Chat Shows Story of Light Entertainment

Ladies and gentlemen, Muhammad Ali.

In the story of light entertainment, one television format has become the most popular and the most important.

# A little less conversation A little more action, please... #

Chat shows didn't exist until television.

You didn't go to the theatre and see a chat show.

The chat show is the pivot around which all light entertainment swings.

Tonight we'll see how the classic combination of sofa,

studio and celebrity has stood the test of time, and how the right host can make or break a show.

There's 500 people in the audience, there's enough lights around to fry an egg,

there's a microphone stuck in every orifice

and the last advice they're given is be natural. Are you crazy?!

-Hello, Michael.

-Oh, hello, Miss Piggy.

You try and create the illusion

that what's going on here is almost dinner-party chat.

-I've never thought of feet as an erogenous zone.

-Try.

Whether light-hearted or not,

the key purpose

is to put the focus on the guest.

-You lost your father at an early age, didn't you?

-No.

-No, my father DIED.

-LAUGHTER

For almost 60 years, the chat show has given us the chance

to catch a glimpse of the real person behind the celebrity.

Why on Earth would somebody come on one of these shows unless they've got something to plug?

I came on this show to sell a book. I am in England to sell a book.

They're not on because they love you.

I'm more available for talk shows when I've got a book coming out. It's simply a fact of life on TV.

A white chocolate bread pudding and hamburger/cheeseburger!

-Is this really the way for a body beautiful?

-Oh, absolutely.

That marked a kind of low watermark in that kind of plugging.

We had Priscilla Presley on recently and she was plugging a line of sheets!

But in return for the big sell we get a small glimpse of the real person behind the celebrity mask.

I was the great white whale.

Sometimes, if we were lucky, we saw a little more than we bargained for.

It was a TV event, somebody being so drunk.

-Don't turn your back on me!

-I can't...

George Best.

Terry, I like screwing, all right?

-And he's as drunk as a skunk. So what do you do with your time these days?

-Screw.

-I see.

Television should have its rough edges.

The bad behaviour only got worse when the Great British Public

were allowed to air their dirty linen on our screens.

My talk show, obviously my interest and my training was in conflict resolution, in mental health.

It was necessary to dumb down the show.

There is a strand of television which is very voyeuristic, bordering on exploitation.

So do you stay or do you go?

I'm going.

But the genuine celebrity is still the life-blood of the talk show world,

even if the host is anything but real.

Were you as surprised as we all were, when he came from behind

and he licked you in the ring?

Were you surprised?

It's not the talk of the town, it's the chat of the town.

The chat show is now almost unavoidable, with talking heads on morning, noon and night.

But when was the big bang that created this constellation of conversation?

In the 1940s, America was the only place to find big stars, and it was here that the chat show was born.

In 1950, the world's first ever chat show, Broadway Open House, premiered on the NBC network.

This new format of variety and conversation hosted by

veteran comedians was short-lived,

but proved that there was definitely a late-night audience for chat.

From New York City tonight, starring Steve Allen.

Two years later NBC tried again and hired comedian Steve Allen.

-Ten seconds, Mr Allen.

-All right, that's enough outta you!

Argh!

The Steve Allen Show became an overnight success thanks to his unorthodox style.

Here he is interviewing Errol Flynn.

Errol, it's wonderful to see you. I understand you've been travelling lately.

-Well, yes, I have, Steve. Actually I've been in Spain.

-Oh, really?

-Yes.

They're incredibly inventive,

and very much a forerunner of everything that followed.

From New York, the Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson.

He-e-ere's Johnny!

In 1962, ten years after Steve Allen, America witnessed the birth

of the first chat show superstar, when comedian Johnny Carson took his place behind the Tonight Show desk

and became one of the greatest names in TV history.

'The Tonight Show is the blueprint, because the Tonight Show'

defined late-night conversation with celebrities,

with a band, with jokes, with monologues.

It defined a form, and that form has worked.

The quality of his work, his extraordinary comic timing,

it's absolutely fascinating, if you look at those shows now.

AUDIENCE GASPS AND LAUGHS

I...I didn't even know you were Jewish!

'Coming out of stand-up comedy himself, he knew

'just how to feed you the line,'

and once he got your rhythm he knew where not to step on your line.

So you'd tell him this whole story, and then he'd be able to say, "Well, how fat WAS she?"

And that would set you up to come right in

with your final line. He was the best straight man in the business.

'There's two ways to do a talk show. One is from the journalistic point of view -'

ask a question, get the answer, ask a follow-up question,

and the second is to do what Johnny Carson does,

which is to actually make the host the centre point of the event

and, like the Americans, to make him the kind of star.

'He became incredibly powerful within the network as a result of

'the sheer profits that that show was generating. I think he was'

one of the first artists that actually got to own his own show, in the sense that

he dictated to the network when he'd like the show to play, how many weeks off a year he would like, and so on.

He became a very potent player within American television.

Never before in the story of light entertainment had so much power rested with a chat show host,

and it was a story that would be repeated again and again.

But all this big-name glamour was light years away from light entertainment in post-war Britain.

'When British TV started up again after the war, TV airtime was extremely limited'

and we just didn't have any post-11pm television.

The talk show format, as far as the British audience was concerned,

didn't exist! It only existed for those of us who'd seen American TV.

Lacking the glitz of Hollywood, British viewers made do with shows

like the BBC's weekly showbiz chat show In Town Tonight.

In town tonight!

Stop!

