Back chat with the past master
TV PICK OF THE WEEK
Parkinson At 50
To mark the 50th anniversary of the show that made his name, Sir Michael Parkinson is taking a look back for the first time over the huge archive of his interviews, in Parkinson At 50.
His story is a remarkable one. The son a Yorkshire miner, he grew up in the village of Cudworth, near Barnsley, and was part of a new breed of working class figures who rose to prominence in the 1960s.
The documentary will look at how he left Fleet Street and stumbled into television, where he made his first attempt at interviewing celebrities courtesy of Mick Jagger, and how on June 16, 1971, he walked down those famous stairs for the first time and introduced the first ever episode of the legendary talk show, Parkinson.
He will discuss how he felt interviewing some of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars such as Jimmy Cagney, Fred Astaire, Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman. He will remember his favourite guests and interviews, including encounters with Muhammad Ali and Sir Billy Connolly, as well as looking at some of his less successful meetings. The tricks of the interview trade will be divulged alongside the backstage stories, and he reveals why he decided to leave the interview game more than a decade ago.
Parkinson At 50 tells the full story of how his show became an award-winning Saturday night staple, giving viewers water-cooler moments before that phrase was even thought of – and why, for him, hosting the show was the best job in television.