Michael Parkinson
Broadcaster and TV presenter Michael Parkinson has interviewed thousands of the world’s most famous and fascinating public figures
The legendary interviewer becomes the interviewee.
…BAWLING MY EYES OUT AT A HOLIDAY CAMP.
I was only about four and had gotten separated from my parents. Some beaut i ful female staff members tried to comfort me by stroking my head. But I was distraught. My upset might have also been down to having eaten about three gallons of ice cream. My dad came running over to get me, after about half an hour. I stayed very close to my family after that – for my entire life.
… A DAD WHO TAUGHT ME TO BE KIND.
He was a hard- working miner and we lived in the working- class village of Cudworth in
South Yorkshire. But he never really shouted at me and certainly never raised his fist. My mum, Freda Rose, was stricter, but it was a very happy household. Mining communities have been seen as dreadful places to grow up in. Not for me. There were woods to be played in and football matches in the street. Occasionally, I’d go into a friend’s house and see the other side of things. A father who was drunk all the time and a woman with a black eye. But, in general, the community wrapped itself around me and made me feel safe.
…THE MOST IMPORTANT THING MUM DID WAS LEAD ME TO BOOKS.
She loved reading, frequently coming back from the library with three or four novels by people like
A.J. Cronin and Daphne du Maurier. I read from a very early age and got into John Steinbeck, Hemingway and crime novels by Raymond Chandler. I learned a lot from reading and it gave me the ambition to be a journalist.
Mum would take me to the cinema several times a week, too, sitting there with her knitting while I was dazzled by the actors and writing on screen. I really wanted to marry Ingrid Bergman.
… I WAS BOUND TO LIKE CRICKET.
Growing up in a Yorkshire household with a dad who was a great cricket enthusiast, there was no other possibility.
When I was a teenager, I played with people like Dickie Bird in the Yorkshire League. If you scored a
50, there’d be a collection for you, but some of the dads would spend it behind the bar before you got your hands on it. My teammates would get themselves out deliberately to stop them.
One of my favourite sporting memories is skippering Maidenhead and Bray’s third team, with my son Andrew in the team. That, and watching my friend [legendary soccer player] S George Best play football N with my O three boys on our lawn. T They I couldn’t get the ball off him, of course.
…I DIDN’T CARE ABOUT BARNSLEY GRAMMAR SCHOOL AND IT DIDN’T CARE ABOUT ME.
A lot of the teachers were old guys who’d been brought out of retirement because the young men were away in the war. They
didn’t understand my love for reading authors like Steinbeck.
But I could always write. I’d do essays for my friend John, while he did my maths homework. He once came top in English and I came top in maths, even though neither of us could do either subject. So I walked out of school at 16 and said, “Give us a job” to the local paper, the South Yorkshire Times.
While working as a journalist in Doncaster, a few years later, I covered the story of the last train engine to be made in the town with a journalist from the Manchester Guardian.
He fell asleep during the celebration lunch, and had to copy my notes for his story. During our subsequent pub crawl he told me there might be a vacancy to work at The Guardian
and that he’d put a word in for me. That was my big break into national newspapers.
… A REVOLUTIONARY TIME AT GRANADA TV IN MANCHESTER.
I joined as a producer in the 1960s. It was such a vigorous place full of wonderfully creative people, and a focus on youth culture. The Beatles were practically the house band on a music show I did. It was the first station to go out of its way to have presenters with northern accents.
I started presenting a film programme called and got to interview film stars like Laurence Olivier – the brother-in-law of one
of the station bosses. The BBC came calling not long after that.
…MIXING IT UP ON PARKINSON.
Part of the joy of doing my BBC chat show, starting in 1971, was that we had everyone from the mathematician Jacob Bronowski and satirist Malcolm Muggeridge to comedian Ken Dodd on it – people I was really interested in.
One of my favourite guests was the politician Dennis Healey. I admired him greatly, but after descending the famous steps, he proceeded to turn the wrong way and sit with our piano player instead of me.
