Keith Chegwin – obituary

Keith Chegwin, the television presenter, who has died aged 60 after a long illness, began his career as a straight actor, including playing Fleance in Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971), but he became better known as “Cheggers”, the chirpy chappie who co-presented such children’s television favourites as Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, Saturday Superstore and Cheggers Plays Pop in the late 1970s and 1980s.

“Say the words ‘Keith Chegwin’ and people either snigger, wince, or go misty eyed for the late ’70s and early ’80s,” one critic observed. Parents hated his lurid velour jumpers, his manic energy and the “Cheggers chuckle” that was likened to a gurgling drain. But children loved his spontaneous ad-libbing style.

His career waned in the late 1980s after he drifted into alcoholism. But he recovered to present the “Down Your Doorstep” outside broadcast segment on Channel Four’s The Big Breakfast, which...