Parkinson (UK)

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This programme was not broadcast between 1983 and 1997.
The first series of the show, including interviews with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Peter Ustinov, Benny Goodman, Spike Milligan and Orson Welles, was wiped on the orders of a BBC committee. All that survives of the first series is a monochrome telerecording of his interview with Shirley MacLaine.
In 1978, Michael Parkinson and his producer, John Fisher (VI), proposed changing the series into a five-night-a-week series as a replacement for the current affairs series "Tonight" (1975), which was producing disappointing ratings. Although this proposal was supported by BBC One Controller Bill Cotton, the Managing Director of Television Alasdair Milne and the Director-General of the BBC, Ian Trethowan, the BBC's Board of Governors objected to it, considering it a "trivialisation of the airwaves" because Parkinson's series had always been made by the BBC's light entertainment department and was therefore judged as an unsuitable replacement for "Tonight" (1975). The proposal had also been opposed by the National Union of Journalists and politicians such as Dennis Skinner.
Only once did Parkinson present a programme without wearing a tie, which was his interview with Richard Burton in 1974. Following the broadcast, BBC controller Paul Fox (XIII) told him that if he did it again he would be fired.