Sir David Frost dies at 74 after suffering heart attack on board cruise liner Queen Elizabeth | Daily Mail Online comments Veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost has died from a heart attack while on a luxury liner – far from specialised medical assistance. Sir David, 74, was on the Queen Elizabeth on its way from Southampton to Lisbon, preparing to give a talk later in the cruise about his career, when he collapsed on Saturday night. The Cunard line refused to say what emergency medical treatment he received on board. But NHS advice makes clear that only specialist hospitals are likely to have the facilities to treat major heart attacks. In particular, the ‘gold standard’ response involves a primary angioplasty – in which a wire frame called a stent is inserted to keep open a blocked artery – within two-and-a-half hours of an attack. Scroll down for video Veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost has died of a heart attack at 74. Pictured with wife Carin It is thought unlikely that the small medical centre on a cruise liner would have the equipment necessary for such a treatment. The Queen Elizabeth is understood to have two doctors on board and three nurses. Last night a Cunard spokesman refused to give details of Sir David’s treatment for reasons of confidentiality.

‘However, we have a full medical team on board and are well equipped to treat the range of patients that present from general practice complaints up to and including intensive care treatment and emergency medicine,’ she said. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share Sir David, who leaves three sons, Miles, 29, Wilfred, 28, and George, 26, was travelling alone, although his wife Lady Carina, 61, second daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, had accompanied him on previous cruises. A spokesman last night refused to detail repatriation plans, but the Queen Elizabeth is continuing to sail towards Lisbon, where it is due to dock tomorrow morning. It is likely that Sir David’s body will then be flown home. Sir David with Sir Michael Parkinson in 2008. They worked together many times during their extensive television careers Sir Michael described a 'non-judgmental interviewer' with a strong sense of morality. He said: 'He was guided in his life by deep principles - I never heard him say a nasty word about anybody and I never heard him swear.

'When you think of all the stuff he was responsible for, never mind the Nixon interview and the two television companies he helped set up too, it's remarkable. 'He was just an extraordinary guy, non-judgmental in that he didn't bring any prejudices to his work. 'But it's not right to say he was a "soft" interviewer - he had a totally persuasive interview style which led to the unmasking of a scoundrel.' Sir David , who probably interviewed more world figures from royalty, politics, the Church, show-business and virtually everywhere else, than any other living broadcaster, was the most illustrious TV inquisitor of his generation. He not only won virtually all the major television awards available, but his professional activities were so diverse that he was once described as 'a one-man conglomerate'. Friends and colleagues from his 40-year career spoke of their shock at the broadcasters death. Stephen Fry wrote: ‘Oh heavens, David Frost dead? No!! I only spoke to him on Friday and he sounded so well. Excited about a house move, full of plans ... how sad.’ His interview with the doomed American President 'Tricky Dicky' Richard Nixon in 1977 was a TV classic.

TV personality Esther Rantzen said: ‘I think fellow interviewers have always been awestruck by David Frost's capacity to elicit memorable, sometimes historically significant quotes from all the movers and shakers or our time - presidents, prime ministers, A*list celebrities . ‘But for all of us who had the pleasure of knowing him socially, it is his kindness, generosity, loyalty and humour that we will miss so much.’ TV presenter Loyd Grossman described the 'irreplaceable' journalist as a ‘master of current events’, adding: ‘I can't think of any other broadcaster that can step into those very, very big shoes.’ John Cleese, whose career was arguably launched on Sir David's programme The Frost Report, said: 'I was very, very sad to hear of David's death. I had known him for 52 years and I was extraordinarily fond of him. 'He was always fun and kind and interesting and I never heard him make a mean comment about anyone. 'I owe a great deal of my professional career to David and I am very grateful for what he did for me.

Life is going to feel rather diminished by the loss of his welcoming, cheery and optimistic voice.' Andrew Lloyd Webber tweeted: 'Farewell David, dearest friend. ALW.' Actor Michael Sheen, who played Sir David in Frost/Nixon told BBC News that the broadcaster 'was a huge part of life when I was growing up'. He added: 'Someone who when I did get to know him a little bit, and I even got to interview him at one point - he was as good an interviewee as he was an interviewer, he just radiated not only warmth as a person but enthusiasm for what he did. Sir David became famous after interviewing President Nixon in 1977. The politician was forced to admit that he had taken part in the infamous Watergate scandal Former President Richard Nixon exhibited a range of expressions during his interview with David Frost 'He clearly loved doing what he did.' Politicians described a 'fearsome interviewer' who knew how to had a unique ability to disarm his opponent.

Prime Minister David Cameron was quick to send his condolences, praising Sir David for being an 'extraordinary man with charm, wit, talent, intelligence and warmth in equal measure.' He addeed: 'My heart goes out to David Frost's family. He could be - and certainly was with me - both a friend and a fearsome interviewer.' Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said: ‘Being interviewed by him was always a pleasure but also you knew that there would be multiple stories the next day arising from it.’ Former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell hailed Sir David as a 'peerless' broadcaster. 'To be interviewed by David Frost was never a chore, even when trying to defend the indefensible,' he said. 'But his scrupulous and disarming politeness hid a mind like a vice. David Frost could do you over without you realising it until it was too late.' A statement from his family said: 'His family are devastated and ask for privacy at this difficult time. 'A family funeral will be held in the near future and details of a memorial service will be announced in due course.' His interview with the doomed American President 'Tricky Dicky' Richard Nixon in 1977 was a TV classic.

He quizzed the President on the Watergate Scandal that had emerged in the early 1970s . Sir David quizzed the President on the Watergate Scandal that had emerged in the early 1970s Sir David Frost has probably interviewed more world figures from royalty, politics, the Church, and show-business than anyone else He is said to have been a 'fearsome' interviewer'. Pictured here with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher The interviewer and his subject sparred through the first part of the interview, but Sir David later said he realized he didn't have what he wanted as it wound down. Nixon had acknowledged mistakes, but Sir David pressed him on whether that was enough. Americans, he said, wanted to hear him own up to wrongdoing and acknowledge abuse of power - and 'unless you say it, you're going to be haunted for the rest of your life.' 'That was totally off-the-cuff,' Sir David later said. 'That was totally ad-lib. In fact, I threw my clipboard down just to indicate that it was not prepared in any way ... I just knew at that moment that Richard Nixon was more vulnerable than he'd ever be in his life.

