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The 7 Ages of Parky >>
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Pissing All Over Parky >>
The Nation Vs Parky >>

Few people in any industry would be lauded for rubbishing their colleagues - except Parkinson, of course, whose stock-in-trade is to pour scorn on every other interviewer in the land who, well, isn’t him. Your background, modus operandi and target audience don’t matter a jot to the man; as long as you’re on the telly like he is, he thinks you’re shit.

In some small effort to redress the balance, TV Cream is profiling five bread-and-butter British talents who piss all over Parky, before presenting a quick run-through of 10 more who are also fully entitled to do the urination thing from a great height.

JONATHAN ROSS
In 2001, Ross (never ‘Wossy’ on TV Cream, and that’s a promise) and Wogan beat Parky in a Radio Times poll of TV’s best-loved faces. A well-deserved victory, it nevertheless failed to stop the Barnsley curmudgeon moaning earlier the same year how “people prefer the more traditional talk shows to the new people like Jonathan Ross.” Warming to his theme, the gruff droning continued. “The problem is they are over-contrived. He is a good comic but he tries to make himself the star of the show. I've always tried to ask questions to find things out about the guests, to conduct a real interview.” Which is nonsense of course, as we all know Michael’s just content to rap about whatever’s on the press release and leave it at that. While TVC is a long way from hanging its hat on Ross’s talent for chat, you can’t deny the moments of magic on his programme come about thanks to his invention, while all of Parky’s best bits feature him sobbing into his cufflink while Billy Connolly does his Hughie Green routine. That, plus Ross isn’t afraid to play the awkward bugger sometimes, particularly when there’s a pressing question to be asked.

MELINDA MESSENGER
The year’s 1999 and, sigh, here he comes again. “Would Arsenal let me play centre half in place of Ian Wright? Would The Sun ask me to pose topless in place of Melinda Messenger? Of course they wouldn't. So why do they think they can do my job? How dare they assume it?” For goodness sake, Ms Messenger’s chat show was simply a short-lived attention-grabbing bit of fun from Channel 5, a programme which had been dead and buried for a year by the time Parky got round to ticking it off his ‘must insult’ list. It really does speak volumes about the man’s insecurities. As for Mel, we’re not saying she’s a female Frost or anything, but at least the woman is halfway likeable and refreshingly cognisant of her place in the food chain. That, plus she’d never dream of labelling someone else: “A pair of plastic boobs”. That’s just ignorant.

TERRY WOGAN
Here’s a turn-up for the book: a chat show host attacking Parky. Earlier this year, while filing one of his annual rants against the BBC, Limerick’s finest suggested Parky couldn’t actually handle live chat show anymore. Aye to that! It was the latest in what we have to admit has been a stream of invective from Tel, but at least in this case it was well aimed. Back in 2000, he’d griped: “Paying millions to presenters is always a mistake. Take Parky. People don't watch his show just for him.” True! The following year, Mike announced he was barring Terry from his proposed chain of pubs, “after he took the mickey out of me on the radio. His family are welcome but he can sit in the car park.” With Parky doubtlessly putting the ‘hostile’ into ‘hostelry’, nursing a ginger beer by the bins and the piss would surely be the more agreeable option anyway. As for Michael’s favourite tipple, we’re guessing it has to be bitter, particularly as Terrence spent the 1980s lapping up viewers with his legendary thrice-weekly dispatches from the verdant delights of Shepherd’s Bush Green. It was a slot that could so nearly have been Parkinson’s, but of course the allure of Anna and Ange on GOOD MORNING BRITAIN and then the hotelier’s bell on GIVE US A CLUE proved too strong. Meantime, Terry buttoned and unbuttoned his blazer while greeting viewers each evening with a whimsical bout of verbiage beyond the capacity of Mike. Along the way he garnered more column inches, criticism and hours on screen than virtually anything else the Beeb made. Shame to see the old codger turning into a bit of a grump himself though, nowadays.

