Publicity:

·        For 50 years David Frost has shared the world’s stage with the powerful, rich and famous – and here he shares it with Foreign Correspondent’s Mark Corcoran.

·        At his London headquarters, the satirist cum celebrity interviewer cum entrepreneur opens up on Frost/Nixon, and what he would like to ask Osama bin Laden and George Bush.
Frost/Nixon - the movie based on his 1977 television encounter with Richard Nixon – received  5 Oscar nominations. Frost reveals the interviews brought him fame, but not fortune. Had he not sold shares in a television company to pay Nixon an appearance fee, he’d now be 37 million
pounds richer.

·        Having launched the careers of John Cleese, Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker on his mid-sixties BBC show, The Frost Report, as well as having been involved in a number of successful television start ups in Britain, these days Frost has a weekly current affairs program on Al-Jazeera English. He says it’s seen in 140 million homes in 100 countries.

He’s interviewed dozens of world leaders, including Yasser Arafat, the last Shah of Iran, six British PMs and seven US Presidents.

BAFTA Red carpet

Music

00:00

MARK CORCORAN: It’s London’s night of nights – the BAFTAs – Britain’s Academy Awards. And as the ‘A’ List braves the rain, there are stolen glimpses of Angelina, Brad and James Bond.

00:10

Frost on red carpet

Along this red carpet of manufactured glamour and youth, strides an incongruous figure – Sir David Frost. For half a century this TV interviewer, extrovert and entrepreneur has moved effortlessly between the powerful, rich and famous.

00:29

Frost grab on red carpet

FROST: [On red carpet]: ‘They made it entertaining and they made it tense as well so that’s why it’s… sort of an intellectual Rocky.’

06:49

More red carpet

Music

00:55

MARK CORCORAN: Tonight he confronts life imitating art, imitating television, sharing the stage with the actor who plays David Frost

01:02

Frost/Nixon promo. Super:
“Frost/Nixon” courtesy Universal Studios

in Hollywood’s take on his 1977 confrontation with disgraced US President Richard Nixon.

01:10

Music

01:18

MOVIE PROMO: The man who has committed the greatest felony in American history will never stand trial.

01:19

FROST IN MOVIE: I had an idea for an interview – Richard Nixon!

01:25

BIRT IN MOVIE: You’re a talk show host. Yesterday I was watching you interview the Bee Gees.

FROST IN MOVIE:  Weren’t they terrific?

01:28

NIXON IN MOVIE: Why would I want to talk to David Frost?

01:34

NIXON’S AGENT IN MOVIE: I got half a million dollars!

01:37

NIXON IN MOVIE: Really?

01:39

Frost and Corcoran

CORCORAN: For Sir David Frost it seems there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

01:52

It portrays you, in that period, as initially, as a lightweight, a Concorde flying, champagne sipping lightweight who’s having a terribly good time and not really that interested in the content. I mean it’s almost, it’s pretty close to defamatory I would have thought.

01:57

Super:
Sir David Frost

FROST: Well if it wasn’t recouped by the rest of the film I think it would be yeah, but basically he wanted to do this thing of building up the under dog thing and I had granted them that I would not have editorial control which I think was on basis, basically a good idea because people then knew it was independent and there’s only twelve…. twelve to fifteen per cent fiction in the film I think, but that certainly was part of it.

02:12

Opening titles “The Frost Report”

Music

02:38

Excerpt from “The Frost Report”

CORCORAN: In the early 1960s the real David Frost unleashed his biting political satire. Driven by a fierce ambition, Frost wanted to do more than play the audience for laughs.

02:42

FROST: I felt a need to move on and I’d been to America, I’d seen talk shows in America. There were no talk shows here.

03:02

Frost interview

I didn’t want to do a talk show that was pure showbiz, but was a combination of things like showbiz and people playing the spoons, as well as politicians and so on.

03:07

Montage....Ford/Thatcher/Carter and others interviewed by Frost

Music

03:16

CORCORAN: This, politics as entertainment formula, became a huge hit. Frost’s mellow non-confrontational style was widely criticised, but over the following decades world leaders lined up to play TV celebrity.

03:19

Frost interviews Arafat
Super: April 1993

FROST: [April, 1993] Do you think you will actually live to see an independent Palestinian national state? Or will you never be allowed to see the Promised Land?

03:34

ARAFAT : No! I would invite you to come to visit me there in Palestine.

03:50

FROST: All right I’ll put the date in my diary.

ARAFAT: Yes please.

FROST: What… what is the date?

03:59

B&W Frost at Sydney airport in 1970’s shaking hands of fans signing autographs

04:02

CORCORAN: Frost jet-setted between shows in Britain, the US and Australia. He’d already notched up four thousand interviews before facing the toughest challenge of his career.