And I knew I had to get it right.' An under pressure Nixon mistakenly said: 'When the President does it, that means it's not illegal.' Admitting he was part of the cover up, Nixon eventually conceded that he had let the American public down. His dramatic interview with Richard Nixon was at the time the most widely watched news interview in the history of TV. It was shown in almost every televised nation in the world, and garnered the largest audience ever achieved for such an interview in the United States. Sir David Frost after receiving his knighthood with his wife and three sons in 1993 Television Presenter and Newscaster Sir David Frost with wife Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard at Ascot in 2011 Sir David Frost at his annual Summer Garden Party with his wife Lady Carina Frost with their sons Miles, Wilfred & George Sir David Frost on his wedding in 1983 say to second wife Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard It was later dramatised into a sell-out West End play, and more recently a Hollywood movie. Sir David, whose career at that stage appeared to be on the decline, poured some of his own wealth into this interview.

It was a gamble, but it totally restored his fortunes - and there was no looking back after that. The 2008 historical drama Frost/Nixon, starring Michael Sheen, chronicled the run up to the Nixon interviews. The film was a critical hit and was nominated for five Golden Globes and five Academy Awards. Sir David was regularly scoffed at by fellow broadcasters for his allegedly non-aggressive style of questioning. A young Sir David Frost and Lance Percival on the set of the television show That Was The Week That Was The Beatles' George Harrison and John Lennon answer questions from David Frost on the television programme 'The Frost Report'. They are discussing to topic of transcendental meditation and LSD Tony Blair, Prime Minister appearing with Sir David Frost on the BBC current affairs television programme: 'Breakfast with Frost' in 2005 Sir David's list of interviewees reads like a roll call of the world's most famous and powerful people. They include virtually every US president and British prime minister during his working life.

Pictured interviewing Sir Edward Heath But he invariably had the last laugh because he almost always extracted more intriguing information and revealing reactions from his subjects than other far more acerbic broadcasters who boasted about their hard-hitting treatment of their 'victims'. Colleague Barney Jones, who edited his Breakfast with Frost programme, told the BBC: 'David loved broadcasting, did it brilliantly for more than 50 years and was eagerly looking forward to a host of projects - including interviewing the prime minister next week - before his sudden and tragic death. We will all miss him enormously.' Peter Fincham, director of television at ITV, said: 'David Frost was one of the giants of television. He co-founded London Weekend Television and was a hugely influential figure in the development of ITV. Sir David interviewing Muhammed Ali in 1974. He had already gained a reputation as an effective interviewer Sir David interviewing Bobby Kennedy shortly before he died in 1968.

He was campaigning for the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency Sir David, TV presenter and journalist, interviews Harold Wilson, former Prime Minister, at Caenarfon Castle in 1977 'He was a major presence on screen for five decades, able to switch effortlessly from light entertainment to interviewing world leaders. And he was the most courteous and generous man you could hope to meet, always making it seem that it was his great good fortune to know you, rather than vice versa. 'He was the epitome of old school charm.' Sir David first came to notice nationally with the Saturday night TV satirical programme That Was The Week That Was, which he hosted and co-created in the early 1960s. By today's standards of merciless lampooning, it would appear tame. Sir David Frost with an early Bafta and with his Fellowship Award at the Pioneer British Academy Television Awards in 2005 It shocked authority, and was a programme not to be missed by those who were its victims as much as by those who enjoyed seeing the great and the good so savagely ridiculed.

But it 'made' Sir David who was then seen as a coruscating rebel, although quite a likeable one, and who was to develop, ironically, as an Establishment figure in his own right. David Paradine Frost was born on April 7, 1939, the son of a Methodist preacher, at Tenterden, Kent. He was educated at Gillingham Grammar School, Wellingborough Grammar School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he joined Footlights, the renowned revue and cabaret society. He then started to do some TV for the regional station in Norwich, particularly a programme called Town and Gown which was about Cambridge. The veteran broadcaster was due to give a speech on the Queen Elizabeth on Saturday For the Christmas edition of that programme in December 1959, the programme-makers decided they wanted a spoof of TV and they approached Footlights and asked Sir David and the comedian Peter Cook to write it. Later Sir David said: 'We went to the station to do it, and I walked into this rather odd environment of a television studio and I thought "This is home. This is for me".

It was an instant feeling, and from that moment on, for me the decision was made. It was a very memorable day.' Another of his programmes, The Frost Report, effectively launched John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett on their subsequent glittering careers. Sir David's list of interviewees reads like a roll call of the world's most famous and powerful people. They include virtually every US president and British prime minister during his working life. David Frost and Michael Parkinson with Robert Kee, Angela Rippon, and Anna Ford at the launch of TV-am in 1983 Frost celebrating with the cast of the 'Frost Over England' television programme Others included Prince Charles, the Duke and Duchess of York, the Princess Royal, Robert F Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Pierre Trudeau, Mikhail Gorbachev, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, King Hussein, Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, and countless more.

He was the only person to have interviewed all six British prime ministers serving between 1964 and 2007and the seven US presidents in office between 1969 and 2008. Among his awards were two Emmy Awards (for The David Frost Show), the Royal Television Society Silver Medal and the Richard Dimbleby Award in the United Kingdom and internationally, the Golden Rose of Montreux. The television presenter was the face of 'Through The Keyhole' for two decades He was the only person to have interviewed all six British prime ministers serving between 1964 and 2007and the seven US presidents in office between 1969 and 2008. But he still had a sense of fun He presented the show Frost Over the World on Al-Jazeera English TV for six years until 2012 Over the years, Sir David wrote 17 books, produced several films and started two television networks, London Weekend Television and TV-am. In 1983, he married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, second daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. There were three sons.

He was awarded an OBE in 1970 and received his knighthood in 1993. ‘When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal’: How an unknown British journalist brought down Richard Nixon Sir David did not reach the international stage until 1977 when he secured a coveted series of television interviews with disgraced former President, Richard Nixon. The dramatic face-to-face was make-or-break both for him and for the ex-president. The 38-year-old Sir David took a massive risk in interviewing such an experienced politician and his New York based chat show had been cancelled. Sir David making final arrangements for the taping of four 90 minute interview programs with Richard Nixon in 1977 But Nixon had spent two years out of the public eye and was trying to salvage his reputation after resigning from the White House in disgrace following the Watergate scandal three years earlier. Sir David struggled to encourage television networks to buy the interviews, because they viewed them as ‘chequebook journalism’. Nixon was being paid for his time. Sir David was forced to fund the interviews himself, taking a huge risk on an unpredictable interview.

