Broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson has died at the age of 88. Best known as the host of the chat show bearing his name, his TV career spanned seven decades. He started work as a sports reporter o a local newspaper and rose to become one of the best-known faces on TV, interviewing the world’s biggest stars including John Wayne, Fred Astaire, Muhammad Ali, Madonna and Dame Helen Mirren on his chat show which in initially ran for 11 years.
A statement from Sir Michael’s family said: “After a brief illness Sir Michael Parkinson passed away peacefully at home last night in the company of his family.
“The family request that they are given privacy and time to grieve.”
“I was very ambitious,” Parkinson recalled in an interview in 2021, “and secretly I wanted to be famous as well. I love being in showbiz. I love asking questions. I love meeting people. In that sense I was ideally created for television.”
The presenter revealed he was receiving radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer in 2013, and said he had the all-clear from doctors two years later.
Guests
In the early 1960s Parkinson was presenting shows on Granada that frequently featured performances by The Beatles. He was working on a film show called Cinema when he was asked by the BBC to present a late-night talk show. He introduced the first Parkinson show in 1971 on BBC television with US jazz singer Marion Montgomery his first guest. Other guests in the first series included John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr, George Best, Michael Caine and Orson Welles, though little of this series survives as the BBC wiped the tapes.
Parkinson famously interviewed Hollywood legends including James Cagney, Gene Kelly, Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall. “I was desperately in love with Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall,” Parkinson said. “Bacall – I fantasised about running away with her. Shirley MacLaine, I fell head over heels with. Her brother [Warren Beatty] came on the show and said, ‘Are you the guy trying to date my sister?’ And I said yes.” But he famously did not get on with some guests, including an uncommunicative Meg Ryan and a quarrelsome Rod Hull – or rather his Emu.
The show ran initially for 11 years and spanned hundreds of episodes in which Sir Michael combined an avuncular style with a journalistic background. In 1998 he returned to the BBC for another run of the show. In total it’s thought he interviewed over 2,000 guests. Parkinson finally ended its run in 2007, following a three-year spell on ITV. You can view his last show here:
Cricket
Michael Parkinson was born in 1935 in the South Yorkshire village of Cudworth, the son of a miner who instilled in his son a love of cricket. Gaining two O-Levels, he got a job collating sports results on a local newspaper, and after two years in the army worked as a journalist for the Manchester Guardian then the Daily Express in London. He became a TV current affairs presenter and reporter for both Granada and the BBC before being recruited for this self-titled show on BBC One.
His TV career also included ITV’s TV-am breakfast show, Give Us a Clue, and BBC One’s Going For a Song, and a Sky Arts series called Michael Parkinson: Masterclass from 2012 to 2014. He was made a CBE in 2000 and was knighted in 2008.
Of the many high-profile guests he interviewed, Sir Michael said boxer Muhammad Ali was his favourite. “When you’re a child and you are sitting there watching glamorous film stars, to think you might one day say, ‘My next guest is Lauren Bacall’ is too fantastic to even contemplate”, Parkinson said in an interview. “But I did that, and I never got bored with it. I had a weekly sense of wonder”.
BBC One will re-broadcast a documentary, Parkinson at 50, on Thursday 17th August at 21:00 BST, in tribute to Sir Michael.
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