Sir Michael Parkinson, the great broadcaster whose television career spanned five decades, has died aged 88.
A family statement said: “After a brief illness Sir Michael Parkinson passed away peacefully at home last night in the company of his family.”
Sir Michael’s long-running Saturday night show, where he interviewed everyone from Laurence Olivier to David Beckham, ran from 1971 to 1982 and returned in 1998 for another nine years.
There has been an outpouring of tributes in the wake of the news, with the BBC’s Nick Robinson calling him “the greatest interviewer of our age”. BBC director general Tim Davie said Parkinson was “truly one of a kind”. He was “the king of the chat show and he defined the format for all the presenters and shows that followed.”
Stephen Fry said: “The genius of Parky was that unlike most people (and most of his guests, me included) he was always 100% himself. On camera and off. ‘Authentic’ is the word I suppose.”
Michael Parkinson was born in 1935 near Barnsley in Yorkshire. The son of a miner, he passed the eleven-plus exam and left school with O-levels in art and English. He was an avid cricketer in his youth and he worked at the Manchester Guardian upon leaving school. In the Fifties, he completed his National Service, becoming the youngest captain in the British Army and serving during the Suez Crisis.
Post-army, Parkinson worked in television and had his own show by 1971. He went on to interview over 2,000 celebrities and became a household name. When his Saturday show finished in 1982, he had spells with TV-am, Thames Television and Yorkshire Television. He hosted BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Five Live’s Parkinson on Sport and a Sunday show on Radio 2.
He held some strong opinions about the state of British TV, once declaring: “In my television paradise there would be no more property programmes, no more police-chasing-yobbos-in-cars programmes and, most of all and please God, no more so-called documentary shows with titles like My 20-Ton Tumour, My Big Fat Head, Wolf Girl, Embarrassing Illnesses and The Fastest Man on No Legs.”
He married Mary Heneghan in 1959 and they had three children. In 1971, he lost a controversial vote to become the rector of Dundee University to none other than Peter Ustinov. The keen-eyed Wings fans will know that he appeared on the cover of the 1973 album Band on the Run. Paul McCartney said he would come on Parkinson’s show if the talk-show host appeared on the album cover. McCartney never fulfilled the promise until 1999
He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lincoln in 1999. His later life and retirement were marked by many awards and in 2008 he was knighted. That same year, he released his autobiography. In 2013, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer but was given the all-clear in 2015.
Parkinson’s death is the end of an era.
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