Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
YOUR D OZEN DA Z ZLING T V ICONS
the asked you t o vote for The results are in! We years figures of the past 25 most inf luential TV rs – and here the winne to mark our Silver Jubilee what it means to them tell Christopher Stevens
THE INTREPID EXPLORER
So the winner is... SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH! The naturalist and undisputed Greatest Living Broadcaster was the runaway winner of our poll to name the most influential figures in television over the past 25 years.
All our icons appeared on many readers’ lists, but no name appeared on every single one except the 92year- old wildlife film-maker’s.
‘I’m just very lucky,’ he told us with typical modesty at our photoshoot honouring the winners,
‘that I’ve been involved in programmes with such wide appeal.’
The accolade is recognition of the dramatic effect Sir David’s had on the world since the 1950s and his first show Zoo Quest. But it is his continuing effect on TV that is astonishing. He not only inspires new generations of wildlife film-makers to use new technology, but he’s still actively involved in filming. Recent years have seen him soaring over the Alps in a hot-air balloon and journeying to the seabed in a mini-submarine. ‘I’m hugely lucky in what I’ve been able to do,’ he told us. ‘How could one hope to see the marvellous things I’ve seen and have the privilege to go wherever you want in the world?’
Our other icons were full of admiration. ‘He’s more powerful than any politician about the world around us. He’s exceedingly good, the Mr Kipling of natural history!’ said Fiona Bruce. Parky praised, ‘His skilful use of words, his sense of humour – he’s a serious man with the timing of a comedian,’ while David Suchet added, ‘He’s one of our saints.’
After the success of Planet Earth II in 2016, Sir David joked to us, ‘If they want me to do Planet Earth III, I will. But it takes five years to make and I’ll be 96 by then, so I think I’ll get them to pay me in advance!’ It’s wonderful to report then that he has no intention of retiring. ‘I still enjoy it because I’m interested in the world around us,’ he told us. ‘I’ve just come back from Chernobyl and I’m off next to Kenya. While people want me to go on doing things, why would I say no? It’s a huge privilege.’ But he was clearly delighted to attend our big day – he even asked David Suchet if he’d kept his seat warm for him!
That’s our winner – now, in no particular order, meet our runners-up…
THE AGELESS SIREN
JOANNA LUMLEY found fame as a Sixties model before landing action roles in The New Avengers – where she famously played Purdey – and Sapphire And Steel, and then reinventing herself as a roving explorer by way of Patsy in Ab Fab. She’s been a figurehead of British fashion and fun for 50 years – and is as glamorous as ever. On being told of her inclusion in our line-up of TV titans, she said, ‘I’m so thrilled and touched. This is as much for Patsy and Purdey as it is for me.’ She’s as famous for her wicked sense of humour as her acting, and her incorrigible flirting helps her get away with almost anything. But she told us early this year she’s never had casting-couch trouble. ‘I have a very handy fist. I’d have knocked them out.’
THE CONSUMMATE ACTOR
DAVID SUCHET has filmed every story Agatha Christie ever wrote about Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and it’s made him one of our best-loved actors. But his career encompasses far more than that, from his first appearance in 1966 on Jackanory to the news-
paper baron he’s just been portraying in Press. ‘I’m thrilled to have been chosen by the readers because they’re the ones who really count,’ David, 72, told us. ‘Critics are important, but once a viewer is on to a particular actor they like, that’s the greatest compliment.’
THE ICE-COOL PRESENTER
FIONA BRUCE is equally admired for her skills as a newsreader and as an arts sleuth on Antiques Roadshow and Fake Or Fortune?, so it’s hard to imagine she’s a worrier. But as she revealed to us, ‘As I’ve got older I find myself worrying about things too trivial to mention, then I get cross.’
She read French and Italian at Oxford, but also found time to sing in a post-punk band and even dyed her hair blue! Fiona, 54, won Weekend’s team over when she turned up for a special cover shoot for the Antiques Roadshow with a broken foot after a trampoline accident, and took the weight off it by bravely sitting sidesaddle on a rocking horse. ‘I can’t tell you how flattered I am to have been nominated by so many Weekend readers,’ she told us at our photoshoot. ‘And I’m in such august company – David Attenborough, Trevor McDonald, Parky; these are my heroes.’
MR SATURDAY NIGHT
SIMON COWELL is the TV star we love to hate, and he revels in it. The impresario of The X Factor and Brit- ain’s Got Talent has made a fortune and become one of the world’s most influential men. Journalists from Weekend have jousted with him for years, trying to make him admit he’s Mr Nasty – and he always escapes. In 2006 he told us, ‘I think I’m a very nice person,’ adding that the producers of his shows set out to make him look horrible. ‘They cut out the bits where I’m being nice.’ He was at his nicest at our photoshoot, telling us, ‘I’m surprised and flattered I’ve been chosen. I always promised myself I’d do a job I love, and I pinch myself every day that I can.’
Simon, 59, started his career in the mailroom at EMI Records and worked his way up before discovering that making and crushing people’s dreams made great TV. But this year he admitted to us that becoming a father to four-year- old Eric had finally softened him. ‘He’s very well-mannered, such a sweet little boy, funny too. I don’t know why I waited so long, he’s the best thing to ever happen to me.’
THE SITCOM GENIUS
SIR DAVID JASON has been a TV comedy legend for five decades. The star of Only Fools And Horses, 78, was always destined for TV greatness – fans will remember him in Porridge in the Seventies. ‘When I started out in the world of acting I just wanted to master the craft. I didn’t chase fame,’ he says. ‘So to join the ranks of some great names in the world of television is a huge honour. I’m delighted to have been included in the readers’ choices of television icons and I thank them for their support. Lovely-jubbly!’
