Are We Live? by Marion Appleby Read Free Book Online Page A

duly did.

    Ryan later said of Parkinson, ‘I don’t even know the man. That guy was like some disapproving father! It’s crazy …he’s a nut.’ Meanwhile, Parkinson called the interview with Ryan his ‘most difficult moment’, adding, ‘I should have closed it …She was an unhappy woman. I felt sorry for her. What I couldn’t forgive her for was that she was rude to the other guests.’

Parkinson vs Helen Mirren
    The grand dame of British acting talent, Helen Mirren, is as charming onscreen as she is off it. But early on in her career, a rather prickly Mirren took offence at Michael Parkinson’s line of questioning during an interview on BBC1 in 1975.

    Proceedings got off to a shaky start when Parky introduced Mirren using press quotes that variously described her as ‘the sex queen of the Royal Shakespeare Company’ and ‘especially telling at projecting sluttish eroticism’ – neither of which appeared to endear Mirren to him.

    She then misunderstood him when he called her ‘a serious actress’ using air quotes (Mirren: ‘In quotes? What do you mean, in quotes?’), and refused to play ball when he spent most of the interview trying to talk to her about her equipment (i.e. body), whereupon she (perhaps, understandably) came over a bit coy.
Parkinson vs Emu
    This time it was Parkinson himself who got a bit riled. While interviewing popular entertainer Rod Hull and his puppet Emu on BBC 1 in 1976, poor Parky was faced with an overexcited bird …

    In an encounter of increasing aggression, the puppet tried to overrule the poor presenter. After flooring Parky and throwing away one of his shoes, the bird then nipped the presenter on the arse. Parky finished the piece with, ‘I knew I should never have booked you!’

Bird Brain
    Parky wasn’t the only celeb to face the relentlessly prodding beak of the puppet Emu.

Not in the script
    In 1983, on ITV’s Good Morning Britain , Emu tossed aside host John Stapleton and co-host Nick Owen’s script, with pages flying all over the set. Emu could then be seen repeatedly nipping Owen’s bottom for the entirety of the show’s closing credits.
    ‘I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can stop eating peanuts.’
    ORSON WELLES
Brush with death
    In 1981, on BBC 1’s Lena Zavaroni and Music , the show’s eponymous – and clearly terrified – star was forced to front a segment in which Rod Hull promised to demonstrate how to clean a pet bird with a brush. After asking Zavaroni to help scrub Emu’s feet, Hull spent the majority of his appearance attempting to pin down the bird shouting, ‘I’ve got him! Scrub his feet!’ Alas, it was all a ruse, allowing Emu to grab the brush and clean Zavaroni’s head with it.

Bad dog
    In the 1990s, on Channel 4’s hip TV show The Word , Emu took a special shine to the US gangster rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg. The hip-hop star patted the bird’s head politely at first, but all hell broke loose when host Mark Lamarr produced his own (rather mean and considerably larger puppet) and began to attack another guest. Amidst the chaos, Snoop could be seen pushing Emu away, before trying to rip his head off. Lamarr then asked Snoop, ‘Do you have anything like this on TV shows in America?’ Snoop said absolutely nothing.

Who Let Them On?
    The annals of television are packed full of irate presenters and slightly mad guests …

Speak up!
    In 1983, on Channel 4’s Loose Talk , in what’s reported to be his first appearance on television, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop managed to clash with no less a figure than rock’s most famous, gravelly voiced troubadour, Tom Waits. The problem was, Hislop didn’t think Tom was talking loud enough.

    Hislop later said of his first foray into television interviewing: ‘I had to talk to a man called Tom Waits, who had flown in and had what was called “jet lag” – as celebrities call it. I think he’d put a huge amount of jet lag up his nose.’

    Here’s how the