He and his subject sparred through the first part of the interview, but Sir David later said he realized he didn't have what he wanted as it wound down. Nixon had acknowledged mistakes, but Sir David pressed him on whether that was enough. Americans, he said, wanted to hear him own up to wrongdoing and acknowledge abuse of power – and ‘unless you say it, you're going to be haunted for the rest of your life.’ The 2008 movie Frost/Nixon (pictured) chronicled the events leading up to Sir David's famous Nixon interviews ‘That was totally off-the-cuff,’ Sir David later said. ‘That was totally ad-lib. In fact, I threw my clipboard down just to indicate that it was not prepared in any way. ‘I just knew at that moment that Richard Nixon was more vulnerable than he'd ever be in his life. And I knew I had to get it right.’ The once powerful Nixon now looked unprepared and weak in front of the English journalist. And the moment came when Nixon uttered the now infamous words: ‘When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal.’ After more pressing, Nixon conceded.

‘I let the American people down and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life,’ he said. The dramatic face-off went on to spawn a hit play. And in 2008, a new generation was introduced to Frost's work with the Oscar-nominated movie Frost/Nixon, starring Michael Sheen as Sir David and Frank Langella as Nixon. The leading ladies that impacted on Sir David's life Sir David was almost as famous for his love of women as he was for his hard hitting interviews. The television presenter was forever in the gossip column and spent the sixties and seventies with a string of beautiful women, especially actresses. Sir David could charm anyone he talked to, a skill that proved useful in both his professional and personal lives. Sir David briefly married Peter Sellers' widow Lynne Frederick in 1981. He had a weakness for beautiful women He was seen with actresses such as Jenny Logan, Alexandra Bastedo and Janette Scott. The newscaster was even engaged to American actress and singer Diahnne Carroll, who says that she did not marry him as he actually seemed ready to have a family.

The lothario added to his list of women with an on/off affair with Carol Lynley over an 18-year period. Sir David Frost with girlfriend actress Janette Scott (left) and Jenny Logan (right) Sir David Frost with another two actresses, Alexandra Bastedo in 1974 (left) and Diahann Carroll (right) in 1971 In 1981 he married Peter Sellers' widow Lynne Fredrick, but they divorced the following year. One girlfriend, Caroline Cushing, was a burgeoning young journalist who was with him when he interviewed Nixon. Sir David whisked Caroline to watch Muhammad Ali fight in Zaire for their first date. Sir David with Caroline Cushing. She went to LA with him when he interviewed former President Richard Nixon He was hosting the iconic boxing match, Rumble in the Jungle, where Ali fought with George Foreman. They broke up soon after the Nixon interviews, but Caroline later became a successful journalist in her own right and was west coast editor for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk Magazine. But, he found the love of his life in second wife Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard.

The daughter of the 17th Duke of Norfolk, they married in 1983 and had three sons: Miles,Wilfred & George and were together until he died. With a 30 year marriage, she supported him throughout many of his achievements. Sir David found the love of his life in his wife of 20 years Lady Carina BBC News - Profile: Sir David Frost Profile: Sir David Frost Sir David honoured with Emmy Sir David Frost has been honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the International Emmys in New York. The 70-year-old is a broadcasting phenomenon - the son of a Methodist minister who became a household name on both sides of the Atlantic, a multi-millionaire and a friend of the great and the good. After studying at Cambridge University, he came to television in the early 1960s, presenting the mould-breaking BBC satirical show That Was the Week That Was. With his mocking delivery and use of headline language, he became a national figure and before long he found fame in the US, commuting regularly across the Atlantic. His catchphrase, "hello, good evening and welcome", was to become much-mimicked.

Trial by TV Sir David mixed pure entertainment - with shows like The Frost Report, which brought together Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett - with serious political interviews with the likes of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. In 1969, he also introduced the much-criticised trial by television, notably of Emil Savundra - head of a cut-price car insurance company which swindled thousands of motorists. The presenter was visibly angry at Savundra's evasions. Sir David was played by Michael Sheen, right, in Frost/Nixon In 1977, he used the format to take US President Richard Nixon to task over the Watergate political scandal. In the interviews, watched by 45 million people, Nixon ultimately admitted his part in the scandal which led to his resignation two years earlier. The story of their verbal battle was brought to a new generation with the 2008 release of Frost/Nixon - a film based on those interviews, starring Michael Sheen as the British contender and an Oscar-nominated Frank Langella as the disgraced politician. David Parradine Frost was born in Tenterden, Kent, though the family later moved to Suffolk.

After a grammar school education, he went to Cambridge, where he was editor of student publication Granta and active in the Footlights theatre company. He presented three programmes on ITV before That Was the Week that Was. Ali interview The list of Sir David's television programmes is a long one - The Frost Programme, Frost on Friday, A Degree of Frost, Not So Much A Programme, More a Way of Life to name but a few. There was also the Frost Over series. Frost Over England in 1967 won an award at Montreux. Others were about America, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. That Was The Week That Was began in 1962 The Frost Programme was the first current affairs programme to use a participating audience. A variety of interview-based programmes followed. Recorded primarily in the UK and America, they were broadcast all over the world. Interviewees from the world of showbiz included The Beatles, Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, Tennessee Williams and Noel Coward. Prince Charles was interviewed on the eve of his investiture as Prince of Wales. Muhammad Ali was interviewed in New York and later in Zaire.

Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Heenan came into his studio and US political activist Abbie Hoffman and his Youth International party, aka the "Yippies", took over during a live show. Sir David was a joint founder of London Weekend Television and one of the famous five presenters-cum-shareholders behind breakfast television station TV-am, which launched in 1983. His Frost on Sunday programme began on the station in 1984, running until 1992. Sir David married his wife, Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, in 1983 In 1993, he began presenting Breakfast with Frost on the BBC - his first regular weekly show for the corporation since That Was The Week That Was. His new show - also on a Sunday morning - ran for 500 editions, ending in May 2005. Since 2006, Sir David has presented weekly current affairs programme Frost All Over The World on the Al Jazeera English Channel. Recent interviewees have included Prime Minister Gordon Brown and former US Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Sir David has written a number of books, produced eight films and has received many major TV awards, in the UK and internationally.

