All I can do is offer a sketch of events, which demonstrated how a programme idea developed into a crisis, with questions being asked in parliament, threats being made about how the BBC is funded, and a proposed shut-down of the entire network by a strike of journalists. At the hub was the phrase ‘trivialisation of the airwaves’, which, according to some, was what would happen if my show replaced
Tonight
. It was first used by the Vice-Chairman of the Governors, Mark Bonham-Carter, at a board meeting in February 1979. He said that the idea of using me as a sort of ‘English Jack Paar’ would be a mistake, a move towards ‘trivialisation’. The fact that Jack Paar had retired seventeen years earlier, to be replaced by Johnny Carson, appears to have escaped the attention of the vice-chairman of the governing body of the largest broadcasting organisation in the world.
Ian Trethowan said that
Parkinson
commanded a sizeable audience and it was time for a change, given the fact that current affairs had not worked satisfactorily in his experience of more than ten years. The BBC Chapel of the NUJ threatened a walk out. Vincent Hanna, a former colleague on
The Sunday Times
, used his political contacts to stir up trouble in parliament. That doughty defender of the working class, Dennis Skinner, asked the Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees: ‘Does my right honourable friend agree that it would be a good idea if he met the Director General again and urgently told him that it is not only members of parliament, but many millions of people outside who are concerned about the removal of certain current affairs programmes and their replacement by chat shows?’
With – if we are to believe Dennis Skinner – the nation in fear and trembling, the
Observer
reported:‘BBCtelevision current affairs men are threatening to resign over plans to drop the
Tonight
programme in favour of a nightly chat show hosted by Michael Parkinson. The proposal, already agreed in principle by the Board of Governors, has provoked one of the bitterest BBC storms in recent times. Mr Alasdair Milne, Managing Director of BBC television, is trying to diffuse the revolt.’ The
Observer
issued a dire warning:‘Everyone will expect endless interviews with Peter Ustinov and that’s not what current affairs are about.’
Four days later the BBC Governors met for a crunch meeting. Immediately prior to their gathering yet another layer of bureaucracy met to have its say. This was the Television Programme Policy Committee, which included one of my fiercest critics, Lady Faulkner, widow of the former Northern Ireland prime minister Brian Faulkner. The minutes of the meeting record: ‘Lady Faulkner hoped that Michael Parkinson could be “broken in” as a serious interviewer.’ At the time of this fatuous utterance I had been interviewing people for nearly thirty years, which was probably the length of time Lady Faulkner had not been watching television.
According to the minutes, this observation brought a reply from the Director General: ‘He felt it was Michael Parkinson’s present image that had disturbed Governors and that they would not have objected if they had been told that Robin Day would be fronting the new programme. But Robin Day would not be able to draw in the extra millions that were the object of the exercise – people who did not normally watch current affairs.’
Bill Cotton said I was a journalist and reporter with substantial current-affairs experience and that, although my present brief was with light entertainment, it did not mean I was typecast.
A few hours later the entire matter was discussed by the Board of Governors. Mark Bonham-Carter said he was not impressed by Bill Cotton’s presentation. He warned that if the new programme went ahead and came to grief, the Board would not treat the matter lightly. He said he meant ‘no disrespect’ to those involved; a solecism fit to serve as an epitaph for the whole absurd débâcle.
While all this was whistling around our heads we went on producing shows with such ‘trivial’ guests as Luciano Pavarotti, Henry Kissinger, André Previn, John Mortimer, Bernard Levin, Christian Barnard and Denis Healey.
The Governors chucked us a bone, a chance to do two shows a week, Wednesday as well as Saturday. I seriously thought about leaving. It had been a demoralising experience for all of us on the show and, in the end, we felt betrayed by a mixture of weak management and clueless governance. The extra show was not a good idea. It simply meant we were booking two headline shows a week instead of one, which often meant a dilution of the Saturday line-up. Moreover, because the BBC was short of studio space, we had to do the mid-week show at Guy’s Hospital.