Once again, we stopped the mighty roar of London's traffic,

and from the great crowds we bring you some of the interesting people

who have come by land, sea and air to be in town tonight.

She's starring in two films which are showing in London at the moment,

although after finishing her dramatic training,

she had a spell of doing nothing but pin-up pictures - Belinda Lee.

-What picture are you working on now, Miss Lee?

-Well, I'm working on two at the moment.

One's called The Feminine Touch and it's a serious film about nursing,

-and the other one's called Who Done It, and it's a comedy with Benny Hill.

-Oh!

Four years later in 1959, the BBC ignored celebrity again

when they launched a resolutely unshowbizzy chat show with journalist John Freeman.

Featuring serious probing interviews with guests like Martin Luther King,

Face To Face bore little relation to its American counterparts.

Was anybody actually cruel to you or violent to you because you were coloured?

Now, I can remember seeing the Klan actually beat negroes

-on some of the streets in Atlanta.

-'My greatest'

early influence in terms of a television interviewer was John Freeman.

I learnt a very important lesson from Freeman early on -

he became the most important and famous man in British television

and you never saw his face. There's a lesson in that for every interviewer

which still applies today.

'No confusion there about who mattered in an interview - the interviewee.'

He underlined that by only showing his left shoulder to the camera.

Never did I realise that I would be in a situation

where I would be a leader in what is now known

as the civil rights struggle of the United States.

'You were analysing people

'as they were laying themselves bare in front of John Freeman,'

that was the purest form.

It was almost psychoanalytical but it was very telling.

It was a brilliant format, and was successful because of John Freeman's skills.

It wasn't until 1964 that ITV made the first attempts at producing an American-style chat show.

Tonight from London...

For Irish presenter Eamonn Andrews,

the move from surprising celebrities on This Is Your Life

to interviewing celebrities on a talk show was a huge leap of faith.

-Well, a great welcome to you, Muhammad.

-Thank you.

-I must say that I,

like a lot of people, can't get used to, since for religious reasons you changed your name...

-Does it annoy you when people forget and call you Cassius?

-No, it's just the manner in the way they say it.

Some will go, "How you doing, Cassius, old boy? How you feeling?"

You know my name, fella!

"Well, Mr Ali, I'm sorry!"

'Eamonn wasn't absolutely perfect,'

nor absolutely totally happy in that role.

He always seemed to be permanently on a state of panic.

Although he's a very amiable person to watch,

you can see he's sort of sweating on, almost literally on, the next thing that was gonna happen.

-So let's have a word about the fight last night, Cassius...

-Muhammad.

-Muhammad! I'm sorry!

I didn't do that deliberately, I promise!

APPLAUSE

'Eamonn was an extraordinarily nervous performer,'

and he sweated a lot, which was a great embarrassment to him

because you'd get him done up in his suit and shirt,

and by the time he got to the set he'd be drenched in sweat.

And we had the make-up girl banging him down, you know, with tissues.

But having drawn attention to yourself now, here the... the youngest known...

However effortless Andrews may have appeared on This Is Your Life,

he clearly found the chat show format more demanding.

For critics and viewers unused to such unrehearsed informality, The Eamonn Andrews Show

was seen as unprofessional and received damning reviews.

The next man to try out the format

was the polar opposite of Andrews,

and had ideas which were to revolutionise the talk show forever.

David Frost had developed his TV technique in the groundbreaking That Was The Week That Was.

This introduced TV audiences to entertaining and intelligent satire for the first time.

Good evening, good evening.

An odd week. For political animals it started two days early...

'That Was The Week That Was, and it emptied restaurants and pubs.'

Everybody went home or somewhere

to watch That Was The Week That Was because it was live.

And you saw cameras in shot

and people walking about and there was an immediacy about that

which we hadn't seen on television before.

What I really suppose my idea was

to combine the amount of research

and responsibility and attitude that Tonight had had

but thrust it at an audience with the techniques of variety and vaudeville.

So there were sketches and songs and monologues and direct appeals to camera.

A huge success, Frost soon attracted attention from the American networks

and began co-hosting a US version of the show -

an experience which gave him a career in America and ideas for the future.

It was clear there was a good talk show to do

with show-business personalities but I didn't want to confine it to that,

so I wanted to add two things to that - politicians and so on, and the other thing was an audience

that was gonna be really involved.

He realised that these kind of shows

shouldn't be just about this authority figure,

or this celebrity being talked to, but it was also about what the members of the audience thought

because ordinary people were suddenly OK!

Nothing is more boring for viewers at home, or indeed for the people doing it, than a stereotype format

so let people depart from the format if they want to.

And ordinary people had a lot to say when given the opportunity to

confront the founder of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley.

-Can I challenge...?

-Can you turn a cam...?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS SHOUT OUT

It was 300,000 East-Londoners that stopped you marching through Aldgate!

The dockers, the clothing workers, the shop assistants stopped you.

Even the biggest police force they could muster couldn't push you through!

-Why did they need a public order?

-We beat you, and will again, and we beat your friend Adolf Hitler!

Can we just move this camera here a bit to one side?

Cyril Bennett, the Controller of Programmes, said, having watched

the first programme where we were involving the audience,

"That use of the audience you'll get rid of in no time at all.

"I bet you a turkey dinner it won't last. "

Well, we won the turkey dinner and it did last, and that was one of the key ingredients in making it popular.

The combination of quite hard-hitting current affairs

with showbiz, that's one of David Frost's great strengths.

