Nicholas Parsons: ’The Just a Minute pilot was so awful the BBC didn’t want it’

I'm complimented for calling on the dot of 10.30 as arranged and he is charming throughout our interview. Even when he has to say goodbye to his wife Annie, who is leaving for a charitable

engagement shortly before our half-hour slot is due to reach its end, he doesn't take the opportunity to bring our conversation to a close because he has promised me 30 minutes of his time

and so that is what I shall have.

Then again Parsons, a sprightly 94, has got a lot to be pleased about. December 22 marks the 50th anniversary of the Radio 4 show he has hosted for 78 series and more than 900 episodes,

making it the longest-running radio show with one presenter at the helm in the history of British broadcasting.

This phenomenon is, of course, Just A Minute - JAM to its fans - the parlour game in which guests must attempt to talk for 60 seconds on a random topic "without hesitation, repetition or

deviation".

Paul Merton and Gyles Brandreth are regulars and it is a magnet for other big name guests such as Stephen Fry and Sue Perkins, all drawn to it by the quirky format but most of all by the

warmth and wit with which Parsons orchestrates proceedings.

And so it comes as something of a shock to hear that not only was Parsons a stand-in for the producer's original first-choice candidate as chairman - the actor-comedian Jimmy Edwards - but

the pilot was such a "disaster" that for a time it looked as if there wouldn't be an episode two let alone an episode 900. "Jimmy was busy playing polo on a Sunday so he wasn't available for

the pilot," recalls Parsons.

"I'd been invited on as a panellist but the producer David Hatch said to me, 'Will you do me a favour and do the chairmanship for the pilot?' "I didn't think I was right for the job.

Basically the way it was conceived then the chairman was a very authoritarian boring figure. I wanted to be on the panel because I thought that would give me more scope to be humorous."

The result was something of a car crash. "Ian Messiter, the great inventor of the show, hadn't thought it through from the production point of view and so in the pilot we had a round where

you couldn't use plurals and another one where you couldn't use the definitive article. That is why it was such a disaster, it was too bitty-bitty. The BBC definitely did not want it and I

can understand why because it was not good."

The man he credits with saving the day is Hatch, an executive who went on to become managing director of BBC Radio but at the time was simply "a bright fellow" fresh out of Cambridge.

"If it wasn't for David we never would have got a series," says Parsons. "Rumour has it he put his job on the line. He saw ways of adjusting and improving it that would make it work.

"He came to me and said: 'I've now managed to persuade them to give us a series. I know I promised that you would go back on the panel but the thing that the BBC quite liked in the pilot was

your chairmanship'. I said, 'But David I was awful' and he replied, 'I know but so was everybody else!'" Parsons accepted a contract for a series of 13 shows and over time it evolved into

the national institution we now know and love. And today Parsons credits the challenge of chairing the show with keeping him young. "I think the more you use your brain creatively doing

crosswords and Sudoku and things like that, the younger you remain. You have to treat it like a muscle, it's very important.

"As you get older you must keep using your grey matter constructively.A lot of people do a rather sedentary job, retire at 65, and then just potter in the garden and so forth. Slowly they

fade away.

"I'm very lucky in that I have a job that requires incredible concentration and mental agility. I have to remember everything the panellists say as they go along so that if they get a

challenge for repetition 48 seconds later I can remember and say, 'Yes, you've said that word', immediately make a decision and carry on."

His only concessions to the ageing process are to stop driving in the dark and to invest in a walking stick. "I do have a stick to walk around because my balance is not great but when I do

my one-man show I make a gag of it. I walk on with a stick and then I dramatically throw it aside. It gets a laugh."

He is lactose intolerant but even that has a plus side. "I have a sensitive stomach and I can't digest cream and butter and so I don't take those rich foods that can lead you to put on

weight. The things I like are simple and probably non-fattening. In that respect I'm fortunate."

Many of Parsons' fans believe it is a national scandal that their hero is yet to be honoured with a knighthood but the man himself will not entertain the topic. "You can't talk about that.

It looks as if you're asking for it," he says with a laugh, adding: "I've got a CBE, I've got an honour."

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And he certainly has no grudge against the institution that has so far denied him the top gong. "I think the Royal Family do an amazing job," he says. "The Queen particularly and Prince

Philip, they're absolutely wonderful. I'm a great royalist because I think we need something to look up to, something that's a symbol of our continuity and security and I think it would be

awful if we had a president or something like that because it's not the same."

He also welcomes the prospect of a divorced American actress joining the clan: "That will be exciting won't it? It shows you how far we have come. When you think of poor Princess Margaret

being told that she couldn't marry Group Captain Townsend because he was a divorcee. They are moving forward all the time. It's great."

But it is his own family who sustain him most at an age when he has outlasted almost all his contemporaries. Indeed, he admits that the obituaries are the first thing he turns to when he

leafs through his weekly copy of actors' bible The Stage.

"I do turn to the obituaries because invariably it's people you knew or worked with who have gone on ahead of you," he says. "But I've still got friends and, most importantly, I've got my

family. I've got my children and grandchildren and my lovely wife Annie here.

"This is what keeps you going.The more close-knit a family you have in a loving sense the more it sustains you."

Just A Minute: 50 Years In 28 Minutes will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Christmas Day, 6.30pm.

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