Television has seen many a fine presenter,
producer and interviewer, but rarely does one person have it all.
Sir David Frost was one such person,
a pioneer who changed the nature of broadcasting.
(Good evening.) Good evening.
David changed British television.
He understood what people cared about
in terms of current affairs, but also what made people laugh.
The rule here is don't, but if you must, confess as soon as possible afterwards.
LAUGHTER
David was really the person who defined
the interview where the interviewer doesn't try to become the story.
He tries to extract the story.
One thing you always knew about David was that his lifeblood
was appearing on television.
I think David was motivated by insatiable curiosity.
Everything he saw interested him.
He did it all with a minimum of ego,
as well as becoming the only
British interviewer to actually take America.
He was involved in so many different revolutions -
the revolution of British satire,
the revolution of the commercialisation of TV
in the UK, in breakfast TV, and then actually revolutionising what
political interviews really meant.
What made the man who took on a president,
whose career encompassed politics, satire and entertainment?
People. People made him happy. His friends, his family.
And then he'd interview you and he'd be happy to talk to you.
He was at the top of his game, in the public eye for 50 years.
He was unique, he was a one-off. And that was our dad.
David Frost was catapulted to fame
as the host of the BBC's That Was The Week That Was in 1962.
It was a smash hit. He was 23 years old.
Ahead of him lay a spectacular career in television.
Hello, good evening and welcome.
And I think you say things and I say things that people want to hear,
that they're thinking about but haven't expressed.
Let's welcome now, please, Mr John Lennon and Miss Yoko Ono.
APPLAUSE
What does 69.4 carats really mean?
It can't be dismissed as an idle bauble!
LAUGHTER
Mr Muhammad Ali.
APPLAUSE
So far, after one session, all the omens are good.
'The David Frost Show.'
David's ongoing career left the rest of us gasping because it was
so consistent, so persistent,
so dogged, but of such quality.
He was the only person to interview seven consecutive US presidents
and a total of eight British prime ministers.
He let us see people like Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair,
endless American presidents, with a kind of clarity
and a directness and a freshness.
We would never otherwise have seen them.
And he understood the power and appeal of all forms of television.
He defied description, David,
cos there'd never been anybody like him before.
He did all these different things. He reinvented himself almost every week and was hugely successful.
But where did this success begin?
He was born in Kent on the 7th of April 1939,
to the Reverend Wilfred J Paradine Frost and Mona,
who had two daughters, aged 14 and 16.
So, having sold the pram and everything, as his mother put it,
David Paradine Frost was a late but welcome addition.
His father instilled a Methodist work ethic, which he
would hand down to his three sons.
I think, very much from the Methodist upbringing,
there were three main points. The first one was to always contribute.
The second one was to always use the talent that you'd been given.
The third one, which I think every single one of us can take on,
is never waste a second of your life and always make sure that whatever
you're doing, there's not something better that you can be doing.
He was obviously incredibly intelligent,
but he worked incredibly hard. Something he's always told us is,
"You've got to do what you love because you can't work that
"hard at something you don't love." People say, "Ah, very puritanical.
"Very puritan, very Methodist."
That was a positive influence on me, that side of Methodism.
It was a loving childhood which David described as relatively
sheltered. "Sheltered from Sunday newspapers
"and alcohol by my parents' principles, from meals
"in restaurants, overseas trips and aeroplanes by my parents' budget."
But it gave David his unerring optimism.
He had a pretty strong mum, Mona.
I remembering him saying. He said, "Dads do their bit,
"but mothers really do it."
I think he got his confidence from her. She was just the same.
She'd bound into a room, beaming, full of energy,
and that's how David was.
One of the things that David wanted was success
and the things that came with it.
I think he wanted a glittering lifestyle
and he set out to get it and he got it.
Before finding that success in television,
David Frost's life could have been very different.
As a boy, he'd been tempted by a career in sport.
He was always very proud of the fact that he'd been offered
professional terms as a goalkeeper by Nottingham Forest.
I met his elder sisters and assorted
nephews, nieces, cousins, and they all told you, "Oh, yes.
"He could have been a footballer, you know.
"He could have left this world behind."
He probably made the correct decision, in that
it's unlikely he would have been at the top of his game
for 50 years, like he was with television.
And he also liked the fact that at that stage there was a maximum
wage you could take in football of £25 a week, I think he said it was.
So, yeah, he liked to retell it, but only when prompted
and I think he was proud that he probably made the right decision.
We've come here to help lead you in a crusade to Jesus Christ
and to help promote the kingdom of God in Britain.
He also took training as a Methodist lay preacher.
It wasn't due to his father's influence alone.
As a 15-year-old,
David saw the American Evangelist Billy Graham, describing it not
so much as a Damascus experience, but a Harringay one.
The power of the performance remained, as did his faith.
I heard, at the funeral, that he knelt down by his bed every
night and prayed and that kind of came as a little
bit of a shock to me, but we did talk about religion.
He definitely did have a faith.
