In all the recent mouthing off about Michael McIntyre's new chat show, the aspiring king of desk-based cobblers has tended to be compared to the latterday Holy Trinity of Talk, Ross, Norton and Carr. Few have mentioned the one true god of the modern chat show, Michael Parkinson, who now really feels like he comes from a bygone age. Yet the old pre-Wogan warhorse is currently back on Sky Arts with his Masterclass. No nicking people's phones, no skipping across the stage, just down the line questions that everyone wants answered.
His guest this week was a must for comedy fans. Eddie Izzard has always got something to talk about and along with some anecdotes that will be familiar to many, there were some new factoids too. I knew that Izzard used to do sword fighting when he was a street entertainer in Covent Garden and I knew things often went badly when he started out, but I didn't know that he was rubbish at magic as well. He would hide under a cloak with a bowl of cornflakes and try to make the cornflakes disappear - by eating them. Another trick that regularly went wrong was throwing a toy beaver through a hoop made of paper.
And, in his own way Eddie has been attempting to throw a toy beaver through hoop made of paper all of his life. Sometimes he succeeds, fantastically running 51 marathons in 43 days (I know how hard it is, I ran about a mile with him and am still knackered) and sometimes he fails - his attempt to run 27 marathons in South Africa in honour of the 27 years Nelson Mandela spent in prison had to be halted due to illness. Persistence and never giving up - unless under doctor's orders – is the key to his success.
And, of course, Parkinson was eager to probe Izzard's motivation for getting into comedy, which comes back to the death of his mother when he was a child. Izzard talked about his mum making him a raven costume for a performance when she was ill and, as ever, he speculated that his pursuit of laughs derives from a desperation to be loved. He would give all of his success up if he could have his mother back.
Losing her, he said, was like being hit by a baseball bat. If this had been on Piers Morgan's ITV1 show this would no doubt be the cue for the guest to whip out the metaphorical onion and blub. But both Izzard and Parkinson are too good for that. Izzard was emotional, but it was never milked.
Parkinson's questions are sometimes a little gentle, but it is a sad reflection on the lightweight contemporaries in this field that he feels refreshing. He is not inquisitorial like John Freeman in Face To Face, nor is he overly serious like James Lipton in Inside The Actors Studio. What this programme excels at is good-hearted yet old school journalistic probing.
As the title suggests, it is a masterclass in chat. And it helps when Parkinson has a guest as open as Eddie Izzard, who is as happy to talk about running for London Mayor as he is about being an action transvestite and going out for the first time in leg warmers.
Parkinson: Masterclass – Eddie Izzard should currently be available to Sky subscribers on Sky Go.
