bowie, less like Hans Gruber, but quite a lot like Alan Rickman as I understand it - was always on your side. I would watch or listen to Wogan going on about absolutely anything, and I often did. The general rule in our house was that, if I turned on the TV, and even if it was just Wogan in a T-pose spinning on the spot, I would be hooked.
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