Michael Parkinson was the most successful of the British chat show hosts who proliferated in the 1970s and earned a lasting reputation as a viewers’ favorite. He subsequently exploited his role in a variety of other television series.

A Yorkshireman to the core, Michael Parkinson started out as a newspaper journalist but later moved to Granada Television, where he worked on current affairs programs, and then to the BBC, where he joined the 24 Hours team and also indulged his enduring love of sport, producing sports documentaries for London Weekend Television.

Priding himself on his Yorkshireman’s “gift of the gab,” he made his debut as a chat show host with his own Parkinson show in 1971. Broadcast every Saturday night for the next 11 years, the show became an institution and set the standard for all other television chat show hosts to meet. Relaxed, well groomed, and attentive to his guests’ feelings, Parkinson nonetheless proved adept at getting the best out of the celebrities who were persuaded to come on the show, without causing offense. The questions he asked were often innocuous and served as invitations to the guest to assume the central role. The best interviews were with those who had a tale to tell and the confidence to tell it without much prodding from the host; Parkinson was sensible enough not to interrupt unless it was absolutely necessary. At the top of the list of dynamic guests Parkinson interviewed were Dr. Jacob Bronowski, Diana Rigg, Shirley MacLaine, the muppet Miss Piggy, Dame Edith Evans, the inimitable raconteur Peter Ustinov, comedian Billy Connolly, and boxer Mohammad Ali, who responded magnificently to the geniality and flattery that the devoted Parkinson lavished on him.

If Parkinson took a personal dislike to a guest, he tried not to let it show (though viewers were quick to detect any animosity). Among those he later confessed to finding most difficult were comedian Kenneth Williams, who appeared a total of eight times on the show and was quick to use Parkinson as a verbal punching bag, and Rod Hull’s Emu, the ventriloquist-dummy bird who wrestled an unusually disheveled Parkinson to the floor to the delight of the audience and the barely concealed fury of the host himself.

After the long run of Parkinson came to an end in the early 1980s, after 361 shows and 1,050 guests, Parkinson worked for a time as a chat show host on Australian television, then busied himself with helping to set up the troubled TV-AM organization in the United Kingdom in 1983. After the collapse of TV-AM, he returned to the roles of sportswriter, radio presenter, and host of a range of popular television shows, ranging from quizzes to the antiques program Going for a Song. In 1998 he revised his role as host of Parkinson, attracting return visits by many of the guests he had last interviewed in the 1970s and 1980s. The show continues to air Saturday nights at 10:30 on BBC 1.