This was followed by a three-year stint on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, where he was successor to the late Roy Plomley, who had created the castaway show.
BBC: Parkinson bows out with honour
2.
"I was always one of these kids who had the smart back-answer in school - a right hard-faced, cheeky young man, " he told Roy Plomley on a 1972 edition of Desert Island Discs.