When a venerable public figure dies, we instinctively mourn not just their passing but the passing of an era. We will not see their like again, we intone gravely. We’ve always suffered from this affliction — in the 18th century physicians searched for a “pathological bone” which was the seat of nostalgia — but it gives us a powerful double effect: things were better in our memories, and they are worse now.

This stately dance played out when Sir Michael Parkinson, gruff but twinkling doyen of celebrity interviewers, died last week. Parky was 88 years old. He had retired from his regular television and radio duties in 2007, maintaining an internet platform from which he could occasionally growl at the woeful conditional of modern society. That seemed apt, wholly in keeping with his image.

He was knighted shortly after stepping back from broadcasting, clearly both delighted and profoundly moved by the honour. Even his acceptance was true to form: as a working-class lad from Barnsley, he was “not the type to get a knighthood” — but then, he reflected, “they give it to anyone nowadays”. A gritty Yorkshire dose of self-deprecation, to be sure, but no-one missed the O tempora, o mores! lament that underlay it. Est ubi nunc gloria Babyloniae, as they certainly didn’t say in South Yorkshire.

Parkinson brought gravitas, a quality now in short supply

Parky’s cultural influence should not be underplayed. For anyone not yet at retirement age, he was a genuinely iconic figure, bright and straightforward, impossibly English and imbued with the grit of his native country. Praised for “authenticity”, Parky had an almost eerie sense as an interviewer when to talk and when to stay silent, when to let the guest fill the silence with his or her words. It was a rare gift, and its spell was magical. The greatest stars of their day revealed themselves to him and his audience because there was an intimacy, a shared trust which he created. It brought gravitas, a quality now in short supply.

Was his a golden age, or was Parky a cross-examiner of unusual distinction and delicacy? Perhaps both: although there were rare, catastrophic failures of rapport, most famously with Helen Mirren in 1975 and Meg Ryan in 2003, his roster of guests seems almost ludicrous in its richness: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Orson Welles, Harold Wilson, Clint Eastwood, Fred Astaire, James Stewart, Anthony Hopkins, Peter Sellers, Liberace, Edith Evans, Diana Ross, Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly, Elton John, Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Walter Matthau, both Attenboroughs.

David Niven appeared three times as a guest, his first two majestic appearances cementing his status as Hollywood’s greatest and most gracious raconteur. Those interviews, from 1972 and 1975, are masterclasses. Parky’s rapport with the very different but equally funny Billy Connolly, who first appeared on the show in 1975, launched the Scotsman’s career. He would appear a further 13 times, and the two became great friends.

We have lost all that now, the narrative goes. Indeed, it is striking that Parkinson saw its final broadcast 16 years ago, without a serious replacement emerging. The reasons are many: our celebrities are not the dazzling stars of Parky’s heyday; the chat show has deteriorated into a grimly transactional business, as the latest actor bangs the drum, blank-eyed, for a formulaic film; and we, the audience, are diminished. Our attention span has shrunk to nothing because of electronic devices. We simply can’t cope with the long, loping form of the interviews of which Parky was a master. We subsist now on a diet of one-minute YouTube clips of interviewers “DESTROYING” their subjects.

Is that really true? The scientific evidence of diminishing attention spans is equivocal at best (Matthew Sweet has devastatingly debunked the central thesis of Johann Hari’s 2022 hand-wringing polemic Stolen Focus). How do we account for the success of Tortoise Media, purveyors of “slow news”? Tell the 11 million people who listen to each episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast that they cannot focus for more than a few minutes at a time.

We lack only two things: courage and a figure of destiny

Are our icons more boring? Surely an audience would listen to Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney talk about their extraordinary purchase and revivification of Wrexham AFC. There was no shortage of viewers for Boardwalk Pictures’s Welcome to Wrexham when it appeared last year. It is hard to believe that Swifties would not be agog to hear Tay-Tay, only 19 at the time, describe her gritty and determined recreation of her back catalogue after Scooter Braun scooped up the masters of her first six studio albums. There is something almost made-for-Parky about the genial and eloquent George Clooney’s absorption in the politics of Sudan and campaign for recognition of the Armenian genocide.

The fault may lie with the deep risk aversion of modern media. Marvel Studios, addicted to regular income, could have made a single film based on their cinematic universe but instead have churned out 32, with 11 more in development. A publishing house wants the anchor of a famous name, which is surely why Katie Price has 11 novels to her name (George Orwell only wrote six). We have also been pummelled by a relentless cannonade of jukebox musicals since the first of the modern genre, Mamma Mia!, burst on to London’s West End in 1999.

We lack only two things: courage and a figure of destiny. If a famous and skilled interrogator were to come forward for a series of long-form interviews with some of the greatest actors, writers, musicians, comedians and storytellers of our age, I have not a doubt that an audience would coalesce. Is the Parky de nos jours already amongst us? Perhaps. It is not Piers Morgan, though he will tell you it is, nor, I think, is it Amol Rajan. Louis Theroux’s formidable track record is impossible to ignore; Kirsty Wark can be sharp but has great warmth and charm; Dermot O’Leary has the quicksilver gift of making a very complex process look laughably easy.

Perhaps we are still awaiting our next prophet. He or she will emerge. All that is necessary is for us, as potential viewers, to recognise him or her and make plain that we are ready, we are paying attention and we want to watch — in droves.