Interview

Sir Michael Love, luck PARKINSON & impossible

Atsadness 84, chat show king Sir Michael Parkinson is flying back to his second home, Australia, for a stage show in which his son, Mike, turns the tables to interview him. Here both Michaels open up to Juliet Rieden about the towering highs and dark lows of a very lucky life.

ir Michael Parkinson retired to , even doesn’t play golf, he doesn’t potter from his TV interviewer’s W.H. Auden, provided compulsory around in sheds. His work’s been his chair 12 years ago, but he viewing for at least two generations hobby; his hobby’s been his work. As is still considered beyond and possibly three. we get older, as we get on, if you’re compare. Today’s youth Parky posed some 80,000 questions lucky enough to have a situation Sprobably have no clue what the magic to more than 2000 stars in his stellar where you enjoy what you do, why on of “Parky” was all about, but one career and the footage of those chats earth would you want to give it up?” mention of his name and a wave of is pure gold, a time capsule of social glorious nostalgia washes through and entertainment history, and the Aussie at heart anyone over the age of 40. impetus for his stage show An Evening Sir Michael used to be a familiar In the UK stars hadn’t made it until with Michael Parkinson, which begins figure Down Under. Indeed, in 2011 they’d revealed their most intimate its five-city tour on October 10. It has he was honoured to deliver the stories on Parkinson, while on his been pitched as Parky’s farewell tour, Australia Day address. In his speech shows in Australia – first on the ABC but Sir Michael – who was knighted he famously recalled: “My father had then on Network 10 – the likes of Bob by the Queen in 2008 – is having none a theory that Australians were a Hawke and Kerry Packer succumbed of it. “I don’t think I ever said that,” breakaway tribe of sunburnt to the bluff Yorkshireman’s cajoling. he responds with an affronted guffaw, Yorkshiremen”. It was a great line The interviews were candid, quickly adding, “I hope to God it’s not that I think also captured the affinity Michael Parkinson’s sometimes awkward, often flirty, … it sounds too final.” Michael has always felt with his interviews were controversial, explosive and always At 84 you might think this a fair southern hemisphere second home. compulsory viewing for at least two fascinating as the most famous folk assumption, but his son Mike, who “My father likes the Australian way of generations, and he in the world, from Lauren Bacall to produces the show and interviews his life, he loves the sunshine, he likes the is still considered

Muhammad Ali, Helen Mirren and father on stage, explains. “My dad people,” says Mike. “But there’s more → IMAGES. GETTY BY HAYNES/CONTOUR NEALE beyond compare.

