REVIEW: Sir David Frost

Ludlow Assembly Rooms

Celebrated broadcaster Sir David Frost entertained a capacity crowd at Ludlow Assembly Rooms as part of the 50th Ludlow Festival.

For the first half of last night’s event, he regaled the audience with anecdotes from his career and showed clips from his landmark shows, That Was The Week That Was, The Frost Report and Breakfast With Frost.

He was an engaging and gently humorous speaker, easing the audience into proceedings with a series of stories about mistakes in broadcasting. He thanked the festival for introducing him and praised Ludlow.

He said: “It’s a great joy to be here and a great pleasure. What a beautiful town this is.”

Talking about his early work at the BBC, he compared the broadcasting guidelines at the time with the situation today and wondered how Jonathan Ross would have coped with rules that banned “any suggestive references to honeymoon couples” and advised against the use of the word “basket”.

He said: “At that time, people were ready to break a few of the old taboos and we were lucky enough to be there to do it.”

Of all the people he had wanted to interview, he said, he had been most disappointed not to interview former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Everything had been set up, and then two days after, Mr Sharon had a stroke and the interview never took place.

Sir David said trying to set up an interview with Barack Obama would be one of his next challenges.

Answering questions from the audience, he reminisced about time spent with former US president Richard Nixon after he finished filming his series of famous interviews.

Sir David spoke for more than 90 minutes and kept the audience interested the whole time. The evening was a great insight into an incredibly eventful life.

Hannah Costigan