THE COMEDY QUEEN
VICTORIA WOOD was adored because, in her songs, sitcoms and monologues, she showed us scenes we recognised, drawn from her own life. She bared her soul in interviews with Weekend too, talking about her trou-
bled relationship with her mother and how it fuelled her eating disorder. ‘My mother thought that if you wanted something it was better to wait for it. She didn’t approve of self-indulgence. I say if you want something you should have it.’ The tensions drove her to have lifelong hang-ups about her body.
‘Victoria would have been delighted to know her work meant so much to so many,’ says her agent Phil McIntyre. She died in 2016, aged 62, but she’s still happily remembered, perhaps because at heart she was so blissfully ordinary. ‘I don’t mind housework,’ she told us. ‘The other day I found myself ironing dishcloths. It’s quite relaxing, actually.’
A DOUBLE DELIGHT
ANT & DEC have suffered the roughest year in their careers with Ant McPartlin taking time out in rehab, leaving partner Declan Donnelly to pair up with Holly Willoughby on this year’s I’m A Celebrity… But the public still love them and that loyalty means a lot to them. ‘Ant and I are honoured and a bit bowled over to be in such esteemed company,’ says Dec. ‘To have been voted for by Weekend readers is a lovely surprise.’
The charm that has won them 13 BAFTAs has been evident whenever Weekend caught up with them. In 2014 they revealed why Ant always stands on the left and Dec on the right. ‘We don’t consciously do it,’ Ant said. ‘It feels odd if I’m on the other side,’ Dec added, ‘even if we’re just watching telly.’ Here’s hoping we see them side by side again on TV very soon.
THE KING OFC HAT
SIR MICHAEL PARKINSON is the undisputed king of the TV interview, attracting the biggest names of the Seventies and Eighties such as John Wayne and James Stewart to his chat show Parkinson. Viewers loved the way he could switch from light banter to incisive questioning, and win confidence without resorting to flattery. Not that he was above a bit of flirting, and he told us he had a particular soft spot for Lauren Bacall. ‘I was in love with her. I told her that on the show and she gave me a kiss. I almost passed out.’
His show ran between 1971 and 1982, and returned between 1998 and 2007 when he proved he still had it by attracting modern guests such as Madonna, the Beckhams and Tom Cruise. ‘And I was much better the sec- ond time because I had more experience and more confidence,’ he says.
THE GODFATHER OF NEWS
SIR TREVOR McDONALD is the undisputed godfather of newsreaders. His rich voice has been delivering the headlines since the Eighties, and he took over the role of sole anchor on ITV’s News At Ten in 1992. ‘I’m shocked but pleasantly surprised that I should have been chosen by so many readers of the magazine,’ he said at our photoshoot. Time and again he was praised for his composed delivery. ‘That was always important. It wasn’t about me; it was about the news itself.’ In the past decade he’s carved a new career for himself as an interviewer, facing some of the most dangerous criminals in the world. Sir Trevor, now 79, has walked into maximumsecurity prisons in the US and sat down with Mafia members.
In 2008 he was invited by the notoriously prickly Duke of Edinburgh to film a documentary about life at Sandringham. Sir Trevor told us, ‘It was daunting. We asked the Duke to do a soundcheck. I said, “Would you count to five for us, Sir?” and he said, “Why should I? You do it.” So I went “1, 2, 3, 4, 5,” and then the Duke continued with “6, 7, 8, 9, 10.” It was his way of lightening the atmosphere.’
THE LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT LEGEND
SIR BRUCE FORSYTH was hosting Sunday Night At The London Palladium in the Sixties, The Generation Game in the Seventies and Play Your Cards Right in the Eighties – and he was still the king of light entertainment in the 21st century. But he confessed to us that when the BBC approached him to present Strictly, he thought the idea was doomed. Who would want to watch celebrities learning the cha-cha-cha, he wondered. The answer, of course, was millions of us.
‘Every single viewer mattered to him,’ says his Strictly co-host Tess Sir Michael Parkinson banters with Tom Cruise on his show in 2004
Daly, ‘which is why being in this list would mean so much to him.’
Sir Bruce, who died aged 89 last year, made his first TV appearance before the Second World War, doing a dance routine before announcing that he wanted to become famous so he could buy his mum a fur coat, and at 14 he was touring the country as Bruce the Boy Atom. But as he told Weekend, he knew that counted for little when he won a lifetime BAFTA in 2008. ‘Strictly is what clinched it,’ he said. ‘In fact, if that hadn’t come along, I probably would have faded into the sunset.’ Our Brucie, fade away? Never!
THE DAME OF DOWNTON
DAME MAGGIE SMITH rarely gives interviews. But earlier this year the Dowager Countess of Grantham and queen of the English stage sat down with three of her oldest friends – Joan Plowright, Eileen Atkins and Judi Dench – for a frank chat. Talking about her muchloved role in Downton Abbey as the formidable Dowager Countess, Dame Maggie, 83, said, ‘ The most exhausting thing was the hats, they were the heaviest thing in the world. I had a hat like the Albert Hall, it was so heavy.’
Before Downton her previous major role was as Betsey Trotwood in a 1999 adaptation of David Copperfield, but it’s the Dowager Countess and her delicious one-liners – who can forget, ‘ There’s nothing simpler than avoiding people you don’t like, avoiding one’s friends is the real test’ – that transformed Sunday-night viewing. Perhaps her best line came when the heir to the earldom, Matthew Crawley, said he would work over the weekend. ‘What is a weekend?’ she uttered incredulously. Well, we know what a Weekend TV icon is. It’s Maggie Smith.