Michael’s biggest interest as a teenager was his love of the quintessential English sport of cricket which gained him trials for his local club, Yorkshire. Eventually Michael turned his career interests to journalism where he was employed by a local newspaper, The Barnsley Chronicle. With enthusiasm and ambition on his side he soon found his way to the Manchester Guardian and eventually to Fleet Street’s Daily Express and on to the very prestigious Sunday Times as a sports columnist. 1959 saw Michael marrying his wife, now of 58 years, Mary Heneghan who shared his love of journalism and ran the long running Thames TV show ‘Good Afternoon.’ Together they had three sons, Andrew, Nicholas and Michael.

By the 1960’s Parkinson had made the transition from the written word to the spoken word when he took his skills to television working for the BBC and Granada Television. It was the late 1960’s that brought Michael to the attention of the British public when he launched his self named chat show. The show’s format is built around interviewing celebrities but without the deep, and sometimes probing and embarrassing questions that can often be posed by  interviewers such as Larry King or David Letterman. This has made him a favourite with celebrities as they know they can relax and enjoy their time facing ‘Parky's’ questions. 

One of Parkinson’s claims to fame was his appearance on the cover of ‘Band on the Run’ the fifth album released by Paul McCartney’s band, Wings, which became Paul’s most successful album since the split up of The Beatles.

In 1983 Parkinson was in the original line up of the breakfast show TV-AM along with Angela Rippon, Anna Ford and Robert Kee, all of whom were replaced soon after by a much younger crew. Parkinson has cited his worst ever interview to be that which he conducted with Meg Ryan when time after time she sat and answered his questions with monosyllabic answers and appeared extremely disinterested in the interview and made ‘Parky’s’ job as awkward as she could until at one point she even suggested that they end the interview, but Michael persevered.

During his time as the presenter of the ‘Parkinson Show’ he has had the pleasure of interviewing, Ringo Starr,  George Michael, Jacqueline Bisset, Tom Cruise, Muhammad Ali, Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Gene Kelly, and James Cagney and Sarah Ferguson. Parkinson has always maintained that his biggest disappointment is that he never had the chance to interview Frank Sinatra. 

Ever the proud, plane speaking Yorkshire man,  Michael Parkinson has been the recipient of numerable awards and honours, including a Fellowship of the BFI, the Variety Club's Media Personality of the Year in 1998, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Light Entertainment Performance in 1999, and, in 2001, the Parkinson series won the National Television Award for Most Popular Talk show for the fourth time.