David was somebody who definitely had a set of very clear moral
principles and precepts about how he should live his life.
Of all the friends I've had, he was the one who had, I think,
the tightest grip on a belief.
Um...
Journalists tend to not bother about those sort of things
and he belied it.
He was brilliant, my father.
He had never given me a hint of the fact that he prayed every day
that I would go into the Methodist church and the Methodist ministry.
And he never wanted to lay that on me, as it were,
but he prayed about it and I only learned about it after he died.
But the young David had set his heart on going to
Cambridge University.
The interview was the first time he had spent a night
away from his parents.
The second time was when he won his place to study English.
He soon revealed a natural confidence.
By the time I went round the societies fair
at the beginning of term, I knew I'd like to run that,
Footlights, and so on, so I had my ambitions and of course,
it was an amazing place because of the talent there.
I mean, Peter Cook, a year ahead of me,
John Cleese, a couple of years behind me, all of the Goodies.
He succeeded in becoming editor of the university arts magazine,
Granta, and secretary of the comedy society, Footlights.
David was virtually sort of stage manager and everything and
Peter said to me once he didn't want him in sketches, he was terrible!
But he was a good organiser, of course.
And they had their second-hand dinner jackets or something
and they drove to the
Palace Theatre, Westcliff, Cambridge Footlights, to do, you know, a show.
And Peter said, "We got out of the van and there was a poster -
"David Frost presents Cambridge Footlights" -
he'd been to the printer's.
This was the beginning of a rivalry between the satirist Peter Cook
and David.
I know the Beyond The Fringe people - Alan Bennett,
Jonathan Miller, Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke -
they did feel that David...copied a lot of their work.
And a lot of their ideas.
He took the idea of impersonating public figures.
They had done lampoons of Harold Macmillan and so on.
So they were the real breakers of convention,
but they did it in the theatre.
He did it on television. That was the big difference.
In his second year at university,
the Footlights were asked to produce an item for regional television.
While I was at Cambridge, I started doing things for Anglia Television and so on,
which I think my father originally thought was Anglican Television.
He thought it was another branch of the Church!
Stepping into a TV studio for the first time was
a revelation for David Frost.
I just felt, getting into television, "This is home."
I really did. It was an extraordinary feeling.
He honed his performance skills, working the comedy circuit
while pursuing a career as a reporter with Anglia Television.
I see from this that the 8:30 from Liverpool Street arrives at 11:11.
But it doesn't. It's running later.
And there's not even a special announcement to tell
the public about it. What do they think?
Anglia thought that David Frost wasn't cut out for television.
What do you think of the fact that the trains are later?
However, after graduating in 1961, he was taken on as a trainee
by Associated-Rediffusion, where he struck a chord with two actors.
I was sharing a flat with Terence Stamp
and he made a film called Billy Budd and became sort of famous
and not me, but he had to do TV interviews
and I used to go along and sponge, get a couple of drinks
and just have an evening out and see people.
And when you go to these things,
you're always met by someone who meets your car
and shows you a dressing room, gets you a coffee and stuff like that.
This young guy did all this,
but he was so impressive. As we were getting in the car,
I said to him, "What's your name?"
And he said, "David Frost." And we got in the car and drove away
and Terry Stamp and I both turned to each other at the same time
and said, "I think we're going to hear from that guy again!"
But as a sort of joke because his personality was extraordinary.
David secured himself an agent,
Noel Gay Artists, whom he would stick with throughout his career.
They soon had reason to celebrate.
"It seems," wrote his agent,
"that we have a very big property in David Frost."
Indeed. He had finally arrived.
(Good evening.) Good evening. An odd week...
David was completely different from us.
We were all learning sketches, singing songs, doing bits
and pieces. He kept the whole thing together.
A peaceful Sunday afternoon, the Salvation Army band...
In any live programme, things go wrong, so instead of us coming
to a dreadful stop and not knowing what to do, just cut to David.
I wonder why in all the rehearsals you refused to do that last link.
Now we know.
And that takes real nerve. Real nerve.
Not getting put out by that at all.
The speed of David's rise was quite extraordinary.
One minute, nobody had ever heard of him,
and the next minute, everybody had.
At the age of 23, not just being a TV star,
but one of very few TV stars, so he was very much in the spotlight.
It's astonishing, really, to think of now.
But certainly the man of the moment, the man of last week, and with
the Labour Party conference, the man of next week, is Hugh Gaitskell.
Hugh Gaitskell has, in recent years, established himself as the only
possible leader of the Labour Party.
A look at his colleagues and it's clear that they are not really
capable of leading a carthorse.
It's impossible to understand all these years later what
an extraordinarily fresh and original programme that was
and in some ways, it was the beginning of the '60s.
Next, please. Come along. Who's next? Ah, Mr Henry Burke.
It was a mixture of jokes and comedy, scepticism, wit
and then serious, really serious, informed current affairs.
And that was a perfect formula.
Just shows if you're Home Secretary, you can get away with murder.
