BARNSLEY-born king of the chat show Sir Michael Parkinson was called a ‘daft old fart’ this week by the wife of his old friend Sir Billy Connolly.
Parky had been speaking on ITV’s Saturday Morning with James Martin, where he reflected on a ‘recent’ dinner with the Scottish comedian, who has Parkinson’s disease.
He said: “The sadness of Billy now is that wonderful brain is dulled.
“I saw him recently, he’s now living in America, and it was very sad because I was presenting him with a prize at an awards ceremony we had an awkward dinner together because I wasn’t quite sure if he knew who I was or not.
“We were walking out after the presentation to go down and have our picture taken, and he turned to me, he put his hands on my shoulders and he said to me ‘how long have we known each other?’ and I thought ‘oh God, he doesn’t really know’. And he did, but he wasn’t sure what or in what context at all, and to have known somebody as long as I knew and loved Billy we got on together very well indeed it’s an awful thing just to contemplate, that that has been taken from him.”
His comments were widely reported in the Sunday papers, but they did not go down well with the comedian’s family and seemingly the comedian himself.
Sir Billy was quoted in the Daily Mirror saying: “I would recognise Parky if he was standing behind me in a diving suit.”
His wife Pamela Stephenson was quoted as saying her husband was ‘doing great’ and that Sir Michael didn’t know anything about her husband’s health.
“Mike Parkinson is a daft old fart doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Billy’s doing great and still funny as hell.”