04:04

Frost—Nixon interview

After three years of negotiation, Richard Nixon agreed to nearly twenty-nine hours of interviews.

04:18

Excerpt from Frost—Nixon movie

The movie shows how that cooperation came at a price. This was unashamed chequebook journalism. Nixon would talk for six hundred thousand dollars. Frost raised the initial two hundred thousand by selling his shares in a lucrative TV company.

04:32

FROST: [Excerpt from movie] Two hundred thousand dollars.

04:49

NIXON: [Except from movie] I do hope that isn’t coming out of your own pocket.

04:53

FROST: [Excerpt from movie] Believe me sir I wish my pockets were that deep. Made out in the name of…?

NIXON: [Excerpt from movie]Richard Nixon.

04:55

FROST: Years, years later…. when London Weekend Television was sold to Granada, a very bright communications journalist here in Britain

05:05

Frost interview

rang me up and said “Do you realise David that if you hadn’t sold those London Weekend shares, today you would be getting a cheque for thirty seven million pounds.”

05:13

CORCORAN: Was it worth it?

05:24

FROST: Yes it was, I’d do it all over again because it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

05:25

Excerpt from Frost—Nixon movie

CORCORAN: Nixon also thought that he’d stitched up a bargain.

05:29

ADVISER IN MOVIE: [Excerpt from the movie] Frost is just not in your intellectual class, Sir. You are going to be able to dictate terms, rebuild your reputation.

05:35

CORCORAN: Was there a gotcha moment if you like where, as portrayed in the film, where you present him with a series of facts

05:41

Frost interview

and the dam wall bursts and you get this very candid monologue or was it calculated on his part? Was this an exercise, a cynical calculated exercise in damage control, in rehabilitation?

05:48

FROST: No, I don’t think - there have been one or two minority thoughts of that but I think the general view of everybody’s right - and I mean I was as close as I am to you now - and I saw what he was going through and it was in no way prepared or rehearsed at all and it was agony for him.

06:02

Archival. Nixon resignation. Super:
August 1974

RICHARD NIXON: [August, 1974] I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

06:21

CORCORAN: After resigning in disgrace,

06:23

Archival. Nixon, Ford and wives departing White House

Richard Nixon had been controversially pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, but what he really craved was political rehabilitation.

06:29

Archival. Frost interviews Nixon

FROST: [From interview] Why didn’t you stop it?

CORCORAN:  However in the highest rating political interview in history, Frost didn’t stick to the script.

06:38

FROST: [From interview] Would you go further than mistakes?

CORCORAN:  Nixon made an extraordinary admission.

FROST: And that was a heart stopping moment because instead

06:46

Frost interview

of answering the question, he said to me…

06:55

Archival. Frost interviews Nixon

NIXON: [From interview] Well what word would you express…?

FROST: Now at that moment I knew that he was more vulnerable than any time he’d been in his life and probably would ever be again,

06:58

Frost interview

so I’d better ruddy well get this right because it had to be an ad lib summary of what we were getting at, as it were, and so I threw the clip board aside because I wanted to indicate this was, you know, not something we’d planned. Neither of us were expecting this, this was just him and I ad-lib, just him and I and a few hundred million people around the world.

07:08

Archival. Frost interviews Nixon

[Frost in interview with Nixon] I think that there are three things -- since you ask me -- I would like to hear you say, I think the American people would like to hear you say, and I think unless you say it you’re going to be haunted for the rest of your life.

07:32

NIXON: [From interview] I said things that were not true. Most of them were fundamentally true on the big issues. I brought myself down. I gave them a sword and they stuck it in and they twisted it with relish.

07:46

FROST: [From interview] You did do some covering up.

08:04

NIXON: [From interview] I let down my friends. I let down the country. I let down our system of government and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government but will think it’s all too corrupt and the rest.

08:08

Corcoran and Frost

CORCORAN: It’s now thirty-two years since this interview series was conducted, half the audiences out there weren’t even born when this happened. What is the appeal, what is the attraction for this period in history?

08:28

FROST: Well that’s a good question, but since you’re doing this program, probably you’ve got the answer as well… but I mean, no, I think it is because it was a unique situation. First of all, historically, the first and so far the only, President who had to step down from office, relinquish his office, resign. So that gave it an awesome… Secondly, there was the fact that for a variety of reasons he’d never given any other interview after he left office in those three years. He’d never even testified in court, because he actually had an attack of phlebitis at the time of the Watergate court case and so on, so that it was all absolutely new and absolutely fresh and the most dramatic thing, that there was an urgency in the American people at that time to have Nixon arraigned in some way. Some would have wished he’d been in court, but here was a forum in which he was facing these issues, a forum he palpably did not control in any way.

08:44

CORCORAN: Trial by television.