No-one was protected.
The age of respect disappeared with TW3
and got replaced by something else.
And things like politics were never the same again.
# They argued, they pleaded They fought and they bluffed
# They couldn't agree But they all got stuffed. #
And what we didn't know at the time, but what was happening around us,
was the cultural revolution of that time.
The pop revolution happened and George Best
came into Manchester, the first glamorous footballer.
So the epicentre of it for us was Manchester,
but when we looked outside, the only significant thing that we saw -
and it wasn't fashion in Carnaby Street -
was David doing that show, and that was terribly influential.
Oh, it's Wilson!
LAUGHTER
It certainly is, Connie. And why did you choose Wilson?
Well, I thought that the other one was probably cleaner,
but he wasn't so bright.
The very first show on, there were these enormous number of phone calls.
Television press office.
Why so many people wrote in favourably was obviously because
they were terrified this thing was about to be swept off the air.
"They'll never let it continue, they'll stop it," you know?
All my friends, us '60s guys,
we'd never miss That Was The Week That Was.
It was the best show on television.
TW3, as it became known, was a hit.
Viewing figures grew from 3.5 to a peak of 12 million.
# That was the week that was. #
But in 1963, it became a victim of its own success,
pulled over fears it could affect the impending general election,
but they didn't go quietly.
The BBC announced this afternoon that the present
series of Andy Pandy will end on December the 28th.
It is felt that in an election year,
the political content of this programme, which is one of its
most successful ingredients, will be more and more difficult to maintain.
A key part of TW3 was its power
to respond to major news events.
'News has just come in that President Kennedy has been shot.'
With all the satire stripped away,
the next day's TW3 devoted itself to the sorrow felt.
The reason why the shock was so great,
why, when one heard the news last night, one felt suddenly
so empty, was because it was the most unexpected piece of news one
could possible imagine.
It was the least likely thing to happen in the whole world.
If anyone else had died, Sir Winston Churchill, De Gaulle, Khrushchev,
it would have been something that somehow we could have understood
and even perhaps accepted. But that Kennedy should go, well,
we just didn't believe in assassination any more.
Not in the civilised world, anyway.
# A young man rode with his head held high
# Under the Texas sun... #
This programme caught the eye of NBC,
so as TW3 ended in the UK, another version opened in the USA
with David, not as host, but as guest presenter.
For those of you who wrote in that you hated our pilot show,
wait till you see this one! LAUGHTER
And at the same time, he launched shows in Britain.
The juggling of a transatlantic career had begun.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Paul McCartney.
APPLAUSE
It became almost a joke that David would go to America,
sort of, you know, eight days a week.
Obviously, he was extremely energised
and stimulated by the American market.
We used to call it his "straight off the plane" face.
"Morning, all."
The colour of porridge and everything and boy,
he clicked into action very quickly!
What sort of shtick did you do...? What's that? American?! That's American, isn't it?
It certainly is. Eh? You go out there a lot, do you? Yes, I do. It shows.
Does it really? Yeah. Are you with us now, or are you on Concorde?
I'm there. Eh? I'm there. How fast are we going?
LAUGHTER
By 1966, David fronted ITV and BBC shows simultaneously.
Each week, The Frost Report, launched on the BBC,
presented comedy sketches based around a single theme.
Marty Feldman was working in a sort of editorial capacity
as well as writing.
I remember the theme of one of the first shows was holidays,
suggested by Marty, who then disappeared on holiday!
The Frost Report brought together those who would go on to
transform British comedy.
Members of the future Monty Python team
and the Goodies cut their teeth here.
And Ronnie first worked with Ronnie.
Good morning, Super. Morning, wonderful!
LAUGHTER
He was a very good sort of ringmaster who got around him
a lot of very good people,
so yes, he gave it a real sense of direction and excitement
and the feeling that with television, you could go anywhere.
Hi-yah!
A key point of my life... He was the turning point of my life.
He completely changed my life and my career,
and I think it would be safe to say he did the same with Ronnie B.
One of the most memorable sketches
was a parody of the British class system.
What we were all doing, or trying to do at the time, was break down the
class barriers, which sounds sort of silly now, but it wasn't silly then.
Indeed, there is one rich man in Chelsea who is so snobbish,
he won't even travel in the same car as his chauffeur.
And David did more with that show than anybody to do that.
I get a feeling of superiority over them.
I get a feeling of inferiority from him.
But a feeling of superiority over him.
I get a pain in the back of my neck.
The moment class is mentioned in this country, that is the picture,
John Cleese, Ronnie B and me.
And it was a very clever little sketch at the time.
La Rose D'Or de Montreux,
a la majorite absolut,
a l'oeuvre presente par la British Broadcasting Corporation, Londres...
Frost Over England!
A special edition of The Frost Report won
the 1967 Golden Rose of Montreux.
And as you must know by now,
Frost Over England has won the Golden Rose and the Press Prize.
First of all, champagne, I think. Let's open a fresh bottle.
