6 • The Sunday Times Magazine
“Mike and his brothers struggled
with my drinking in the Seventies.
That wasn’t nice for them to see”
Michael & Mike Parkinson
The former chat show king and his son, a TV producer and writer, on making up for lost time
COMING
TOGETHER
Michael, 85, and
Mike, 53. Right:
three-year-old Mike
with his dad in 1970RELATIVE VALUES
Michael
If I’m being brutally honest, I was an absentee father.
Always working when the kids were growing up. I’m
not saying I would go back and change that, but I do
regret missing out on those early years. I’ve got three
sons and they all went from being in the pram to
getting a job overnight. Mary, my wife, was the one who
brought them up. And she did a bloody good job.
Mike talks about it in the book [a family memoir]
we’ve written together. Who was this strange man who
would suddenly turn up at the dinner table and start
telling him off? He mentions once deciding that I’d
outlived my usefulness and ought to be exterminated,
like in Brave New World.
When I first read Mike’s part of the book, I thought:
“That’s a bit strong.” But that’s Mike’s memory of the
time and maybe I can learn from that. It doesn’t mean
that we didn’t love each other. It’s just an example of
the complexity of family life. None of us is perfect.
I do know that Mike and his brothers — and Mary,
especially — struggled with my drinking in the
Seventies. That wasn’t nice for them to see. And, again,
it was Mary who had the hardest job. She’s the one who
took me aside and said: “When you have a drink, you
become ugly.” That brought it home to me.
I suppose the drinking became an issue after my
father died in 1977. I loved my father dearly. He was
a much better man than me. Never saw him lose his
temper once. He was the kind of bloke who would solve
disputes by being kind. I’m far too hot-headed for that.
There was a lot of sadness at the time, but I don’t think
I realised how much sadness and grief I was feeling until
much later. Yes, I knew he was a miner and I knew it was
the mine that eventually killed him — all that bloody
coal dust! I knew he loved cricket and football. But I
don’t think he understood the world I moved into after
I left home at 16. Journalism, Fleet Street, then telly. We
never talked about stuff like that. We never talked about
how we felt. That’s how most of my dad’s generation
were. They weren’t all chatty-chatty, lovey-dovey.
Looking back I realise I was lucky to get into telly
when I did. I actually started at Granada Television in
Manchester [in 1961] the year after Coronation Street
— being working-class was quite fashionable at the
time. Sadly, I don’t think a working-class kid would have
much of a chance these days.
My father was proud of me being on telly, but would
never tell me that. I only ever heard it from other people.
He used to love coming to the recordings, meeting all
the film stars. When I introduced him to Lauren Bacall,
he went completely gaga. I feel so lucky to have been on
the show at a time when audiences were happy to see
a real spread of guests. Yes, we had Clint Eastwood and
Shirley MacLaine, but we also had Jacob Bronowski
[the science historian] and Malcolm Muggeridge [the
caustic social critic]. These days it’s all about sequins
and Strictly Come Dancing. Does anyone really care, eh?
I became a dad at 25, and, like any new parent, I was
full of good intentions. Unfortunately at that age you
know bugger all about being a parent. And in those days
it was still acceptable for the father to say: “That’s not
my job. My wife will deal with that.” Fathers weren’t
supposed to take time off work to change nappies or to
tell their sons that they loved them.
Thank goodness that’s all changed. I’ve had the chance
to compensate for the mistakes that I did make. Over
the years I’ve been involved in projects with all three of