For 36 years, Michael Parkinson has been a near-permanent fixture, either on TV gurgling sycophantically at famous people or in magazines grumbling that people can't gurgle sycophantically at famous people as well as he can.
But not for much longer, because last night Michael Parkinson recorded his last ever celebrity interviews before fades away into a retirement of autobiography-writing and complaining about how rude young people are. And it's even been reported that professional northerner Michael Parkinson even got a bit teary-eyed during the filming of his last show. That's something we're either putting down to Parkinson realising what a prolific and generous interviewer he's been over the last three and a half decades or because Jamie Cullum turned up and started singing bad jazz-pop at him. We're going to go with the second one.
Michael Parkinson has interviewed all the big names in his time as television's most famous celebrity interviewer. Orson Welles, Muhammad Ali, Patrick Kielty – at one point or another they've all been exposed to Michael Parkinson's legendary interview technique that consists of making a noise like a half-dead washing machine and then twinkling his famous twinkly eyes in the mistaken belief that it's flirtatious, when actually we get the impression that the effect is most like the time your Nan fell face-first into the biscuits and forgot where she was.
Well, you can kiss that interview technique goodbye, because last night Michael Parkinson filmed his last-ever interviews. That wasn't particularly surprising – Michael Parkinson announced his retirement back in June – but nevertheless, filming them proved to be a moving task for Parkinson. And that's really saying something, since the last recorded time that Michael Parkinson showed any emotion was the first time he ever crapped himself as a baby. At the very end of filming, Michael Parkinson is reported to have welled up while telling the audience:
“I was told to pick a wish list and I put down these names and every single one of them is here… Over the years it has been a privilege to meet some of the most intelligent and interesting people. It has always been a great joy and I shall miss it.”
And this wish list of perfect Parkinson interviewees included Billy Connolly, Michael Caine, David Attenborough, Judi Dench, Dame Edna, David Beckham, Jamie Cullum and Peter Kay, with Dench apparently singing an amusing song about Meg Ryan to the host and Kay dressing him up as a lollipop man, presumably before making up a hilarious off-the-cuff hour-long routine that started with "Do you remember lollipop men? Do you? Lollipop men? 'Son, don't cross the road until I do, I'm the lollipop man'. Lollipop Men! Do you remember the sticks that lollipop men carried? What were all that about?"
The final Parkinson – actually the penultimate Parkinson, since there's also a one-off lifetime retrospective episode to come – will be broadcast on December 15, but you'll probably only be able to stand about five minutes of the stilted, slightly self-satisfied conversation before switching channels just like every other time that you've tried to watch Parkinson lately.