Duckers & Diving: The Art of Fine Interviewing

CHAT show host and celebrity interviewer par excellence Sir Michael Parkinson was guest speaker at the latest Journalists’ Charity lunch; never one to miss out on some fine fare our celebrated columnist joined the event to relay proceedings…and drop a few names.

Controversy and much laughter at the Journalists’ Charity celebrity lunch; lots of anecdotes, a condemnation of ‘junk TV’ and a swipe at the BBC’s much criticised coverage of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Regatta on the Thames.

First, junk TV – in Parky’s days his chat show got 10-15 million viewers but then there were really only two television stations whereas today there are many and “you are God” if your talk show nets four million.

He blamed it all on TV executives following a trend downmarket and so producing “a uniformity of crap”.

Yet junk television didn’t get many more viewers than more intelligent shows.

Sir Michael, now 78, said he did deliberately watch some of it because he wanted to understand it.

But he noted: “The trouble is that so much is vulgar, brainless, and inarticulate, promoting all that is wrong about this country. Certainly anything with the word Essex in it isn’t worth watching.”

As for the BBC’s coverage of the Regatta, he said it had cried out for “a Dimbleby or a John Simpson”.

Somebody who could have explored the stories behind some of the historic craft.

And, as a distinguished journalist, he bemoaned the demise of Fleet Street.

“It was full of vagabonds and rogues – splendid people. It was flamboyant and lively – you would get a fight every night in the newsroom.”

People with presence, he noted, had made the greatest Parkinson interviews, for example Orson Welles and Mohammed Ali. Something also possessed by Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela.

At 23 film actress Raquel Welch had been “wonderful, beautiful, flawless”.

He added: “She said she was very plain as a child – ‘until the equipment arrived’.”

Not all guests on the show played the game.

There were the monosyllabic Meg Ryan and Robert Mitchum and others who had been either drunk or stoned. “Donald Sutherland came back years later and said – ‘I think I owe you an apology’.”

Then there were the great comedians like Billy Connolly, Les Dawson and Tommy Cooper. Cooper had once turned up with chicken legs on his feet and a saucepan on his head.

There were some of his heroes he could never persuade onto the show – Frank Sinatra and Katherine Hepburn.

And television’s Nick Owen, who was posing the questions, was brave enough to ask about the Emu incident.

The time when puppeteer and entertainer Rod Hull came on the show.

And, as Emu was want to do, he attacked Parkinson in spectacular style, rolling round the floor of the studio, leaving his always immaculate host with ruffled hair, suit and feelings.

For once, Parkinson nearly lost it.

You could see he was seething – and it clearly rankles to this day.

But he acknowledged there were always “banana skins” waiting for anyone in the public eye – and when it happened to you audiences “loved it”.

“Somewhere out there is a big manhole cover you are eventually going to fall down – Emu was my manhole!”