It’s the end of an era now Michael Parkinson has retired; he was the last of his kind, a special breed.
The last of great chat
show host and a master of his craft, who considered a great interview to be one
where he had to say very little.
Now alas we have comedians
sitting in the hosts chair trying to fill his shoes.
Skinner and Norton and
others of their ilk who think they’re at a gig and the guests are merely an
extension of their audience.
The worst of all is
Jonathon Ross who thinks himself the star and his guests are the supporting
cast with whom he can manipulate the conversation to the point where he can use
a pre-planned gag.
When he does stop
performing his act and using his guests as the stooges to bounce his gags off
and finally asks a question, he invariably answers the question as well
normally with another tedious gag.
By the time, the interview
is over you know no more about the guest than you did before it started.
But it’s not just
comedians of course who have tried and failed Clive James, Clive Anderson, pop
stars, politicians, royals, socialites you name them they’ve all tried it and
the end result is always the same. Hosts who are more interested in what they
have to say than their guests in short people with big egos only interested in self-promotion.
The guests themselves
don’t help the situation as they are only there because their production
company, recording co, publishing co etc. want them to publicize their latest
project or product.
So now all the great
interviewers have gone, and we must mourn the lost art of interviewing because
none of the younger exponents have bothered to learn the craft from Michael
Parkinson’s example.
