Sir Michael Parkinson wins big libel payout

Sir Michael Parkinson wins big libel payout
Sir Michael Parkinson wins big libel payout

Sir Michael Parkinson has accepted £25,000 libel damages over a newspaper claim that he had lied about his family background. Sir Michael was at London's High Court for the settlement of his action against Associated Newspapers. He said he would donate the sum in full to two charities - the Alexander Devine Children's Cancer Trust and a school for orphans in South Africa. His solicitor-advocate, Mark Thomson, told Mr Justice Eady that the article - Who's Telling Parkies in the Daily Mail in May last year - caused considerable distress and harm to Sir Michael, 74. The presenter has described his upbringing in the mining community of Cudworth, near Barnsley, in his autobiography. The article suggested that he had behaved in a grossly insensitive way towards his elderly uncle, Bernard Parkinson. It alleged he had intentionally lied about his family background and his father, by painting a false picture of a harmonious and close knit family and by presenting his father as an honest and well-liked man. He said the newspaper - which had agreed to pay the damages and Sir Michael's legal costs - now accepted the allegations were 'entirely false'.

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.