92 The Australian Women’s Weekly | AUGUST 2019 Interview

to it than that. He liked the fact that in that. He’s very good indeed,” says Below: Michael on set with Mary, when he went to watch the cricket Michael with a knowing chuckle. who also worked in TV. Bottom: there would be Bob Hawke sitting If this sounds a tad narcissistic, Sir The Parkinsons and their sons (from with the people and they’d be going, Michael isn’t concerned. After all Mike, left) Nicholas, Andrew and Michael. ‘G’day Bob, how are you?’. Whereas the youngest of his three sons, bears his in this country there’s all that sense of name, which can prove difficult at forelock tugging and deference.” times. “It was just a fit of terrible ego But over the past few years, serious – ‘he shall be named after me!’” jokes illness has kept Sir Michael in the UK, Mike, who hates the addition of Jr which is possibly behind the, albeit which can be erroneously added to his premature, valedictory ta-da. name to differentiate him from his In 2013 Michael was stopped in dad. “I have a terrible middle name his tracks by an aggressive prostate which I have to use on my passport cancer which he said “changed me. which is Timothy. That’s actually what It introduced the possibility I might my mother wanted to call me, so die.” Then, in an unrelated back thank goodness my father called me operation meant he had to learn to Michael. Timothy would have been newspaper. Although today walk again. “I’ve had a couple of bloody awful. Of course, it [being he tells me he thinks he illnesses which didn’t do me any good called Michael Parkinson] is irritating would have loved university, at all,” Michael tells me, “but having but it is useful sometimes if you want back then he just wanted to recovered from those I thought it’s to get into a restaurant. I do sound get out and work and he’s time to wander back, see some friends quite like him on the phone, never really stopped. “You and do some shows.” so sometimes I do a cheeky don’t have to do a university Mike used to produce his father’s thing: I phone up restaurants education to be a writer, TV show and when Parky retired in and say, ‘could I have a table a journalist, to report on 2007, the pair set up a production for Michael Parkinson?’” people; you just have to have company. They have worked on The pair is about to start an enquiring mind, that’s all, various one-man stage shows over the work on a book together and an ability to write plain years but this performance combines about John William “I’m not really English. I could do both.” father and son in what promises to be Parkinson, Sir Michael’s Top: Michael He was surrounded by graduates an intimate trip down memory lane. father, who died too young over it yet; I grieve interviewing from posh backgrounds but says it “It’s a story of his childhood, an in 1976, leaving a huge hole Bob Hawke; was his accent – and a lot greeting movie extraordinary story of a young boy in his only son’s life. A few of hard graft – that gave him his big for him still.” icon Lauren born in a mining village who went on days before our interview, Bacall in 2004. break in TV. “I got fired by the Daily to become one of the most famous I watched Michael sob Express [newspaper]. I had a row with interviewers in the world; a uncontrollably in a television them and I got a call from a man remarkable story,” says Mike, who tribute in which he was I owe my childhood to that and I owe would have killed me. Or if he didn’t I knew at the newly-formed Granada spent close to two years gathering interviewed by UK breakfast my life to Mum and Dad,” says kill me, my mother would have done. Television in . They’d just archives to then choose the clips of TV host Piers Morgan. He Michael. “Cudworth was a mining They were determined I was not to go started making [TV soap] Coronation notable interviews that punctuate the was discussing his father’s final days shoulders, in a sense, to get from village. Dad worked at Grimethorpe down the pits. They did everything Street, and he said ‘come along and show. “We went to the BBC, to ITV, and he is just as emotional when we where I came from to whatever I Colliery – a wonderful name! It’s they could to dissuade me, but I didn’t produce a program for me’. I said, to Yorkshire Television, and then to talk. “My father was the best man I achieved. It’s probably my age – I’m disappeared, the pit’s gone, it’s a car need much dissuading. ‘I can’t, I don’t know anything about

Australia. We discovered the master ever met, and even though his death getting to be an old man – but it’s that park now. My house is still there, but “My father took me down a pit producing …’ I had the time of my life. tapes at Channel 10 were in some bins was about 40-odd years ago I’m not thing about the part he played and the reason for a village being there has when I was about 14 and he took me “It was 1963, the great cultural at the back of the studios – that’s not really over it yet; I grieve for him still.” what he didn’t have as compared with disappeared, so it’s dying.” to where men were working in three revolution. Pop music, The Beatles, a lie! I employed a team of five, with The book, he admits, is a way to what I have … He was like a bloody I sense that despite his fame, success, foot height. It’s hot down there, it’s and it became the year that you had me in charge, and we looked at every reconnect with the patriarch he misses mole. He worked underground all his and a very comfortable home in a noisy, it’s terrible, awful. Coming back to have a north country accent to single existing episode. There were every day. “It will be a picture of a life and I’ve always been constantly picture-postcard village on the River home, my father said to me, ‘What do work at the BBC. That’s how 650-odd shows.” man working in the South Yorkshire aware of what he did so that I could Thames in the heart of ’s you think?’ and I said, ‘Not for a profound the social change was. Pulling this together into a coal fields as a miner from the age enjoy my life.” affluent south, Michael’s identity is thousand pounds a shift’, and he said, All the actors, all the playwrights, all sophisticated piece of theatre has been of 14 until he died aged 73 from rooted in working class Cudworth. ‘I wanted to hear you say that’. He the comedians, all the communicators a labour of love for both men. “The pneumoconiosis, a dust disease that Miner’s son “I used to go back to see who was still said, ‘if ever I see you at the pits’ gates came from up there and Granada nice thing about working with your miners get, and contrasting that with Michael was the only child of John, there, talk to the old miners who wanting a job I’ll kick your backside became a powerful force in TV. children if they are gifted, and Mike is the career that his love and his known as Jack, and his wife, Freda, knew my dad, but they just had this all the way home.’” Eventually the BBC took me on particularly gifted, is the joy of seeing inspiration allowed me. born in Cudworth in Yorkshire. “It contrast between his life and mine.” Michael left school with two O and away we went. So, I was very somebody that you made being very “I’ve started feeling guilty about wasn’t posh, it wasn’t wealthy, but it Did Michael ever yearn to follow in levels in Art and English Language lucky. I’ve been lucky all my life in good … I do now have immense pride him, about his life. I stood on his was a very good place to grow up, so SHUTTERSTOCK. IMAGES. GETTY BY HAYNES/CONTOUR NEALE PERMISSION. WITH USED AND SUPPLIED PHOTOGRAPHS FAMILY his dad’s footsteps? “No, my father and at 16 began working on the local my timing.” →

