Parkinson's Sunday Supplement BBC R2 11th January 1997

I was amazed and flattered, during the run of Think No Evil at Us at Birmingham Rep (Dec 96-Jan 97) to be asked onto legendary chat-show host Michael Parkinson's Radio 2 afternoon show. It was my birthday too so it had a feeling of significance and the promise of having 'arrived'. Of course, it was his television show that I dreamed of being a guest on during my adolescence. I watched it every Saturday night religiously. Not only were some of my most revered idols interviewed on it (Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Morecambe and Wise, Dame Edna, Duke Ellington, George Burns...) but you had those memorable multi-guest mixes: Quentin Crisp and Malcolm Muggeridge, Dame Edna and Gloria Swanson, Bette Midler and Professor Galbraith. To me, to be invited onto his show was the apex of having made it. After that, surely you could die happy, I thought. Whatever downturns your life might take thereafter, you could always say on your deathbed, 'I was on Parkinson.' Disappointingly, when the call came he did not have a television series but beggars can't be choosers, so radio was had to do. A significant number of people who later came to see the show on tour first heard about me from this broadcast.