In the early 1980s, he was briefly married to Peter Sellers' widow, Lynne Frederick. In 1983, he married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Bookmark with: David Frost and Carina Fitzalan-Howard Relationship Details | ShagTree Photo Credits David Frost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "For other people named David Frost, see David Frost (disambiguation). ... Frost married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, daughter of the 17th Duke of Norfolk" - source DAVID FROST AND CARINA FITZALAN-HOWARD - Dating, Gossip ... "David Frost and Carina Fitzalan-Howard photos, news and gossip. ... On 19 March 1983, Frost married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, daughter of the 17th Duke of Norfolk." - source Who is Carina Fitzalan-Howard dating? Carina Fitzalan ... "Carina Fitzalan-Howard relationship list. Carina Fitzalan-Howard dating history, 2014, 2013, ...

FitzAlan was a sister-in-law of Sir David Frost, ..." - source Lady Marcia Fitzalan-Howard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "Lady Marcia was a sister-in-law of Sir David Frost, ... Lady Carina Fitzalan Howard. ... another sister is married to the 5th Earl of Balfour." - source David Frost Weds Daughter of Duke - NYTimes.com "David Frost, the television personality and writer, and Lady Carina Fitzalan Howard, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, were married at the registrar's ..." - source David Frost (Comedian) - Pics, Videos, Dating, & News "David Frost (75 years old) is a ... Sir David Paradine Frost, Kt. , ... On 19 March 1983 David Frost married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard (born 20 February 1952), ..." - source Sir David Frost dies: TV giant, party host supreme and ... "Sir David Frost soared to stardom while still in his early 20s, ... Sir David Paradine Frost, ...

A year later he married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, ..." - source David Frost: From the singer he wooed with an egg-sized ... "Before he settled down to marriage, the late David Frost’s romantic entanglements were a sort of running soap opera, played out in the gossip columns of ..." - source David Frost and Carina Fitzalan-Howard Pics - David Frost ... "View the latest David Frost and Carina Fitzalan-Howard pictures. Large photo gallery featuring David Frost and Carina Fitzalan-Howard. Magazine images. Pictorials." - source Sir David Frost Dies Of Heart Attack On Ship "Sir David Frost was born on April 7, ... Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, who he married in 1983. ...

David Paradine Frost was born on April 7, ..." - source Sir David Frost dies: TV giant, party host supreme and thoroughly good egg | Daily Mail Online comments Lasting happiness: David Frost and his wife, Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, with their three sons in 1993 He was mocked and mimicked for his catchphrase: ‘Hello, good evening and welcome,’ delivered with a nasal twang that remained familiar to TV audiences for half a century. He soared to stardom while still in his early 20s, fell to Earth, then resurrected himself far more often than Lazarus. He was a towering figure of 20th-century television, and of British life. Sir David Paradine Frost, who died suddenly yesterday at the age of 74, was born in Kent on April 7, 1939, son of a Methodist minister. He attended a succession of grammar schools where he proved a precocious football wizard, and declined an offered contract from Nottingham Forest. Then came Cambridge, where his ambition and abilities blossomed. He edited the student newspaper Varsity and the literary magazine Granta, and became secretary of the famous Footlights drama society.

He spent a brief period as an ITV trainee before, in November 1963, producer Ned Sherrin plucked him from obscurity to front a pilot for the ground-breaking BBC TV satire show That Was the Week That Was, which thereafter exploded into a Saturday late-night series which gripped the nation and became known as TW3. As a viewer, I remember as if it was yesterday the excitement and novelty of that show, which outraged the Conservative government and was adored by everybody else, especially the young. I was then working as a teenage researcher at the Beeb. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share One of my biggest off-duty thrills was to join the invited studio audience at Television Centre for the show’s transmission, accompanied by a BBC librarian who is now my wife. We were all offered mulled wine to add to the jollity — imagine the Corp doing that for an audience now! — and to help generate the sense almost of a generational conspiracy against the establishment which the brilliant Ned Sherrin sought to create.

Party time: With Carina and their sons at their Chelsea home in 2009 There was sublimely sexy Millicent Martin singing her weekly topical song, Bernard Levin doing feisty interviews, Lance Percival, Willy Rushton, Roy Kinnear and the rest strutting their stuff, delivering lines composed by some of the smartest young script-writers in Britain. And above all there was Frosty, anchoring the gang of anarchists. Some people derided him as a hollow vessel — just a clever frontman with a lavatory-brush haircut and conspicuously classless persona. But he had a brash, in-your-face cheek which audiences loved, and a precocious maturity which the camera played upon. Like it or hate it, here was the new Britain, and David Frost was its standard-bearer. I adored him in those days, not only for on-screen brilliance, but also for his off-screen kindness. I was a nobody of 18, he was a huge star. But he invited me to his terrific parties at Battersea Fun Fair. Sensation: With U.S.

President Richard Nixon in 1977 In restaurants, he always crossed the floor warmly to greet every acquaintance, including me, thus doing wonders for my street-cred with my own dates. Few of us forget those who are nice to us when they have nothing to gain from being so, and ever since I have thought David Frost an unusually decent human being. To be sure, from his early days he was mocked for sucking up to the rich and powerful; for being all things to all men; for lacking the killer instinct of the greatest interviewers — indeed, for failing to make up his own mind whether he was a journalist or a show-business luvvie. But nobody lasts as long as did David at the top of TV without possessing extraordinary qualities. Most conspicuous, of course, was a driving ambition. After TW3 folded, he briefly presented its pale shadow of a successor, Not So Much A Programme, More A Way Of Life. Then followed a much more successful show, The Frost Report. There he revived and enhanced his reputation through tough interviews with notorious figures such as the fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, the fraudster Emil Savundra and rebel Rhodesian premier Ian Smith.

Between 1969 and 1972 he also commuted weekly to New York to present an American version of The David Frost Show. To David in those days, life was about work, money, fame and not much else. Though for some years he dated the starlet Janette Scott, domestic life seemed to hold little charm for him. His social life was simply an extension of the office and studio, his parties an endless procession of meetings with people who had been, were or might in the future be useful to his career. For a time, he achieved a peculiar sort of fame as Concorde’s most frequent flier — 20 times a year, on top of endless slower global trips. Some people saw something a little sad in Frosty’s manic pursuit of stardom, disdaining what most of us think of as a real life. But most successful people are obsessives, and in the decade after TW3 was launched, nobody doubted David was a superstar. In the late Seventies, however, his career languished. He seemed to lose his touch, and British and American audiences tired of him. He clung precariously to a screen role presenting an appalling Australian TV light entertainment show.

