He was no different to any other dad I knew.. what you didn’t see was that he could be bad-tempered, especially if Barnsley lost
him to be. He wasn’t perfect, he could be distant and was very much of his generation – not as hands-on as we expect dads to be now.”
Becoming one of the world’s most revered chat show hosts wasn’t an obvious career path for a miner’s son born in 1935 in Cudworth, South Yorks.
He left school with just two O levels to become a local newspaper reporter before moving on to the Manchester Guardian and the Daily Express.
His television career began on current affairs programmes before Parkinson hit the screens, running on the BBC from 1971 to 1982, and from 1998, later switching to ITV1 from 2004, until 2007. During those years, including bringing his chat show to Australia in 1979, he interviewed an estimated 2,000 celebrities.
When asked who his dad’s favourite encounter was with, Mike suspects it would be Ali, who he interviewed four times. In their first meeting in 1971, Ali captivated the audience with his experiences of racism.
And the final interview, in 1981, became a dreadful preview of Ali’s Parkinson’s disease, as the boxer known for his verbal sparring slurred words while trying to answer questions on brain damage.
Other highlights include his interview with Polish scientist Dr Jacob Bronowski who visited the Nazi
ON WHY HIS DAD WAS SO LOVED BY PUBLIC
Boxer Muhammad Ali in 1981, puppet Emu and Rod Hull in 1976, Billy Connolly’s first show in 1975, and an awkward chat with Helen Mirren, also in 1975
concentration camp Auschwitz where many of his relatives had died.
Or possibly one of the 18 times he chatted with Billy Connolly, whose career was launched in 1975 by his bike joke that left the host in stitches.
He also made headlines for some awkward interviews, including a frosty interaction with Meg Ryan in 2003, and the time in 1975 when he asked Helen Mirren if her “equipment” had hindered her being recognised as a serious actor.
Mike confidently predicts his least favourite interview, however, would have been the one with Rod Hull and Emu in 1976.
“Who would want to be attacked by a glove puppet and humiliated on TV?” Mike laughs as he recalls his dad trying to stop him from showing that clip during the 20 years they worked together at Parky Productions. He’d
often say: “Sometimes people are remembered for things they would rather forget!”
Meeting Mike at the pub leads to a run-in with
Reverend Ainsley
Swift who held the funeral service.
He recalls: “Jimmy
Tarbuck found out I was from Liverpool. And during the eulogy, he said,
‘Fancy Parky arranging for a scouser to take his funeral’, which made everyone laugh.”
So what was it about Parky that everyone loved?
“If you think about where he came from to where he ended up, his is a story of hope,” Mike says. “He had integrity, and there was a genuineness about him – people could trust him. It was like slipping into a warm
bath.” Mike also suspects he would have been shocked by the outpouring of grief after his death.
And what would he think if he knew he also inspired this journalist, whose ancestors were miners, to follow their dreams? “He’d say he was lucky to have two parents who made him raise his sights above the pit headgear and encouraged him to follow his dreams no matter how outlandish they seemed,” Mike says.
“If his story inspired one person to try to overcome their background and follow their outlandish dreams, then all that he achieved, even being attacked by an emu, was worthwhile.”
AT HIS LOCAL
People could trust him, he’d integrity. His work was like slipping into a warm bath MIKE PARKINSON