BIOGRAPHY: Parky: My AutobiographyBy Michael Parkinson Hodder & Stoughton, 384pp, £20
MELBOURNE GERSHWIN Parkinson - it doesn't have quite the ring does it? Well that's how the man we know and love as "Parky" might have been labelled if his Dad had had his way.
He wanted the baby called Melbourne, after a famous English cricketing victory down under. His mother said yes, if she could choose the baby's second name. But when it turned out to be the name of her favourite composer, the awful truth dawned: his beloved son would have to survive life in a mining town rejoicing in the name Melbourne Gershwin. A simple "Michael" was the compromise.
This story opens Parky, Michael Parkinson's autobiography, and sets the scene for a life filled with stories of humour, pathos and no little adventure. He writes lovingly of his parents Jack and Freda. Jack loved life and saw his tough dirty mining job below ground as simply an inconvenience, separate from the real business of living and sport. Freda, a formidable woman, according to Michael was the "engine of his ambition".
She was a woman with the talent and longing to be a dress designer, but who realised that in an era when working class girls were simply not encouraged to stay in school, that it would never happen. But bitterness did not invade her world. Parkinson's account of his early years in the Yorkshire village of Cudworth, of Jack and Freda, of a grandfather washing the coal dust off his back in a tin bath before the fire, help us to understand how he grew into the intelligent, sensitive, humane, and grounded man we know.
Unlike many autobiographies that cross my desk, this one is a page turner. The narrative takes us through life as a junior reporter on the South Yorkshire Times, then national service when private Parkinson, an unruly and undisciplined soldier, ends up in Egypt during the Suez crisis. Having been co-opted at his own request to 4PRS, a unit hastily assembled to deal with the world's media, he found himself wading ashore in Port Said, as the tracers cut the air, brandishing over his head, not a weapon but a typewriter.
All of Parkinson's yarns - heroic or comic - are told in that self-deprecating style with which we are familiar, but which skilfully disguises the pin-sharp writing of a consummate journalist. But, of course, it's chat-show Parky that most people want to read about and he does not disappoint. There are faithful recreations of famous encounters and lots of backstage tittle-tattle. But all of it is given in a spirit of fun and generosity. He casts himself as a bit-player in the lives of the celebrated, the movie stars, the sports men and women, the politicians, the great and the good.
Actors are perhaps the most difficult guests. After all, we only know them, not for themselves, but for the parts they play. Imagine getting this call from an agent the night before a client was due to appear on the show: "You will be aware that while my client possesses an incomparable talent, he can also behave in a reprehensible manner.
"Therefore I have to tell you that he won't be doing the show for reasons I don't quite understand. You may talk to him yourself. If a Chinaman answers the phone, take no notice. That will be my client pretending to be somebody else."
It was, of course, Peter Sellers. He was terrified of coming on as himself. Michael told him he could come on as somebody else, if that would help. And so, Peter walked down those famous stairs dressed as a German soldier. With the moment of fear conquered, he was utterly brilliant.
In the book Parkinson exposes what we exponents of the talk-show genre understand fully: that TV talk is consensual. If one of the parties does not engage, the party's over. The celebrity interview is a minor conspiracy between interviewer and interviewee, to verbally joust, with a view to entertain. Of course, sometimes a semi-orchestrated combat goes wrong and becomes real, others fall flat. With the benefit of editing - which a live show like the Late Late does not have - the bad bits can be excised. But occasionally, when things do go dreadfully wrong, no editor or producer would want to edit the tape. Michael admits that he will be more remembered for his calamities than for his triumphs. There was that legendary encounter with Rod Hull and Emu in 1975, and more recently his interview with a very grumpy Meg Ryan, much, it has to be said, to the heightened enjoyment of the viewer. Michael does studied discomfiture better than anybody.
A PROGRAMME POSTMORTEM WILL generally show that it's down to the celebrity "handlers" who have not fully briefed their "star" on the nature of the experience. If they have been led to expect the sycophantic puffery of an appearance on Conan O'Brien, then a Parky "chat" may be interpreted as an ambush.
In Parky you can read of the sad decline of David Niven, of how Robert Redford was turned away at the door of the studio by the commissionaire, and Peter O'Toole reveals why actors always pee in the sink. There were those who could not appear without the help of drugs or drink, and those who appeared the worse for it. We get to know the off-stage George Best and we can watch the arc of the career of the greatest of all heavyweights, Muhammed Ali. But it's clear that the reason that Parkinson connects so directly with his viewers is that he is, like them, a fan. You feel, rightly or wrongly, that the people he welcomes onto the set of Parkinson would be equally welcome into his own home.
Thinking back on all the Parkinson shows you may have seen, you will probably recall not only the young and beautiful, but those, as Michael puts it with "dust in the crevices" - Dame Edith Evans, Sir Ralph Richardson, Alastair Cooke, Sir John Gielgud, and many more. In truth, Michael admired and enjoyed what they brought to the interview: their life experiences, their wisdom, but also a capacity for plain speaking, having passed the point of caring about personal or professional inhibition. This autobiography is just like an extended edition of a brilliant Parkinson on television - engrossing and entertaining. Whether on the printed page, or on the small screen, Mr P has - to borrow from Noel Coward - an enduring talent to amuse.
Pat Kenny is the presenter of the Late Late Showon RTÉ 1 and Today with Pat Kennyon RTÉ Radio One