Sir Michael Parkinson's son says late TV legend 'wasn't father of the year'

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The late Sir Michael Parkinson’s son has said his dad was ‘not the father of the year’ as he reflected on his public and private legacy.

Sir Michael died aged 88 on August 16, with the news shared in a statement from his family to the BBC which read: ‘After a brief illness Sir Michael Parkinson passed away peacefully at home last night in the company of his family.

‘The family request that they are given privacy and time to grieve.’

Tributes quickly followed for Sir Michael, affectionately dubbed the ‘king of the chat show’, by high-profile figures including Sir David Attenborough and Sir Elton John.

Over his career, he became a familiar face on both the BBC and ITV for his intimate celebrity interviews, most notably on the BBC show Parkinson, and conducted headline-making chats with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Dame Helen Mirren and Meg Ryan.

Now his son Michael Parkinson Jr, 56 – known as Mike – has revealed what his dad was like at home, away from the studio and his celebrity guests.

As well as revealing his broadcaster father suffered from imposter syndrome and that the family didn’t want to ‘step on the toes’ of the public’s grief over the past few weeks, he also praised his mother.

Mike discussed his father’s relationship with his own father, a miner, and how the two only saw each other when the young Sir Michael was playing in a cricket match or football match, agreeing that their connection was ‘old-fashioned’.

He then revealed that his own relationship with this father wasn’t ‘consciously different’, because of that.

‘I can’t sit here and start saying he was the father of the year because he wasn’t the father of the year – but not in a bad way,’ Mike told hosts Richard Madeley and Kate Garraway.

‘He was very much a man of his time, he very much was strict and “do as I say and not as I do”.

‘I think it does go back to the fact that in the end what defined him as a man is what he did, and it drove him, and it drove him forward. And behind every single story there is a great woman, and behind him was my mother.’

‘She was the one that held the family together [and] reminded him that he needed to come home and be with us,’ he added.

Barnsley-born Sir Michael married his wife Mary, 87, also a journalist and broadcaster, in 1959.

The pair met on a bus in Yorkshire and have three children and eight grandchildren.

Mike has worked with his father for the past two decades in the entertainment industry, while brother Nick is a chef and other sibling Andrew has kept away from the spotlight.

Mike also revealed the level of his father’s celebrity in itself truly hit him when he came back in 1998 again with Parksinson, after initially finishing in 1982, and was met with such a rapturous reception, making the TV legend emotional.

Good Morning Britain airs weekdays from 6am on ITV1.

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