Alan Parker, the director of
Midnight Express
and
Birdy
, was my first guest and I offered him the chance to criticise the shortcomings of the British film industry, an invitation he was delighted to accept. The media cautiously accepted that, although my style was different, it wasn’t likely to cause an outbreak of hostilities in the Balkans.
Bruce Oldfield, the dress designer, was my next guest, and I asked him if he thought designing frocks was a proper job for a man. It was a deliberately provocative question, designed to wrong foot Bruce and perhaps annoy him. It didn’t upset Bruce half as much as it did some critics, including the BBC Review Board, which criticised me for being too obtrusive and ‘not nearly interested enough in the music’.
This last observation was particularly witless, given I had introduced music back into the interview and had done so with a purpose. If Plomley had seen the programme as a chat with music, I very much saw it as a chance to explore exactly what music meant and what part it played in the castaway’s experience, to analyse the soundtrack of their lives, if you like.
But if the Review Board criticism was barmy, what followed was even more stupid and incomprehensible. This time it was our old friends on the BBC Board of Management who, at their meeting in 1986, voiced concern that ‘all the guests who had so far appeared on the programme under Michael Parkinson’s chairmanship had indeed been born in Yorkshire’. This was offered to substantiate their opinion that the show was suffering a ‘Yorkshire bias in the choice of castaways’. In fact, of the six guests up to that point, Alan Parker came from Islington, Nigel Kennedy was born in Brighton, Bruce Oldfield in London, Dennis Taylor in Northern Ireland and Roy Hattersley in Derbyshire. Only Maureen Lipman was guilty of having been born in Yorkshire, although that was the last thing on our minds when we booked them.
With this latest ludicrous episode added to what had gone on in my last days at the TV Centre, I could be forgiven for believing there was a plot to scupper my career at the BBC, or that the entire organisation was run by madmen. In fact, what was really happening was a rearguard action of the broadcasting establishment against what it perceived as the desecration of a hallowed institution. Fortunately, the public didn’t see it that way. The ratings climbed. David Hatch – no lover of the establishment himself – was totally supportive. He told the critics as far as he was concerned there were not enough Yorkshire-born people on
Desert Island Discs
and he looked forward to hearing many more. Indeed, he said his ambition was eventually to make it compulsory that everyone working on Radio 4 was born in Yorkshire.
Mr Hatch himself was born in Yorkshire, and liked a laugh.
My stint lasted nearly one hundred shows and two years and I left of my own accord. To be frank, I never intended a long run. I knew there would be resistance to my appointment and planned to see that die down, make a point and then move on. I certainly didn’t want to spend the rest of my life hosting a parlour game, which is what, in fact, it is.
I was having too much fun at the time hosting another parlour game,
Give Us A Clue
. Of all the many television shows I have done, aside from the talk show, this was among the most enjoyable. Lionel Blair and Una Stubbs, later followed by Lisa Goddard, were not only a delight to work with but also the most entertaining and agreeable companions. I did a couple of turkeys as well.
Parky
was a feeble attempt at a mixture of satire and talk and I’m not sure, even now, what
All Star Secrets
and
The Help Squad
were about, although
Secrets
did involve one great comedy moment featuring Bernard Manning and a feisty member of the public.
After chatting to Bernard I invited questions from the audience whereupon one formidable-looking lady stood up and denounced Bernard in vigorous fashion. She told him he was not only a male chauvinist pig, but a bully, a racist and, generally speaking, a disgrace to civilisation and mankind. At the end of her tirade she stood her ground, looking challengingly at Manning, awaiting a response.
I feared the worst. Instead, Bernard looked at her admiringly and, taking in her ample figure, said, ‘By gum, lass, but I’ll bet you’ve crushed some grass in your time.’
Sir Paul Fox, my mentor at the BBC, now boss at Yorkshire Television, asked me to do a series of one-man shows for his company. When he was in charge at the BBC, Paul had been a particular fan of the longer interviews with such people as Muhammad Ali, Professor Jacob Bronowski and Fred Astaire. We obliged with Richard Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, Robbie Coltrane, Adam Faith, Tom Jones, Billy Connolly, Terence Stamp and many more, including Elton John.
