David Frost

Frost was a veteran broadcaster who started out in the 60s satire boom and found worldwide fame with his TV interviews. Frost became a media personality and comedian comfortable cross-examining the most heavyweight political figures of the day. He was a bon vivant, smoker of big cigars, dapper dresser, chum of the rich and famous, and so much of a jet-setter that, for a while, he was Concorde's most frequent flier, travelling from London and New York an average of 20 times a year for 20 years. His greatest journalistic coup came in 1977 when he interviewed the disgraced US president Richard Nixon and induced him to confess in public his guilt over Watergate. Frost was born in Tenterden, Kent. His father, Wilfred Paradine Frost, was a Methodist minister of Huguenot descent; David reportedly more resembled his mother Mona. He was educated at Gillingham and Wellingborough grammar schools. For two years before university, Frost was a lay preacher after seeing the charismatic evangelist Billy Graham perform at Harringay Arena in north London. As an undergraduate, Frost attached himself assiduously to Peter Cook, whose cabaret style he copied.By the end of his time at Cambridge, Frost had not only appeared in a television comedy sketch with Cook, but also had a traineeship with the London TV company Associated-Rediffusion, an agent and a cabaret gig where he was spotted by Ned Sherrin, a young BBC TV producer who had been tasked with creating something singular – a subversive TV show. Even though he had no experience of handling an elaborate live TV show on the BBC. After two pilots, the first show was broadcast in November 1962 and quickly gained a reputation for lampooning the establishment. After two successful series in 1962 and 1963, "That Was the Week That Was" did not return in 1964. Frost presented an interview-based series, The Frost Programme on the BBVC and then expanded to the US. From 1969 to 1972, he made five TV shows a week in New York for the Westinghouse network, and three a week for London Weekend Television, the company he co-founded in 1968. His personal life was colorful - old flames from the 60s and early 70s included the actors Janette Scott, Carol Lynley and Diahann Carroll (to whom he was at one stage engaged) and the model Karen Graham. He was married twice, first to Peter Sellers's widow, Lynne Frederick. But their marriage lasted only 17 months and the couple divorced in 1982. The following year Frost married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. He alone interviewed all eight British prime ministers who served from 1964 onwards – and all seven US presidents in office between 1969 and 2008. He interviewed Prince Charles on the eve of his investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969. He interviewed Muhammad Ali, both in the US and in Zaire before the boxing match with George Foreman touted as the Rumble in the Jungle. Frost moved his show briefly to the satellite broadcasters BSkyB. Then, in 1993, he began presenting Breakfast with Frost on the BBC. From 2006, Frost presented a weekly live current affairs programme Frost All Over the World on the al-Jazeera English channel. Frost was knighted in 1993. He died of a heart attack at age 74 in 2013.