I even forgave her when she stared at my head and said, ‘Can I ask you a deeply personal question?’
‘Of course,’ I said, besotted.
‘Is that a toupee?’ she asked.
At the end of the show I was having a drink with Frank Oz, who created Miss Piggy, and I mentioned to him the curious business of believing in the Pig. Mr Oz asked me to explain.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘for a time out there I was having a serious conversation with a pig.’
‘So?’ he said.
‘Well, look at it another way, for a time out there I was actually romancing a piece of cloth.’
‘That’s bad,’ he said. ‘But even worse – and I want you to think seriously about this – is that for twenty minutes out there you were making love to my right hand.’
I was never in danger of falling in love with the Emu. I didn’t like the creature but we booked the act because we thought it might be an event. It was certainly that. At the end of his attack on me I was shoeless, jacketless and without a shred of dignity, scrabbling round the studio floor. Ever since I have been reminded of the catastrophe on a fairly regular basis.
Rod and the Emu were the first guests on the show and we were rid of them before bringing on Anna and Billy. However, at the end of the show, Rod and the Emu made an unscheduled return with the intent of more havoc. I told them, in no uncertain terms, to go forth and multiply. They had a look at Anna but decided not to attack her because the violence isn’t funny when directed against a woman.
It was then that Rod made the biggest mistake of his professional life. He moved menacingly towards Billy Connolly. Now Mr Connolly is not a man to deal sympathetically with an assault by another man’s alter ego disguised as an emu. He grabbed the bird by the neck and, talking to the beak, said, ‘I tell you what, Emu, you peck me and I’ll break your neck and his bloody arm.’
After Rod had died and his son revived the act, we were approached to see if the Emu could make a return to the show. We said only if it could sit next to Meg Ryan.
With some disasters, like the Emu, it is easy to analyse cause and effect. With Meg Ryan I still can’t work out what exactly went wrong. She was promoting a film called
In the Cut
, which I had seen and didn’t much like. However, being an erotic thriller, it raised some interesting questions, such as what had attracted ‘America’s sweetheart’ to such a film. There were ominous signs when I visited her dressing room to say hello. We had never met before, but I had admired her films, including
When Harry Met Sally
, and was genuinely looking forward to interviewing her for the first time. She was with an entourage of publicity people but there appeared to be a certain
froideur
between them.
Ryan was on with Trinny and Susannah and sat behind the set while the girls chatted away about some new show they were doing on what clothes tell us about people, power dressing and all that. They did a good spot and certainly raised enough interesting points for a following guest, particularly a woman, to pick up on.
When we first designed the set we built a cosy sitting room at the back where waiting guests could see and hear what was happening in the studio before they went on. This was a way of furthering our ambition to let the show be as conversational as possible. When I met Meg and looked into those wonderful blue eyes I decided to settle her with a few questions about what Trinny and Susannah had been saying.
She seemed surprised, as if she had been beamed into the show from another universe. Eventually she said to the girls, ‘Oh, did you just do a fashion item?’
I knew in that moment I was not going to make friends with Meg.
She later claimed I talked down to her in an aggressive manner. Her spokesman said I would not have been as robust with a male interviewee. The fact is she was uncooperative from the start. One reviewer said she ‘glided from slight frostiness to naked hostility via snooty disdain’.
There comes a point in an interview where it serves no purpose to continue. The only question left is why did you bother turning up and then not trying. She had stated she had worked as a journalist for a short time. I told her she obviously didn’t like being interviewed, that her demeanour and body language suggested she wanted no part of our show and, that being the case and she having been a journalist, if she was in my shoes, what would she do?
‘Wrap it up,’ she said, which was the only sensible quote I got from her all night.
In many ways the on-screen relationship between host and guest is one aspect of the interview you cannot account for or, more importantly, anticipate. You can prepare for someone being drunk, nervous or unwell but you cannot legislate for that moment when the guest walks on and you sense the antipathy. It doesn’t happen often and it has nothing to do with personal prejudice. I have interviewed many people I imagined I didn’t like but had never met and, more often than not, having interviewed them, completely changed my mind.
