Nicholas Parsons

Early life

Parsons was born at 1 Castlegate, Grantham, Lincolnshire; he was the middle child of the family, having an older brother and a younger sister. His father was a general practitioner. His mother, born in Bristol to a founder of local company W.B. Maggs & Co, was training as a nurse when she met Parsons' father at University College Hospital, London.

Parsons was born left-handed but was made to write with his right hand. As a child, he had a stutter, which he managed to control as he grew older, and was slow to learn owing to dyslexia. He also suffered from migraines but nevertheless excelled at school.

After education at Colet Court and St Paul's School in London, Parsons' initial career plan was to become an actor. However, his parents believed that a career in engineering would be better, as he had repaired grandfather clocks as a young man and was creative with his hands.

While at school he was best friends with Admiral Sir John Devereux Treacher KCB who was to become Commander-in-Chief Fleet. At school Parsons' nickname was "Shirley" after the then burgeoning talent of Shirley Temple.

After he had left school, his family contacted relatives in Scotland, who arranged a job for him on Clydebank near Glasgow, where he spent five years employed as an engineering apprentice at Drysdales, a maker of marine pumps. While there, he also spent two six-month periods studying engineering at the University of Glasgow. He never graduated, but finished his apprenticeship and gained sufficient qualifications to become a mechanical engineer. He was offered a position in the Merchant Navy during the Second World War, which he never took up due to illness.

Career in entertainment

He started his career while training as an engineering apprentice; he was discovered by Canadian impresario Carroll Levis, and appeared in his radio show as an impersonator. He also gained valuable early experience in amateur concert parties.

At the end of the Second World War, he became a full professional actor. He made his stage debut in West End theatre as Kiwi in The Hasty Heart at the Aldwych Theatre in 1945 which ran for over a year, then played the lead in a tour of Arsenic And Old Lace. He made his film debut in Master of Bankdam in 1947 and continued his stage career in West End theatre, with two years in repertory at Bromley, Kent, and later Windsor, Maidstone and Hayes, and played many supporting roles in British films of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1952, he became a resident comedian at the Windmill Theatre, performing regular nights of stand-up comedy to packed houses. He starred in the West End show Boeing-Boeing for 15 months and later, other West End productions throughout the 1970s. He featured in the Stephen Sondheim musical Into The Woods at the Phoenix Theatre, London, for six months in 1988.

One of his first TV appearances was in The Adventures of Robin Hood where he played Sir Walter of the Glen, a knight in 'Trial by Battle'. Parsons became well known to TV audiences during the 1960s as the straight man to comedian Arthur Haynes. They had a successful season at the London Palladium in 1963 and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in America in 1966. In the same year, the partnership broke up after ten years at Haynes's request, allowing Parsons to return to the stage, before becoming a regular on The Benny Hill Show from 1968 to 1971. After Haynes' sudden death, Parsons appeared as a personality in his own right on television, including in the long-running Anglia Television quiz show Sale of the Century, broadcast weekly from 1971 to 1984. In 1983 Hill wrote and performed in the sketch "Sale of the Half Century", with himself cast as Parsons.

Parsons has been the host of the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game Just a Minute since it was first broadcast on 22 December 1967. The show continues to be transmitted and Parsons has been heard in every edition and has presented the show in six different decades. The programme's longevity is arguably due in part to the host's ability to be a chairman, create laughs and to act as a straight man to the comedians who participate.

In the 1950s Parsons provided the non-singing voice of Tex Tucker in the children's TV puppet series Four Feather Falls at the suggestion of his then wife, actress and voiceover artiste Denise Bryer, who was in the show. During the late 1960s he created and presented a satirical programme on Radio Four called Listen to This Space, which by the standards of its time was very avant garde, and he received the Radio Personality of the Year Award for his work on this programme in 1967.

In the 1950s and '60s he appeared in many supporting roles in British films. Also, in the late 1960s, he portrayed David Courtney in the short-lived American sitcom The Ugliest Girl in Town.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1978 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

In 1988 he appeared as himself in The Comic Strip Presents episode "Mr Jolly Lives Next Door", in which he had the misfortune to encounter two incompetent escort agency directors (Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in their usual cheerfully violent, dipsomaniac personas) followed by the psychopathic and misnamed Mr Jolly himself (played by Peter Cook).

In 1989 he featured in the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who as the doomed Northumberland vicar Reverend Wainwright in the Seventh Doctor serial The Curse of Fenric. Parsons later provided a commentary for the DVD release of the serial. Another guest role in 1989 was in The New Statesman, where he played the host of a daytime quiz show. In 1990, he appeared as the Mayor in the BBC's series for children Bodger & Badger.

In the early 1990s, he hosted a short lived panel game called "Laughlines" which was broadcast by Sky TV rival BSB on the Galaxy entertainment channel, followed by an appearance in the final fourth series of the UK TV show Cluedo as Reverend Green.

Parsons took the lead role of the narrator in the 1994 21st anniversary revival of the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show and repeated the role at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End, further starring in the revival the following year. He then toured with the production intermittently from 1994-1996.

In April 2005 he was the guest presenter on the BBC comedy news show Have I Got News for You and over the next decade guested on many other television shows as a speaker and an entertainer including as Father Gorman in Marple: The Pale Horse and Celebrity Mastermind in December 2007. Just a Minute transferred to television in 2012 for a ten-part early-evening series to celebrate its 45th anniversary, with Parsons and regular panellist Paul Merton.

Parsons wrote an autobiography entitled The Straight Man: My Life in Comedy, which was published in 1984, and he produced a book of memoirs in 2010 called Nicholas Parsons: With Just a Touch of Hesitation, Repetition and Deviation.

He appears annually at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe presenting his comedy chat show The Happy Hour at the Cabaret Bar at the Pleasance, and has done so since 2001.

Nicholas Parsons is the oldest intermittent broadcaster on BBC Radio (4). Sir David Attenborough is the next oldest intermittent broadcaster on BBC TV and radio.

Roles outside entertainment

From 1988 to 1991, Parsons served as Rector of the University of St Andrews. In 2005, he became for a short period honorary Chairman of the International Quizzing Association (IQA), a body that organises the World and European Quizzing Championships. He is a leading member of the Grand Order of Water Rats charity, a patron of the British Stammering Association, and was a Pro Dono Ambassador. He was the president of the charity the Lord's Taverners from 1998 to 1999. He is an Ambassador for Childline and Silverline.

Parsons is a lifelong Liberal, having supported the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats. He was invited to stand as a Liberal Party candidate for Yeovil in the 1970s, but he turned down the opportunity in order to remain in the entertainment industry. On 17 October 2013, a week after his 90th birthday, he appeared as a guest on the BBC1 political discussion show This Week.

Awards and recognition

Parsons was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2004 New Year Honours for services to drama and broadcasting. He was promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for charitable services, especially to children's charities.

Having served as rector of the University of St Andrews from 1988 to 1991, he was awarded an honorary LLD by the university in 1991. He was also awarded an honorary DA by the University of Leicester in 2007, and an honorary DL by the University of Lincoln in 2014.

He held the Guinness World Record for the longest after-dinner speech (11 hours for charity) until it was reclaimed by former holder Gyles Brandreth.

Publications