DES O’CONNOR
For many Des flies under the radar, but whether it was in his pomp squirming at Stan Boardman and jawing with Tony Blair on DES O’CONNOR TONIGHT (which, let’s not forget, ran for 25 years), or shoring up Melanie Sykes on TODAY WITH DES AND MEL, the man has always been able to turn on the charm. You’d never see Des bombing in the company of an icy Hollywood who's wife refusing to play ball - not with his personal charm. Of course, he’s one of the few lucky ones on this list who hasn’t even suffered an implied bad-mouthing from Parky, probably because Mike knows when he’s biting off more than he can chew. As for the difference between the two personalities, that became obvious when Des crooned to a PARKINSON audience in 2003 to keep them entertained while the production came to halt thanks to technical difficulty. “He got a fabulous reception and showed what a professional he is,'' said a member of the audience following the recording - words which are surely rarely heard within the vicinity of ‘Michael’s Theme’. What would the Yorkshire Pudding have come up with had the tables been turned? An impromptu bout of charades? The mind fails to boggle.

GRAHAM NORTON
It’s plain to see that, since his ubiquity on C4 in the late 1990s, Graham Norton has been a serious cause of concern for Parky. Of course, the old man was happy to brand his rival “cheap and silly” in 2002, coincidentally the same year he lost the Best Talk Show gong to the Irishman at the National TV Awards, bringing to an end his four-year winning streak. With Norton’s career path patently winding its way towards White City, Mike hotfooted it out the back door of Television Centre as his “fatuous and egocentric” (his words, obviously) rival came in the front. Was the old man perhaps fearful of being sidelined by the comparatively likeable and talented Norton? The irony is, of course, that since setting up camp at the concrete doughnut, Graham’s laid off the chat, and that’s despite the fact he’s a far more inventive host than Parky. He dares to go straight for the laughs and doesn’t feel any need to mythologize the job of jawing to the rich and fatuous.

ALSO:

RICHARD AND JUDY - Even Parky has to concede the former has some talent, but for our money Richard and Judy’s tag-team tittle-tattling makes for far more sparky encounters than Parky’s languid lines of enquiry.

JOHN INVERDALE - Being superbly well-informed about your guest’s career and background, is, for our money, the mark of a good journalist, not simply barking “I’m a journalist” at all and sundry.

JOHNNY VAUGHAN - Okay, we can’t deny Mr V isn’t prone to the odd bit of grandstanding and look-at-me-I’m-just-doing-that-to-be-a-bit-mad tom-guffery. However he’s a hell of a quick-thinker, and his left-of-centre questioning technique usually yields far more than Parky’s regular, “So, tell me about the book”.

DAVID FROST - We’re talking diminishing returns here as the years pass by, obviously (“Did you l-luve, love her?”), but the man is still showing his one-time TV-am cohort a clean pair of heels. Plus, he’s got those Nixon and Savundra encounters on his show reel, which throw the whole of Mikes oeuvre into grim context.

RUSSELL HARTY - Seemingly priggish and bitchy, but always wonderfully parochial in a fashion that didn’t make you want to dispatch a fleet of tanks up the M62, Harty was of course immortalised by that encounter with Grace Jones - something the man didn’t latterly try and sweep under the carpet a la “that bloody bird”.

DANNY BAKER - The progenitor of the aforementioned look-at-me-I’m-just-doing-that-to-be-a-bit-mad tom-guffery mentioned above, we reckon the Bake can claim to have influenced more interviewers than anyone since Letterman. Step forward, at one end of the spectrum, Evans, and then riiiighhhht at the other, Bacon. But no-one could ever do quirky like Danny. Could Parky have quizzed Shatner on British soaps? Or passed the time with Barry Bethal talking about Slim Fast? Exactly.

NICK HANCOCK - Not the most likeable of characters, granted, but a pretty nifty exponent of the just-run-with-it school of interviewing, proving himself a dab hand at developing a spontaneous line of discussion or joke when he was hosting Room 101. That, and he knows all about quitting when you’re ahead.

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD - A woman he’s been chatting to gets a knife off the bonce, and without so much as a ruffle, he’s linking to the next item. There’s unflappable for you.

BOB MONKHOUSE - For a man so talented to cast himself as second fiddle to the likes of Roy Jay and Emo Philips on his self-titled chat show is admirable indeed. You’d never get Parky being so refreshingly ego-free ... although, like Bob, he’s never had any problem in providing those feed-lines.

ANDREW MARR - Eschewing both Sir Robin’s flattery (“If I may be so bold”) and Paxman’s finger-pointing (“Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?”), he’s turned political interviewing into a kind of deceptively capricious parleying that somehow prompts just as many home truths as harsh revelations. It’s the whimsy of a parlour game crossed with the bile of a high executioner.