He could make extraordinary gear changes between the serious and light-hearted remarkably easily.

Didn't you once have great dreams, fantasies of being a cat burglar?

I wanted to be a criminal as a child.

I'm not kidding, cos at first I thought of being, um...

a confidence swindler, and using my intelligence to...

LAUGHTER

Frost had become so strong a celebrity magnet,

that there seemed to be few professional challenges left.

And he was a huge star in America.

He got everybody. He was the only one who could get Nixon

for the Nixon Tapes after that terrible scandal of '74.

By 1977, five years after Watergate and three years since Nixon's resignation,

Frost had become so powerful

that he beat his American rivals to an exclusive interview.

Richard Nixon talks tonight about war on two fronts - war in Vietnam.

Why it was fought, why it was prolonged, why it was lost and what it cost.

The big shows that Frost did,

like the ones with Nixon, were real studies

in what you could do and what you couldn't do.

I realised later that Frost did quite a good job with Nixon.

That's about as hard as you can go with someone

who's determined to evade the issue.

You did do...some covering up.

We're not talking legalistically now, I just want...the facts.

I mean, you did do some covering up, but there were a series of times when maybe overwhelmed by

your loyalties or whatever else, but as you look back at the record...

you behaved partially, protecting your friends or maybe yourself, and that in fact you were,

to put it at its most simple,

a part of a cover-up at times.

No, I again respectfully will not...quibble with you

about the use of the terms.

However, before using the term, I think it's very important

for me to make clear what I did NOT do and what I did do.

'He wouldn't volunteer things,'

it was only when you'd got him on the ropes and, to try and get off the ropes,

he'd make a further admission, and so on.

But that's madness of him to say that.

-It isn't madness at all.

-How could two small countries like Cuba...?

Being a formidable former president

didn't exempt Nixon from the intense confrontational approach that Frost had perfected back in Britain.

So that is obstruction of justice, period!

That's your conclusion...

-It is.

-But now let's look at the facts.

'The very last day of the Watergate taping we were absolutely,'

both of us, exhausted at the end because...

taking...this incredibly private man

right into the depths of his inner soul, you know, was exhausting for both of us.

I let the American people down...

..and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life.

My political life is over.

Frost's success was further proof that demand for big names was big business.

Back in Britain, it was a journalist from Barnsley who was to become the next big chat show name.

I saw David Frost on television and I saw Johnny Carson, which seemed to me to be

the perfect way to earn a living. There are many different ways

to do a talk show. My way is to use my journalistic experience,

my experience as an interviewer,

to actually get the best out of the people sitting opposite me.

That's my way of doing it and I never thought there's any other way.

All of those iconic '50s, '60s, '70s stars,

be they Hollywood film stars, or global sporting superstars,

your Rolodex of memory remembers seeing everybody.

Of course he was a fantastic enthusiast for these big Hollywood stars

who were perhaps doing their first interview on television in Britain.

It was one major booking with a Hollywood giant that kick-started Parkinson's legendary

star-filled roster, and helped him to single-handedly define the chat show genre for the next decade.

We had a terrible problem when we first started, in getting the big names on.

Quite obviously, the agents stood back and said, "Well who are you?

"Let's see a bit of form, first of all."

And we decided one star would open the door and unlock the doors and that was Orson Welles.

He is, of course, a remarkable man, most easily summed up as actor,

writer, film and theatre director, but what else?

'I was terrified of meeting Welles because I admired him so much.'

I thought I might faint when I saw him.

I spent days writing out the interview. I really did.

I'd broken it down to about 15/16 questions which I put on a white sheet of paper in my dressing room.

And there was a knock on my door, and there's my hero, and he's dressed entirely in black.

He had a black sombrero on, he had a black cloak on,

he had a black suit, he had a black shirt and a black bow tie.

And he's a massive man and he came in...he swept past me, "Mr Parkinson," he said,

and walked in and looked around, disapproved of this tiny BBC cubby-hole

being used as something more grand altogether.

He saw the questions - "What are they?"

I said, "They're my questions, Mr Welles."

"Ah", he said, "may I look, Mr Parkinson?" I said, "You may."

And he looked at them and said, "Mm, very interesting,"

and he ripped them and put them in the bin and said, "Let's talk."

You've been called a genius many times.

Yes, it's just one of those words, you know.

It's one of those words. I suppose there have only been two or three geniuses in this century.

-We all know who they are.

-Really?

I suppose, yes. We've got Einstein and Picasso and...somebody in China we haven't heard about, you know.

So you don't accept the...

Oh, I accept anything I get!

But...but between friends, you know, there aren't many of them.

-No.

-And I really wouldn't want to try to edge my way

into an elevator

that was for geniuses only, going up, you know.

'Once he'd been on the show, from that point on, the doors opened.'

The agents took the point of view that if Orson Welles,

who was then the greatest film star, director in the world, could do a show then anybody else would.

-May I see that, please?

-Yes, of course.

-Yes. No. ..Yes.

-LAUGHTER

I don't know.

Yes, and no. He'll tell you the questions later, I've gotta go.

If you're making a living as a journalist and an interviewer which is what I do,

but in fact you don't have that kind of fantasy life,

-you don't create something?

-Oh! I thought you were in showbiz!

-No.

-Oh, they told me you were in showbusiness!

-No. No.

-Oh, I didn't know you were a journalist!

Oh, how dreary!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

By 1973, Parkinson was a huge figure in light entertainment,

even beating Cliff Richard to Top Male Personality of the Year!

