Michael Parkinson, who died during the week, once bestrode the Saturday evening TV schedules (after the football highlights) as almost essential viewing.

He first came to my attention, though, hosting the Granada TV programme Cinema, as an enthusiast for the form a natural progression for him from his journalistic beginnings. I remember his relishing the description of the final scene of a Western (most likely Duel in the Sun) as “lust in the dust.”

He of course became most famous for his eponymous chat show, where his professional Yorkshireman attitudes occasionally ruffled feathers.

On one occasion I recall he asked Paul Simon how he went about writing a song. As if that process could be distilled into a short demonstration. Simon’s discomfort was evident.

He is said to have given Billy Connolly his big break. Perhaps in the wider UK, but Connolly was huge in Scotland well before his first appearance on Parky.

His interviews with Mohammad Ali and the one with Miss Piggy stick in the memory but the less said about him being attacked by a (large) glove puppet the better.

In later life, though, Parkinson became more notable for being the star (and later referrent) of life insurance adverts.

Michael Parkinson: 28/3/1935 – 16/8/2023. So it goes.

Sometimes I feel that we live in a Chinese curse.

Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and now Libya. Where will it end?

Of course I thought the world had gone to hell in a handcart when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas if you prefer.) In my whole memory up to then the British Army had not been involved in a full blown shooting war. (Now it seems they’ll never be out of one.)

Then there was the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that followed.

I remember once seeing Enoch Powell on Parkinson and laughing at the old codger when he referred to the “Dutch East Indies.”

Now it’s me who is a bit of an old codger. I still think of St Petersburg as Leningrad as that was its name when I visited on a school cruise in the 1970s.

I have to scoff though when Mr Irresponsible and his sidekick William Hague stand up for the rights of street protestors.

That’ll be fine except when it occurs in the UK then, eh?

OK, arrest people who break the law by smashing windows or throw stuff and the like, but what is kettling and thumps on the head or back with a truncheon if not repression?

And kettles boil, do they not? Or is that the object of the exercise?