Sir David Frost shares a laugh with Prince Charles. The world of showbusiness have paid tribute to the veteran broadcaster Nobody in London or New York would have been surprised if, at the end of that period, he had slowly sunk without trace. Instead, of course — and as everybody who has seen Peter Morgan’s terrific play and 2008 film Frost/Nixon knows — in 1977 he contrived an astonishing revival by conducting a series of taped TV interviews with disgraced U.S. President Richard Nixon, which he funded out of his own pocket when nobody else would. Most of the interview content was amazingly dull, but the encounters would be forever remembered for a single magic moment, when Nixon came as close as ever he would to expressing contrition for his conduct towards the American people. The Frost/Nixon movie was most memorable for Frank Langella’s portrayal of the fallen president. But Michael Sheen also delivered a virtuoso impersonation of Frost, which depicted him as an almost comic, sometimes pathetically naïve figure. This caused some of us to feel bewildered that David himself appeared to like the movie so much.

Award-winning: Sir David with a Bafta, one of the numerous awards he received But maybe, in his old age, it was sufficient cause for delight that he should have been immortalised in an Oscar-nominated feature film. The worldwide sales of the Nixon interviews boosted his finances and revived his prestige as a TV journalist. His career always straddled current affairs, showbiz and light entertainment, and for almost 20 years he also presented a panel game, Through The Keyhole, on daytime TV. His energy and enthusiasm were astonishing. He possessed an infinite capacity to believe passionately in projects that were something second-rate or even tawdry, but which Frost threw himself into heart and soul. His personal life remained to most of his acquaintance an enigma. Though a highly intelligent man, he seemed to derive most satisfaction from the company of women whose beauty commanded admiration, but who otherwise had little to recommend them. After his long walk-out with Janette Scott, he was engaged for a time to American actress Diahann Carroll, then spent five years with party girl Caroline Cushing, a relationship that spanned the period of the Nixon interviews. He also had a long on-off affair with American actress and celebrity squeeze Carol Lynley.

In 1981-82, he was briefly married to Peter Sellers’ ex-wife Lynn Frederick. Then, in the following year, he once more provoked astonishment by forging a union with the most established of all Establishment families when he wed the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard. More remarkable still, their marriage lasted through the ensuing 30 years. It seemed mostly happy, and produced three unusually nice and well-balanced sons. David and Carina forged an impeccably conventional social life at a big London house in Chelsea’s Carlyle Square, and a country mansion at Michelmersh in Hampshire. Carlyle Square for many years provided the venue for Frosty’s annual summer parties, which I never heard of any prospective guest refusing. The Hastingses panted for our invitations as eagerly as everybody else, together with the chance to mingle with 500-odd politicians, journalists, show-business stars, writers, socialites and high-profile villains. Skilled: Sir David playing football in his flat.

As a youth he was offered a contract at Nottingham Forest There you might see David Cameron glad-handing the ex-News of the World Editor Rebekah Brooks in the years before his premiership and her disgrace; top policemen chatting to celebrity hairdressers; TV presenters quarrelling with supermodels. The Frost parties were much derided — by those who had not been invited — but those who attended were simply amazed and impressed by the turn-out. TV and journalism breed innumerable feuds. Most of us, after a lifetime in the business, have friends but also enemies with whom we are on non-speakers. Frosty somehow contrived to stay on terms with everybody — Labour and Tory, writer and TV critic, novelist and actor. He greeted each one as his dearest and oldest friend, which provoked plenty of teasing. But he indeed possessed a remarkable gift for acquaintance, if not for intimacy. Everybody from Henry Kissinger to the prime minister of the day would accept his call. And then, of course, there was Frosty the supreme studio professional. Those of us who have experienced the tension, the drama, the innumerable beartraps of live television know just how hard it is to do what David did supremely well.

His Sunday morning interview programme Breakfast With Frost ran on the BBC from 1993 to 2005. It was an outstanding current affairs show where the mighty were as happy to appear as were humbler folk like me, reviewing the newspapers or peddling books. The programme became compulsory viewing for the media and political classes. He interviewed eight serving British prime ministers and seven serving U.S. presidents, as well as many other national leaders. The secret of success as a TV performer is not to harangue the audience as two or three million viewers, but instead with the confiding sense of chatting to two or three half-interested people into whose homes, and even bedrooms, one seeks to make oneself an intruder. David was a master of that art, just as he unfailingly kept his nerve when live feeds went down, an interviewee lost his temper, or a video recording got lost. He was as accomplished a studio ringmaster as Robin Day or David Dimbleby.

Breakthrough: He first found fame on sixties satire show That Was The Week That Was It was an extraordinary achievement, to remain a star of this most transient of all mediums through more than five decades, even if in his last few years, to find an audience he had to resort to the Qatari-owned network Al Jazeera. He loved the camera, and the camera loved him. To be a successful TV frontman requires the gift of seeming supremely natural, while actually doing something entirely theatrical, and that is what Frost did. He made himself richer than any other British current affairs presenter in history by running his own production companies as well as appearing on camera. Although his business affairs experienced their bumpy patches, he became as successful an entrepreneur as he was a performer. Host: Sir David became well-known for the incredible parties he threw I knew David as an admiring colleague, not as a close friend, and thus it is a little impertinent to guess at his motivations. But it amused many of us that the man who started out as a satire star, deriding everything the Establishment stood for, chose to end up as a duke’s son-in-law, wedded to the social and political values of old-fashioned conservatism.

There were demons in Frost, as there are in many journalists, which caused him to alternate runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds, until finally he abandoned TV blood sports altogether, and settled for being an on-screen softy. I was due to appear next month on a BBC nostalgia radio show hosted by David, about the year 1963, when he himself soared to stardom amid the fall-out from the Profumo affair, and the crumbling of the Tory government. I was looking forward to the evening, because all encounters with Frosty were fun, on air or off it. But I was a little surprised that he was thought fit to do the programme, because he had looked so ill for so long, especially at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. It was easy to make fun of his indiscriminate bonhomie, as readily lavished upon scoundrels such as Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer as upon the good and great. He was a curious human being, who started his career trampling on the conventions but thereafter spent a lifetime seeking social acceptance and love. But at root he had a good heart, and a generosity of spirit which is unusual in an industry characterised by its brutality and bitchiness.

