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Sir David Paradine Frost, Kt., OBE (born 7 April 1939) is an English journalist, comedian, writer, media personality and daytime TV game show host best known for his two decades as host of Through the Keyhole and serious interviews with various political figures, the most notable being Richard Nixon. Since 2012 he has been hosting the weekly programme The Frost Interview. From 2006-2012 he hosted the weekly programme Frost Over the World on Al Jazeera English.
Early life
David Paradine Frost was born in Tenterden, Kent, on 7 April 1939 as the son of a Methodist minister of Huguenot descent,[citation needed] the Rev. W. J. Paradine Frost, and his wife Mona, and with two elder sisters.[1] While living in Gillingham, Kent, he was taught in the Bible class of the Sunday school at his father's church (Byron Road Methodist) by David Gilmore Harvey, and subsequently started training as a Methodist local preacher, which he did not complete. He attended Barnsole Road Primary School in Gillingham, then Gillingham Grammar School and finally Wellingborough Grammar School,[2] while residing in Raunds, as his father worked as a minister at the Methodist church there. He subsequently won a place at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in English. Throughout his school years he was an avid football (soccer) and cricket player,[1] and was actually offered a contract with Nottingham Forest F.C., which he turned down in order to attend university.[3]
At Cambridge, he was editor of both the student newspaper, Varsity, and the literary magazine, Granta. He was also secretary of the famous Footlights Drama Society,[1] which included actors such as Peter Cook and John Bird.
After leaving university, he became a trainee at Associated-Rediffusion and worked for Anglia Television.
That Was the Week That Was (TW3)
Frost was chosen by writer and producer Ned Sherrin to host a pioneering satirical programme called That Was The Week That Was, alias TW3. This caught the wave of the satire boom in 1960s Britain and became a popular programme. TW3 was the last piece of scheduled programming broadcast by the BBC on a Saturday, and regularly overran its time slot.[citation needed]
After a pilot episode on 10 November 1963, a 30-minute American version of TW3 featuring Frost ran on NBC from 10 January 1964 to May 1965. In 1985, David Frost produced and hosted a television special in the same format, That Was the Year That Was, on NBC.
After TW3
Frost fronted a number of programmes following the success of TW3, including its immediate successor, Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, which he co-chaired with Willie Rushton and P. J. Kavanagh. More notable was The Frost Report, 1966 and 1967, which launched the television careers of John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. He signed for Rediffusion, the ITV weekday contractor in London, to produce a "heavier" interview-based show called The Frost Programme. Guests included Sir Oswald Mosley and Rhodesian premier Ian Smith. His memorable dressing-down of insurance fraudster Emil Savundra was generally regarded as the first example of "trial by television" in the UK.
In 1963, a tribute to the recently assassinated President John F. Kennedy on That Was the Week That Was had seen Frost's fame spread to the United States. His 1970 TV special, Frost on America, featured guests such as Jack Benny and Tennessee Williams.[4]
From 1969 to 1972, Frost kept his London shows and fronted The David Frost Show on the Group W (U.S. Westinghouse Corporation) television stations in the United States.[5] In 1977, he met former US President Richard Nixon in a series of interviews for American television.
That same year Frost was the executive producer of the Academy Award-nominated The Slipper and the Rose. Frost was an organiser of the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly in 1979. Ten years later, Frost was hired as the anchor of the new American tabloid news program Inside Edition. However, he was dismissed after only three weeks, and then-ABC News reporter Bill O'Reilly was recruited in his stead.
During the 1980s, 90s and 2000s, he presented the panel game Through the Keyhole on daytime TV, which featured a long running partnership with Loyd Grossman.
After transferring from ITV, his Sunday morning interview programme Breakfast with Frost ran on the BBC from January 1993 until 29 May 2005. The programme originally began in this format on TV-am in September 1983 as Frost on Sunday until the station lost its franchise at the end of 1992. Later it transferred briefly to BSB before moving to the BBC.