09:46

FROST: Yeah, trial by television and a rather dignified version of it, exactly. A number of people said or wrote, that this was a cathartic experience for the American people,

09:47

Photo. Nixon taken during interview

and I think it was, because they really needed this to be put behind them by Nixon facing the music in some way or other.

09:58

Bush leaving White House. Farewelled by Obama

CORCORAN: Perhaps the success of the Frost--Nixon film is also due to timing. There are recent parallels with the end of another highly contentious presidency. Where Nixon felt unfairly condemned by Watergate, the legacy of George W Bush is now viewed through the prism of Iraq and the war on terror.

10:09

Corcoran-Frost interview

CORCORAN:  Do you think George W Bush should perhaps consider a similar series of interviews, a cathartic…

10:30

FROST: George W Bush would be a very interesting subject because he is much smarter and so on. I mean he’s got very, very strong conservative views and so on.

10:38

CORCORAN: Do you think he’s smarter than Nixon?

10:48

FROST: No, I think that Nixon had a real depth in terms of his analysis of - the depth of an academic almost - in dealing with some of the world issues that he was dealing with. George W Bush was never the caricature he was made in the first year or two of his Office, when people thought he couldn’t put two words together and if you interviewed him you’d only get stuff that had been handed to him - and that was not true. So he’s a better subject than that. But George W Bush… yes I would…. I would find that a very interesting challenge, yes.

10:50

On set of Al Jazeera show – Frost’s signature greeting

Music

11:32

CORCORAN: At nearly seventy years of age, Sir David Frost shows no sign of slowing down…  Three years ago he was back in the headlines with his decision to front Al Jazeera’s new English language channel.

11:43

The Arabic network, owned by the Emir of Qatar, has long been accused by the White House of anti American bias, of aiding and abetting Washington’s enemies in a propaganda campaign of the War on Terror.

12:03

Frost-Corcoran interview

FROST: I checked out the more lurid rumours about Al Jazeera.

12:17

CORCORAN: Were you concerned from what you’d heard about Al Jazeera?

12:21

Super:
Sir David Frost

FROST: Well I was concerned to check them but I mean… I found that you know, they had never done… shown beheadings or you know, those things from years ago… and in fact that sort of, luckily that sort of rumour disappears as soon as

12:24

Control room of Al Jazeera English

people have Al Jazeera English in their country.

12:43

Frost on set

CORCORAN: His weekly show is recorded in Al Jazeera’s London Bureau and according to Sir David, is seen in one hundred and forty million homes in one hundred countries. The target audience? The same people who watch CNN and BBC World.

12:52

Frost-Corcoran interview

FROST: Once people see the output, either my show or the whole lot, they see that there is no propaganda of the sort that they describe. There is no particular source material from Osama bin Laden or whatever like that.

13:10

CORCORAN: Would you interview Osama bin Laden?

13:29

FROST: Well…. could I interview Osama bin Laden?

13:31

CORCORAN: If his people called you?

13:36

FROST: Yeah, on Al Jazeera English, could I do it? Would I be free to do it? Would there be any editorial problem with Al Jazeera? No. They said there would be no…. I would have editorial control and I’ve had complete editorial control. So as far as Al Jazeera is concerned, Al Jazeera English, with some trepidation no doubt, they would not have any objection to it at all. The only person who might have an objection to it is me, because -- and I think you would be in the same position if this opportunity emerged for Foreign Correspondent -- I mean, which is that…  I mean is your duty as a citizen in a situation like that greater than your responsibility as a journalist? That is, shouldn’t you, if you’re in the room with this threat to the world, shouldn’t your first duty be to try and perform a citizen’s arrest or whatever, or shoot him? Now you’re not probably going to get out of there very easily anyway, but should you do that? Is one’s duty to this evil man greater than your duty to journalism?

13:38

CORCORAN: But there would be many in the Al Jazeera audience, particularly in the Middle East, who would regard George W Bush as a criminal. Why should that matter if Osama bin Laden’s people call you and say, come and talk, we can cover all subjects. Why is there a problem?

14:56

FROST: I think that’s a very encouraging argument towards being able to do it, but basically George W Bush hasn’t vowed to wipe a whole country off the map or send people out to provide suicide bombings and all those things, on individuals. So I think it is different, you’re dealing with someone whose avowed policy is to do what he can to Israel, to do what he can to other enemies, and therefore I think his declared program is rather different to George W. Bush’s. But it’s a good debate. And it’d be interesting what your viewers think.

15:14

CORCORAN: Sir David Frost thank you.

16:05

FROST: Pleasure. Thank you.

16:07

·         Reporter : Mark Corcoran

·         Camera:  Sam Ingram

·         Editor:  Mark Douglas

Producer: Ian Altschwager

16:09