When I managed, in the evening,
I remembered to say "thank you" in all the languages represented there.
Merci beaucoup, arigato gozaimasu, grazie, Vielen Dank,
dekuji vam, dziekuje bardzo, koszonom szepen, etc, etc,
I could do the whole lot.
And that shows that I was quite confident,
that I bothered to nip out to the loo and learn that, or whatever.
His confidence also gave him the ability to unsettle his colleagues.
If he was appearing live, which he loved, he would deliberately
make himself a little bit late, to get the adrenaline going.
Three or four minutes before you were going to go on air,
David would be conducting a conversation with somebody
on the other side of the Atlantic.
In those days, the United Nations had Boutros Boutros-Ghali,
and this man rushes in and he goes, "David, David! Come up!"
And quite coolly, David says,
"Boutros Boutros, always a pleasure,"
and walked into the studio.
But behind this relaxed approach was a serious man.
His show on ITV, The Frost Programme,
revealed his unique style of interviewing.
Good evening and thank you.
Tonight, it is my pleasure to welcome the Foreign Secretary,
the Right Honourable George Brown. Welcome.
And we must say how much we appreciate it,
particularly in the week of the tragedy
that befell West Ham at Swindon.
Please...
So, the guest felt, "Well, this person is really at ease.
"He doesn't seem particularly wound up or anxious or aggressive,
"so that puts me at ease, too."
What have you done today? What time did you get to bed, get up?
He became people's friend, which is
a clever interviewing technique, because they let you in.
I came home last night... I got home from Brussels at 10:30.
It took about an hour to get myself back on speaking terms with my wife.
THEY CHUCKLE And then...
He could lull his interviewees, because he was such good company.
And they would relax, and he'd suddenly hit them
with a very quiet question and think, "Got you."
Welcome back. With me now, Dr Emil Savundra.
This 1967 edition, with fraudulent businessman Emil Savundra,
was controversial, becoming known as the first "trial by television".
Fire, Auto went bust and a great many people have not had claims paid.
Is that true? INAUDIBLE QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE
No, no, that question wasn't even intelligent.
I'm not going to cross swords with the peasants.
I came here to cross swords with England's greatest swordsman.
I'm afraid nobody is a peasant,
I'm afraid they are the people who gave you your money.
Ah, this is fine...
The Savundra interview was ground-breaking, because again,
it moved television on.
He actually got a real figure and put him under the cosh
in front of a camera.
Just a second.
My husband was killed in a car crash, he was a passenger,
in January '65.
And I was supposed to get £7,000.
The claim was settled in April '65 and the cheque was
held up for other excuses,
until June '65, when of course, it bounced.
The only thing I can say is this -
all these, and the other heart-rending stories
which I have heard recently,
have made me realise only too well that
my selling out was the wisest thing I ever did.
How? How do you mean that?
By selling out, I have no legal responsibility
and no moral responsibility. You have...
You have TOTAL moral responsibility for all these people!
David attacked him from a high moral viewpoint,
he didn't go in for the fact he was breaking the law,
the essence of his attack was that this man was behaving immorally.
How do you sign a bit of paper
that gets rid of past moral responsibility? Tell me that.
He doesn't sort of say,
"You are the most evil man that ever walked the planet,"
he just keeps at him with the questions
and kind of wears him down.
You can look at these people here... Yes.
..widows, widowers, whoever they are... Yes.
..and you can feel, "I have no legal responsibility, and I have
"signed a piece of paper and I have no moral responsibility either"?
Right. Thank you.
It really made people take him seriously,
in a way that before that, they hadn't been quite sure
whether he was just a comic, or an entertainer.
It's not really the way to end a series,
but it's the end of the series. Bye-bye.
APPLAUSE
At the age of 27, he set up David Paradine Productions,
still going strong today.
Their first programme featured the preacher
he had seen as a teenager, Billy Graham.
It's like a door, he has a door, and over that door, it says,
"Whosoever will, let him come." That includes you, me, everyone.
Back in the days where everything was owned by ITV
or the BBC, David was arguing about owning rights.
So, he was one of the first to set up an independent company
and take control, whereas we were always subject to the fashions
and waywardness of television,
David rooted himself in places where it was secure in the business
side of it, in contacts, in trading,
in making alliances with people, with other departments,
with other independent companies, with other franchises and so on.
In 1967, he successfully spearheaded the bid to launch
London Weekend Television.
He pulled together a dazzling team of talents,
and it was not surprising that he won the licence, because in
those days it was a beauty parade, it wasn't a bidding contest.
And sadly, that team didn't last very long,
but out of it came a very successful television network.
By the 1970s, David Frost was everywhere,
and his ability to handle the interview was renowned.
David did one of the funniest
and most revealing interviews with Muhammad Ali.
The Christian Bible says all white people are devils.
Well, the Christian Bible says all people are sinful.
It says all white Gentiles and Jews are devils.
'Ali makes the mistake of quoting scripture to somebody
'who knew the Bible more than he did.'
