Profile: Sir David Frost

Frost highlights

Sir David Frost is a broadcasting phenomenon - the son of a Methodist minister who became a household name on both sides of the Atlantic, a multi-millionaire and a friend of the great and the good.

From Cambridge he came to television in the early 1960s, and presented the mould-breaking satirical show That Was the Week that Was.

With his mocking delivery and use of headline language, he became a national figure, and before long was equally successful in the United States, commuting regularly across the Atlantic.

His catchphrase "Hello, good evening and welcome" was to become much-mimicked.

Trial by TV

Sir David mixed pure entertainment - shows like The Frost Report, which brought together the Ronnies Barker and Corbett - with serious political interviews: Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Harold Wilson were three of his subjects.

Final breakfast with Frost

He also introduced, in 1969, the much-criticised trial by television, notably of Emil Savundra, head of a cut-price car insurance company which swindled thousands of motorists. He was genuinely angry at Savundra's evasions.

David Parradine Frost was born in Tenterden, Kent, though the family later moved to Suffolk.

After a grammar school education, he went to Cambridge, where he was editor of student publication Granta and active in the Footlights theatre company.

He presented three programmes on ITV before That Was the Week that Was.

In the words of Kitty Muggeridge, wife of Malcolm, he rose without trace.

The list of Sir David's television programmes is a long one - The Frost Programme, Frost on Friday, A Degree of Frost, Not So Much A Programme, More a Way of Life were some of them.

Watergate interviews

There was also the Frost Over series. Frost Over England in 1967 won an award at Montreux. Others were about America, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

He also presented The Guinness Book of Records Hall of Fame.

Frost's interviews with Richard Nixon after Watergate were revealing, much acclaimed and achieved the largest audience for a news interview in history.

President Bush gave Frost the first full-length interview of his presidency - only a few months after Frost had been dropped from an American show, Inside Edition, apparently because viewers did not like his Englishness.

Frost is an unconventional interviewer, and on occasions has been almost embarrassingly fawning and sycophantic - notably with Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan.

Worldwide audience

He was a joint founder of London Weekend Television and one of the famous five who made such a disastrous start at TV-am on breakfast television. But, unlike the others, he continued to appear on its Sunday morning programmes.

The Frost Programme was the first current affairs programme to use a participating audience.

A variety of interview-based programmes followed. Recorded primarily in the UK and America, they were broadcast all over the world.

Interviewees from the world of showbiz included the Beatles, Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, Tennessee Williams and Noel Coward.

Prince Charles was interviewed on the eve of his investiture as Prince of Wales.

Muhammad Ali was interviewed in New York and later in Zaire. Cardinal Heenan came into the studio. Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies took over during a live show.

Frost on Sunday began the Sunday morning tradition in 1984 with the TV-am programme, which ran until 1992.

Then David joined the BBC - his first regular weekly show for the corporation since That Was The Week That Was.

Frost also worked on radio and in films as producer of The Slipper and the Rose.

Sir David has written 15 books, produced eight films and has received many major TV awards, in the UK and internationally.

He works hard for charity, helping to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds.

In the early 1980s he was briefly married to Peter Sellers' widow, Lynne Frederick. Then in 1983 he married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk.