As Sir Michael Parkinson dies, we look back on his acting role in horror classic Ghostwatch

The legendary broadcaster and talk show host Sir Michael Parkinson has passed away at the age of 88. 

A beloved fixture of UK television - his career spanned an astonishing seven decades - he was arguably best known for his chat show, simply titled Parkinson, where he interviewed everyone from members of the royal family such as Princess Anne to legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, and rock gods David Bowie and Paul McCartney. Anyone who was anyone appeared on Parkinson and to say that he had an impressive career is a huge understatement. 

For horror fans, though, Sir Michael was best known for something else entirely. That's because in 1992 he took part in an unusual one-off television event that is still talked of in hushed breaths to this day: Ghostwatch.

Airing on Halloween night in 1992, Ghostwatch was a 90-minute documentary, apparently broadcast live, where a team of famous UK presenters (including Red Dwarf star Craig Charles) investigated a haunting in the West London town of Northolt. As Sir Michael puts it at the start of the show, there will be "no creaking gates, no gothic towers, no shuttered windows" - this was a haunting in suburbia.

Viewers tuned in to see this group of cozily familiar faces - led, of course, by Sir Michael - and got the fright of their lives when a ghost actually did show up in the form of a poltergeist nicknamed "Pipes". The irreverent tone of the show's first half slowly gives way to a sense of rising panic and confusion as the presenters start to realise the horrible truth of what they're dealing with...

Of course, Ghostwatch wasn't really true. It was a drama written by Stephen Volk (whose credit is prominent at both the start and the end of the programme) and directed by Lesley Manning, filmed in a pseudo-documentary style. Both Volk and Manning hoped that viewers would be briefly taken in by the film's conceit before realising that it was fiction. 

That didn't quite happen. Although many will have figured out the truth, a huge number of viewers believed Ghostwatch to be entirely real - and they made their voices heard. In total, the BBC received 300,000 complaints and the programme made headlines the next day. The BBC instigated a 10-year ban on it ever being repeated. It still hasn't been to this day - though you can buy it on a very nice Blu-ray.

There's lots to love about Ghostwatch to this day, but there's also no doubt that one of the major factors in its success was the casting of Parkinson as himself. 

Part of his genius was his ability to make both the guests and the audience feel at home. Although he had his fair share of controversial guests and interviews, you always felt like you were safe in his presence. Ghostwatch consciously subverts that, first by showing his mounting confusion ('if Michael Parkinson is worried then something must be really wrong' the audience thinks) and then tipping over into outright horror as the lights go out in the studio and he is left to an ambiguous fate.

It should also be noted that his acting throughout is excellent, his level-headedness grounding the production even as the appearances of the poltergeist become more apparent. You'd imagine that there might be the temptation to give a little wink or self-effacing hint that he was in on the gag, but he played the part with deadly seriousness. 

For his part Sir Michael was always supportive of the show, even after when the BBC were less than happy with the public response, dismissing the furore around it to writer Volk by saying,:"People are daft, some people believe the wrestling!" 

It certainly didn't hurt Parkinson's career either, which only went from strength-to-strength in the following decades. He will be greatly missed and British TV will never be quite the same.

Ghostwatch is available on Blu-ray from 101 Films.

Want to watch something really scary? Check out our list of the 30 best horror films of all time.