The Elton John interview was something of an event because we had an exclusive with him at what might have been the lowest point in his life. He had recently undergone throat surgery, which made his future uncertain, he was living apart from his wife Renate – a wedding greeted with much mirthful cynicism by the media – and was under constant siege from the tabloids. The
Sun
ran a sequence of stories accusing him of soliciting and drugging rent boys as well as having his dogs’ barks silenced because they were disturbing his sleep. All lies.
I called him to see if he would come on the show and talk about his troubles. He agreed and then, just before the show, cried off, saying he was too ill. I called once more and he agreed to try again. This time he turned up, wearing a tracksuit and baseball cap and with a heavy, dark stubble, looking more like a down and out than a rock star.
I had known Elton for many years. We used to go to watch Watford together when he was chairman of the club. I would sit next to him while rival fans abused him about being ‘queer’ and ‘taking it up the rear’ and other such pleasantries, and I would marvel at his fortitude and good humour in the face of the most appalling provocation. But this was a different Elton, almost a defeated man. When he talked about his marriage to Renate he said they were having a trial separation. A year later they divorced.
Mary and I had been guests at the wedding in Australia in a pretty church on a hill overlooking Rushcutters’ Bay. I think we might have been the only couple present who were not stoned. I remember that an insect, crawling up one of the stone pillars in the church, attracted an inordinate amount of attention from guests who gazed in awe at the creature’s progress, no doubt seeing a golden snake gliding across a rainbow, or some similar hallucination. The fans held their boogie boxes blaring out Elton’s greatest hits at the open windows as the organ played the wedding march. I commissioned a painting, by Australian naive artist Narelle Wildman, of the wedding party outside the church, and gave it to the couple as a wedding present. I wonder who has it now?
When I see Elton nowadays, happy in his relationship with David, secure in his position as one of the giants of rock’n’roll, I sometimes recall that hunched and pained figure I interviewed in Leeds and marvel at the strength and self-deprecating humour that saw him through the crisis to his present state of prosperity and content.
He sued the
Sun
and won. The paper published a full front page apology and reportedly paid Elton a record one-million-pound settlement. At the end of the show Elton suggested he should perform ‘Don’t let the sun go down on me’.
In the fifteen years between leaving TV-am and returning with the talk show to the BBC, I practised the Michael Caine theory of employment. This involves accepting anything legal that is offered in the certain knowledge that a lot of it will be forgettable, even risible, but also understanding that every time you go before a camera or a microphone you learn something about your craft.
I did a morning show for LBC Radio, a sports programme for Radio 5 Live, took over from Keith Waterhouse as a columnist on the
Daily Mirror
, returned to writing about sport as a columnist for the
Daily Telegraph
, worked with the enchanting Mariella Frostrup and Penny Smith on
Going For A Song
, commenced a twelve-year stint on
Parkinson’s Sunday Supplement
on Radio 2 where, with producer Anthony Cherry, we created a weekly haven for fans of the Great American Songbook.
Tim Rice and I developed a publishing company called Pavilion and indulged our passion for books about cricket. We also published the work of a then fairly unknown artist called Jack Vettriano. Tim bought one or two of his paintings for a song. I passed on the chance. Nowadays it will cost you upwards of £50,000 for one of Jack’s paintings.
It was in this busy period that I made my debut as an actor. I was sent the script of a television play called
Ghostwatch
by Stephen Volk. I was to play the part of the host of the eponymous television show about the supernatural, which, one awful night, was invaded by a malignant spirit. The play attracted an audience of more than eight million but sadly also made news headlines when a young man committed suicide after watching the programme. His family claimed he had been affected by what he had seen on television and the consequence was the play was never repeated until very recently when it appeared as a DVD.
