Hear what Parky has to say when he brings An Evening with Michael Parkinson to Cambridge
The show celebrates the life and career of a man who has interviewed more than 2,000 of the most important cultural figures of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Muhammad Ali, Lauren Bacall, Sir David Attenborough, Julie Andrews, Sir Michael Caine, Madonna, David Niven and Oliver Reed, to name but a few, ‘Parky’s’ list of interviewees is certainly impressive.
During the periods when it was on, virtually anyone who was anyone appeared on Parkinson, which over the years has also given us some of the most memorable moments in British television history.
These range from an ‘out-of-control’ Rod Hull and Emu to an impassioned Muhammad Ali and a somewhat uncooperative Meg Ryan.
Memories from the long-running series, which first ran from 1971 (actor and bounder Terry-Thomas and tennis player Arthur Ashe were among the guests on the very first episode) to 1982 – and then again from 1998 to 2007 – will be recounted when the broadcaster, journalist and author visits the Cambridge Arts Theatre next month.
In conversation with his son, Mike, and showing highlights from the Parkinson archive, the evening is set to offer an entertaining and informative look at Sir Michael’s remarkable journey from a pit village in Yorkshire to a staple of Saturday night viewing.
Sir Michael, 84, began by offering some advice on how to be a good interviewer. “Do your research,” he says, “and then go at it – and listen too, that’s the other thing.
"It’s amazing the number of journalists I’ve come across in my long career in journalism who don’t listen.”
He continues: “The talk shows have gone back to where it started: it’s comedians now who run it, which is not a bad thing.
"I mean Graham Norton’s a very, very clever performer, but it’s not an interview he does – he wouldn’t admit to that at all, he wouldn’t want to.
“He does a party. He assembles people and has a good old knees-up – and that’s wonderful, it works very well indeed. The talk show started in America and it was done for the first 20 years by comedians.”
Sir Michael cites Johnny Carson as an example, adding: “They were comics and they did a wonderful job. They weren’t journalists, and I was a journalist so I operated with different methods, that’s all.
"What’s changed is that today, because the comedians have taken over, there is no place for the kind of interview that I wanted to do, which was to see no difference between Jimmy Tarbuck and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
"I wanted to jumble people together so you’ve hopefully got these fascinating encounters with different kinds of people. I did it in a journalistic way, not a comedic way – that was the difference.”
Sir Michael says he loved every minute of his time fronting a chat show, and has also enjoyed travelling around the country for the past two or three years “just talking and reflecting, and showing clips of the moments of my interviewing career on television which I’ve particularly liked and like talking about.”
Sir Michael, who is currently co-writing a book with his son about his father – he also recently penned a biography of his great friend George Best – reveals that the clips will be of “the great talkers like Ustinov and Attenborough, and the great comics like Billy Connolly and the great American comedians I’ve interviewed... really just my own personal pick.
"Even though I say so myself, it’s a very entertaining show and it’s a funny show – but there are sad moments to it.”
He elaborates: “When you look at Ali in his fading years, George Best in his fading years too... but generally speaking it’s a show that’s good fun.”
Will the Emu clip be shown? “No, of course not. Why would I?” says Sir Michael. “That wasn’t an interview, that was an incident...
"As a matter of fact, we do do it, I’m joking. We have it up our sleeves, we sometimes do it, sometimes don’t. It depends on how the evening shapes, if the audience is right for it.”
On the late, great Muhammad Ali, Sir Michael says: “He was an immense character, he was an immense figure, both in terms of reputation and of course in terms of fact – he was the most extraordinary looking man, physically, I’ve ever seen.
"But he was also a deeply disturbed man and in the end, he was a deeply tragic man.
“So there’s a story there to be told and we did four interviews with him, and in those four interviews we trace his decline – from this great athlete to this broken man.
"The last time I interviewed him was just 10 years after the first time and the discrepancy was tragic and awful and sad.”
Sir Michael has always said that the ‘one that got away’ was Frank Sinatra, but the broadcaster did come close to sitting ol’ blue eyes down for a chat after meeting him at a party where he was introduced to the singer by a mutual friend.
“At the end of the evening, after I’d met my great hero, I went up to him and said, ‘Mr Sinatra, thank you so much for inviting me, I must go now’,” he recalls.
“‘But we were talking about you coming to England and I hope when you come to England, you’ll come on my show’. ‘Sure thing, David’, he said.”
Despite retiring, it seems Sir Michael’s reputation as the ‘go-to’ interviewer precedes him.
“I had a man call at my house two days ago,” he reveals. “He said to me, ‘Do you know Nigel Farage?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I’ve met Mr Farage’, which is not the same as saying I support Mr Farage – which I don’t – and he said, ‘We’d like to invite you to do an interview’.
“I said I didn’t want to do an interview and found it rather strange. I sent him on his way politely, although I did think it was a bit of a cheek knocking on my door and asking about doing an interview.
"Then he came back two days later and said would I interview him! So I do get offers still.
“In all my years that had never happened to me – people knocking on my door saying will you interview me.”
An Evening with Sir Michael Parkinson will be on at the Cambridge Arts Theatre on Wednesday, June 26, at 7.45pm.
Tickets: £25/£30. All ticket prices include a £3 per ticket booking fee.
Box office: 01223 503333, or cambridgeartstheatre.com.
