Broadcaster and quiz show host

Born: October 10, 1923;

Died: January 28, 2020.

NICHOLAS Parsons, who has died aged 96 after a short illness, was a broadcaster who began his career as an actor and a comedian – he also had an extremely unlikely few years as an apprentice in the Glasgow shipyards. But he was most famous as the host of the long-running Radio 4 panel game, Just a Minute, and the 1970s gameshow Sale of the Century (often remembered for its introduction: “From Norwich, it’s the quiz of the week!”).

Some viewers and listeners found Parsons’s pompous personality irritating, and it made him an easy target for mockery from the sharpest-witted Just a Minute contestants such as Kenneth Williams. But Parsons’ headmasterly manner became his trademark and he was certainly efficient at keeping control of Sale of the Century and rattling through hundreds of questions, which in the early years of the programme he wrote himself.

For Parsons himself, however, the success of Sale of the Century was a curse as a well as a blessing: he presented the programme for 12 years from 1971 until 1983 and at its peak in the mid 1970s its viewing figures in the UK reached 20million, but he ended up feeling like it was a distraction from what he believed was his real career as an actor and comic.

In reality, his achievements as an actor were slim – there were a few small parts in films, and he appeared in Doctor Who in its dying days – although he did have some success in comedy: for a while in the 1950s he was one of the biggest stars of television as the straight man to the comic Arthur Haynes, now somewhat forgotten. Together, they appeared in The Arthur Haynes Show on ITV until Haynes ended their partnership.

Before landing the job with Haynes, Parsons had honed his career in comedy partly in the theatres of Glasgow, where he did a spot doing impersonations of war-time celebrities, and partly in the shipyards where, as a posh Englishman, he had to master the banter quickly to survive.

Born the son of a doctor in Grantham in Lincolnshire, he ended up in the Glasgow yards through an uncle who had connections at Drysdale’s, the pump and turbine firm on Clydebank, and he was accepted for an apprenticeship when he was just 16 years old.

Parsons’ uncle had suggested a career in the shipyards because he knew his nephew was good with his hands and had repaired several clocks on his own by the time he was 14. But Parsons’ background was hardly the typical preparation for a job in the Glasgow yards. His family had Scottish ancestry (his mother’s family came from Dumfriesshire) but his was a professional middle-class background and the family had staff: at one point, a butler, a cook, a parlourmaid and nanny. Parsons’ father was a GP in Grantham and told his son that it was he who had delivered Margaret Thatcher, daughter of local grocer Alfred Roberts and future Prime Minister.

Growing up, Parsons suffered from a stutter and struggled with his confidence after his mother forced him to write with his right hand even though he was left handed. It didn’t help that he became a boarder at Tenterden Hall, a prep school in north London, when he was just seven. He was miserable there and was moved to Colet Court, where he fared better, excelling at soccer and cricket.

By the age of 16, he was off to Glasgow where he lived at the YMCA on Sauchiehall Street and commuted to Drysdale’s, on the Clyde. He worked in a number of different departments including the pattern shop where wooden patterns of pumps were made; he also fitted pumps to ships, meaning that he worked at almost every shipyard on the Clyde.

The work was hard, with the young Parsons working sometimes for nine hours on his feet with barely a break. He was also an oddity in the yards, with his English public-school accent, but although after a short time he was known as Big Nick and had fitted in. There were still culture clashes though - he remembered a colleague asking him if he was a 'Billy' or a 'Pape' and not having the foggiest idea what he meant.

As for the job itself, Parson said that it was the chapter of his life that had left the deepest impression on him, although his heart was not really in the idea of making a career in the yards. His real passion lay in theatre and performing and, when not working at the yards, he was able to pursue his theatrical ambitions in Glasgow, which at the time had more amateur theatrical companies than any other city in Britain.

For a time Parsons worked for the city’s Transport Players and did some work on radio for BBC Scotland. He also auditioned for the showman Carroll Levis at the Empire Theatre in Glasgow, winning a spot doing impersonations of famous people of the day including Jimmy Stewart and Max Miller.

This led to an appearance on Levis’s radio show, Carroll Levis Carries On. Parsons also worked at the famous Alhambra, which was pulled down in 1971

When the Second World War broke out, Parsons stayed on at the yards as engineering was a reserved occupation, although he did work as a firewatcher in Glasgow during the night. He was on duty during the Clydebank Blitz and was among the volunteers who helped the emergency services the following day as they worked in the rubble – he and others worked all day trying to clear the rubble so that the ambulances could get through.

Parsons’ theatre work also continued throughout the war, and he appeared in plays in the early days of the Citizens’ Theatre, where he realised theatre was what he wanted to do with his life. He left Drysdale’s and joined a repertory company in Bromley, where he stayed on for two years; he also appeared in cabaret doing his impressions while also doing small parts in regional theatre; he then started to land parts on television and was a member of the BBC’s radio repertory company just before it was closed down.

He then started to break into television and found some early success in the genre that would come to define him when he presented the 1950s ITV quiz show What’s It All About?, which was similar to the much more famous What’s My Line?

He first worked with Arthur Haynes on an ITV sketch show called Get Happy (scripted by Johnny Speight, later more famous as the creator of Alf Garnett) and it was the beginning of a ten-year partnership based on Haynes playing a range of parts and Parsons playing the straight man.

For a while in the 1950s and early 1960s, the partnership was extremely successful and Haynes became the most successful comedian in Britain. However, in the same way that Tony Hancock eventually ditched Kenneth Williams, Haynes felt that he could work better alone and in 1965 he ended the partnership with Parsons. However, Haynes died of a heart attack in 1966, just before a new series of his ITV show was due to start recording.

Parsons continued to find some work on television, appearing in some episodes of Benny Hill’s show, again as the straight man. He also had a few small parts in films, including the comedy Doctor in the House, and one of the Carry On films, Carry on Regardless.

In the late 1960s, he was asked to appear on a Radio 4 panel game originally called One Minute Please, the idea being that the contestants would try to speak on subject for one minute without repetition, deviation or hesitation. Originally, Jimmy Edwards was going to be the chairman and Parsons a contestant, but when Edwards was unavailable Parsons was asked to step in and that was that; the first programme was recorded in 1967 and Parsons was chairman thereafter.

He made headlines in 2018 when he missed an episode of Just a Minute - his first absence in half-a-century

Stephen Fry, one of the regular panellists on the show, tweeted today: "He ruled Just a Minute for a Lifetime. A stunning achievement: never scripted, always immaculate".

Sale of the Century came along in 1971 and was based on an American format in which contestants answer questions for cash which they then spend on prizes. It was an immediate hit and by 1974 was number one in the ratings, although from the beginning Parsons’s pompous style made him a love/hate figure.

The show ran for 14 years and, in Parsons’s view, pigeon-holed him as quiz show host and effectively closed off many other opportunities for him. When the show was dropped in 1983, he returned to the theatre and in 1988 featured in the Stephen Sondheim musical Into The Woods at the Phoenix Theatre, London.

Parsons also appeared occasionally in acting roles on television. In 1988, he appeared as himself in The Comic Strip Presents with Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson; the following year he played a vicar in the Doctor Who story, The Curse of Fenric, and in the 1990s he played Reverend Green in the television series Cluedo, based on the board game. For many years he was also a regular at the Edinburgh fringe with his one-man show.

Nicholas Parsons was appointed OBE in 2004 for services to drama and broadcasting and CBE in 2014 for charitable work. Having served as rector of the University of St Andrews from 1988 to 1991, he was awarded an honorary LLD by the university in 1991.

Parsons is survived by his wife Ann, and by two children from his first marriage.