This establishment included a small but attractive theatre which, according to legend, had been built by mistake. The story was a famous surgeon who had operated at the hospital bequeathed a theatre in his name whereupon they built not an operating theatre, as the surgeon intended, but one to accommodate thespians and strolling players. It seemed to me that the confusion of its creation made it the perfect venue for our extra show.
For a long time I felt resentment at the way we had been treated but, at the same time, I was buoyed by the notion that, if the BBC didn’t want us, there were other options. During the débâcle I had been approached by an Australian businessman, Colin McLennan, who sold some of the early shows to ABC Television in Australia, where they had done well. He thought it might be a good idea if I went to Sydney and did a series of shows interviewing prominent Australians for the ABC. I didn’t have to think twice. I had always wanted to go to Australia, particularly if someone else was paying the fare.
I set off anticipating a one-off visit to a remote haven where I might lick my wounds. I soon discovered Australia was no place to feel sorry for yourself, particularly if you happened to be a Pom. But its optimism and enthusiasm recharged me. I fell in love with Oz and its people. Thirty years on it is my second home.
33
LEARNING MY ABC
While the BBC debated whether or not cultural life as we knew it in Britain in the 1970s would be destroyed by a talk show, an entrepreneur was busy buying up the back catalogue and selling it to Australia. We had long thought that the galaxy of stars on offer would make the show attractive to buyers overseas but the BBC commercial arm of the time thought otherwise. When approached by an American businessman, Michael Baumohl, the man in charge of selling the BBC abroad said he doubted if an English talk show would have an international appeal. When it was pointed out to him that James Cagney, Fred Astaire, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Luciano Pavarotti and the rest were great international stars with massive box-office appeal, particularly in rich and expanding English-speaking markets such as Australia, the man from the BBC offered the thought that maybe the Aussies would have difficulty understanding my accent. Mr Baumohl persisted in doing the deal anyway, and Colin McLennan, the Australian entrepreneur who had identified the market, flogged the shows to Australia, where the natives had so much difficulty understanding me that, over the years, they bought the entire
Parkinson
catalogue, including more than a hundred shows we recorded in Australia.
The ABC, the Australian equivalent of the BBC but without the money, took the first series of twelve shows and they proved so successful they agreed with Colin McLennan’s suggestion to bring me to Oz to record a series with Australian guests. I flew out to meet Colin in Singapore ahead of landing in Australia.
In those days the 747s had the bar on the upper deck and a small bedroom alongside, which is where I lay my head before arriving in Singapore. I had been asleep for no more than an hour when I developed an itch on my chest and belly. Looking down I saw I was being invaded by a swarm of nipping creatures, which turned out to be bed bugs. I called the hostess who found a first-aid kit and smeared me with a yellow antiseptic cream, which looked delightful when matched with my pink silk shirt with the Concorde collar, which, I assumed, would knock ’em dead in Oz.
There was mild panic among the staff because, not only was I a designated VIP, but they also knew I was a journalist, who might sell his story of the calamity. I was whisked off the plane at Singapore and found myself in the back of a white Rolls-Royce with a pleasant young man who said he was PR for the airline. He wanted to offer profuse apologies and told me a story about the bed linen having been infected in some foreign laundry and he hoped I would understand and not make too much of it, particularly as he had arranged with the hotel to pick up the bill for my stay and pay for everything, and he meant everything, and, by the way, sir, we asked the hotel to provide you with a VIP reception reserved only for very famous people, and we hope you will be pleased.
At this precise moment, we turned off the road into the driveway to the hotel across which was hung a huge banner with the message: ‘WELCOME NORMAN PARKINSON’.
I arrived in Australia not knowing what to expect. ‘G’day, Parko,’ said the immigration man. That was the first time I heard the antipodean version of my nickname. As we drove into Sydney and I looked about me, I was amazed by the quality of the light. Every building was clearly etched, its contours diamond bright and clean cut against the azure blue sky. In my mind I contrasted it with the landscape I grew up in, the Lowry churches and factories diffused with the sky in a soft blur. On television the newscasters wore vivid, bright colours, the women had American teeth, and everyone glowed with exercise and well-being.
