End of an era: Broadcast giant, master interviewer David Frost dies

In TV’s historic moment, he elicited Nixon’s apology for Watergate.

LONDON:

British broadcaster David Frost, a master of the television interview, famed for coaxing an apology for the Watergate scandal from former US President Richard Nixon, died suddenly on Sunday.

Aged 74, he had a heart attack late on Saturday aboard a luxury cruise liner. His sudden death brought tributes from international celebrities and political leaders, many of whom called him a good friend as well as an acute interrogator.

“David Frost died of a heart attack last night aboard the Queen Elizabeth, where he was giving a speech,” his family said in a statement, adding they were “devastated”. “A family funeral will be held in the near future and details of a memorial service will be announced in due course.”

A household name in Britain since 1962, he hosted the cutting-edge television satire show That Was The Week That Was as a recent Cambridge graduate. Frost secured his broader reputation with the Nixon interviews of 1977, three years after the American president retreated into silence after quitting in disgrace.



In those encounters, dramatised in the 2008 film Frost/Nixon, the British talk-show host sparred with the former US president for hours before eliciting a moment of historical drama: Nixon apologised for the bugging of Democratic rivals at Washington’s Watergate building and the later cover-up.

His interviewees read like a who’s who of the rich and famous, from big names in show business to world leaders, including South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela. Frost was the only person to have interviewed the last eight British prime ministers and the last seven US presidents before Barack Obama. He was also the last person to have interviewed the last Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Others included Benazir Bhutto, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin, Yasser Arafat, Frederik Willem de Klerk, and Jacques Chirac.

The son of a Methodist minister from Kent outside London, Frost launched his career while still at Cambridge University as a leading figure in the Footlights Dramatic Club, a hotbed of innovative comedy.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 2^nd, 2013.