I and a host of others respected him as a supreme professional, who achieved a longevity on screen almost without parallel in a medium which uses and discards most of its stars within a few seasons. Corridors of power: Sir David Frost interviewing British Prime Minister David Cameron at 10 Downing Street He bridged the divide between on-screen entertainment and journalism in a fashion which those of us less accomplished at it could only envy. It is mistaken to mumble the cliché that he will be missed, because television has moved on since his salad days. But we could instead say something much more unusual: that some of the programmes which he made will be long remembered, even in that most transient of mediums; while the man himself was among the nicest stars most of his acquaintances ever met. When he said: ‘Hello, good evening and welcome!’, he meant it. The man who knew everyone... including LOTS of very beautiful girls Although for the past 30 years, Sir David has been devoted to the love of his life, the beautiful Carina Fitzalan-Howard, in his youth he enjoyed a love life as glittering as his amazing career.

Frost’s legendary charm not only made him a brilliant interviewer, but it also saw him seduce a string of glamorous and sophisticated women. In his 20s, Frost dated the stunning actress Janette Scott. Frost had long been a fan. ‘I had worshipped — nay, lusted after — Janette Scott since the age of 15 when I watched her first screen kiss,’ he wrote... but she left him to marry the U.S. jazz musician Mel Tormé. Royal secrets: The king of TV interviews a youthful Prince Charles in the Sixties Yesterday: Frost and Paul McCartney in 1965 (left). In John Travolta's DC3 plane in 1977 (right) He was seen with beauties on both sides of the Atlantic: actress Jenny Logan (who later became the Shake n’ Vac girl), New York fashion editor Bernadette Carey, and Bond girl Jill St. John. Frost thought he had found his soul-mate when he met the U.S. actress and singer Diahann Carroll. In October 1972 they announced their engagement with Carroll flashing a diamond ring she described as being ‘as big as David’s heart’.

Despite the diamond, they never made it to the altar. Carroll said Frost was away in London too often and that he ‘needed to have a family and I did not want to have any more children’. Frost/Niven: With film stars David Niven and Ali MacGraw True Grit: Meeting John Wayne in 1973. Entertainer Frost makes a guest appearance on Petula Clark's show in 1970 Punchline: Having a laugh with Muhammad Ali Sixties icons: With Diana Dors, Mick Jagger and TV campaigner Mary Whitehouse in 1968 After a fling with Alexandra Bastedo, star of spy drama The Champions, and a long relationship with Playboy model Carol Lynley, the next woman to fall for Frost was the socialite Caroline Cushing. For their first date, in 1974, Frost asked Cushing to go to Zaire, where he was to host the legendary ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Cushing accepted, and they stayed together for five years.

In 1981, he wed Lynne Frederick, the fourth wife and widow of Peter Sellers, but it was a disaster — partly because Frederick suffered acute depression — and they divorced the next year. A year later he married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. His choice of bride made many think Frost had finally joined the Establishment of which he had so long been a scourge. Top-level summit: A garden interview with U.S. President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair Tragic: Bobby Kennedy just before his 1968 death (left). A night out with Noel Coward in 1972 (right) Shake on it: Greeting Margaret and Denis Thatcher At the bars: A workout with ballet icon Rudolf Nuryev. Right, with the Duchess of York Engaged: But Frost didn't marry Diahann Carroll Teenage crush: He dated Janette Scott (left) in his 20s.

With Lynne Frederick (right) Happy: Five years with Caroline Cushing David Frost Weds Daughter of Duke - NYTimes.com David Frost Weds Daughter of Duke Published: March 26, 1983 David Frost, the television personality and writer, and Lady Carina Fitzalan Howard, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, were married at the registrar's office in the Chelsea section of London last Saturday. The bride, who is 30 years old, and Mr. Frost, 43, are honeymooning this weekend at the residence in Jamaica of David Mahoney, chairman of the Norton Simon Company. The bride's father is the premier duke and the premier Roman Catholic peer in England. The Dukedom of Norfolk was created by Richard II in 1397. Mr. Frost, son of Mrs. W. J. Paradine Frost of Beccles, Suffolk, England, and the late Rev. Frost, is chairman of David Paradine Ltd. and host of TV-AM's ''Good Morning'' program in London. He is coauthor with Michael Deakin of ''David Frost's Book of World's Worst Decisions,'' which will be published next week by Crown.

His previous marriage, to Lynne Frederick, the widow of Peter Sellers, ended in divorce. His father was a Methodist minister. Illustrations: photo of Lady Carina Frost Sir David Frost - Telegraph Obituaries Sir David Frost Sir David Frost, who has died aged 74, began his career in television satirising the patrician Establishment and ended it with a knighthood, a duke as a father-in-law and a reputation as the television personality politicians on both sides of the Atlantic most wanted to be interviewed by. Sir David Frost Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY With former President Richard Nixon Photo: TIME-LIFE/GETTY Frost fronting That Was The Week That Was in 1964 Photo: REX 12:10PM BST 01 Sep 2013 Frost made his name in the 1960s on the BBC’s late night satirical series That Was The Week That Was. With his sardonic manner, slurred diction, nasal voice and alarming surges in volume, he was the first to show that quirkiness and unnaturalness could work better on television than the “natural” but bland presentation that had been the norm.

He was also one of the first television presenters to recognise instinctively the value of a catchphrase as an indispensable prop in fixing a personality and establishing a rapport with television audiences. His tautological “Hello, good evening (or morning) and welcome” was delivered with a conscious air of self-parody long before he himself became a butt of the satirists. Although Frost was only the link man to performers like Willie Rushton and John Bird, it was Frost, above all, who reaped the benefits of the programme’s notoriety. From the early days of The Frost Report in the 1960s, and The Frost Programme in the 1970s, to Frost on Sunday in the 1990s, he was rarely off British television screens, appearing in everything from news and documentaries to chat shows, quiz shows and comedy. In total, Frost presented more than 20 television series, produced nine films, wrote 14 books, won numerous awards, and was a co-founder of London Weekend Television and TV-am. In 1969 a poll revealed that he was, after the Queen and the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, the best-known person in the country.

