I suspect the obits on David Frost (make that Sir David Frost) will focus on his legendary interviews with Richard Nixon and on his standing as a mogul of the British entertainment industry. All well and good. But I would hope that someone more qualified than Yours Truly would write at some length about his many non-Nixonian contributions to American television, including the wonderful, cancelled-too-soon U.S. version of That Was the Week That Was and his own, not-unsuccessful talk show. He was a pretty good interviewer and in some vault somewhere, there are hours of good interrogations of famous people — shows which oughta be running somewhere now. He was also quite influential in Great Britain in the early careers of many of the Monty Python troopers and other great Brit comedians.
As I wrote here, I've long thought the Nixon interviews were overrated in terms of what they meant. I think they meant a lot of money to Frost and Nixon, a chance for Nixon to gin up a little sympathy…and not much else. And I thought the play and movie, Frost/Nixon, made Frost seem like a pretty weak, frivolous TV star and not much else. He always impressed me as a much more substantial human being and man of accomplishment than that.
I met Mr. Frost but once. In 1985 (I may be off by a year), ABC commissioned a pilot that would revive That Was the Week That Was as a weekly series. I was offered a writing position on it but ultimately had to bow out because its schedule conflicted with something else I was committed to work on. Before I withdrew, I was brought in for a meeting with Frost, who would host and serve as Executive Producer. At first, I was surprised and delighted how enthused and impressed he seemed to be with me. That's before I realized how enthused and impressed he was with everyone and everything. Even the coffee they brought him was "super" and the best coffee he'd ever had. The articles about him all said he was a workaholic who was forever juggling eleven projects, somehow managing to talk to you while he simultaneously made eight phone calls, reviewed three scripts and penned an article or three. He lived up to all of that. I ultimately wasn't unhappy I didn't get to do that show as it didn't turn out very well. But I think I missed out on something by not getting to spend more time around David Frost…a man who was at least as interesting as anyone he ever interviewed. And he interviewed everyone.