94 The Australian Women’s Weekly | AUGUST 2019 AUGUST 2019 | The Australian Women’s Weekly 95 able to get Betty Grable – he used to Left: Michael and Mike, who produces the stage show go on about that; but all the others, and interviews him. Below: Ingrid Bergman and lovely old film Michael and his father, John. stars like Lauren Bacall, he loved their involvement in my world.” But after John’s death Michael was destroyed. “My father was 73 when he died and he was a very sick man. He wasn’t a smoker or a drinker. He played sport all his life and he was a fit man. My mother lived on for 30 more years. She lived to be 96. She had more than a third of her life away from her husband. All those things you look at, you say that’s not right, that’s unfair.” Michael watched his father wither away and the sight of his lifeless body taken away by “two guys in a plastic bag” that seemed so very small, too small to contain the great man he idolised, will never leave him. “I thought he’s got to be worth a lot more than that.” It was at this point that his sister. Family to her is lucky life started to fall apart. absolutely central and when “I remember that from that moment she had her own children, it onwards he became a less happy figure was very much at the core and it’s not a secret that his drinking of her being that she wanted began to spiral out of control, not to Mary’s sacrifice it to be a close knit and happy unit,” the point that he became a falling- Michael says he’s also been lucky in says Mike of the mother who was the down drunk, but he was drinking far love and celebrates his 60th wedding central figure of his and his two too much,” recalls Mike, who was too anniversary this year. He met the brothers’ very happy childhoods. young to really understand what was incomparable Mary Heneghan on a “The problem with her is that her going on. “It was affecting his moods bus. “I was going to a mining village talent shone through and when she and it was affecting him around the outside of , working for the got an opportunity to go on television, family. He became a distant, slightly Yorkshire Evening Post, and this very she was a natural. She was a better scary figure. It took him probably a attractive girl with wonderful golden forensic interviewer, certainly of year to pull himself out of it and that red hair came on the bus. I was quite politicians, than my father. But she was down to my mum. She’s very shy so I got my friend to ring her up was presented with a stark choice. She honest with him and she turned around pretending to be me and made a date got so successful that the offers that one day and said, ‘you know what, the with her. We were both engaged at the were coming in would take her away, problem with you is when you drink, time, too, which is rather sad but that like my father who wasn’t there when you become ugly’. That really pulled was it, we were in love. Television is I was growing up, and she made that him up and made him think, yes, I’ve littered with broken romances, so I decision that she didn’t want that. I kind of lost the plot here. thank God we’ve been spared that. think my father’s been allowed to fly “But I don’t think he ever really That’s just luck. We just got lucky.” by my mother. She supported him, not came to terms with it. I think he misses Mary was a teacher but later she in a way that she’s become down- his father greatly. He showed that when too became a TV interviewer and was trodden, but she decided that she he cried last week on TV. I think to very good at it. In the end though it wanted to be at home with us kids.” have that raw emotion when you’re was Mary who stepped away from her in your 80s, about a man who’s died career, allowing Michael to shine. Losing the plot 30 years ago, shows the effect the guy “Mum lost her parents when she John lived to experience his son’s fame had on him.” AWW was young and she had two sisters, and Michael says he loved it. “He one who was younger than her, and thought it was great fun because all An Evening with Sir Michael Parkinson when she was 17 or 18 she was the old film stars that he’d always runs from October 10-24. For tickets

effectively looking after her younger fancied I got on the show. I wasn’t visit sirmichaelparkinson.com.au PERMISSION. WITH USED AND SUPPLIED PHOTOGRAPH FAMILY ALAMY.

96 The Australian Women’s Weekly | AUGUST 2019