Now the viewers wanted MORE chat

and ITV gave it to them when they pitted their very own Yorkshire chat show host

in direct competition with the BBC.

The world's greatest talk show, and this is starring...

Wait a minute...um... Russell Harty?

Russell Harty's more informal approach gave his audience a chance

to see the stars in a way that was unthinkable on the Parkinson show.

Can we have a look at your...

-at your top for the last few moments of the show?

-Getting undressed in front of an audience?

'High camp at its best,'

and that's what Harty was all about.

I tell you what I usually do on talk shows when I was asked that,

that the host takes his shirt off and his jacket off.

'Just seeing people making fools of themselves'

and somehow revealing something of their real nature. That's what he wanted from his guests.

All right!

Oh, I feel so good.

Despite a decade of delivering huge audiences for the BBC, by 1980, Michael Parkinson was restless and

keen to expand the format into an American-style five nights a week.

I couldn't understand why the BBC had fought this.

It's the only sort of big broadcast institution in the world that's never had a five-night-a-week talk show.

And the BBC handled it badly!

Well, that's it, then. For the statistically minded it's been 361 shows, 1,047 guests,

373 hours, 47 minutes and 56 seconds of television time,

and 11 years of my life.

'It was always his ambition to have five nights a week like Carson.'

Whether it would've worked, we don't know, it didn't get a chance.

I thought, "I'm going to move on." I went to breakfast television

and that's basically why I left the BBC.

But the BBC's offer of a twice-weekly slot wasn't enough to prevent Parkinson

from teaming up with his former mentor, David Frost, and taking the talk format

into brand-new territory - breakfast television.

Hello, good morning and welcome to TV-am.

New studios, a new news service and a new national network.

'In 1979, or early '80,'

if someone had said, "Are you gonna be doing breakfast TV?"

I'd have said, "What's that?

"We don't have it here!"

So one suddenly thought, "That's the new frontier one wants to be involved in, and so go for it!"

But Parkinson 's departure from the BBC had left the Corporation in urgent need of a replacement.

We were then left with a void. They wanted another major talk show at the BBC.

You can get power-crazed in this place.

To fill the void, the BBC took the bold step of replacing Parkinson,

the consummate journalist, with radio DJ Terry Wogan.

I took over the Saturday show

from Michael, and...you know, a daunting prospect

cos Michael was and is such an outstanding talk show presenter,

and so...I took it over, and I hope I brought something different to it.

The idea for Terry Wogan to do a chat show on BBC1 was in the works

when I arrived at BBC1, in 1984 I think,

and I was full of enthusiasm for that. I was a huge admirer of Terry Wogan.

I like you, Wogan. I do, I swear to God.

And yet you married an Italian?

Wogan, there's a little green thing on this side of your nose...

'Terry is just genuinely a decent human being,'

a kind and generous person, and that comes across.

Wogan's appeal was very light. It's very professional,

but it's a... nobody's-gonna-get-hurt interview.

Well, when I get too tough I just say pretty much what, you know, what I have to say.

I don't do it in an angry way, although I can get angry if you push me that far.

-I'll try not to, no.

-Don't do it

cos I can tell you where to put it if I don't like where you got it.

This is...

APPLAUSE

'I was a guest of Wogan's a few times'

and I found out how good he was. He's a terrific help.

'He knows where the conversation should go, he'll help you out if you get into a hole.

'Experience helps but also he's very charming.'

The English are very tolerant and interested in it and it's very civilised.

-I think I'm going to be sick!

-LAUGHTER

Sounded like Richard Attenborough's acceptance speech!

Within two years Wogan was given what Parkinson had been denied -

not quite a US-style Monday to Friday slot, but an unprecedented three nights a week of live TV chat.

Welcome to the beginning of what I hope will be a long and happy relationship.

At seven o'clock every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, this show will be coming to you live

from the BBC Television Theatre on verdant Shepherds Bush Green, London.

People forget that Wogan went out three times a week in prime time.

There are hardly any chat shows in prime time now on British TV.

He went out three times a week and live,

and he really defined the light entertainment of the '80s. Everything came through his studio.

And unlike his predecessor, Terry didn't feel overly compelled to research his guests.

The big difference between working with Terry

and Mike, of course, is that Terry was a broadcaster

without a deep sense of curiosity, and that was the challenge

when we decided to develop Terry as a talk show host.

I tried to bring

a spontaneity to it.

I didn't want to be a slave, and I never have been to research.

And didn't Mel Brooks give you the book as a birthday present?

Oh, no, that's a pack of lies.

-Is it?

-Yes, that's a pack of lies.

-I'm certainly glad

we didn't have that in the research.

-And you are celebrating some kind of anniversary, aren't you?

-Am I? What am I celebrating?

It says on the card there that you are.

By the time housewives' favourite Michael Aspel had got in on the act

with yet another talk show in the mid-'80s,

the competition for stars was fierce and the stakes were high.

'He is a performer, and has got'

a very wry and dry sense of humour,

but the show was never about him.

It was always about the company.

He's, on-screen, very engaging, very witty, very smart.

I never enjoyed his chat show

as much as I enjoyed the other shows he did,

cos I didn't think he was a natural chat show host but I think as a presenter, he's brilliant.

But no amount of talent

could save a host from one of the chat show circuit's more unpredictable guests, Oliver Reed.

