Tony Parsons (British journalist)
Encyclopedia
Tony Parsons is a British journalist broadcaster and author. He began his career as a music journalist
on the NME, writing about punk music. Later, he wrote for The Daily Telegraph
, before going on to write his current column for the Daily Mirror. Parsons was for a time a regular guest on the BBC Two
arts review programme The Late Show, and still appears infrequently on the successor Newsnight Review; he also briefly hosted a series on Channel 4
called Big Mouth.
He is the author of the multi-million selling novel, Man and Boy
(1999). Parsons had written a number of novels including The Kids (1976), Platinum Logic (1981) and Limelight Blues (1983), before he found mainstream success by focussing on the tribulations of thirty-something men. Parsons has since published a series of best-selling novels – One For My Baby (2001), Man and Wife (2003), The Family Way (2004), Stories We Could Tell (2006), My Favourite Wife (2007), Starting Over (2009) and Men From the Boys (2010). His novels typically deal with relationship problems, emotional dramas and the traumas of men and women in our time.
, Essex, he was the only child of working class parents. He spent the first five years of his life in a rented flat above a shop in Essex, before his family moved to their own house in Billericay
, Essex.
His father was a former Royal Naval Commando who won the Distinguished Service Medal
in World War Two. After the war, he worked as a lorry driver, market trader and greengrocer. His mother was a school dinner lady
. Parsons attended a grammar school but dropped out when he was 16 years old and worked in a series of low-paid, unskilled menial jobs. He flirted briefly with politics through his close association with Screaming Lord Sutch
whose political philosophy he came to share. Then he got a job with a city insurance company as a computer operator where his free time allowed him to develop his literary skills – publishing an underground paper called the Scandal Sheet.
Parsons married fellow NME journalist Julie Burchill
– they had both answered the same advert in the paper requesting "hip, young gunslingers" to apply as new writers. He and Burchill collaborated on a book in 1979 – The Boy Looked at Johnny. Together they had a son, Bobby Kennedy Parsons. After the collapse of this marriage in 1984, Parsons became a single parent caring for their 4-year-old son. The experience of being a young man caring for a small child was to later influence his best-selling novel, Man and Boy. Parsons' father died of cancer in 1987 and his mother died of cancer in 1999, just weeks before the publication of Man and Boy. The book is dedicated to Parsons' mother.
In 1992, Parsons married his Japanese wife, Yuriko. They have one daughter, Jasmine. He lives with his wife and daughter in London
.
Distillery on City Road, London, where he developed an acute gin allergy and wrote his first novel, The Kids, published by New English Library in 1976. Parsons later said that he had imagined that if he could publish a book then he would be able to make a living as a professional writer. The £700 he made from the Kids did not get him out of Gordon's gin factory. However, when the weekly music magazine New Musical Express advertised for new writers in the summer of 1976 Parsons submitted his novel to the editor, Nick Logan, and was rewarded with a staff writer job. For the next three years he wrote about new music. He wrote the first cover story on The Clash
, and features of the Sex Pistols
, Blondie
, Talking Heads
, Ramones
, David Bowie
, Bruce Springsteen
, New York Dolls
, Buzzcocks
, Led Zeppelin
and many more.
For most of the eighties Parsons struggled to make a living as a freelance writer. After a long spell in the doldrums, his career only started to recover in the nineties. Parsons became a regular on the live BBC panel show, Late Review. He made a series of controversial authored documentaries for Channel 4
. When Piers Morgan
became editor of the Daily Mirror, Parsons was poached from The Daily Telegraph
as a columnist.
In 1990 he wrote Bare, an authorised biography of pop-star George Michael
. Despite the absence of a written contract with the singer, proceeds from the book were split equally between the two men. However, they fell out in 1999 after an interview Michael had given to Parsons was published in the Daily Mirror.
In 1993 he presented a film for the British television documentary series Without Walls, focusing on the controversy surrounding the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange
. Director Stanley Kubrick
and distributor Warner Brothers unsuccessfully sued broadcaster Channel Four in an attempt to prevent clips from the film being shown on television. In the programme, Parsons is seen taking a cross-channel ferry from England to France to watch the film, which at the time was still embargoed in Britain due to a self-imposed ban by the director.
Though it sold respectably on publication, the 1999 novel Man and Boy
was a word-of-mouth success, and only reached number one in The Sunday Times
best-seller list one year after publication. Despite the publication of a series of novels, Man and Boy remains his best-selling book, being published in 39 languages, most recently Chinese for its publication in the People's Republic of China (January 2009). Man and Boy won the British Book Awards
' Book of the Year Prize in 2001.
In 2007, Tony Parsons wrote a series of articles about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from a beach in the Algarve in Portugal, in the Daily Mail
. The tone with which these articles were written was later described as having a "touch of arrogant xenophobia" by The Guardian
's Marcel Berlins
. Certain comments and remarks made in the articles may have been xenophobic in nature. Indeed, the Press Complaints Commission
that year received 485 complaints, a massive increase in the number of complaints in comparison to previous years, his article on the McCann affair being the one with the most complaints.. In an article for the Daily Mirror in 2007, entitled "Oh Up Yours Senor", he said of Portugal's ambassador to Britain, Senhor António Santana Carlos, "And I would respectfully suggest that in future, if you can't say something constructive about the disappearance of little Madeleine, then you just keep your stupid, sardine-munching mouth shut".
In 2009 Parsons signed a three-book contract with HarperCollins for two further novels and a non-fiction book called, Fear of Fake Breasts. Parsons also writes a monthly column for GQ magazine and a weekly column for the Daily Mirror.
British magazine Viz currently runs a recurring feature entitled "Tony Parsehole", a parody of Parson's weekly column in the Daily Mirror, and in particular the pieces in which he pays tribute to the recently deceased (e.g: George Best, The Pope).
