Sir David Frost, RIP

It was a shock to arrive home from worship at lunch time today and read the news of David Frost’s sudden death. Not that I knew him, of course, but for eight years of my ministry I lived in what was known locally among Medway Methodists as ‘the Frost manse’. He had grown up there when his father, the Reverend Paradine Frost, had been the local Methodist minister. (Hence David’s middle name of Paradine and his production company being named Paradine Productions.) If Sir David was at the forefront of the British satire explosion in the early 1960s, their roots were not in his Cambridge University days, as some might claim, but in his young character. I can think of a church member who was in Sunday School and Youth Club with him who said how mischievous he was then, and an organist at the crematorium who confirmed similar stories from his school days.

While I was living there, BBC2 filmed a tribute night to Sir David. It included a scene where he stood outside ‘my’ manse. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in at the time of filming, and I only learned about it later from a friend, Jen Doragh, who sometimes comments here.

One thing he deserves to be remembered for, I believe, is the deeply moral streak he brought both to satire and to political interviewing. Without That Was The Week That Was, there would be none of the moral critique you find in the satire of people like Ian Hislop. Although people will remember his interviews with Richard Nixon and with Margaret Thatcher after the sinking of the Belgrano, his 1967 grilling of the fraudster Emil Savundra was surely a landmark in broadcasting. He paved the way for the searing scrutiny of public figures we see today. It is a shame that not all of today’s political broadcasters have the subtlety that Frost showed at times.

Rest in peace, Sir David.