You stop the show and let me go get my briefcase. Yes, sure. Yes, yes.
Can you stop the tape for a minute? No, we'll keep the tape running. Let me go get my briefcase.
Get it in four-hundredths of a second, all right? Right, right.
Right, well, he's just going to prove to us
that all white people are devils, so we'll keep the tape running...
It's just a wonderful theatrical moment.
Now, if you look at it, you think, "He's set that up."
But he didn't, actually.
It says here in Romans... Romans...
Third chapter...
and ninth verse.
"What, then," it says, "are we better than they?
"No, in no wise.
"For we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles,
"that they are all under sin."
It was Ali who challenged him
on a saying, a quotation, and David got it right.
It says, "All Jews and Gentiles," and in the Bible, "Gentiles" means
"all people who are not Jews", not just whites... No, no...
Blacks, greens, blues and everybody.
You're teaching me something I don't know.
I thought I should tell you that. "Gentiles" means "everyone". Let me put it another way.
You shouldn't say that on TV - you're wrong.
That's one of my favourite moments, because Ali was a handful -
I know that better than most.
Despite the heated exchange,
the two men remained on good terms for decades.
When you look at the people David interviewed, there never has been
and never will be, I suspect, anybody who will have his span.
In 1968, he had captured the last personal interview with
Senator Robert F Kennedy.
How would you like to be remembered?
I mean, what would you like the first line of a history book
about Robert Kennedy to say?
I think something about the fact that
I made some contribution to, er...
you know, my country or...
or those who are less well off.
I think, again, back to...
what Camus wrote about the fact that, er...
..perhaps this world is a world in which children suffer,
but we can lessen the number of suffering children,
and if you do not do this, then who will do this?
And I'd like to feel that I'd done something to lessen that suffering.
Weeks later, the senator was assassinated.
More than two decades on,
David Frost would ask the difficult questions
of Kennedy's convicted killer, Sirhan Sirhan.
Did it not occur to you then, or very soon after,
that the weak and the disadvantaged
and the helpless were tremendously wounded by the loss
of Robert Kennedy and they would be better off if he were still alive?
I agree, sir.
I can't say anything but... except that I am totally sorry, sir,
and I can feel nothing but remorse for having caused that,
that tragic death of Robert Kennedy.
And if I could, sir, bring him back to life, talk to him
and have him, you know, carry out what he had, you know,
promised to do for the weak and the disadvantaged,
I would treasure the opportunity to bring him back to life.
And the sum total of all those interviews that David has done
are going to be a very, very important historical archive,
and anybody who wants to understand the second part
of the 20th century is going to have to look at those interviews.
As President, I must put the interests of America first.
Therefore, I shall resign the presidency,
effective at noon tomorrow.
The securing of that place in history came after
President Nixon's surprise resignation in the wake
of the political scandal known as Watergate.
He had not given an account to the American people,
he had not been put on trial,
he had not been called before congressional committees.
He was going to have to answer a lot of tough questions.
It took more than two years,
but the man who persuaded the President was David Frost, in 1977.
There has always been a suspicion that Nixon said "yes" to David,
not just because David offered him the biggest cheque, $600,000,
which he did, but because he thought
David would be an easier interviewer.
If you feel that he is stonewalling,
or from what you learned in your research, lying, what will you do?
I shall say so, again and again and again.
They thought he was an irrelevant entertainment presenter.
And they had obviously never seen the Savundra interview or
all those sort of hard interviews that David had done.
I hope the approach he will take will be the one of a cascade of candour.
A cascade of candour, from Richard Nixon? Is this what you expect?
No, it was just a phrase that I thought would appeal to you.
David assumed that he would find it easy to fund,
and to sell the programme. The American networks wouldn't buy it.
He, in the end, did attract some investors.
He had to construct his own television network
and he had to sell his own advertising whilst
we were preparing this monumentally difficult journalistic task.
A lot of us, at the time of the Nixon interviews, the time
he did them, thought that David had probably lost the plot
and had his best days.
Because one has to remember how short most careers in the media,
and especially in television, are.
The Nixon interviews took place over 30 hours,
with Watergate forming just four hours of the total time.
Mr President, to try and review your account of Watergate
in one programme is a daunting task...
'We focused on those things where the evidence'
was strong. We ignored those areas, of which there were many,
where there was suspicion but no evidence. We made sure we
understood the legal framework - what would the charge sheet have said?
And he studied Nixon, he studied Nixon's physical appearance,
his body language, the rate he sweated, his hands,
how he moved, how he was dressed, how he related to those around him.
David studied Nixon to the nth degree.
Nixon had some of his former White House staffers.
They prepared him very heavily for all the earlier interviews.
We assumed, naturally, they prepared him
heavily for the Watergate interviews.
It transpired that he had done no preparation at all.
And you were recollecting this meeting,
and you said that you said to Dean and to Haldeman,
"Christ, turn over any cash we got."
That's YOUR recollection of the meeting,
on April 20th, when you didn't know you were on television.
