Michael Parkinson reflects on his illustrious career and his guilt for miner dad

He's interviewed everyone from Hollywood royalty to heavyweight champs – so after such a long, successful career, Sir Michael Parkinson is happy to take things easier.

The veteran broadcaster has battled a host of health problems lately and fans voiced concern for his welfare when he looked gaunt and frail on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday.

He may be 85 now but Sir Michael still has enough of his famous wit to make a mischievous joke about how he would prefer to die.

“I think about death, of course you do. You’re bound to as you get older,” he said. “I think what Mary and I should do is jump in the river together. Have a good family party then go and jump in the river. That would be an ideal end to a glorious life.”

The quip says more about his devotion to his beloved wife than any worries about ­falling off his perch anytime soon.

This is obvious whenever he talks about the girl he met in his early 20s on the top deck of a double-decker bus in Doncaster.

He recalled: “Mary was a joyous, glamorous Irish girl with red hair. She was irresistible – as much for her personality as anything else. She was the life and soul. I was certainly very attracted to her sense of humour, the way she laughed.

“We’ve been together 60 years. We’ve had our ­moments but I fell in love with her when I first saw her and I still love her.”

They have sons Andrew, Nicholas and Michael, and Mary has stood by her man through thick and thin – when he hit the bottle after his father’s death, while he battled prostate cancer in 2015 and when he had to learn to walk again after the spinal surgery in 2017 that forced him to slow down.

“I can’t continue at the pace I used to work at,” he said. “There was a point not too long ago where I was in hospital, there was this gallstone thing, and I really couldn’t write. Maybe something to do with my brain but I just couldn’t function.

“So there are signs and indications there that I’m finding it much more difficult and less enjoyable to continue ­working like I have been. But I’m not sad about that – I’ve done my bit. I’ve been lucky all my life.”

And what a glorious life it has been. Brought up on cricket and football in the Yorkshire mining town of Cudworth, near Barnsley, “Parky” started out as a journalist on regional newspapers.

He became a familiar face in the 1960s as a presenter on BBC and Granada television before his long-running BBC talk show, Parkinson, began in 1971.

Regularly pulling in more than eight million viewers every Saturday night, he has interviewed upwards of 2000 stars over the years – everyone from Hollywood icons to boxer Muhammad Ali, ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and Footie legend David Beckham. Then, last year, the tables were turned.

During an interview for Piers Morgan’s Life Stories, suppressed emotions around his father’s death from a lung disease in 1975 came tumbling out and the tough Yorkshireman broke down in tears.

That emotional interview sparked the idea for his latest book, Like Father, Like Son – A Family Story.

Written with youngest son Mike, 53, the book charts the life of Michael’s dad Jack, a Yorkshire miner Parky describes as a “raconteur and human tsunami”, and Parky’s relationship with his own kids.

He said: “I’ve written quite a bit about my father because I’ve needed to. I feel guilty about the kind of life he had, as opposed to the wonderful life I’ve had.

“He could never understand how lucky I felt, having to see what he had to do for a living, and juxtapose it with what I had and what I was doing for a living. He was never going to make old bones. He died at a time when he felt he’d had a good innings.”

He adds: “Whenever I do an interview and we start talking about living in a mining ­community, people feel sorry for me.

"They shouldn’t, they’re great places to grow up. I never felt frightened or afraid, I had great parents who looked after me and cared for me. I had a blissfully happy childhood.”

In the book, his own son Mike describes his famous dad as “forbidding and distant”.

Asked how he would describe himself as a father, Parky jokes: “Terribly generous, thoughtful to a fault!”

But he turns serious as he admits: “There isn’t a successful person who’s worked as long as I have who can turn around and say, ‘I have devoted myself to my family’.

“That’s nonsense, absolute nonsense. There has to be in someone like that, a certain drive, an ambition, an ever-running motor which is very difficult to switch off. I’m 85 and I keep thinking, ‘Why the hell aren’t I retired?’”

He adds: “I realise how lucky I am to have a talented son. I’ve got two boys who are equally as talented in their own different ways.

"And we’re still family. We all live within three or four miles of one ­another. I think to myself, ‘We must have done something right’.

“Of course, now we are all terrified of this virus and we’re very careful about it. It’s a dreadful time. But we’ll survive. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again. There’s nothing to do except be careful and await your destiny.

"I’m quite good by myself – I think people who write are. I quite enjoy being separated and lonely. Mary finds it more difficult. She’s more gregarious and needs company. I’m quite a ­morose fella really, so I find it OK.”

For Parky, a night in front of the telly usually involves EastEnders, sport or a good BBC drama. He also likes Netflix and used to love Coronation Street, although he admits: “It’s starting to disappoint me lately.”

After being such a huge part of the TV landscape for so many years, he now believes there is no longer a place for his journalistic interview technique on primetime TV.

“I don’t think I would fit into the present talk show regime,” he said.

“It has gone back to what it used to be. It’s all about showbiz and lots of laughs. Nothing wrong with that at all. But we were much more balanced and journalistic than that.

“Graham Norton reinvented the talk show in the sense that he didn’t actually bother doing interviews. What he did do was create a party atmosphere and everybody comes in and has a ball, which is a good idea too.

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