'Landmark moments tend to be embarrassing, terrible or awful ones'

and that's a shame. I mean, I was... I worked on some of them.

I worked on Aspel, the drunken Oliver Reed night which is an extraordinary

night in my career...

..and is amazing to be part of something like that.

To feel the tension and electricity of something major happening.

# I was known as a wild one By all the folks around

# I was known

# I was known as the wild one... #

I was Director of Programmes at the time

and I remember the old Independent Television Commission complaining bitterly.

I think they thought it was live. They'd have gone nuts

if they'd known it was recorded the day before.

But it was a piece of... It was a television event, somebody being so drunk.

CLIVE JAMES: I remember that Michael Aspel show very well.

My function was to sit there as the other guest... while Oliver Reed ran amok.

I stepped in and asked the question, "Why do you drink?"

Which Mike Aspel hadn't asked because he couldn't really,

because the host can't do that on an entertainment talk show.

Unless it was an investigation into Alcoholics Anonymous, the host couldn't do it.

Why do you drink?

Because the finest people that I've ever met in my life are in pubs.

Ladies and gentlemen, Elizabeth Taylor.

APPLAUSE

But Aspel could still compete for the big Hollywood names, and memorably persuaded Liz Taylor

to give her first ever interview on British television.

'That was a phenomenal coup.

'I mean, that was just an incredible booking.'

On Aspel and Co there was always enormous competition for guests.

It was a sign of how good you were as a researcher.

You had your dream list of who you had to go and book and could you get them?

You're looking slim and lovely now, but as the world knows,

there was a time when of course you weren't quite as sylph-like.

I was the great white whale.

We have a picture here, which I'm sure you won't mind us seeing

because in the context of your present appearance, there you are.

Isn't that pretty?

How long ago was that?

About seven years ago.

And how much did you weigh?

I would say about 185.

-What's that? 13 stone or something?

-My God.

That's a boiling piece.

And while Liz delivered her side of the deal with a candid interview,

she in turn got a promotional TV spot.

'We were going to do an hour's special with Elizabeth Taylor,'

and her request was that the whole of her dressing room

had to be painted purple,

which matched coincidentally the colour of the box of the perfume that she was promoting at the time.

Long gone were the days when a guest was flattered to be invited onto a show.

Now there were books to sell and films to promote.

Plugging became openly acceptable.

-Like this book Flying Visits which is coming out soon.

-More free plugs than Currys!

'The average chat show host tries to get the book or the record over'

as fast as they can and talk about somebody's life.

Of course, what the person that's coming on wants to do is plug the record.

There's an inevitable conflict.

Three Fugitives, it opens in 70 days.

I came on this show to sell a book. I am in England to sell a book.

They're not coming on because they love you or because they want

to necessarily reveal their innermost selves or secrets.

After 30 years of chat dominating the evening schedules,

the emphasis suddenly switched to daytime television.

Yes, hello. It is nice to be back but wasn't the weather absolutely fantastic last week?

Summer rain now, so stay inside and watch This Morning.

This mid-morning magazine format centred around conversation

soon filled the void of daytime schedules.

There was this huge black hole in the morning with nothing on at all,

and there was potentially a very big available audience.

# You'll wonder where the yellow went When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent. #

At the heart of this success was the obvious rapport

between the first husband and wife chat show double act, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan.

'Doing a daily talk show'

'is a very big strain'

on the host. It hugely helps if there's two of them.

'The husband and wife dynamic within This Morning

'was hugely important to the success of the programme. They both are so together'

as a couple, and have such a strong relationship,

they know exactly what the other person is about to ask next.

Even the Americans realised that celebrities were not the only way forward.

The Phil Donahue show built on David Frost's discovery that a combination

of non-celebrities, real issues and a studio audience could make great entertainment and great ratings.

It broke down the fourth wall of the studio, if you like.

And getting the audience involved made it much more of a dialogue.

Now who doesn't wanna take ecstasy?

'I was on holiday in Florida with my wife.'

I'd never seen anything like this. He kept me out of the sunshine.

We're always in ecstasy.

'And from that day on, I said,'

"I wanna do a show like that -

"a live audience show with ordinary people talking about their fears,

"their emotions, politics, whatever it was."

Now that the chat show hot seat was open to all,

the established conventions of the interview were really up for grabs.

John Stapleton brought the idea home with him and British daytime TV changed forever.

Hello, good morning. The time is ten o'clock, the place is the city of Leeds.

'When I started doing The Time The Place,'

the only competition we had on BBC, if I remember, was Play School,

which was a completely different audience.

'Its aim was to get ordinary people on the air'

first thing in the morning to discuss topical issues,

to hear the voice of the ordinary person. That was his big purpose.

Ladies, would you have your fella wearing one of these?

This is Errol, and he, for the purposes of this show, is modelling a...a skirt.

But if keeping control of a couple of celebrities was often impossible,

what were the chances of reining in a whole studio audience?

'I thought it was a perfectly innocuous programme'

about fashion, and two black guys in the audience stood up and started protesting.

-Who else wouldn't wear one? You wouldn't be seen dead in one?

-No.

Listen, right, I dress in black because my people are dying in the mud, OK?

-I'm not a joker, I don't joke.

-Well...

Now, you've got...you've got... This is racism going on here.

You've got models here... three white boys there dressed nice

and you've put my black brother in a dress.

Now hang on a tick. I'm sorry, I'm not buying that for a single second.

-My people's in the mud...

-I am not entering a discussion...

-We're catching fire.

