Legendary television interviewer Sir Michael Parkinson has died aged 88 after a brief illness.
He was best known for his show “Parkinson” interviewing more than 2 000 guests over 20 years, including actors, sports stars, comedians, and literary and intellectual figures.
The show aired first on the BBC between 1971 and 1982, then between 1998 and 2004, and finally from 2004 on ITV until 2007.
He interviewed Alistair Cooke, the mathematician Jacob Bronowski, WH Auden, Jonathan Miller, and Henry Kissinger. Parkinson was well briefed and rarely fazed by any of them.
Actors included Orson Welles (his first guest), James Stewart, Fred Astaire, James Cagney, Shirley Temple and Bette Davis. A drunken Robert Mitchum answered monosyllabically, and a disdainful Meg Ryan advised him to wrap up an interview that was not getting anywhere.
The comedian Rod Hull’s emu puppet, launched an unprovoked attack and wrestled Parkinson to the ground. ‘The only thing I’ll ever be remembered for’, he complained, ‘is being attacked by a fucking emu’.
Sports stars included Geoffrey Boycott, Bobby Charlton, George Best and, four times, Muhammad Ali. Parkinson said that he was the most amazing man he had ever met.
Michael’s father was a miner at Grimethorpe colliery, and his mother encouraged him to read and go to the cinema four times a week. He lived on a council estate but won a scholarship to Barnsley grammar school.
His father bequeathed him a lifelong love of cricket. He was an accomplished club cricketer, playing for Barnsley in the Yorkshire league with Boycott and future test umpire Dickie Bird. He said he had a trial for Hampshire only to be dissuaded by his father: ‘It’s not like playing for Yorkshire, is it’?
On his retirement Parky said that only two interviewees had evaded him: Frank Sinatra and Sir Donald Bradman.