Of course I didn't know I was on television.
On April 20th, it could well have been my recollection.
And so, when the interview started, Nixon equivocated,
he wondered, he talked on and on and on.
..We haven't followed up with what happened after the meeting.
David simply out-argued him,
both on the facts and he out-argued him on Nixon's legal interpretation.
Talking about this hush money, for Hunt, talking about blackmail
and all of that, I would say that you endorsed or ratified it.
But let's leave that on one side... I didn't endorse or ratify it.
Why didn't you stop it?
Because at that point,
I had nothing...
..no knowledge of the fact that it was going to be paid.
He came up with some very old and unpersuasive thoughts,
and David, quite quickly, had him on the ropes.
Would you go further than "mistakes",
the word that seems not enough for people to understand?
What word would you express?
My goodness, that's a...
I think that there are three things, since you ask me,
I would like to hear you say,
I think the American people would like to hear you say.
One is, there was probably more...
than mistakes.
There was...wrongdoing.
Whether it was a crime or not, yes, it may have been a crime, too.
'I realised he was, at that moment, more vulnerable than he would ever be
'again, and it was an absolutely emotionally drenching experience.'
Because to get Richard Nixon to face up to things like that was
more difficult than almost anybody.
And then, when he did, it had all that greater power, you know,
because it was this man doing it, who wasn't born to do this sort of thing.
I let the American people down.
And I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life.
My political life is over.
I will never yet, and never again,
have an opportunity to serve in any official position.
Maybe I can give a little advice, from time to time.
And so...
..I can only say that, in answer to your question,
that while technically, I did not commit a crime,
an impeachable offence...
These are legalisms.
..as far as the handling of this matter is concerned,
it was so botched up.
I made so many bad judgements.
The worst ones, mistakes of the heart, rather than the head,
as I pointed out.
But let me say,
a man in that top judge...
top job, he's got to have a heart... but his head must always
rule his heart.
So, they were sensational interviews,
which certainly did wonders for David's career,
that actually, I think, humanised Nixon as well.
It was watched by 45 million viewers
and carried on 150 stations.
David later said, "We had won the greatest gamble of our lives.
"I thought my dad, a great but poor country preacher,
"must be smiling in heaven."
And it was a truly profound piece of television history
and historians will be grateful, I think, to David forever.
I can't think of another interviewer who could have done
that in that way where, because he appeared to be empathetic
and sympathetic to the person being interviewed, he got Richard Nixon
to say things that were obviously true, by the way.
But had David gone at him in a sort of heavy way,
I doubt he would ever have said.
A remarkable story. Incredible courage. Chutzpah, really.
David Frost had risked more than his reputation.
To fund the project, he had privately raised $2 million.
He only told me in the last year he had
sold his shares in LWT in order to help fund the interviews.
If he had held on to those shares,
they would have been worth tens of millions of pounds.
Ray Snoddy called me on the day that the deal was announced -
when LWT was bought by Granada, in those days -
and he said,
"Do you realise if you hadn't sold your London Weekend shares,
"you'd be collecting a cheque today for £37 million?" Imagine that.
Well, I'd rather have done the Nixon interviews.
Later, it obviously became the subject of a play and a movie
but very brave of David. Very, very brave.
Frost Nixon, the dramatisation thereof,
the play and then the film, it gave him a whole new lease of life.
Four, three, two and...
Mr President, we were talking about the period March 21st to April 30th
and the mistakes you made and so on, and I was wondering...
..would you go further than "mistakes",
the word that seems not enough for people to understand?
Well, what word would you have expressed?
David was proud of his portrayal on screen and stage.
My goodness.
David had seen it so many times. He loved it.
So, I was sitting next to David. He was literally...
He was mumbling the lines as they were being said by the...
Not just his own lines, but all of these lines. He was...
HE MUMBLES
And I was saying, "David, shut up!"
The Nixon interviews made David Frost
one of the most famous men in the world.
In 1980, using his profile and his considerable business acumen,
he led the bid to the Independent Broadcasting Authority
for the first commercial breakfast television franchise.
They advertised for people to bid for the franchise
and David Frost walks in with all the glitz in the world.
And they were, you know, knocked down by this,
knocked over by this, and gave him the franchise.
Well, it's the happiest day of my life I can recall,
professionally, you know, because this group came together,
excited by the challenge of breakfast television
and to have the opportunity of doing it as well, well...
We hope we don't let the side down.
In a race to be top dog, the BBC
and ITV launched their breakfast shows just weeks apart in 1983.
You're watching the first edition of BBC television's Breakfast Time,
Britain's first ever regular early morning television programme.
Good morning. Welcome to Good Morning Britain for the very first time.
After months, years of preparation, we have, at last,
what we've always wanted - you.
The BBC format was an accessible news magazine,
while TV-am's famous five
took an in-depth approach, described as a "mission to explain".
We do hope that you're going to stay tuned to us, not just for this
morning's programmes but every morning.
