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<\/p>\nMichael Parkinson took another sip of Sancerre. \u2018The best thing about our job, kid, is that you get paid to meet your heroes.\u2019<\/p>\n
The year was 1992, the venue Langan\u2019s Brasserie, then one of London\u2019s top celebrity restaurants, part owned by Michael Caine.<\/p>\n
Parky was treating me to lunch, the week before I was about to inherit his flagship morning radio show on LBC. I\u2019d been a regular panellist on the programme, which helped launch my broadcast career on the same station.<\/p>\n
When Mike concluded he\u2019d had enough of early starts, LBC\u2019s bosses decided in their infinite wisdom to promote me from my own, recently-established lunchtime slot.<\/p>\n
Truth be told, I was terrified. There hadn\u2019t been such a misguided appointment since Frank O\u2019Farrell was plucked from Leicester City to succeed the mighty Matt Busby at Manchester United. He lasted about five minutes.<\/p>\n
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Parky was treating me to lunch, the week before I was about to inherit his flagship morning radio show on LBC<\/p>\n
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Parky was right, you meet a better class of person down Memory Lane<\/p>\n
I was convinced a similar fate awaited me. Mike took me to lunch to impart reassurance and some welcome avuncular advice. By then, he had earned his place in the pantheon of broadcasting greats.<\/p>\n
But at heart, he remained a reporter who had left grammar school with a couple of O-levels and drifted into a job on his local rag in Barnsley. I could relate to that, having followed a similar career path in Peterborough.<\/p>\n
When I started out in 1971, Parky was embarking on the next leg of a remarkable odyssey which would lead to fame and fortune \u2014 with the occasional self-inflicted hiccup \u2014 having been chosen to present his late-night BBC talk show that summer.<\/p>\n
Originally it was a run of just eight, but \u2018Parkinson\u2019 soon became part of the Saturday night appointment-to-view furniture, along with stalwarts such as The Generation Game and Match Of The Day, regularly pulling in audiences of up to 12 million.<\/p>\n
Talk about being paid to meet your heroes. Parky\u2019s guests were a Who\u2019s Who of 20th Century cultural giants, from Orson Welles and Fred Astaire to philosopher Jacob Bronowski and Muhammad Ali.<\/p>\n
Mike made no secret of the fact that he was in awe of these people. But his relaxed, informed interviewing style brought out the best in them.<\/p>\n
It helped that long before he became a talk show host, he had already built a solid foundation in proper journalism, first on newspapers and then on TV, covering everything from sport, to wars in the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n
Those of us from my generation who aspired to follow uncertainly in his slipstream were treated to a weekly, hour-long Look and Learn masterclass.<\/p>\n
\u2018Parkinson\u2019 the programme has been frequently and incorrectly described as a \u2018chat\u2019 show. What Mike did wasn\u2019t chat, it was grown-up, in-depth interviewing.<\/p>\n
He cajoled, teased, probed his guests, with rewarding and often surprising results. Plus, he had a natural curiosity and genuine interest in them and what they had to say.<\/p>\n
Parky did his homework, and brought real world experience to the party, unlike most of today\u2019s TV \u2018talent\u2019, who are content to read out half a dozen trite questions prepared by a millennial researcher fresh off a worthless media studies course. (Yesterday, one pig-ignorant presenter actually referred to the actress Lauren Bacall as \u2018Lauren Backle\u2019. Give me strength.)<\/p>\n
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When I started out in 1971, Parky was embarking on the next leg of a remarkable odyssey which would lead to fame and fortune having been chosen to present his late night BBC talk show that summer<\/p>\n
Mike also knew the value of silence, letting his interviewees fill the dead air. That\u2019s easier to do on television than on the wireless, but somehow he managed to pull it off.<\/p>\n
Obviously, I was keen to understand how he did it. Don\u2019t worry, this isn\u2019t one of those \u2018the Michael Parkinson who knew me\u2019 pieces. But I shall always be grateful for the generosity of spirit he showed me when I was having a crack at radio and TV.<\/p>\n
Be yourself, was the best piece of advice. There was no point in me trying to ape Parky, any more than my attempting to write a column like the peerless Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish.<\/p>\n
