John Richard Whiteley (28 December 1943 – 26 June 2005) was an English presenter and journalist, best known for his twenty-three years as host of the game show Countdown.

Thanks to over twenty years' worth of daily instalments of Countdown as well as his work on the Yorkshire magazine programme Calendar and various other television projects, at the time of his death Whiteley was believed to have clocked more hours on British television screens—and more than 10,000 appearances—than anyone else alive, apart from Carole Hersee, the young girl who appeared on the BBC's Test Card F.[2] Whiteley was born on 28 December 1943 in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire,[3] the first child of Thomas (1912–1992) and Margaret (née Bentley) Whiteley (1918–2001); he had a younger sister, Helen, who died in March 1998 aged 49 of cancer.

[8] Speaking in 2017 about the documentary, Tomlinson claimed to be in possession of confidential documents proving that it had been funded and written by British intelligence services and that Whiteley had been employed by MI5 at the time of broadcast.

Whiteley was chosen as host and continued with the show when Jeremy Isaacs brought it to Channel 4 as the first programme broadcast by the new station.

He was nicknamed "Twice Nightly Whiteley", in reference to the time when he would present the Calendar news programme and Countdown in the same evening, from 1982 to 1995.

)[12] As the presenter of Countdown, Whiteley developed a reputation for wearing garish suits and ties, and it was common for Carol Vorderman to comment on this.

[5] He was the subject of This Is Your Life in March 1997 when he was surprised by Michael Aspel on the set of the ITV soap opera, Emmerdale.

He made a slow recovery from the illness, but doctors discovered problems with his heart and carried out an emergency operation for endocarditis on 24 June.

[citation needed] On 10 November 2005, five months after his death, thousands of friends and admirers gathered at York Minster for a memorial service to celebrate Whiteley's life.

Guests included his co-presenter Carol Vorderman, who paid tribute to him, saying, "If he were here, he would have welcomed you one-by-one, greeting every one of you by the hand and would have wanted a photograph taken".

Three pairs of Whiteley's spectacles were donated by Kathryn Apanowicz, his longtime partner, to optical charity Vision Aid Overseas (VAO).

[18] In 2008, three years after Whiteley's death, Giggleswick School announced its plans to raise £1.3m to build a theatre in his honour.