Within three months, it was clear TV-am had been trounced,
with ratings as low as 200,000.
And it was a disaster. I think it was...
It failed because I think too much thought had gone into the presenters
and not enough thought had gone into what was in the show.
Commander Philpott. We're going to
bring order to the weather today, David. Thank you very much indeed.
It went wrong because, maybe, we lacked the kind of drive
and expertise to stand back from it
and look at it without the famous five, if you see what I mean.
It was top-heavy. All the publicity was about us and all that.
And in the end, you know, it's about the programmes you make, basically.
The people who front them are important but it's
the content of the programmes, and maybe we didn't get that right.
We certainly didn't get something right.
TV-am was an incredibly gruelling experience.
And everyone who was involved with it
still bears the scars to a certain extent. Some more than others.
I remember one moment we were standing outside our offices.
I had an office next to David in the third floor of this building.
There was a canal beneath us
and I was standing there looking out the window.
I turned round and David was looking at me and he said,
"Who jumps first?"
I think if we'd have gone together it'd have been about right.
It was a salutary lesson and I think it shook up David more than
anybody else because it was his baby.
Greg Dyke was brought in to turn around the fortunes of TV-am.
The new management at TV-am have confirmed that
David Frost will not be continuing as one of the main presenters.
It is one of a series of changes announced today
in an effort to improve poor viewing figures.
When I told David that, actually, we didn't want him to present
the show five days a week any more,
he just said, "That's fine.
"I'll be able to lay in bed."
Rather than lying in bed,
David was moved to a new role as host of Frost On Sunday.
The winning formula saw David doing what he did best.
Prime Minister, you said that in '83, and the ministers knew in November '82.
Do you think, Mr Frost...? That was incorrect, what you said, wasn't it?
Do you think, Mr Frost, that I spend my days prowling round
the pigeonholes of the Ministry of Defence to
look at the chart of each and every ship?
If you do, you must be bonkers.
Frost On Sunday ran until 1992, when TV-am ended.
Out of it came an unlikely success story.
One of the most extraordinary things about David
was his mastery of all genres of television.
You know, he was someone who refused to be put in a particular box.
As always, we've borrowed the keys to two fascinating homes,
belonging to two well-known personalities, and with the help
of Loyd Grossman, we'll be taking a privileged peep
behind closed doors.
One thing that carried on through TV-am and was always successful,
through all the vicissitudes, was Through The Keyhole.
As we go through...the keyhole.
Through The Keyhole, he always
described it as his hobby. You know, interviewing prime ministers
and presidents was his main job and this was just something he adored.
He loved it. It was another way to find out about people.
And, you know, it was great fun to go and watch it.
In 1993, David Frost moved to the BBC.
Hello, good morning
and welcome to the first edition of Breakfast With Frost.
Breakfast With Frost ran every Sunday for over 500 editions,
famous for pulling in the big hitters with some
help from David's little black book.
We were in my grubby little office in TV Centre
and he dipped into his huge bag,
overflowing with different notes and newspapers
and bits and pieces, pulled out his black book and said,
"Well, I've got a number here," punched in a number,
and ten minutes later, my presenter was speaking to
the President of the United States and chatting away -
"Hello, George." "Yes, David here." And I thought, "Wow."
In a 1998 episode, he secured not one but two world leaders.
Mr Prime Minister, Mr President,
it is a great joy to be talking and let's...
It was all about the Northern Ireland peace process, which was
at an absolutely critical stage and the interview was very important.
David, I think, is the only person
that could have got the two of us together
and the only person, I think, interviewer, that Bill Clinton would
have said, "Yeah, OK, I'm going to do this somewhat unusual
"and British Prime Minister actually interviewed together."
I think being interviewed by David was
rather like relaxing in a warm bath but being conscious there is
a cold shower overhead that could be turned on at any moment.
It's for him and her to make sure that they get
the sort of service that they deserve from the taxes
we compulsorily take from them to pay for public services.
Do you think some of the criticism of you in the Tory press has been
class-based? I have no idea and if I spent my time worrying about that
I'd be a very miserable man indeed.
He was an interviewer to be respectful of
and to be very nervous of when you went into the interview
because, although it would be asked in a very nice way,
the question would be pretty much on the raw nerve.
Do you find President Bush an easy, a good person to work with?
Do you like him? Do you find him easy to work with?
I find him incredibly easy to work with and I think it's a pity
that there is such a parody of him in parts of the media here.
Do you pray together?
Pray together? How do you mean?
Do you say prayers together for peace? You and the president?
We don't say prayers together, no, but I'm sure he, in his way,
hopes for peace and I hope for peace, too.
I was literally so surprised by that question...
I mean, I hadn't, by the way.
I was so surprised by the question that everyone assumed
afterwards that, really, I had, but hadn't admitted to it.
Even now, today, I get asked,
"Did you kneel and pray with George Bush?" And so on.
It was just an example of... Only David would ask such a left-field,
frankly, odd question such as that.
He was prepared to try any technique, really,
to get under somebody's skin and into their soul, almost.
