An instinct for comedy

William Cook discovers that the clue to Nicholas Parsons’s enduring success lies in his ability to laugh at himself

When I was a kid, watching Sale of the Century on my grandma’s colour telly, Nicholas Parsons used to seem like the smartest man in show business. Meeting him half a lifetime later, in a rooftop restaurant in Kensington, I’m pleased to find that he still looks just as dapper. His blue blazer is neatly pressed, his white shirt is crisply ironed and his bright eyes sparkle like a schoolboy’s. You’d never guess he was in his eighties, with more than 60 years in showbiz behind him. He’s worked with Tony Hancock, Kenneth Williams — all the greats, and he’s outlived the lot of them. He’s a living marvel. They should have him stuffed.

Parsons has reinvented himself countless times, from leading man to pantomime dame, from Radio 4 stalwart to undergraduate icon. Today, he’s beloved by modern comics as much as by the Variety old guard. He’s hosted Have I Got News for You as well as Just a Minute, which he’s chaired for more than 40 years. Paul Merton, star of both, is both friend and fan. ‘He has a wonderful comic brain,’ he says of Merton. ‘He lets others take the limelight.’ Parsons could almost be talking about himself.

The son of a doctor and a nurse, Nicholas Parsons was raised in a ‘well-to-do, professional, middle-class family’. His parents weren’t rich, but before the war a GP’s wage went a lot further than it does today. His father could afford a butler, a cook, a maid and a nanny. Nicholas was educated at Colet Court and St Paul’s but when war broke out money became tight, and instead of staying on at school he was sent up to Glasgow to learn a trade, in an engineering firm called Drysdale’s.