-I came here to talk about racism...

-Not at our invitation you didn't.

-Yes...

'The fact of the matter is we were talking about fashion.

'You can't have people hijack a programme and dictate their own agenda.'

They were threatening and they were unpleasant,

and...the programme, which was going out live, was pulled off air.

Back in Hollywood, and prime time, even The Tonight Show had picked up on the enthusiasm for real people,

and Johnny Carson had long been spicing up his celebrity roster with a few unknown eccentrics.

We'll get a camera over here.

Now that would be a... It's a dog! It's a dog!

- An, an angry dog or an angry bear! - Kinda like a beagle.

- All right. - OK?

You go either way. I say... It's now a beagle, folks.

- Whatever you see. - Well, OK.

He was the first talk show host

to feature real people regularly on a network show,

by which I mean old ladies who collect crisps.

Look at this one, John.

No, no, no.

No, I didn't.

Oh, my God!

But in 1992, after 30 years on top,

4,000 shows and 25,000 guests, Carson was finally to retire.

# That rainy day is here. #

Americans got used to watching Johnny before they went to bed,

and he absolutely became part of the American cultural landscape.

The final show was a hugely emotional TV event,

and the big question was who would succeed Carson's chat show crown?

The two main contenders for the post became comedian Jay Leno and NBC late-night host David Letterman.

Letterman's always been quite clear. He would've always loved to have hosted the Tonight Show

and Johnny Carson was absolutely his hero.

The fight for the top job ended when NBC made the surprise choice of Jay Leno.

NBC mainly went with Jay Leno because he was more controllable.

David Letterman is the dark prince of late night,

he is his own man, he doesn't take well to...

doing what network executives tell him to do, whereas Jay Leno does.

While Leno got the Tonight Show, wildcard Letterman turned failure into success

with a shock 16 million move to rival network CBS.

And I wanna thank them for their support,

and also I would like to thank them for their generosity because...

Letterman's a god.

You can't better Letterman on a good night.

And all the pretenders to the crown have come,

you know, Jay Leno and Arsenio Hall and all those guys,

none of them is a patch on Dave when he's on form.

Most talk shows were pretty straight.

There was very little comedy in-between them.

Nobody had really done that sort of comedy/talk show format before then.

The rise of the comedy talk show

was in the first place fuelled by the success of Letterman

who was defining his show through the '80s,

and it took a few years for the British to realise

there was a potential here to do something different.

The first glimpse British audiences had of this variety-filled chat show with a comedy host

was when a young Jonathan Ross unashamedly styled himself as "the British Letterman"

for a new series on Channel 4.

It was sort of stolen hook, line and sinker from that format,

but it was a very simple format - it had a house band in the way that Letterman had a house band,

and there were gags in the show in the way Letterman had it, there were stupid tricks.

Everybody's gotta learn their talent somewhere and he was lucky he had those years at Channel Four

where there was little or no responsibility.

Doing a chat show on Channel Four,

if it bombs, it's not the end of your career, it's a good learning curve.

So he served his apprenticeship and it served him well.

By the early 1990s, the influence of Letterman and the success of The Last Resort

had spawned a raft of comedy-based chat shows, where the host was part interviewer and part stand-up comic.

A former courtroom barrister, Clive Anderson's sharp mind and quick wit

made him well qualified for the chat show host's chair.

I've always done bits and bobs of comedy in my life,

either scripts or doing a bit of stand-up, contributing here or there.

So when you put the two together and end up interviewing somebody on television trying to be funny,

as I am generally trying to do in those sort of shows, the fact that I've written a bit of comedy,

and in court have cross-examined witnesses, it all seems to make sense.

During those early days of Clive Anderson Talks Back you got quite a lot of edgy interviews,

while the guests came on expecting one thing

and then realised halfway through,

"Hang on, this is...this is not a conventional chat show."

I think the best example of that is Jeffrey Archer, who was completely caught by surprise.

I would greatly admire someone who could write a novel quickly -

I mean they take about...the latest one has taken 19 drafts,

- Yes. - Every bit handwritten... - Yes.

- ..and it isn't easy. - Which draft does the public get? - About the 19th, 20th.

- Right. - You're really catching on tonight, Clive, I mean...

- Very fast. - Yeah. Thank you very much. Now...

Didn't know you were a critic as well.

There's no beginning to your talents.

You've moved on to your writing now. That's what you're famous for...

All the old jokes are the best, I've got to admit that.

If you ask a difficult question and there's a joke in it, it takes some of the sting out of the question.

That's my theory, it's not always been proved correct in practice.

This new breed of chat show host grabbed the spotlight more than ever before.

Former TV critic Clive James took to the airwaves

keen to distinguish his chat show with a mix of satire, monologues and interviews via satellite.

On with the show, and in a week when it was revealed that Prince Charles's new youth-preserving diet

consists of organic bean sprout paste on a cabbage leaf,

the Prince tells us, "I feel so young, I could dance all night."

Saturday Night Clive was a talk show, but it was also a look back at the week's news,

and it was the first television show to really look at things like...

re-interpreting news footage in a funny comic way or news stills.

In fact, we were doing that before Have I Got News For You.

The Soviet Union is still a super-power,

and interference from the United States will not be tolerated.

He told excited Russian crowds that US marines aren't as macho as people say...

..but Soviet paratroopers are real men.

Meanwhile on Channel Four, The Word took the attitude of these cheeky presenters

and packaged it into a notorious late-night chat show

which treated its guests to an added measure of provocation.

