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Photo clippage: Parky special

Petulant to the last, Michael “Mike” Parkinson has decided that, “after 25 years of doing my talk show”, he’s had enough.

Nice of him to refer to it as “my” show, thereby confirming what we all suspected: that he never really cared for us, the viewer, and was only ever interested in airing his obsessions in front of his favourite celebrities. It’s also interesting to learn that he can’t count. He did the show on the BBC from 1971-82, then again from 1998-2004, and finally on ITV from 2004-now. Which makes 21 years, not 25.

Anyway, by way of a cheery salute to the miserable bastard, further to this, here’s a few of his finer moments, so described because all of them involved him keeping his mouth shut.

1) Parky’s harem. Jill Tweedie, Mary Parkinson, Sylvia Duncan, Rita Dando and Mavis Nicholson prepare to take over Thames TV’s Tea Break in 1971.

2) Adam Faith celebrates 25 years in the business in appropriate style: with Elton, Nick, Parky and Parky’s cake-making son.

3) The wilderness years: Parky revives Going For A Song with Tony Slattery, Leslie Ash and Eric Knowles.

4) The Beeb’s 1996 Christmas line-up: Parky, Martine…and Isobel Lang. What more could you need?

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Chris Hughes

    June 26, 2007 at 10:09 pm

    Course, you’re forgetting the roaring success that was Parkinson: One To One on ITV in the 1980s. I think there were a couple of series of that. So that, er, makes 23 years.

  2. FeedbackReport

    June 27, 2007 at 9:43 am

    Being such an arrogant sod, he’s probably factoring in his narration of The Woofits as some sort of ‘chat’ experience.

  3. Ben.H

    June 27, 2007 at 10:53 pm

    Is he double-counting the years 1979-1982 because he was also doing chat shows in Australia at the same time?

  4. Rich

    June 28, 2007 at 8:27 am

    Wasn’t The Woofits produced by his production company as well?

  5. Ian Jones

    June 28, 2007 at 3:27 pm

    Maybe he’s including the years he spent lazily presenting clips of his old series.

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