Alan Whicker once told me that the quickest way to come to terms with a strange land was to watch telly and listen to the phone-ins for a couple of days. I took the advice of the master and discovered a land a lot more complex and sophisticated than I had imagined, yet at the same time a country with growing pains, sometimes gawky, lacking in self-confidence. The Australia of the seventies was not the assured, self-reliant, wealthy nation of today.
Listening to the phone-ins was also a way of finding out what Aussies made of a Pom coming out to show them how to do interviews, which was the way my trip was perceived by one or two of the phone-in hosts, who were generally scathing about the notion. One called me a carpetbagger, another a ratbag, and yet the general feeling was typically Aussie. ‘Give the Pom a fair go,’ was how they summed it up.
I was installed in the Sebel Townhouse, an establishment that the
Sydney Morning Herald
once described as: ‘a place where the best stories are even now unpublishable and people still joke about selling the carpets for their cocaine content’. It was even better summed up by another regular guest, Billy Connolly, when he said: ‘It is not the best hotel in terms of rooms, or food, or ambience or anything you get a star for. What makes it unique is it’s the only place I’ve stayed in where you never hear anyone say: “Oh, you can’t do that sir.”’
I stayed there for so long they named a room after me. They offered it to Michael Aspel when he visited Sydney. He said he would only take it at a large discount. They pulled the hotel down a couple of years ago to make room for apartments. It should have had a preservation order slapped on it. Where else in the world could you sit in the bar in the company of the aforesaid Billy Connolly, Elton John, Marc Bolan, Warren Mitchell, George Best and David Frost, as happened one night?
The next morning I went to breakfast and sitting in the far corner of the room was Bob Dylan. Doing the job I do I am not in the habit of autograph-hunting, but this was someone I wanted to meet because he didn’t do talk shows and it might be my only chance. So I went across and bade him good morning. He looked up and grunted. Whereupon I launched into my overture to the autograph request, which included telling him how much I admired his talent as a musician, singer, composer and general all-round special human being. All this I said to the top of his head and, when I had finished, he looked up and drawled, ‘Two eggs sunny side up and orange juice.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ I said.
We set up in Colin McLennan’s office with two experienced journalists, Chris Greenwood and his wife Barbara Toner, making up the production team. Barbara was an Aussie, Chris had worked in the country on television talk programmes, and together they were a formidable package. Barbara, who later went on to win a deserved reputation as a novelist, had a sharp and decisive mind and a tongue to go with it. She didn’t do polite conversation, nor did she suffer fools at all.
We were once at dinner in Melbourne with an exceedingly pompous and boring television executive, soft-soaping him for a deal we were making, when Barbara struck, having accidentally spilled salt on the table.
‘Throw some over your shoulder and make a wish,’ said the boring producer.
Barbara closed her eyes and did as he said. When she opened her eyes she said, ‘It didn’t work.’
‘How do you know?’ asked the man.
‘You’re still here,’ said Barbara.
We needed to make a quick impact because our first run was limited to seven shows. We identified three Australians whose appearance on the show would be regarded as masterstrokes. They were Kerry Packer, Sir Don Bradman and Bob Hawke. Hawke, later to be prime minster, was then the head of the Australian Labour Movement.
Bradman was
the
prize. Along with Sinatra, he was the man I most wanted to interview. I wrote him a letter to which he replied saying that if ever I came to Adelaide, where he lived, he would shout me lunch, but he really didn’t like being interviewed, and would therefore politely have to decline our request. News that Don Bradman had turned us down was used by some journalists to suggest I was angry at the rebuff and couldn’t understand why he had said no. What I had said was that I was disappointed and why should I not be? I pointed out that Bradman was the greatest batsman the game had ever produced, that he was the genius against which every other player would be judged and that it was a pity he didn’t give the public a chance to hear his story from his own lips. I offered the somewhat flamboyant thought that in musical terms it was a bit like Mozart saying ‘no comment’ when asked about his contribution to music.