Simon Cowell was the paramount example. I didn’t like what he stood for in the music industry. I thought he promoted mediocrity through the kind of so-called reality shows for which I have total and utter contempt. That opinion still holds firm and yet, when I interviewed him, I was impressed by his candour, his ability to laugh at himself, and his great charm. When he confessed to me he didn’t like music, I felt like taking him home and adopting him.
On the other hand, you can really admire someone, and long to meet them, only to be disappointed when you do. My first meeting with Helen Mirren was like that. I enjoyed her as an actress and thought she was a beguiling woman, an intriguing blend of intelligence and sex appeal. When she first came on the show she wore a revealing dress and carried an ostrich feather. This might have accounted for a clumsy line of questioning about whether or not her physical attributes stood in the way of her being recognised as a genuine actor. Ms Mirren bridled and wondered if I was asking if breasts prevented her from being taken seriously. I was wrong-footed and blundered on to a point where I could feel her hostility. We didn’t meet again until many years later, and we recalled that first meeting. Helen said she thought I behaved like a complete ass and I couldn’t disagree.
Kenneth Williams was someone I didn’t like before I met him, and having met him for the first time found no need to change my mind. The feeling was mutual. In his published diaries Williams records that in December 1971 he was asked to appear on a show I was doing for ITV. ‘I said certainly not. North Country nit,’ he wrote. In 1974, having already appeared on the show three times, he tells in his diary that he ‘loathes’ me. By 1981, having appeared on the show more times than anyone else apart from Spike Milligan and Billy Connolly, he thinks I am ‘very likeable and patient’. When he appeared with me on
Desert Island Discs
he wrote: ‘I get along fine with Michael Parkinson ’cos he’s direct and honest and lets you become uninhibited.’
For my part, I went from disliking him to understanding him, or at least recognising those insecurities that bedevilled his personality. He was capable of being rude, cruel and arrogant. His saving grace was he could be incredibly funny and I treasure some of the moments he created on the show.
My favourite is his account of touring with Dame Edith Evans and fetching up in a seedy hotel in the north country where, after the show, Dame Edith asked an old and doddering waiter for a drop of sherry. As the waiter bent over to pour the drink he broke wind in spectacular fashion. Dame Edith wrinkled her nose in distaste and said in that wonderful voice, ‘This place has gone off terribly.’ Performed with Kenneth’s wonderful imitations, the anecdote becomes a classic comedy vignette.
Our relationship was professional and distant, except for the time I was working in Australia and decided to bring him over for a couple of shows. When it was announced he was in Sydney I was called by Sir James Hardy, winemaker and yachtie, who told me Lady Hardy was Kenneth’s greatest fan and would be honoured to meet him. Would I like to bring Kenneth and Marti Caine, who was also in town, on to his boat for a trip round the harbour? He asked if I would explain to my guests that his boat was not a gin palace, but a yacht that had raced in the Sydney to Hobart and therefore the guests would need to dress accordingly. I explained this to Marti and Kenneth who said they understood.
Next morning when I called to pick them up Marti was wearing killer heels and Kenneth looked like a bank manager about to board the 7.30 from Surbiton to the City. He wore a belted raincoat, sensible suit and brogues. The crew, who rowed in to collect us, were as amused at their passengers as Kenneth and Marti were confused by the sight of a racing yacht. It was not what they had imagined, particularly Kenneth who looked around for somewhere to sit and ended up perching on the side of the boat like a man who has decided he was not stopping for too long.
He was discovered thus by Lady Hardy who, as she went to greet him, started telling him how much she admired his talent and had looked forward to this meeting.
He cut across her welcome. ‘It’s all very well but what about my backside?’ he asked.
This was not what Lady Hardy was expecting.
‘You see, missus, I’ve got terrible piles and if I sit on damp wood like you’ve got here on this boat, then they play up something awful. I’ve always had trouble with my bum, you know. I’ve had the finest people in Harley Street up my bum, you know. You can’t imagine the work that’s been done up there.’
