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I remember as a very young kid watching "That was the Week that was" way back. It was a revolutionary programme for TV in the sense that it took the piss endlessly out of politicians, the great and the good....something that was a first.

A brilliant interviewer, I remember watching his talks with Nixon which were amazing.

Max Tranmere in a separate post wonders why he did crap like "Through the Keyhole". God knows! I suspect it reflects the general dumbing down of primetime television. As a kid I can remember seeing some amazing plays on the BBC written by the likes of Dennis Potter, Jim Cartwright etc. which would never get made on TV now. Satirical shows taking the piss off politicians would probably bring the wrath of Downing Street on the Beeb, these days.

RIP David Frost.

I worked with Frost six or more times over the past couple of years, and I think it's fair to say on each occasion he was a mere shadow of his former incisive self. When people whose original remit was to get under the skin of politicians and other reprobates, are offered and accept knighthoods or peerages, then you know that the bad guys no longer fear them. Its not unlike politicos who Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell probably despised, wanting original copies of the caricatures to hang on their walls. The sting in the tail had been removed years ago. When I filmed Frost interviewing Cameron, it was little more than an exchange of invitations to soires they were each having in coming weeks.

That said, he was always courteous and professional even if he never seemed to remember he had met all the crew several times before.

Interesting to get your take on Frost having worked with him.

I suspect you are correct. Frost became a big transatlantic figure and had a show in the States where he interviewed many Hollywood stars which requires much more of a "schmoozing" style of interviewing rather than a forensic approach.

I think that the "schmoozing" Parky style of interviewing then began to infect politician interviews that he did.

Having said that his work particularly early in his career like That was the Week That was, with the likes of Bernard Levin and scripts written by John Cleese and Dennis Potter was innovatory and had no predecessors in British television.

Like so many revolutionary creative types he became a sad parody of himself. However to his credit he moved British TV out of the Billy Cotton Band Show drivel era into something more edgy and challenging.

andy at handiwork wrote:


>
> That said, he was always courteous and professional even if he
> never seemed to remember he had met all the crew several times
> before.

That's because, according to Chris Hutchins in Punch, Frost had a bit of a drinking problem.

David Johnson wrote:

> I remember as a very young kid watching "That was the Week that
> was" way back. It was a revolutionary programme for TV in the
> sense that it took the piss endlessly out of politicians, the
> great and the good....something that was a first.
>
Satirical shows taking the piss off
> politicians would probably bring the wrath of Downing Street on
> the Beeb, these days.
>
Some time ago I said that all three major parties had the same views and you disagreed with me. I'm not going to revisit that but I do believe that most politicians these days are party clones and part of the problem is that there are no satirists to mock them.

As you say TW3 did it mercilessly in the early 1960s. That was before I was born but I have read that as well as the Profumo Scandal, TW3 was partly responsible for the fall of Harold Macmillan.

In the 70s Mike Yarwood gave politicians a personality ? perhaps something that they publicly hated but privately loved because it made them public figures. Who can forget Denis "Silly Billy" Healey or Ted Heath's quaking shoulders or Harold Wilson and his pipe? I seem to recall Yarwood even did an impression of Vic Feather. Could you imagine someone taking off Bob Crow?

In the 80s Spitting Image did for Edwina Currie, Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Lord Tebbit et al what Yarwood had done for their predecessors in the previous decade.

There was Rory Bremner in the 90s but he was a bit too clever and not helped by being on Channel 4.

We need to prick the pomposity of politicians by mocking them and laughing at them. We need to remind them that they work for us...

Entirely agree. As an aside I cam across a quote from the great Peter Cook who reckoned that Frost used to steal some of his gags. He called Frost the "bubonic plagiarist".

Brilliant!

And Cook also rescued Frost from drowning.

We need to prick the pomposity of politicians by mocking them and laughing at them. We need to remind them that they work for us...

well said Essex.....