I just think The Word was quite cutting, it was fairly unpretentious.

It wasn't so much we would ask certain questions that other people wouldn't ask,

we would couch them in a certain way.

- So, so what provokes you now? - You!

Oh, come on, really. Eh! Come on!

The Word was the first TV show to actually do that, to do it to guests.

All right, yeah, we'll give you a bit of this.

Know what I mean? We're gonna shift you out of your comfort zone.

You're wearing my ass paper-thin.

I wanna tell you, I am like, I'm going to drag myself back into town into bed and have a...

- See that's the whole idea of it. A bit of squirming on the show. - Yeah. Well...

You provide plenty of that.

Good evening, and welcome to TFI Friday. Friday night's live on Channel Four once again.

Former DJ Chris Evans was another of this new wave of pushy presenters.

Skilled at taking his guests out of their comfort zone,

Evans embraced this outrageous approach on TFI Friday, his loud and laddish teatime chat show.

I think the best person I ever saw was Chris Evans, really,

who made you feel like you were there at his height of TFI Friday.

He was a genius at being able to communicate this sense of fun

and intimacy and everything, you know.

- Very few people can do that. - If you don't swear tonight, I'll give ya my shoes.

They'll do.

All right?

60 (BLEEP) good...

Do you see?!

We apologise for that.

Try and do your best for me, mate.

You never felt that there was a formula that was being abided to.

Like radio, you could sort of bounce around wherever you wanted to go,

and it just so happened that there was some cameras pointing at them.

The next big break with the format came courtesy of comedienne Ruby Wax,

who cleverly abandoned the studio for a more intimate, more hands-on approach with her guests.

We're entering Imelda's abode, her humble abode, cos she was a little...

Her town house. Very small, tiny, fall-from-grace marble town house.

We're going here, OK.

Gracias, amigo.

# ..And dozy dotes and little lamsy divey

# A kiddly divey, too wouldn't you? #

Fidel Castro.

Saddam Hussein.

Ruby was so well prepared, she knew exactly what she was doing.

The day before we left she said to me, "I need proper jewels."

I persuaded Theo Fennell to give us £70,000 worth of jewellery

so that Ruby could wear real jewels.

She said, "When Imelda Marcos sees me, she'll think, "I'm one of you,"

Absolutely. And so we had our half an hour with Imelda Marcos, it went into three days.

Why are you mobbed when you go into the streets?

What is it about you that they love so much?

Maybe, maybe I'm transparent.

Maybe they know what's in my heart.

- Maybe they know... - They know the mother.

If Imelda can do it...

..everybody can do it.

- That's probably why... - That's exactly what I would like to share.

The people love you. They think if this little girl can come up and pull this stunt...

this great piece of work, then anybody can.

- Yes, if this is, it's a matter of attitudes, values and... - No, just let's go back...

It was one of those little leaps forward that nobody had thought

to go round their houses or their apartments and make fun of them,

and look in their closets and say, "Look how many shoes you've got!"

OK, so where next, Imelda?

Imelda's toilet.

This her loo, this is her flusher, this is her mirror.

Chat show hosts do play a game with the people they invite on and particularly somebody like Ruby Wax,

who maybe playing a trick on the guest that the celebrity doesn't quite know about,

we know about, maybe the celebrity doesn't mind, because obviously they've let the show go ahead

and go on the air, but it had a real sense of informality and danger and anything could happen.

'And so our fairy princess may still live happily ever after.'

To get into her flat, and to have the former dictator of the Philippines

sing you Feelings one-on-one,

you know, you just get beyond that and to sit there, in her flat,

where she claimed with tears running her down that she was the mother of the nation,

and the camera would pan left and you'd see a Pissarro and a Van Gogh which she'd nicked from the museum.

Another female face on the chat show scene was comedienne Caroline Aherne.

Although her creation Mrs Merton was anything but a gentle old lady,

Aherne's persona allowed her to deliver clever, provocative comedy entirely at the guest's expense.

Now, I'm not Harry Carpenter, anybody'll tell you that,

but I do like a good ding-dong, we all do in the north west,

so seconds out while I go the distance with everybody's favourite boxer, Chris Eubank.

Chris Eubank during the weeks leading up to the show kept phoning me

saying he was concerned he'd be made fun of in the show.

Which is a bizarre thing to say, because of course he is!

I like your outfit, Chris.

- Mmm-hmm. - Is it Marksies?

- Marks and Spencers? - No.

I didn't wanna lose him as a guest. He said, "I'm concerned about the double-entendres,

"because she says double-entendres and they are, they are rude and they are not respectful."

And I looked at the script and... I said, "Well, it looks all right to me.

"I think you'll be fine", so he said, "All right, I'll come."

So he turned up on the night, and in this interview there was this one whopping big double-entendre.

Were you as surprised as we all were,

when he came from behind and he licked you in the ring? Were you surprised?

Oh, come on, Chris!

Chris Eubank, come on!

It's a chat show!

It's great when you watch it because, you know, you're at home and everything's gonna be all right,

and she did some very good ad-libbing.

They were in the studio, we didn't know if this show was ever gonna get going again!

We didn't know if our guest was ever going to talk again!

By the late '90s, it was difficult to imagine where the chat show could go next,

but thanks to an Irish comedian we were so about to find out.

But the main difference, the main difference between a straight man and a bisexual is about...

mmm, four and half pints of lager...

..in my experience.

To do talk shows you need to be skilled in lots of areas,

but most particularly I'd maintain

you need comedic skills and stand-up comedic skills are important.

Graham Norton got the very best from his celebrity guests

when they entered his world full of risque jokes, raunchy audience members and hi-tech games.

The show kind of came out of an Edinburgh show that I was doing,

where I talked to the audience and then at the end did phone calls.

And so that's where the phone calls came from.

The internet was something the executive producer Graham Stuart suggested,

and I said yes to humour him.

I didn't know what the internet was and I assumed we'd do it in the pilot, and then we'd cut it out.

Little did I know!

Bob in New York. No, this is bizarre. He's well-built and into nude apartment cleaning.

-We have to talk to him!

-Well, he's a nudist!

'The first moment on the So show,

'where we kind of saw where it could go,'

where she just grabbed the phone off me and was talking to this guy,

the guy's going, "Is this really Grace Jones?"

"Where have you been?" And, you know, she's getting all angry

and then she's singing La Vie En Rose to him down the phone, and it was all unplanned.

SHE SINGS IN FRENCH

You got enough now? You happy?

'I'll give you my address.'

Thank you.

-Bob? Bob?

-'I'll give you, I'll give you my address...'

-Bob?

-'You send me a photo and...next time you're...

-I'm gonna send you a washed-up picture!

'The next time you're in New York I'll clean your apartment for free.'

'To find out what makes somebody laugh, what shocks somebody, how they react to a certain thing,

'is I think, more revealing'

than asking them a direct question.

What are the chances of you asking a question they haven't been asked before,

or that they're gonna answer differently this time? They're just not!

Norton's big reward for such innovation was the holy grail of

chat shows. Channel Four gave him a US-style five-nights-a-week slot never before seen on British TV.

'Weirdly, doing a five-nights-a-week show is very liberating,'

because if you do a rubbish one, you just go,

"Oh, well, we're doing another one tomorrow, hopefully it's better!"

Whereas when you're doing once a week, it better be good.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr White in Reservoir Dogs and the star of Pulp Fiction, Harvey Keitel!

'We worked very hard coming up with new stuff,'

and trying not to repeat too many things.

You're doing a sort of Cheerleader Challenge, but there's the real cheerleaders. Hello.

Hello, real cheerleaders. Now, whereabouts are you from, what part of America?

We're not, we're from Bracknell!

'It was...I suppose the ultimate challenge for us to create,'

you know, pretty high-powered entertainment on a nightly basis.

Well, that was what set out to do and...and it was hard work

but I believe that most of the time we succeeded.

Despite the endless evolution of chat shows, in 1998, the BBC decided

it was time to go back to basics, and after a gap of over 15 years, Parkinson was back at the BBC.

'One of the attractions to guests appearing on the Parkinson show is'

that they know they are going to be dealt with in a professional way

by a man who knows his stuff.

He will probe into areas where people may be reluctant to speak,

but he manages to do it in a way that doesn't appear to be stepping over the mark,

and to that extent, I think they feel safe.

How difficult was it breaking up with Liz? Was that difficult?

-You were with her a long time.

-You slid that in from nowhere.

I know, you came to see me backstage and we discussed a few topics

we might talk about and, that never came up, but OK, it's up now.

-Well, it's...

-Judas!

-Oh, no, please!

No, it's fine. Well, it's sad, it's sad...Michael,

or should I call you Parky?

Whatever you want. Whatever you feel like doing.

'As you get older, maybe because of that change in relationship'

that you get because you're older, the job becomes in a sense easier.

Maybe it's because you're more confident yourself,

maybe because you have a clearer definition of who you are, I don't know.

Or maybe it's because after having tried lots of other things in the meantime

you actually would like to be back where you're most at home and that was a big part of it with me.

The other curious thing too is you seem to do this when everything's going great for you.

Your career's happening, everything...people love you,

-then all of a sudden...away you go. What is it, boredom?

-It's...

I should be paying you £100 for this.

-Yeah.

-Should I lie back? Yeah, I dunno what it is.

For me personally I get an awful lot of success and, a lot of the times

I don't think I deserve it, and then I wanna sabotage it, you know, I wanna mess it all up but...

'Parky had great guests,'

but Parky made them great guests.

He knew what he wanted to get out of them, and how he was gonna do it,

and that's why he is and remains the king of the chat shows.

For almost 60 years, our appetite for televised conversation has been

fed with a constant stream of TV chat, from showbiz to pop,

from serious to funny, to the almost surreal and the downright disturbing.

So what's left in store for our favourite light entertainment show?

The future of the talk show, I think, is completely and utterly secure.

The challenge is to find new ways of doing a talk show, find new ways of involving an audience.

There's always gonna be somebody else coming up in the ranks

who you think has got that bit of magic, who... and what do you do with them?

Well, you might give 'em their own chat show.

The comedy show will actually last longer than the kind of show I do.

I don't think it'll disappear, but I don't think it'll have the kind of profile that it has now.

I might be wrong. I hope I am, because it will be a great job for some person to do, that's for sure.

Next time on The Story Of Light Entertainment,

the magicians, the dancers, the puppets and the circus acts

from television's greatest show on earth - variety.

It's never the trick, it's always the person doing it.

I want to believe that I was born a showman, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The Muppets were totally different than anything we'd ever seen before.

That's one thing I never talk about, is puppets.

That's the only thing I can't talk about. I know nothing about puppets.

Why would you ask me about puppets?

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd