Given a chance, he believes, audiences will turn away from the circus element and embrace more sober, low-key shows like his own. In fact, he says, his career is a case in point. But that's all changed now. He agrees that his success is in large part because his show is not about him, but about his guests - he remains in the background, engaging but unobtrusive, masterfully prising revealing answers from his subjects. And fame, as Parkinson knows only too well, can be a fickle friend.
Fame changes people.
Fame's very seductive. And it becomes much more difficult when you become famous yourself, not just because you've changed, but because people change towards you as well. It was not long after his meteoric rise to fame at the age of 35, he says, that he began to be sucked into his own mythology. I began to lose the plot. I began to believe the symptoms of fame.