FAREWELL PARKY!

 

The death of Sir Michael Parkinson at the grand age of 88 is a reminder of a lost art-form – or at least (if you disagree with 'art') then a lost aspect of premier journalism. He was the doyen of the TV 'chat-show': a true successor and refiner of the art of the television interview, previously pioneered on America's The Dick Cavett Show and, in Britain, on John Freeman's Face to Face.

 

'Chat-show' is too trivial a term for Parkinson's achievement as telly's Torquemada. It's true that 'Parky, as he was affectionately referred to be legion of viewers, was a man with the sharply honed mind of a seasoned inquisitor, but his mode of torture was invariably tempered with a genuine fascination with (and, often, admiration for) his 'victims'!. Above all, he was more intent on exploring the thoughts and views of his interviewees than in promoting his own; more determined to showcase his subjects than in ever pushing his own ego.

 

We worked together, for a few years, when I was a regular TV/Radio critic on his Sunday morning Radio 2 programme. I loved our easy, warm conversations and an annual joy for our group of reviewers (news, sport, film, TV etc) was to be invited to a delightful, intimate Christmas lunch hosted by Michael and where we each received an 'Award' for our work over the preceding year – all with wonderfully absurd category titles and, on at least one occasion, the opportunity to form an impromptu orchestra with kazoos and swanee whistles!

 

Not so long ago, I wrote to Michael to congratulate him on the BBC's then recent Parkinson at 50 series: an anthology of memorable moments (and there were so many!) from fifty years of the show: hilarious chats with Peter Ustinov, Dudley Moore, Kenneth Williams and Billy Connolly; delightful exchanges with James Cagney, David Niven and Ingrid Bergman; unforgettable encounters with Orson Welles, Muhammad Ali and Kermit and Miss Piggy; and, in what was his all-time favourite interviewee, an intense and incisive intellectual conversation with mathematician and philosopher, Jacob Bronowski.

 

Responding to my email, Michael replied:

 

Dear Brian

 

Many thanks for your charming letter which stirred lots of wonderful memories. It served as a reminder of how much I enjoyed doing our show on Radio 2. It was a very happy time for me made more so by a group of colleagues, including yourself, who just happened to be very good at what they did.

 

I am glad you enjoyed PARKINSON AT 50. We had a lot of great reactions and if I am allowed an opinion I think it was a marvellous reminder of a great team I worked with through the years and of the time when you were allowed to do a talk show without performing like a halfwit.

 

With every best wish

 

Michael

 

"A reminder of ... the time when you were allowed to do a talk show without performing like a halfwit."

 

Yes, Michael that just about sums it up! I won't say, in Hamlet's words: "I shall not look upon his like again", because I hope I may, but to reflect on Parky's career is to look with unqualified admiration on the absolute gold-standard for what being a chat-show host should be: a person who is on top of his research; not bound by pre-planned questions, but always open to seizing the opportunity of the moment and – above all – not just an 'asker' but a 'listener'. 

 

Art: 'Parky', a pastel portrait of Sir Michael Parkinson by Glyn Overton. Check her other artwork HERE

A KNIGHT TO REMEMBER

The passing of Bruce Forsyth (aged 89) marks the end of an era of British TV light entertainment. Forsyth was one of those celebrities to whom words such as 'Legendary' and 'Iconic' can be applied without accusation of hyperbole.

Sir Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson, CBE, is remembered best as a TV host whose shows became inextricably linked with his name: Sunday Night at the London Palladium, The Generation Game, The Price is Right, You Bet! and Strictly Come Dancing, but there was much more to Bruce than a witty compere: he was a singer, a mean hoofer, an occasional actor in films (Star! and Bedknobs and Broomsticks) and memorable for his multi-character performance in the 1964 stage play, Little Me. In 2012, he was recognised by Guinness World Records as having the longest television career for a male entertainer.

On the occasion of Bruce being given his knighthood in 2011, I posted a recollection of having me and interviewed him a few years earlier. In a bad pun on his famous catchphrase, "Nice to see you! To see you –– nice!", I called the piece...  

"KNIGHT TO SEE YOU! TO SEE YOU – KNIGHT!"

How delighted we all were when Bruce Forsyth finally became Sir Bruce in the Queen's Birthday Honours last week.

I realise that this post will be largely inexplicable to my overseas readers, but here, in the UK, Brucie is nothing short of a National Treasure. He made his TV debut, aged 11, in 1939 ("Was there television in 1939?" asked one media commentator), before going on, three years later, to become 'Boy Bruce, the Mighty Atom' playing the variety theatres with a song, dance, and accordion act.

Full-on stardom came in 1958 when he began hosting the hugely TV variety show, Sunday Night at the London Palladium with his famous maxim, "I'm in charge!"

