Audio: Michael Parkinson: It's Parky's turn to do the talking

There are two ways to start an article about interviewing Michael Parkinson.

Both are questions, one is rhetorical.

The first is: do you know who would have made a great guest on Parkinson?

The answer to that one is straightforward: Parkinson.

The second is with the rhetorical question: how do you interview the man who has interviewed everybody?

The answer to this is a little more tricky.

There is a school of thought that Parkinson was a bit soft on the subjects of his interviews. A couple of days with Parky's People, published by Hodder this month, soon suggests this is a lie. Meeting him confirms it.

The book is a collection of 100 interviews, transcripts of some of

those historical TV moments when the sparkly-eyed Barnsley lad charmed, cajoled and manipulated – yes, manipulated – his interviewees into sharing some part of their soul with us. This is the man, we remember when we revisit those interviews in the book, who asked John Wayne: "You were at the forefront of people who were blacklisting alleged communist members of the industry... when you look back at

that now, John, are you proud of what happened?"

Of Bette Davis he asked: "Is (divorce) a price you think you've had to pay for the career you had? You've been married four times, haven't you?"

He even dared to climb in the verbal ring with Muhammad Ali: "You belong to a faith that teaches separatism... yet here you have white friends."

Soft? Not likely.

Parkinson's beautiful offices are set in a grade two listed building on the outskirts of Royal Windsor. It's all a long way from the former mining town where the future Sir Michael grew up.

It's also a longer way than he has accounted for this morning – he's running late. Fortunately, our meeting is scheduled in the days immediately following the Pakistan cricket betting scandal and the wait for him to arrive means I can read the newspapers and catch up on the latest developments in the story – developments of which cricket fanatic Parkinson is undoubtedly aware.

In his introduction to Parky's People, Parkinson says that a newspaper interview, as opposed to a radio or television interview, is the easiest to carry out.

Of the print interview, he writes: "You can relax your victim over a pleasant lunch (although we make do with coffee in his office), chat in a disconnected way for a couple of hours and then go and shape the interview as the whim dictates."

He also explains that the key to a successful interview is to get the interviewee to relax. Later on, he demonstrates: "Once I get them to do

that (leaning forward in his leather seat) I know I've got them."

Taking his advice, I decide that idle chit-chat about the cricket on his eventual arrival is the best way to approach this interview and get The Master to relax – the equivalent of a gentle half-volley to introduce a new batsman to the crease and put him at ease. Mistake.

"What do you make of all this business?" is the first question after handshakes are exchanged on Sir Michael's arrival. It's a throwaway, a loosener. Sir Michael hammers it back over my head and sailing out of the ground.

"The cricket?" There is anger in his voice. He might be in leafy Windsor, he might have a pad in London, he might have met some of the world's biggest stars, but this man remains a granite-hard Barnsley lad. The question begins an invective against the possibly bent cricketers – and Sir Michael's mood does not improve once we reach his office.

"I've got the wrong keys," he exclaims, with neither despair nor desperation, but sheer, bloody Yorkshire anger when the key refuses to turn in the lock.

Cue another load of profanities.

It's like seeing your grandad swear: thrilling and not a little scary.

Soft? Don't believe it.

Once inside the beautiful, spacious, office, which overlooks acres of green land, Parkinson relaxes. At least, he appears to. In truth, he was relaxed the whole time – it's just that we have an image of this avuncular, silver haired charmer in our heads, but that's TV Parkinson. This is actual Parkinson.

A coffee table is piled high with books – on Muhammad Ali, on Orson Welles, Dame Judi Dench.

Research? Or simply a prop for visiting journalists?

"Research, for the book," he says simply. He almost pronounces it book with long vowels, as in "spook", but the accent has softened, slightly, from his boyhood.

Sitting on one side of his desk, we begin the interview proper – which seems a little unfair. He never had a table between him and his subjects. At 75, he looks healthy and, after showing off his old-fashioned typewriter, on which he writes everything, he leans back in his chair and exposes his striped socks as his feet land on the corner of the desk. Perhaps the cricket question relaxed him after all.

The publication of Parky's People, this month precedes a five-hour long DVD due out later this year. He might live in a Berkshire mansion, but he quickly reveals he's still the same thrifty Tyke on the make, just as he was when a boyhood talent for writing meant he could charge classmates sixpence to write their essays for them.

"I've got two bites of the cherry for flogging. I'm flogging the book now, doing interviews and all that sort of nonsense, then later this year the DVD comes out and I start all the flogging again. Then I go to Australia on December 3, and I don't wish to crow, but I'm going for the Ashes and I'm quietly chuffed," says Parkinson.

