Parking Parky

[Ooh, it’s a ranty one today…]

Counter to the engaging personalities of 'Antandec' described a few posts ago, Parky (the chat show host equivalent of mild cheddar) has finally retired after 50 years.

For a man whose interview technique consisted of little more than “So, everyone thinks you’re great and you’ve apparently got a book/film/show out at the moment. Why don’t you spend five minutes telling us about that while I swivel in my chair pretending to be enraptured?” he’s done alright for himself over the last half a century. Being on the receiving end of his yawnsome and mild-mannered modus operandi must have been tantamount to being mauled by a particularly tired and recently tranquillised octogenarian sloth who’d recently had his claws clipped.

Exhibiting a pedestrian style that can best be described as “functional”, he’s contributed thousands of hours to Great British telly with about as much spark and humour as a corpse. If you were to program a computer to produce a chat show host, which contained just the right amount of sycophancy, just the right amount of mild earnestness and just the right amount of robotic questioning, Parky would undoubtedly pop out, which makes you wonder why the BBC didn’t do it years ago (especially seeing as the computer would have been far cheaper to run).

Apparently, now he’s concluded his reign as “Britain’s premier chat show host”, his intention is to sit through all x-thousand shows of immensely boring footage. Rather him than me. With any luck he’ll be the only one who’ll ever witness those bloody clips of him being molested by Emu, or drying his tears at Billy Connolly, or chatting with Miss Piggy. Not to mention the thousand interminable interviews with Dame Judi bloody Dench.

I’m happy to concede that I might be wrong however. I’m not too big to admit it. Maybe I’m completely missing the point and the optimum personality for a chat-show host is to be an individual of such blandness with so little to say or contribute that the guests appear monstrous personalities by comparison.

His complete lack of anything approaching “personality” was perhaps never more apparent than when he was a guest on Room 101 where, of all the things he could have picked which anger him to the very core of his being and made him shake with rage, he picked things like ‘the bit of cotton used to secure newly-purchased socks to the cardboard’.

Jesus Michael, if nothing makes your blood boil more than the packaging on a fresh pack of argyles then your world must be an empty one indeed. Ironically, (and if you haven’t guessed by now), top of my list to consign to eternal torment would be Parky.

[Disclaimer: having read this back, it seems unfairly aggressive. Seeing as it was my New Year’s Resolution to be nicer to people I feel I should pay him a compliment to balance things out: he’s got a fine head of hair for a man in his 70s. And yes, I am jealous of it. If I had Antndec’s money and youth, and Parky’s barnet, I could rule the world I tell you…]