He was now on a comedy monologue and unstoppable.
Lady Hardy had blanched at being thus harangued and shortly disappeared down below where she no doubt took to her hammock.
Kenneth wrote in his diary that while on board the yacht he reflected on his reasons for coming to Oz. ‘From the time I boarded the aircraft for this trip there has been a feeling of unreality: the continual question “what on earth am I doing?”’ Kenneth Williams in Australia would have made a marvellous television documentary. I think it fair to say that at the end of his first visit neither he nor Australia quite knew what to make of each other.
The only time I ever saw Kenneth Williams lost for words was when we put him in the studio next to Jimmy Reid. Reid was a trade union leader who, in the seventies, led the sit-in at a Glasgow shipyard threatened with closure. His eloquence and intelligence made him a national figure. Previously, I had interviewed Kenneth on a show with Sir John Betjeman and Maggie Smith, but what started out as a celebration of Betjeman’s talent ended in a row with Kenneth after a diatribe about the political unrest in the country. I told him that, when he started criticising working men such as miners and dockers, he didn’t know what he was talking about. I accused him of talking crap. He said he had never been so insulted in all his life. A short time after, we booked Jimmy Reid on the show and asked Kenneth if he would like to debate the state of the nation with him. He agreed and we brought them together at the television centre for a very different kind of
Parkinson
show.
Before the interview we showed them the studio, the walk-on and then sat them down for a sound check. In such a situation you ask a daft question just so the sound man can get a proper level. The cliché question is: ‘What did you have for breakfast?’
Kenneth said he didn’t want to discuss breakfast, he would rather recite poetry. It seemed obvious to me this was a deliberate attempt to upstage Jimmy Reid, to demonstrate that he was now operating in Williams’s world and might be discomfited. At the end of the poem, beautifully delivered, Kenneth looked at Jimmy in a challenging manner.
Jimmy said, ‘That was Yeats, wasn’t it?’
Kenneth looked surprised but nodded in agreement.
I asked Jimmy what he had for breakfast.
He said he would like to perform a poem. He did so in a clear, confident voice and looked towards Kenneth.
Williams said, ‘I’ve never heard that before. Who wrote it?’
Jimmy Reid said, ‘I did.’
After the programme Paul Fox called Richard Drewett and told him to keep the format free from the kind of political debate he had just seen. This did not please Kenneth. He wrote in his diary: ‘It certainly shows the BBC in its mediocre light. Bland, bland, bland and
Blankety Blank
.’
I thought Paul’s instinct was right, although it was worth a try. If we had shown the rehearsal rather than the show, it would have been much better. Not that Kenneth would have welcomed it.
Our last meeting was in June 1987, when I was hosting
Give Us A Clue
. Kenneth was a regular and welcome guest and found, in performing charades, the perfect vehicle for showing off. He wrote in his diary: ‘To Teddington. My team on
Give Us A Clue
was Simon Williams and Martin Jarvis. No show could be more enjoyable ’cos all the people there are delightful to be with. Michael Parkinson asked me (as he always does) “What are you working at?” and I said, “Fuck all.”’
Ten months later he died, aged sixty-two and irreplaceable.
26
LIGHTING UP FOR BETTE DAVIS
When I was sitting in the back row of the Rock Cinema in Cudworth watching my Hollywood heroes, I never imagined that one day I would say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my next guest is Fred Astaire . . . James Cagney . . . John Wayne . . . James Stewart . . . Lauren Bacall’ and see them walking down the stairs towards me.
How could I have dared believe while watching Bette Davis and Paul Henreid play that famous and romantic last scene from
Now, Voyager
that one day I would play the Henreid part opposite Davis. I was greatly affected by the movie when I first saw it, particularly the moment where the romantic theme soared in the background as the lovers parted, and Henreid pulled off his marvellous trick with the cigarettes when he put two in his mouth and lit them, handing one to Davis, creating the definitive gesture of shared intimacy for my generation.