Frost had a genius for access, and he interviewed nearly everyone who was anyone, including six American Presidents, eight British Prime Ministers, several members of the Royal family and a galaxy of celebrities. He had a phenomenal memory and an instinctive understanding of the value of flattery; most of his interviewees considered themselves personal friends. Related Articles Geoffrey Wheeler 01 Jan 2014 “The big names answer the phone to him”, observed an envious colleague. “Nobody else can phone the people he can and get through — and they’re pleased to talk to him.” “Now at last here’s someone I recognise” announced American President George HW Bush across a crowd of leading British public figures held at No 10 Downing Street. At the Frosts’ annual garden party, held in the second week of the Wimbledon championships, leading politicians would rub shoulders with showbusiness personalities, sports stars and minor royals. Frost also had a Panglossian ability to look on the bright side. Though he had failures that might have sunk a more introspective personality, he was always able to put them behind him. Both LWT and TV-am began with hopelessly unrealistic programming ambitions and both hit trouble soon after they were launched.

Most of his books earned indifferent reviews and several business ventures failed. An attempt to open a chain of steak houses in Japan collapsed after it was calculated that he would need to fill every table six times a day to make it pay. But unlike television figures such as Michael Parkinson or Russell Harty, Frost was never held in great affection by the British public, possibly because he always seemed so desperate to be liked. Even friends admitted that away from the cameras there was a strange insubstantiality about the man. Kitty Muggeridge famously remarked that after That Was The Week That Was, Frost was expected to sink without trace; instead, he “rose without trace”. The phrase seemed to encapsulate both the suddenness of Frost’s rise and the lack of any obvious intellectual anchorage in his career. For Frost never appeared to have any considered views about life. He was never heard to utter a political opinion and never voted in an election. Interviewers asking direct questions about his personal feelings on an issue would be fobbed off with anecdotes about what someone else had said. They were often left with the impression that Frost was not interested in anything other than his own career. Not even in the lengthy first volume of his autobiography did Frost provide any insights.

He knew the rich and famous, but had nothing interesting or original to say about them. He travelled the world, but his most interesting observations were that Americans eat hamburgers and call pavements “sidewalks”. Christopher Booker, a Cambridge contemporary, saw him as an embodiment of all that was vacuous about the 1960s: “a hollow man in pursuit of fame for its own sake”. His most obvious quality, Booker observed in a savage profile in 1977, “was ambition of an all consuming and extraordinary kind. He simply wanted to be amazingly famous for being David Frost”. Yet even Booker found him “impossible to dislike”. Though he had an insatiable appetite for celebrity, he was never arrogant or vain. Wholly devoid of rancour, he was never heard to voice a disparaging word about anyone, despite many attempts by interviewers to get him to do so. People in his estimation were usually “wonderful”, “lovely” “or “super”. One person on whom Frost’s charm failed to work was the satirist and comedian Peter Cook.

At Cook’s memorial service in 1995, Stephen Fry recalled an occasion when Frost rang Cook to invite him to dinner with Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson: “big fans ... be super if you could make it — Wednesday the 12th”. “Hang on, I’ll check my diary,” said Cook, riffling through the pages. “Oh dear, I find I’m watching television that night.” Frost, who was in the congregation, laughed with the rest of them. Even for those who turned against him, Frost had only kind words in return. David Paradine Frost was born on April 7 1939 at Tenterden, Kent, the son of a Methodist minister, the Rev WJ Paradine Frost. As his sisters were 14 and 16 years older, he was raised as an only child. There was no alcohol or swearing in the Frost household, and no Sunday newspapers or television. The Frost family lived a peripatetic life, moving from Tenterden to Kempston, Bedford, then back to Kent, to Gillingham, then to Raunds, near Wellingborough. David attended Gillingham and Wellingborough grammar schools.

His father would have liked him to follow him into the ministry, but David’s talents seemed destined to take him in other directions. At school he excelled at sports and displayed an early talent for satire, selling his classmates bottles of soapy water labelled “Bill Haley’s Bathwater” and conducting pseudonymous campaigns through the letters column of the local paper, one of which called for all dogs to be shot. Frost could have been a star striker for Nottingham Forest. A club scout was present when he scored eight goals with eight shots at a school match, and offered to sign him up. But Frost was determined to go to Cambridge, where he arrived in 1958 as an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius. At Cambridge, Frost got to know Peter Cook, Eleanor Bron, John Bird, Jonathan Miller and other stars of what was to become the Sixties satire industry; but although he edited Granta and became secretary of Footlights, his contemporaries were baffled by his ability to rise above an apparent lack of comic talent and intellectual depth. “What the hell has he got?” Christopher Booker recalled asking. One thing his contemporaries noticed was Frost’s utter imperviousness to disaster.

Peter Cook once recalled seeing him dying on his feet at a club but remaining convinced his performance had been a great success. Frost’s first screen appearance came during his student days on Anglia Television’s Town And Gown series, on which Frost, according to the local paper, made “unrestrained appearances as an explorer, Professor Nain, Lionel Sope, Goalie Finn and Ron Plindell”. But Frost immediately knew he had found his métier. “The first time I stepped into a television studio,” he recalled later, “it felt like home. It didn’t scare me. Talking to the camera seemed the most natural thing in the world”. Down from Cambridge, he took job with Associated-Rediffusion, who marked him down as “totally unsuitable” to appear on screen, and supplemented his income by performing in nightclubs. In 1962, Frost was doing an impersonation of the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in a two-month stint at the Blue Angel in Upper Berkeley Street when he was spotted by Ned Sherrin, who was looking for a linkman for his new BBC series That Was The Week That Was, sometimes referred to as TW3.

Sherrin decided that Frost was exactly the man to bring satire to the late night mass television audience, and signed him up there and then. The first TW3 show went out in November 1962, and the series continued for just eight months. Condemned by Mary Whitehouse as “the epitome of what is wrong with the BBC”, by its peak, the show had become a ratings sensation, attracting more than 12 million viewers. After his early success with TW3, Frost’s career seemed to falter. “David Frost: A short life and a sad decline” announced the Daily Express gleefully in 1964. But he soon demonstrated his extraordinary talent for bouncing back. In 1966, after being sacked from TW3’s lacklustre successor Not So Much A Programme, More A Way of Life, he sent out invitations to a totally pointless but ostentatious champagne breakfast at the Connaught to which he summoned most of the headline figures of the 1960s. Amazingly, many took the bait, among them Harold Wilson, the Bishop of Woolwich, the philosopher AJ Ayer, Lord Longford, and several newspaper proprietors.