Wonderful.
My interviews with boxer Muhammad Ali are very famous, but I never loved him. He was always a challenge – you never knew whether he was about to say something remarkable or strange. He was afraid of flying so he wore his own parachute to the Rome Olympics. A remarkable mind.
… NEVER FORGETTING I WAS JUST A JOURNALIST.
It didn’t matter how well-known I got, I tried to treat Parkinson as no more than a job.
I had my moments while making the show, but I don’t think I was ever badly behaved in public. Believe all that celebrity- status palaver and you’re heading for the dustbin.
…RUPERT MURDOCH MADE ME AN OFFER I COULDN’T REFUSE.
He gave me a very lucrative deal to do a show in Australia in 1979 called Parkinson
in Australia. The BBC didn’t pay that well, so it gave me some much-needed security.
The Aussies and I hit it off straight away. They loved cricket and were very straight-talking. Basically Yorkshiremen with suntans.
…WRITING ABOUT A FAMILY OF DOGS CALLED THE WOOFITS.
I branched out into light- entertainment more in the 1980s, doing Give
Us a Clue, for instance, which I loved. It was daft and funny. I somehow became a children’s author, too.
The Woof its were created in France, but I was approached to reinvent them for an English audience. I moved them to a coal mining village and gave them names such as John Willy Woofit, after my dad.
… HAPPILY WHISTLING GERSHWIN ON THE WAY TO WORK.
When I was approached to present Sunday Sup
plement on Radio 2 in 1996, they told me, “You’ll be playing music from the station playlist”.
I replied, “No, I won’t. I don’t enjoy that kind of stuff. I want to play stuff like music from the Great
American Song Book. And that’s a dealbreaker.”
They backed down and let me play what I wanted. So for the next 11 years I was able to give a new plat form to al l the songwriters I loved.
I did a chat show again in the late 1980s, then from 1998 to 2007, speaking to everyone from singer David Bowie to broadcaster David Attenborough. I had more confidence and a surer step than I’d had when I was
trying to make a name for myself. But I started to think, You’re in your mid-70s and still working. You’re
joking! Plus, the people running the TV industry had changed and I didn’t want to get all grotty and disenchanted working with them. So I quit television and radio at the same time.
I started doing more writing and tours, a few years later, however, I was back doing the odd show on TV. I never reached the blissful state of contemplating my navel for very long.
… MARY, MY WIFE, IS STILL VERY ATTRACTIVE AT 84.
We have been together for more than 60 years now, since I met her on the bus on the way to report on a village council meeting. I don’t sit round pondering why we’ve stayed together so long. But she’s still so energetic.
She is a bit of a golf bandit, however. And what does annoy me is when people call her Lady Mary but don’t call me Sir Michael [chuckles]. A man at the golf club did it the other day.
“How do you think she became a Lady while I’m still Mr?” I told him. Calling me “Sir” is generally entirely optional, though!
… STILL STICKING CLOSE TO THE FAMILY.
My son, Michael, now 53, lives next door to me in Bray, Berkshire, and Andrew, 60, and
Nicholas, 57, are a couple of kilometres away. We enjoy each other’s company, even though they probably think I’m a boring old fart.
It’s been a joy working with Michael on the book and to see what a gifted writer he is.
Andy works in the media, too, and Nicholas ran a wonder ful Michelin- starred restaurant, The Royal Oak in Paley Street, nearby. The Queen and President Macron went there. But it’s closed down because of COVID-19.
We’ll have to see what he does next.
…WATCHING THE THAMES DRIFT PAST DURING LOCKDOWN. My wife and I live right on the River Thames which is particularly lucky. I wish the bloody pandemic would go away.
At 85 though, my ambitions are now quite limited. When I wake up in the morning, I think, Thank God for that.
Looking back, I can see that my life has been really fascinating. I feel incredibly lucky.
Parkinson’s new book, Like Father, Like Son (Hodder & Stoughton), is a memoir about his dad, John, and is co-written with his own son, Mike.