Michael Parkinson - Parky

Reviewed by Maggie Perkovic on the bookshow 6th November 2008
Having been a fan of Michael Parkinson for many years both in his days with the BBC when he interviewed stars like Fred Astaire, Jimmy Stewart, Lauren Bacall, Jimmy Cagney et al. then latterly when he presented his Sunday supplement which reviewed the papers and spoke about new films and shows and television, and of course he played the very best music, Frank Sinatra and jazz artists of the highest caliber, I was thrilled to purchase his autobiography, Parky.
It is a fascinating story of a true Yorkshire man destined for life in the pits as a coal miner but whose mother and father wanted something better for him.
At a fairly young age his school visited a local pit, one of the more modern kind and the young Parkinson was fairly impressed. On hearing this his dad took him to an older more basic kind where the miners toiled in small spaces and where the work was back-breaking.
“What do you think now?” said his dad “do you fancy working there?”.
“Not even for a 100 quid a week”, he replied (bearing in mind that was a lot of money back then). His dad felt he had learnt an important lesson.
Parky was a great film fan and the main reason he favoured a career as a reporter was because he had seen Humphry Bogart complete with mac and grey Fedora rush into a phone box and shout “hold the front page!” Which looked great in a film but a bit daft in a Yorkshire telephone box with the operator saying “number please”.
He started as a cub reporter in a local paper and gradually got to Fleet Street, later on moving to TV and radio. His father really wanted him to be a cricketer and play for Yorkshire in fact despite his illustrious career, his father suggested, towards the end of his life, that “it wasn’t like playing for Yorkshire was it?” Although his parents were tremendously proud of him.
He writes movingly of his wife and children of his friends and family from Yorkshire and of his head teacher at grammar school who said “Michael Parkinson would never amount to anything”. How wrong he was.