Well he might be.

Compiling the book – which is as fascinating for the interviews left out as for those chosen to be kept in – gave the Barnsley boy who aspired to play cricket for Yorkshire, an opportunity to look back over a career unparalleled in British television. "We put a list of people down and thought, 'Bloody hell, it goes on forever'," says Parkinson.

"I think the book is interesting because it's not just 'here's an interview with Billy Connolly'. It's a social history of Britain – or even the world – seen through the eyes of witnesses. On the DVD we've got a section where people talk about the war. People forget that some of these stars were actually in the war, flew missions. James Stewart was a hero, David Niven, as they say, had a very good war. Whatever that means."

Even a cursory glance through the content list reveals that Parkinson's claim holds water, that this book is more than a chance to read just how funny Peter Ustinov really was. Not only do we see Orson Welles, Sir Alec Guinness, Dame Judi Dench and Roald Dahl in the list, but also WH Auden, John Betjeman, Jacob Bronowski.

Parkinson says: "The show was also about some of the most extraordinary people of that time who were witnesses to the world. We have Bronowski talking about going to Auschwitz.

"In Britain, we have a great intellectual history.

"David Attenborough is a great teacher, the greatest broadcaster of a generation, without competition.

"He is one of the most extraordinary thinkers about the universe and the world we live in, yet his gift is in being able to make those complex thoughts clear to anybody.

"What is the purpose of life if it isn't to learn from great people? If it's not that, we might as well all go on Twitter, Twitter to each other and read what great brains like Kevin Pietersen (that same day there were revelations about the England cricketer announcing his omission from the England side on Twitter) have to say."

You may not have been expecting that.

Is not Parkinson, who embraces the nickname Parky, the soft interviewer who belongs to another age, a sycophant who panders to his famous friends?

This media-constructed Parkinson has never been the real thing.

The real Parkinson is forthright – I receive a passionate and rather brilliant speech about why Yorkshire should become an independent state "like Wales and Scotland, we've as much right and we've more bloody money than they've got".

He is proud and knows his worth.

He's a Yorkshireman at heart and when have they ever been known to beat around the bush and fawn because someone is tagged "a celebrity"?

"The talk show has changed. There never used to be any question of celebrity," says Parkinson, almost spitting the word out.

"It's a vacuous, downmarket word. We put the Poet Laureate on next to a comic and got 15 million people.

"The shortest interview back then was 20 minutes and now we've arrived at the point where this machine spews out one word constantly: Celebrity.

"Towards the end of my show I said one week that we had David Frost and the powers-that-be said, 'Isn't he too old?'"

Parkinson pauses to allow his unspoken disgust at this decision to really register.

"I thought, 'If that's your judgment, I don't know what the answer is anymore'."

Since he left television – his last talk show was broadcast on ITV in 2007– his working days have been taken up with a website, books and the forthcoming DVD. What he hasn't left behind are his opinions. His favourite interviews are impossible to name.

He says he was upset by John Wayne.

"God that was awful. It's very strong on film that," he says, sadly.

"To be fair, he didn't shirk any questions, he was an old pro, but after my interview I could never watch his movies with the same relish I used to.

"He was a great film star. He stood at the top of those stairs and the audience gasped. These days everybody is a Google away, but then you'd only ever seen him on a 40ft screen and here he was on telly. Here's Duke Wayne walking down the stairs.

"To see that this God-like figure who cleaned up the Indians in the movies was a very fallible human being was too much for some people – including myself – it was deeply sad that this man held these profoundly Right-wing views."

Upsetting though it was – and to relive his tussles with Muhammad Ali, three of whose interviews are transcribed in the book – Parkinson clearly took great joy in revisiting them all.

"I don't think I ever lost that sense of wonder. I never lost the feeling that I was a very, very lucky person to invite to my dinner table every week – that was how I saw it – whoever I wanted. I would say, 'This week I would like Billy Connolly, Dame Judi Dench and George Clooney'. 'Okay, Michael'. Come on, what a wonderful job to have."

How do you interview the man who has interviewed everybody? That is

the question. You take a couple of tips from the master himself. Prepare, let him get comfortable, sit back and enjoy.

See Monday's Yorkshire Post for exclusive extracts from Parky's People, featuring some of his favourite interviews.

To hear an exclusive podcast with Michael Parkinson, log on to www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/podcast

Parky's People, published by Hodder and Stoughton, 20. To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk.

P&P is 2.75.

YP MAG 16/10/10