And you would get the feeling that I would imagine...
I'm not a Catholic but, if you are a Catholic, you go to confession
and you speak to the priest and he's not going to tell anyone.
That's what you do with David.
You always thought, "Well, he won't tell anyone this."
Did you love her?
No.
I don't think that's what that was about on either side.
But I liked her very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, David Frost.
But what happened when the tables were turned?
David Frost, the man who rarely talked about his personal life
and never about his politics.
What are the areas that you care not to be asked about?
LAUGHTER
Very good question. Isn't that a good question?
Could I just make a note of that?
LAUGHTER
Well, he didn't like being interviewed, David.
I knew David for around 40 years and I knew him very well -
I was best man at his wedding and all that stuff.
I never really knew an awful lot about the young Frost
and all that sort of thing.
It wasn't that he had anything to hide, it was simply that he believed
other people were more interesting than he was in that area.
Well, I think it's very fortunate for me that I am a genuine independent.
I mean, I have never bought a party ticket in this country or been
able to buy, 100%, a party ticket, or in America.
You've voted, of course?
No, I have never voted. You've never voted.
It meant people with wholly different opinions could
appear on his programme and expect to be given a fair interview
that wasn't tilted in any one direction.
This is the essential thing about David - he wasn't out to
prove any particular political point in an interview.
He was there to draw out from the person being interviewed
what they really thought.
This private man was married twice.
In 1981, he wed Lynne Frederick, who was the widow of Peter Sellers.
The couple divorced the following year.
A year later, he married the love of his life -
Lady Carina Fitzalan Howard,
the daughter of the 17th Duke of Norfolk.
At the age of 43, he'd found great happiness.
The couple's three sons were born within five years.
It made for a joyful family life.
In terms of a team, in raising us, you know,
they had everything covered.
He wouldn't have had the career he had
or been the amazing father he was to us
without her love and support along the way.
As a father, he couldn't have been any more supportive or enthusiastic.
There was never a bad word said about any of us by him.
We used to joke that he just couldn't favouritise any one of us
on any single topic, even whether it was,
"Who's the best at being called George?" or something.
He still couldn't, you know.
You just got that feeling which you've always got about him,
of sort of love and affection in the family and that's, in the end,
what David was about.
He was about a lot of things but he was about his boys.
In 2006, he began yet another strand of his career,
with a new show on al-Jazeera English,
where he was to end his days as a broadcaster.
Hello. Welcome to Frost Over The World,
a new programme for a new station.
Well, I thought it was an interesting move, actually,
because, you know, there was a big TV revolution going on there, again.
So this was like revolution number four for David Frost.
Al-Jazeera has been quite an extraordinary success story
and I think to go and anchor one of its shows
was kind of quite a smart move.
As he entered his 70s,
it might have been time to contemplate a quieter life.
Could we tempt you to play us out with a bit of music?
I think so, David. Oh, thank God. Praise the Lord.
HE PLAYS "Lady Madonna" by the Beatles
At our regular lunches, I would, as friends do, chastise him
and say, "David, you're going to have to think about
"drawing a discreet and gentle end to your broadcasting career
"and leading your life in a different way." "No, no, no, no."
None of us want to give up and one of the things I said
to David recently - "Are you going to give up?"
He said, "No. Are you?" "No."
He was never going to retire.
As long as there was work to be done, television cameras
to appear in front of, he'd have been there.
Show me where there is a programme and I'll be there.
On August the 31st 2013,
Sir David Frost died of a heart attack
on board the Queen Elizabeth, where he was due to give a speech.
He was 74.
Sadly, I was on the Solent with my son,
going back to our place in the Isle of Wight in a boat,
and we passed a huge ship, which was the Queen Elizabeth.
At the time, I didn't know.
Obviously, we were just passing in a little boat
and this monstrous great ship was there,
at the moment that he was clearly breathing his last,
which was... Afterwards, it became very poignant.
I find it difficult to imagine he is dead, you know.
That's the strange thing.
I'm sitting here talking about my friend who's dead
and I know he's dead but I can't believe he's dead.
It's very odd. It's...
Somebody said of Dame Edith Evans when she died,
"She can't have died, she's not the type."
I feel the same about David. It's odd.
I was actually due, the week after he died,
to go and have lunch with him on Sunday in his new house.
And I was looking forward to that,
when suddenly I turned the television on and he was gone.
And I went to his funeral instead - instead of lunch.
Sir David Frost - a giant of broadcasting
and, above all,
a man who loved life and was loved by many.
He gave everything he had every day, you know,
to making the most of his time and I think he'd be delighted with that.
I think he was on one of the daily chat shows
a couple of years ago and rather than, "Sir David Frost,"
and underneath saying, you know, "broadcaster,"
or, "journalist," or whatever, it just said the word "legend".
There's a massive hole now, for us.
But the fact that there is a hole and that we miss him, you know,
highlights what an amazing 28 years
we were able to have with him before that.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd