Sir David Frost

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2005

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sue Lawley's guest this week is the veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost - the only British television presenter to have interviewed seven American presidents and six British Prime Ministers who has, over the past five decades, become a broadcasting institution. The presenter once known as a scourge of the Establishment has become something of an establishment figure himself, noted for his formidable contacts book, his star-studded parties, and for his gentle but revealing interviewing style. Born in 1939, the youngest son of a Methodist minister and his wife, David was football and cricket-mad from an early age but with a burning ambition to go to Cambridge University. He arrived there in 1958, and threw himself into it, joining Footlights and editing Varsity and Granta. After Cambridge, Ned Sherrin saw him performing a comedy act in a Mayfair bar and hired him up to present the iconic satirical programme That Was The Week That Was. Other successful programmes followed including Frost Over Britain and The Frost Report.

Breakfast with Frost ran for twelve years until early 2005. David is not retiring though and is due to present a new interview programme for Al-Jazeera International which will begin next Spring, and will also conduct occasional interviews for the BBC.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: The Dam Busters by Eric Coates Book: London A-Z Luxury: Sunday papers

Transcript

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0:25.4	heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.7	Hello, I'm Krista Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:35.6	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:38.8	The program was originally broadcast in 2005,
0:42.2	and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
0:44.2	Music My castaway this week is a broadcaster for ubiquity and longevity he has no equal.
1:05.5	He is as famous on BBC television as the BBC logo itself.
1:09.9	He started in the 60s straight out of Cambridge with a satirical show called That Was the BBC logo itself. He started in the 60s, straight out of Cambridge,
1:12.2	with a satirical show called That Was the Week that was. It and the spin-offs that succeeded it
1:17.3	defined the age in which they were made. Their presenter continued to grow with the Times,
1:22.4	moving from satire to mainstream current affairs, interviewing the countries and indeed
1:26.8	the world's most famous men and
1:28.7	women, a man with a guaranteed entrance ticket to everything that mattered. His last big BBC programme was his
1:35.8	famous Sunday breakfast show, a role from which he retired earlier this year. With typical
1:41.6	appreciation of what tomorrow might bring, he's now joined the Middle
1:45.0	Eastern Station, Al Jazeera International. I don't think I am a retiring person in either
1:50.7	sense of the word, he says. My ambition is always to find the new frontier. He is, of course,
1:56.3	Sir David Frost. Eyebrows shot up, David, at the idea of Frost on Al Jazeera.
2:02.0	Why would you want to go there?
2:03.9	Well, the thing is, it's really, people's reaction was really rather exciting.
2:08.1	They were sort of intrigued, this is cutting edge and so on.
	...

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