Much to my amazement and delight I was nominated for a BAFTA. It wasn’t exactly my acting debut. Previously I had appeared in
Brookside
and in
Madhouse
, a horror film starring Vincent Price, which involved him setting fire to himself in a TV studio as I interviewed him. Don’t ask why because I never did work it out.
Vincent was a joy to work with, an urbane man with a deep knowledge of art and a great lover of racehorses. When he was making
Dr Phibes
at Bray Studios he would take his lunch alone, sitting by the River Thames wearing his hideous make-up.When passing pleasure boats full of eager tourists were informed by their guide that these were the studios where many horror movies were made,Vincent would appear on the bank and, taking a sandwich from his picnic box, he would shove it slowly into a hole at the side of his throat.
Richard Curtis gave me a part in
Love Actually
. I had to interview Bill Nighy, playing a mad rock’n’roller with shameless exhibitionist tendencies. These included exposing himself to me during the interview. The audience just saw his back and, of course, he didn’t really show me his willy but there were those who believed he did. For some time I was approached at social gatherings by attractive young ladies who would ask me what the gorgeous Mr Nighy was like to work with and would then ask, ‘But what is he really like?’ in that nudge-nudge-wink-wink kind of way. After a while I stopped trying to explain to them that filming movies is make believe, and found a one-word answer that stopped any further pursuit of the truth. ‘Frightening,’ I would say.
My most difficult co-star was a koala bear. While in Australia I was asked by Quantas to make a commercial, which required me to sit next to a koala bear and attempt to involve it in polite conversation. We started work in a mock-up of a 747 at 8 a.m. and by midday I was starting to hate my furry friend. Koalas eat eucalyptus leaves, which contain a narcotic, and therefore spend most of their lives either asleep or stoned or both. Nor are they particularly cuddly. They have long and powerful claws with which they can shred the bark from trees and cause serious damage to human tissue, as I witnessed when one turned on a model at an earlier publicity event. In addition, my koala was also a bedwetter. Whenever we awoke him for a take he would have a pee and we would have to change the seat covers.
The entire business became a tedious farce, made worse by the attempts of the trainer to devise ways of getting the creature to cooperate. His best suggestion was that just before we went for a take he would prod the koala with a stick, hard enough to wake it up. I pointed out the flaw in the scheme. The first person it would see after being so rudely aroused from its slumbers would be me, and I had already seen what damage koalas could cause when angered.
Eventually, at about six at night, with the set stinking of pee and everyone frazzled, except the koala, we had what we wanted in the can. I was sitting there, thinking this was not what I had in mind when, all those years ago, I decided I wanted to be a film star, when a woman with a tape measure leaned across me and started measuring the koala’s inside leg.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Measuring him for a pair of trousers, of course,’ she said rattily, as if I was stupid.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because I’m making him a suit, that’s why,’ she said, as if talking to an imbecile.
‘I don’t want to appear thick,’ I said, ‘but I must ask. Why are you making him a suit?’
‘Because tomorrow he’s off on a personal tour to Japan,’ she said. She then added, in a whisper, so the koala couldn’t hear, ‘He’ll feel a bit strange. It’s his first time abroad.’
What gave me the greatest satisfaction during this period was getting back to full time sports journalism. I wrote a column for the
Daily Telegraph
sports pages, then edited by David Welch. It was David who invented the idea of the sports supplement and, with the encouragement of the paper’s editor, Max Hastings, assembled a group of journalists of matchless talent, humour and style. It was a good time to work for the
Telegraph
and my ten or more years there were the happiest and most fulfilling of all my years in writing about sport.
I revived the style I had developed at
The Sunday Times
twenty or more years before, recalling the heroes of my youth including Skinner Normanton, the hard man of Barnsley FC, whose deeds stirred admiration as far afield as Malaysia, where I was asked to attend the annual dinner of the Kuala Lumpur Skinner Normanton Appreciation Society. I was writing about a lost and nostalgic world and comparing it with the super smooth multi-million pound industry soccer was becoming, and it struck a chord.