And Mike was his own man, a one-off. What you saw on TV was pretty much what you got. He could be warm, funny, clever and, yes, spiky and irascible at times. He was a perfectionist who didn\u2019t suffer fools, not even lightly.<\/p>\n
As he got older, he admitted that he had become a \u2018curmudgeonly old bastard\u2019.<\/p>\n
A few of his pearls of wisdom have stuck with me over the years, and been oft quoted in this column. For instance, being a couple of decades his junior, I once teased him: \u2018You spend a lot of time down Memory Lane these days, Mike.\u2019 \u2018You meet a better class of person down Memory Lane,\u2019 he snapped back. The older I get, the more I realise he was right. There won\u2019t be another Parkinson because the world has changed beyond recognition.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, many of the \u2018tributes\u2019 honed in on an interview with Helen Mirren, in which he wondered out loud whether her \u2018equipment\u2019 had ever got in the way of her being taken seriously as an actress.<\/p>\n
This was back in the Seventies, when feminism was in its infancy and burning your bra was all the rage. Even then, with Confessions Of A Window Cleaner still pulling in the crowds at the Odeon, it was a fairly crass observation. La Mirren and the Cosmo crowd were incandescent.<\/p>\n
The fuss quickly passed, though. But in these days of trial by Twitter that single off-the-cuff remark could have ended his career. Can you imagine the modern BBC standing by him, with the social media lynch mob howling for his cancellation?<\/p>\n
Still, can you also imagine Parky asking David Cameron if he masturbated over Margaret Thatcher, or ringing up Andrew Sachs so the repulsive Russell Brand could boast that he\u2019d slept with his granddaughter?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what one of Parky\u2019s \u2018successors\u2019 Jonathan Ross was reduced to \u2014 and he\u2019s still going strong. Years later, Mike remained troubled by the Helen Mirren incident, which doesn\u2019t surprise me. Most of the best journalists I\u2019ve known tend to obsess over their mistakes rather than their successes.<\/p>\n
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Millions will best remember him from his magnificent television shows, which will never be bettered<\/p>\n
(He felt the same about the famous attack by Rod Hull\u2019s Emu, worrying only half in jest that when he popped his clogs, the headlines would probably read: \u2018Emu Man Dies\u2019.)<\/p>\n
Mike was a consummate journalist. I can still recall some of his brilliant sports columns for the Sunday Times in the dim and distant.<\/p>\n
At his best he was up there with the very finest \u2014 our own, much missed Ian Wooldridge and the great Hughie McIlvanney.<\/p>\n
His reminiscences of the Barnsley hardman Skinner Normanton, from the late Forties and early Fifties, were a particular joy. As were the heckles from the Barnsley crowd: \u2018Tha\u2019s about as much bloody use as a chocolate fireguard!\u2019<\/p>\n
That\u2019s probably a hate crime in these woke days of knee-taking and rainbow laces. In one of his last interviews, Mike said he was more proud of his written work than anything he\u2019d done as a TV presenter. I don\u2019t believe that was false modesty.<\/p>\n
But most people will, however, be unfamiliar with his newspaper columns. Millions will best remember him from his magnificent television shows, which will never be bettered.<\/p>\n
After falling out with the BBC for a second (or was it third?) time, \u2018Parkinson\u2019 transferred to ITV, but it was never going to be the same. The game had moved on.<\/p>\n
Parky was no Norma Desmond. But although he was still big, the \u2018celebrity\u2019 guests had got small. How do you go from Lauren Bacall to some dopey bird from Love Island, surrounded by stylists, agents and sticking to a script written by PR spivs?<\/p>\n
He once asked me what all the successful stars he\u2019d interviewed had in common.<\/p>\n
Talent? I replied.<\/p>\n
No, he said, they all work harder than everyone else.<\/p>\n
And few worked harder than Mike Parkinson, a true polymath, equally at ease talking sport, politics, cinema, jazz, you name it.<\/p>\n
Perhaps his greatest achievement in life was his six decades-long, rock solid marriage to the wonderful Mary \u2014 a rarity in showbiz circles \u2014 and the enduring closeness of his family.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m tempted to give him the \u2018Emu Man Dies\u2019 headline he half-feared. But he deserves better than that.<\/p>\n
So instead I\u2019ll raise a glass of Sancerre to one of my heroes. Cheers, Parky.<\/p>\n