The Congo cannibals didn’t want to chat...
THE 82-year-old is best known for presenting chat show Parkinson from 1971 to 1982 and 1998 to 2007. He is married with three children.
As a child, I had a quick mind for words – swear words!
The boy next door, who was about 11, taught me, when I was about five, how to say ‘b****r’, ‘s**t’ and various other swear words, and I’d sometimes blurt them out, much to the embarrassment of my mother.
I had a recurring anxiety dream as a kid.
I’d be sitting an exam but didn’t know any of the answers because I hadn’t done the research. Later on, after becoming a chat show host, I had another recurring anxiety dream: walking down the stairs of a TV studio and not knowing who the hell I was interviewing. I did actually forget who I was interviewing one day. All I could think of was the word ‘Duke’ but I knew it wasn’t Duke Ellington because he was a white man. Thankfully, he dropped his name – John Wayne, aka ‘The Duke’ – into the conversation.
I find it offensive when people hint that I’m a ‘phoney Yorkshireman’.
Yes, I’m a Yorkshireman and I’m very proud of it, and I’ve never tried to disguise it or have elocution lessons.
As a young newspaperman, I travelled to the Belgian Congo where rebel fighters had returned to cannibalism.
When my photographer and I showed a bit too much interest, they became really hostile. We were lucky to escape with our lives.
I’d love to travel back to Granada Television in 1963.
I’d just left Fleet Street and landed a job as a producer there. It was such an exciting time. Coronation Street had started there in 1960, and the BBC’s Z Cars began in 1962 … it was a golden period for television.
I’ve always preferred interviewing women to men.
Women like to gossip. Some of my best shows involved female guests talking among themselves.
I’ve always been known as Parky.
But at home as a boy, I was Parky 2 – my Dad was Parky 1!