Since then he has worked for Al Jazeera English, presenting a live weekly hour-long current affairs programme, Frost Over the World, which started when the network launched in November 2006. The programme has regularly made headlines with interviewees such as Tony Blair, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Benazir Bhutto and President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. The programme is produced by the former Question Time editor and Independent on Sunday journalist Charlie Courtauld. He was one of the first to interview the man who authored the historic fatwa on terrorism, Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri.[6]
During his career as a journalist he became one of Concorde's most frequent fliers, having flown between London and New York an average of 20 times per year for 20 years.[7][8]
In 2007, Frost hosted a discussion with Libya's leader Gaddafi as part of the Monitor Group's involvement in the country.[9]
In June 2010, Frost presented Frost on Satire, an hour-long BBC Four documentary looking at the history of television satire. Prominent satirists who were interviewed for the programme include Rory Bremner, Ian Hislop, John Lloyd, Chevy Chase, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Will Ferrell and Tina Fey.
Achievements
Frost was instrumental in starting up two important ITV franchises: London Weekend Television in July 1968 and as one of the 'Famous Five' who launched TV-am in February 1983. Both new stations had plans that were considered highbrow and both suffered launch problems with low audience ratings and financial difficulties that led to outside parties taking large stakes in the companies and significant changes in business strategy before stability was achieved.
On 20 and 21 July 1969, during the British television Apollo 11 coverage, he presented David Frost's Moon Party for LWT, a ten-hour discussion and entertainment marathon from LWT's Wembley Studios, on the night Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Two of his guests on this programme were British historian A.J.P. Taylor and Sammy Davis, Jr.[10]
Frost started the production company David Paradine Productions, and was also part of a consortium with Richard Branson that failed to acquire three ITV franchises under the CPV-TV name.
Frost's longest television association was with the daytime panel show Through the Keyhole. The programme, produced by his David Paradine Productions company, ran on various channels from 1987 until 2008, with Frost acting as host throughout. To younger generations, Frost is chiefly known for his role on this show, alongside Loyd Grossman.
Frost is the only person to have interviewed eight British prime ministers serving between 1964 and 2010 (Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron) and the seven US presidents in office between 1969 and 2008 (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush). He was also the last person to interview Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran.[11]
He is a patron and former vice-president of the Motor Neurone Disease Association charity, as well as being a patron of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, the Hearing Trust,[12] East Anglia's Children's Hospices, the Home Farm Trust and the Elton John AIDS Foundation.[13][14][15]
After having been in television for 40 years, Frost is worth £200 million.[16] This valuation includes the assets of his main British company and subsidiaries, plus homes in London and the country.
Frost/Nixon
Originally a play by Peter Morgan that was developed from a series of interviews, Frost/Nixon was presented both in London and on Broadway. The play was adapted into a motion picture, starring Michael Sheen as David Frost, Frank Langella as Richard Nixon, directed by Ron Howard, and released in 2008. The film was nominated for five Golden Globe awards: Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score,[17] as well as five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing.
In February 2009, David Frost was featured on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC-TV) international affairs programme Foreign Correspondent in a report titled "The World According To Frost", reflecting on his long career and portrayal in the feature film Frost/Nixon.[18]
Personal life
Before his present marriage, Frost was known for several liaisons with beautiful and high profile women, and he is also known for remaining friendly with most of them. In the mid-1960s, he dated British actress Janette Scott, between her marriages to songwriter Jackie Rae and singer Mel Tormé; in the early 1970s he was engaged to American actress Diahann Carroll; between 1972 and 1977 he had a relationship with British socialite Caroline Cushing; and in 1981 he married Lynne Frederick, widow of Peter Sellers, but they divorced the following year.[1] He also had an 18-year intermittent affair with Carol Lynley.
On 19 March 1983, David Frost married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard (born 20 February 1952), daughter to the 17th Duke of Norfolk, and the couple have three sons.[1] For many years they have lived in Chelsea, with a weekend home at Michelmersh in Hampshire. [19]
Selected awards and honours
- 1970: Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)[4]
- 1993: Knight Bachelor[4]
- 1994: Honorary doctoral degree of the Sussex University
- 2005: Fellowship of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts BAFTA
- 2009: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree of the University of Winchester
- 2009: Lifetime Achievement Award at the Emmy Awards
Publications
- "I Gave Them a Sword": Behind the scenes of the Nixon interviews (1978). Published as Frost/Nixon in 2007.
- David Frost's Book of Millionaires, Multimillionaires, and Really Rich People (1984)
- The Rich Tide: Men, Women, Ideas and Their Transatlantic Impact (1986). With Michael Shea.
- An Autobiography. Part 1: From Congregations to Audiences (1993).
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