David Frost (7 April 1939 – 31 August 2013)
The king of the ‘soft interview’ has died. David Frost the man who ridiculed the establishment then became the establishment suffered a heart attack at the age of 74 while on board the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship giving a lecture.
Coming from a grammar school during post war Britain he was at the head of the storming of the ruling elite grip on British power during the sixties. The fact that his first mentor was Tory supporter Ned Sherrin who gave David Frost his first opportunity on That Was the Week That Was, illustrate the fact that the ‘new guard’ would someday become the ‘old guard’.
Having made his name lampooning the rich and powerful David Frost then became a master interrogator always seen to be fair with his interviewees, but still able to get the killer answer to a question which was usually an uncomfortable question at the heart of an issue which the interviewee was in the centre of.
David Frost was also a television entrepreneur who aimed high but was not too self important to go ‘down market’ if that what was required to make money. His biggest failure was when he was with the TV-AM and the ‘Famous Five’ (who took on breakfast television with Michael Parkinson, Angela Rippon, Anna Ford and Robert Kee). The ambition was a “mission to explain”, but, ended up having a puppet called Roland Rat being the star and David Frost being shunted to a ghost spot interviewing boring politicians on a Sunday morning.
The Sunday morning spot turned out to be a major move and when the quality of the subjects rose. Frost on Sunday then became Breakfast With Frost when he went back to the BBC. Breakfast With Frost became required viewing especially when a major news story broke out on the weekend. Breakfast With Frost also brought back political satire into David Frost repertoire with impressionist Rory Bremner used to do a stand up routine on the latest news.
David Frost also had a hit with the very popular ‘Through The Keyhole’ which invited guest to guess who’s house Lloyd Grossman was looking around. This again started out as a TV-AM filler and went on to be a major success spawning its own tv series.
The one thing that David Frost will always be famous for was the the interview that he had with Richard Nixon. In the journalist world the interview was associated with ”cheque book” journalism a derogatory way of describing paid interviews. The Nixon/Frost interview has now been seen as a major success especially when it featured the apology by Richard Nixon of letting down the American people over The Watergate Scandal.
As a journalist, networker and socialite David Frost was a master and surprisingly had very few if any enemies. His ability to gain access to the important interview was probably his only downside because it was always seen as soft and gentle and not hard hitting which is the diet for the modern age.
The David Frost Show: John Lennon and Yoko Ono
David Frost vs Emil Savundra
David Frost vs Emil Savundra pt 2