As a TV host, he was the reason, in the 1970s, that we tuned-in in our millions every Saturday night to watch Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game with its nationally adopted catch-phrases ("Good game! Good game!", "Didn't he do well?" and, of course, "Nice to see you! To see you – nice!") and having adopted him, via 'the box', into our extended families, we followed his later successes on stage, occasionally on film, and on a succession of game and talent shows, Play Your Cards Right, You Bet, Bruce's Price is Right and, most recently, Strictly Come Dancing.

Bruce has been part of British life for as long as most of us can remember and I've always been an admirer: because he is one of that tough breed of multi-talented entertainers who got their break in vaudeville and can truly be described as 'survivors' – able to endlessly reinvent themselves.

I was delighted, therefore, back in 2009, to have the chance to meet and interview Brucie when I was making a duet of radio programmes as a tribute to the BBC impresario, the late Bill Cotton.

I visited the Forsyth home (just over the hedge from the famous Wentworth Golf Club!) and spent a couple of hours talking about various aspects of his long career. At the end of the interview, I asked him to sign my copy of his autobiography, Bruce, which he did, adding: "Try to believe it!"

Then I produced something else, tucked in the back of the book: a fan photo that I had requested in the 1960s and which, on its arrival, I had been bitterly disappointed to find had a printed signature!

"Now, I've finally got to meet you," I said, "would you mind if I asked you to do the job properly?!”

Laughing, Bruce explained how, when he first experienced stardom, he was totally unable to cope with the extensive fan mail. He recalled how, on arriving at his agent’s office one day, he saw a line of GPO mail-sacks stacked up along the hallway. When he asked what they were, he was told him, they were all for him! As with a number of stars, printed fan cards were an inevitable solution and, in many ways, a more honest option than those signed for others by agents' secretaries.

Anyway, Bruce was much amused that I had kept the photo (however unsatisfactory) for fifty years and happily did the deed, adding a dedication and a second signature – this time, as he noted, "in real ink”!

Thank you, Sir Bruce! Rest in peace.

THE LATE LORD OF DISCWORLD

“Where did you say your business was?” said Lezek.

“Is it far?”

No further than the thickness of a shadow, said Death. Where the first primal cell was, there was I also. 
Where man is, there am I.

When the last life crawls under freezing stars, there will I be.

Farewell, Terry Pratchett!

You had a rare genius for storytelling and myth-making that had its roots deep in the centuries-long history of fantasy and legend but which produced exotic flowers blooming in a riot of contemporary satire...

The Discworld is flat and rides on the back of four giant elephants

who stand on the shell of the enormous star turtle...

and is bounded by a waterfall that cascades endlessly into space.
Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything
so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.

But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances

crop up nine times out of ten.

You could be prickly and curmudgeonly and woe-betide the idiot who tested your endurance of folly...

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,

but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance

You battled the demon dementia with courage and humour and gave the bastard a run for its money...

The pen is mightier than the sword... 

if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp

We had several memorable encounters including these two conversations for the BBC World Service...

"There are times when you realise that events are so far out of your control that it is a relief to just sit back and see what happens next – that lovely sense of crystalline relief that there is nothing you can do about it. So, if Death walked in now and put his bony fingers on my arm, I think a sense of hopeful expectation would be about the most I could muster; but there's no point in saying 'Excuse me, there's something I want to finish'! One should take life as it comes ––– that's what Death always does."

"The only reason for walking into the jaws of Death

is so's you can steal his gold teeth."

Terry Pratchett

(1948-2015)

BEAR NECESSITIES

Somewhere around forty-five years ago, I began a correspondence with Michael Bond, the creator of Paddington, which led to a friendship than ran across several years, during which time I used to visit and stay with Michael and his family.

I always loved the Paddington books: the small domestic misadventures of the marmalade-loving bear from Darkest Peru (each a single chapter in length) are perfectly pitched so as to engage and amuse the young listener (always allowing the child to be one jump ahead of the muddles blundered into by the accident prone Paddington) while providing plenty of good story-telling opportunities for the adult called upon to turn the pages!

Michael was always a generous encourager of my youthful ambitions to be a writer, but over the passing years, we eventually lost touch – until this week, when I had the opportunity of visiting my old friend and mentor to talk to him about his latest book – Love from Paddington – for tonight's Radio 2 Arts Show.

Paddington – famous for his polite manners, his ability to handle difficult situations with determination and difficult people by the use of one of his celebrated 'hard stares' – made his debut in A Bear  Called Paddington in 1958.

Although many other volumes followed, the new book is the first to be told in Paddington's own words – as he chronicles his exploits in a series of letters written from his home with the Brown of 32 Windsor Gardens to his Aunt Lucy who lives in the Home for Retired Bears in Lima...

With Love from Paddington is a nostalgic trip back to some of the young bear's most engaging escapades illustrated with a combination of pictures by Paddington's first artist, Peggy Fortnum and his current illustrator, R W Alley

You can hear my interview at 10:00 pm on the Radio 2 Arts Show with Suzy Klein sitting in for Claudia Winkleman.

"THAT CERTAIN THING CALLED THE BOYFRIEND"

News comes of the death of British composer and playwright, Sandy Wilson, aged 90.

Wilson is best-remembered for his enduringly popular musical, The Boy Friend, written in 1953 as an affectionate, light-as-air spoof on the theatrical musicals popular in the 1920s.

Beginning life at London's Players' Theatre Club, The Boy Friend opened in the West End, in an expanded form, in 1954 and ran for 2,078 performances, making it, briefly, the third-longest running musical in West End or Broadway history after Chu Chin Chow and Oklahoma! until its record was broken by Salad Days.

The Broadway production, opening in 1954, starred Julie Andrews as Polly Browne, the central character who is search of the eponymous boy friend. It was Andrews' American debut and established her true star potential.

I interviewed Sandy Wilson, a few years ago, when I was researching and writing a BBC Radio 2 series on 'The Musical' . To be precise, I interviewed him twice!

The first 'attempt' (that's the only way I can describe it) did not go well: he was ill-at-ease, took offence at some questions, baulked at answering others, was generally reluctant to discuss the musical genre in general and refused point-blank to comment on the contemporary scene. In short, the interview was a complete and utter disaster. The man who'd written the song 'I Could Be Happy With You' was obviously anything but – and nor was I!

At the end of this uncomfortable encounter, Wilson grudgingly signed my copy of his autobiography (ironically, under the circumstances, entitled, I Could Be Happy) adding the inscription: "Well, I tried!"

The following day, I decided I wasn't going to leave it at that... I found a period greetings card in the shape of a fan featuring '20s 'flappers' in a carnival setting, wrote an abject note asking whether he might possibly consider giving me a "second chance", because I couldn't possibly conceive of our making a series of programmes for the BBC on the musical without his involvement.

He instantly replied, graciously saying that the failure of the interview was entirely his fault and, yes, he'd "be happy to try again"! So, we did: he was a pussycat and I knew what pitfalls NOT to fall into! The interview was a success and our second meeting ended with his sitting at the piano playing me some of his numbers...

Those two visits to Sandy Wilson's London flat will, for completely different reasons, long live in my memory...

In 1971, The Boy Friend was filmed by Ken Russell, starring Twiggy and Christopher Gable. The movie proved to be less about spoofing 1920s stage shows as the Busby Berkeley film musicals of the 1930s and, to Wilson's understandable chagrin, included songs written by other composers including 'You Are My Lucky Star' from Singin' in the Rain. But for all that, it had all the usual, unpredictable Russell extravagances, some brilliantly staged numbers and a top-flight cast giving terrific, high-energy performances.

Here, from that film, are the legendary Tommy Tune with Antonia Ellis and the Boys and Girls singing and dancing their way through Sandy Wilson's effervescent 'Won't You Charleston With Me?'

Alexander Galbraith "Sandy" Wilson

1924-2014

SOUNDS LIKE BRADBURY

A week tomorrow, the BBC will be broadcasting my new 60-minute dramatisation of Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man and from tomorrow and for the next seven days, I will be posting links to my previous audio adaptations of Ray Bradbury stories.

From the day when, as a teenager, I read my first Bradbury book – The Golden Apples of the Sun – I fell hopelessly under the spell of this remarkable teller of tales, Martian Chronicler, purveyor of Dandelion Wine, resident of the October Country who remembered the Day it Rained Forever...

His novels, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes,The Halloween Tree and others and his inimitable collections of short stories with their curious happenings, bizarre and beautiful characters depicted in glittering, shimmering prose became my favourite reading and their author my hero and, eventually, my friend...

Here is a treasure, acquired years later: the original art for Joe Mugnaini's illustration to 'The Wilderness', one of the stories in The Golden Apples of the Sun, the book that electrified my youthful imagination and fired my own desire to write...

Before I begin transporting you to the surreal worlds conjured by Bradbury the magician, here is a radio programme I made BBC World Service about him in 1988, in which he talks about his life, memories and inspirations. The reader is Blain Fairman...

"A TALENT FOR LONELINESS"

Bob Hoskins, one of Britain's unforgettable character actors on stage, TV and film passed away yesterday at the age of 71.

Eighteen years ago, in October 1996, I interviewed Bob Hoskins at Bristol Old Vic when he was appearing in Jon Marans' play, Old Wicked Songs, prior to its transfer to the Gielgud Theatre in London.

This harrowing drama focused on the relationship between a Viennese music professor in his late-50s, Professor Josef Mashkan and his newly acquired student, Stephen Hoffman, a 25-year-old pianist who, at one time, was considered to be a prodigy in his field, but suffers from severe burn out and has not been performing for a year.

Though initially reluctant to do the interview, Mr Hoskins, relaxed sufficiently to talk memorably not just about Old Wicked Songs but also The Long Good Friday, Pennies From Heaven, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, what made him tick and his self-declared 'talent for loneliness".

I think it's a cracking encounter... I hope you enjoy it as a memory of a fascianting character and a great actor... 

Bob Hoskins

26 October 1942 – 29 April 2014

TERRY PRATCHETT: DODGER, DISCWORLD & DEATH

Hurrah! Hooray! 

Today sees the publication of Dodger, a new novel by Sir Terry Pratchett which the publishers describe as follows:

Dodger is a tosher - a sewer scavenger living in the squalor of Dickensian London. Everyone who is nobody knows Dodger. Anyone who is anybody doesn't. But when he rescues a young girl from a beating, suddenly everybody wants to know him. And "Dodger's" tale of skulduggery, dark plans and even darker deeds begins...

Pratchett and Dickens: a perfect combination! I can't wait to read it...
 
The advent of a new Pratchett has also awoken a nine-year-old memory...

It was an unforgettable event – for both good and bad reasons – it was the night of the 2003 SFX Awards – annually dished out by "the greatest SF, fantasy and horror magazine on the planet" – and I was a nominee for my book, The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy.

I'm sure in the subsequent nine years the SFX Awards have gone from strength to strength, but back in 2003, the organisation (at least as far as the nominees were concerned) was a tad chaotic and I spent well over an hour abandoned in the gloom of the back stage area with nothing to drink and nowhere to sit except on the cases used for transporting the sound equipment.

On the plus side, apart from subsequently winning the award in my category  – the bizarrely-titled 'Best Sci-Fi Fantasy Related Non-Fiction Book' (think about it!) – was being incarcerated during the pre-show wait with the aforesaid Terry Pratchett.

Terry Pratchett is, of course, creator (of among other things) the Discworld (a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the shell of a giant turtle travelling through space) which serves as a device for the author's humorous dissection of the social, political and cultural mores of our own non-flat world!

The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983 and has been followed by, to date, another 39 novels. Behind the consistently brilliant jesting is one of the most startling minds around – something Pratchett receives insufficient credit for with the lit-crit crowd because his wit and wisdom (and an astonishing ability to conjure unforgettable imagery) is wrapped up in laugh-out-loud humour. In my library, Pratchett doesn't sit on a shelf alongside the other fantasy and sci-fi guys (regardless of how well he can do that stuff), he cohabits with other great, and all too often underrated, humorists such as Thurber, Wodehouse, Perelman and Benson.

We had already met, my having interviewed him on three separate occasions for various BBC arts and books programmes. The first of those encounters did not go brilliantly (due to a combination of catching him during one of those exhausting book-launch-tours and a couple of dumb questions from the interviewer) and, mercifully, no copy of it has survived! But I learned the lesson and, the next time we sat down to chat, I was better prepared...

My initial encounter with Terry Pratchett was not quite as uncomfortable as that experienced by the member of the SFX Award ceremony team (and an effusive fan) who encountered us as we lurked in the half-light waiting for someone to bother about us. By this time Terry was lying flat on one of the cases with his trademark hat over his eyes. The fan approached with a huge pile of books ("Would you sign them to 'Pooh', that's my nickname...") and Terry began patiently inscribing the books, at the same time saying very quietly: "If someone doesn't come to look after us in the next two minutes, we won't be here when you eventually get around to coming back."

The message finally got through and, as it turned out, it was probably just as well we didn't leave since – apart from the lovely James ('Scotty') Doohan from Star Trek – we were the only two recipients to turn up for the ceremony. In fact, my award was seventh or eighth on the running order and the first award not to be collected by the presenter! As a result, even though no one knew who the hell I was, my trip to the podium was greeted with thunderous applause and an indecent amount of cheering!

In the intervening years since we collected our gongs, Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with 'posterior cortical atrophy', a very rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease and his courageous and characteristically phlegmatic response has been widely documented as have his views on assisted dying. It would be impossible, today, to interview Terry without asking about these looming issues.

Back in 1995, when he had just published his eighteenth Discworld novel, Maskerade, I had an extended interview with Terry Pratchett that was largely full of his sharp perception and quirky humour, his profundity and humanity.

However, since Discworld features the eternally present character of Death, it is hardly surprising that he makes what may now seem a prophetic appearance...

Make yourself a cuppa, put your feet up and  enjoy...