It was a brilliant publicity stroke which, while it left his guests baffled, catapulted the 26-year-old Frost from a face in the TW3 line-up to a marketable celebrity. The following year he orchestrated and secured the franchise for LWT, of which The Frost Programme became a cornerstone. In 1968 he signed a £125,000 contract with an American network for a three-nights-a-week show, the biggest salary ever offered to a British broadcaster. So began three years of transatlantic to-ing and fro-ing, invariably on Concorde. Honours were heaped upon him. In one week in 1969 he was appointed OBE in Britain, made a Doctor of Laws in Boston and given a “Faith and Freedom” award for “communicating the relevance of Judaeo-Christian ethics to 20th century America”. In 1968 he set up his own company, David Paradine Productions, and by 1969 his salary was rumoured to be £500,000. At the height of his fame during the 1960s, Frost enjoyed a reputation for aggressive and fearless interviewing.

He eviscerated Rupert Murdoch on the subject of pornography in an interview so hostile that it was said to have contributed to Murdoch’s decision not to live in Britain. He stood his ground against the formidable Enoch Powell in an interview on the subject of racism. In 1967 Frost conducted what was perhaps his most notorious interview with the disgraced insurance fraudster Emil Savundra. When Savundra’s trial began a week later, the phrase “trial by television” was used by Savundra’s defending counsel to excoriate Frost. Frost became a symbol of Sixties glamour, dynamism and irreverence. In his survey of the decade, The Pendulum Years (1970), Bernard Levin anointed him “Man of the Sixties”. Frost, he said, “divined by a remarkable instinct what the age demanded and gave it”. Newspaper diarists delighted in documenting his dalliances with actresses and models He was engaged twice but dumped both times, virtually at the altar; all his girlfriends, he always insisted, were “ terrific” and “wonderful” and most remained friends. During the Seventies his career seemed to falter again.

His output remained copious, but in series such as David Frost Presents the Guinness Book of Records (he bought the television rights to the world’s bestselling book in 1973), he began to lose focus. His appearances on British television became more sporadic. Then, in 1977, he secured perhaps the biggest coup of his career by signing up the disgraced former American President Richard Nixon to an exclusive contract to give a series of four interviews; it was the first time since his resignation that Nixon had agreed to answer questions on the record. Deceptively easy-going at first, almost at the end Frost moved in for the kill, and Nixon found himself apologising to the American public for the first time for his role in the Watergate affair. Frost packaged and sold the interviews to nearly every country in the world, and the interviews achieved the largest audience for a news interview in the history of television. Having established himself again at the centre of world affairs, in 1981 Frost married Lynne Frederick, the widow of the actor Peter Sellers, but the marriage ended in failure 18 months later. In 1984 he married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk.

It was, by all accounts, a conspicuously happy union. Frost was one of the “famous five” who launched TV-am during the early 1980s, but the only one to survive the debacle when the other four were axed in March 1983. “He’s competent, he’s professional and he has the best address book in the world” enthused Bruce Gyngell, who took over as managing director. “ He’s always on the up, he’ll greet you positively and say: ‘Hello Sunshine, how are you going? Lovely to see you.’ He’s quite irresistible.” In the 1990s Frost could be seen in Britain interviewing heads of state on TV-am’s Frost on Sunday, spying on the rich and not quite famous in Through the Keyhole, as well as chronicling the bizarre in The Spectacular World of Guinness Records. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, he could be seen quizzing more heads of state on Talking With Frost. As Frost became more of an Establishment figure, opinions were divided on whether he offered television viewers anything more than the interviewing equivalent of Hello! magazine.

“What is the real thing you want to get across?” and “How would you like to be remembered?” were typical of the sort of questions which politicians could expect to be asked. It was hardly surprising that they queued up to be on his shows. Yet at the same time some politicians were said to view him as the most dangerous inquisitor of them all, a man who would lull the interviewee into a false sense of security before bowling a googly. In 1986, the Conservative Party chairman was coaxed into dismissing a riot at a boxing match as mere “exuberance”, undermining his government’s “get tough” policy on hooligans. In 1987 the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, dropped his guard when asked as a unilateralist whether he would be willing to send “our boys” into battle in an army equipped with short range tactical nuclear weapons. Kinnock thought not, on the whole, because Britain could always put up resistance on the home front. The press seized on this as Kinnock calling for a latter- day Dad’s’ Army to see off the nuclear threat.

Frost himself believed he got more out of his subjects by being nice to them and felt that the impact of interviews was more compelling and sometimes chilling done conversationally than as a courtroom confrontation: “There’s little point weighing into the interviewee from the start. Much better to let him damn himself out of his own mouth, then you’ve got the ammunition you need.” David Frost was knighted in 1993. He and his wife had three sons. Sir David Frost, born April 7 1939, died August 31 2013 British broadcaster David Frost dies aged 74 British broadcaster David Frost dies aged 74 World | Agence France-Presse | Updated: September 01, 2013 17:12 IST EMAIL COMMENTS File picture of British television presenter David Frost London: British broadcasting great David Frost has died of a heart attack, his family said in a statement on Sunday. He was 74. Frost, celebrated for his revealing interviews with former US president Richard Nixon, died Saturday after falling ill on board the Queen Elizabeth cruise liner. "His family are devastated and ask for privacy at this difficult time," the statement said.

"A family funeral will be held in the near future and details of a memorial service will be announced in due course." Frost's list of interviewees, from presidents and prime ministers to royalty and show-business celebrities, was expansive. On the surface, Frost's interviewing style could come across as soft, but the friendly veneer allowed him to extract intriguing information with more blunt questions. Frost's lengthy 1977 interviews with Nixon saw him press the former president on the Watergate scandal. The encounter was turned into a play entitled "Frost/Nixon", which was adapted into a 2008 film, with Michael Sheen playing Frost and Frank Langella as Nixon. It was nominated for five Oscars. British Prime Minister David Cameron said: "My heart goes out to David Frost's family. He could be -- and certainly was with me -- both a friend and a fearsome interviewer." Frost was knighted in 1993, becoming Sir David. With his extensive contacts book, his annual summer garden parties were often a who's-who of the rich and famous. The broadcaster wrote 17 books, produced several films and started two British television networks, London Weekend Television and TV-am.

In 1983, he married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, second daughter of the Duke of Norfolk -- the premier duke in the English nobility, who has a role in organising state occasions. They had three sons.

Question: Which TV presenter was married to Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, daughter of the late Duke of Norfolk?
Answer: David Frost