During a brief break from his meteoric chat show fame at the BBC, Michael Parkinson hosted a weekly radio programme about the movies on LBC, unsurprisingly titled Parkinson’s Picture Show.
I was hired as the “Around the UK studios correspondent”, a rather thankless task, as the film industry in Britain was at a very low ebb at the time. However, following my inevitably brief roundup each week, Parky would generously keep me on in the studio to enjoy some shared time with his star guests.
These included on one occasion a fairly pickled Oliver Reed who, while being grilled by the host about his latest screen role, began to take his trousers off. Parky was quite unfazed by this, merely reminding Reed gently that as this was radio such a provocation would be entirely lost on listeners.