Music journalism
Music journalism is criticism and reportage about music. It began in the eighteenth century as comment on what is now thought of as 'classical music'. This aspect of music journalism, today often referred to as music criticism , comprises the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of...
on the NME, writing about punk music. Later, he wrote for The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, before going on to write his current column for the Daily Mirror. Parsons was for a time a regular guest on the BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
arts review programme The Late Show, and still appears infrequently on the successor Newsnight Review; he also briefly hosted a series on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
called Big Mouth.
He is the author of the multi-million selling novel, Man and Boy
Man and Boy (novel)
Man and Boy is a novel by Tony Parsons. It was awarded the 2001 British Book of the Year award.-Plot introduction:Harry Silver is a successful television producer about to turn 30. He is happily married, has a four-year-old son and drives a convertible sports car...
(1999). Parsons had written a number of novels including The Kids (1976), Platinum Logic (1981) and Limelight Blues (1983), before he found mainstream success by focussing on the tribulations of thirty-something men. Parsons has since published a series of best-selling novels – One For My Baby (2001), Man and Wife (2003), The Family Way (2004), Stories We Could Tell (2006), My Favourite Wife (2007), Starting Over (2009) and Men From the Boys (2010). His novels typically deal with relationship problems, emotional dramas and the traumas of men and women in our time.
Background and personal life
Born in RomfordRomford
Romford is a large suburban town in north east London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Havering. It is located northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan...
, Essex, he was the only child of working class parents. He spent the first five years of his life in a rented flat above a shop in Essex, before his family moved to their own house in Billericay
Billericay
Billericay is a town and civil parish in the Basildon borough of Essex, England. It lies within the London Basin, has a population of 40,000, and constitutes a commuter town east of central London. The town has three secondary schools and a variety of open spaces...
, Essex.
His father was a former Royal Naval Commando who won the Distinguished Service Medal
Distinguished Service Medal (United Kingdom)
The Distinguished Service Medal was a military decoration awarded to personnel of the Royal Navy and members of the other services, and formerly also to personnel of other Commonwealth countries, up to and including the rank of Chief Petty Officer, for bravery and resourcefulness on active service...
in World War Two. After the war, he worked as a lorry driver, market trader and greengrocer. His mother was a school dinner lady
Lunch Lady
Lunch lady is an American slang term for a woman who cooks and serves food in a school cafeteria; the equivalent British English term is "dinner lady". In Britain, a dinner lady also patrols the school playgrounds during the lunch breaks to maintain order amongst the children...
. Parsons attended a grammar school but dropped out when he was 16 years old and worked in a series of low-paid, unskilled menial jobs. He flirted briefly with politics through his close association with Screaming Lord Sutch
Screaming Lord Sutch
David Edward Sutch , also known as "Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow", or simply "Screaming Lord Sutch", was a musician from the United Kingdom...
whose political philosophy he came to share. Then he got a job with a city insurance company as a computer operator where his free time allowed him to develop his literary skills – publishing an underground paper called the Scandal Sheet.
Parsons married fellow NME journalist Julie Burchill
Julie Burchill
Julie Burchill is an English writer and journalist. Beginning as a writer for the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has written for newspapers such as The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She is a self-declared "militant feminist". She has several times been involved in legal action...
– they had both answered the same advert in the paper requesting "hip, young gunslingers" to apply as new writers. He and Burchill collaborated on a book in 1979 – The Boy Looked at Johnny. Together they had a son, Bobby Kennedy Parsons. After the collapse of this marriage in 1984, Parsons became a single parent caring for their 4-year-old son. The experience of being a young man caring for a small child was to later influence his best-selling novel, Man and Boy. Parsons' father died of cancer in 1987 and his mother died of cancer in 1999, just weeks before the publication of Man and Boy. The book is dedicated to Parsons' mother.
In 1992, Parsons married his Japanese wife, Yuriko. They have one daughter, Jasmine. He lives with his wife and daughter in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Career
In 1974 he began work in Gordon's GinGordon's Gin
Gordon's is a brand of London Dry gin produced in the United Kingdom and under licence in New Zealand, Canada and several other former British territories. The top markets for Gordon's are the UK, US, Greece and Africa...
Distillery on City Road, London, where he developed an acute gin allergy and wrote his first novel, The Kids, published by New English Library in 1976. Parsons later said that he had imagined that if he could publish a book then he would be able to make a living as a professional writer. The £700 he made from the Kids did not get him out of Gordon's gin factory. However, when the weekly music magazine New Musical Express advertised for new writers in the summer of 1976 Parsons submitted his novel to the editor, Nick Logan, and was rewarded with a staff writer job. For the next three years he wrote about new music. He wrote the first cover story on The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
, and features of the Sex Pistols
Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians...
, Blondie
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
, Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
, Ramones
Ramones
The Ramones were an American rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first punk rock group...
, David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
, New York Dolls
New York Dolls
The New York Dolls is an American rock band, formed in New York in 1971. The band's protopunk sound prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era; their visual style influenced the look of many new wave and 1980s-era glam metal groups, and they began the local New York scene that later...
, Buzzcocks
Buzzcocks
Buzzcocks are an English punk rock band formed in Bolton in 1976, led by singer–songwriter–guitarist Pete Shelley.They are regarded as an important influence on the Manchester music scene, the independent record label movement, punk rock, power pop, pop punk and indie rock. They achieved commercial...
, Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
and many more.
For most of the eighties Parsons struggled to make a living as a freelance writer. After a long spell in the doldrums, his career only started to recover in the nineties. Parsons became a regular on the live BBC panel show, Late Review. He made a series of controversial authored documentaries for Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
. When Piers Morgan
Piers Morgan
Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan , known professionally as Piers Morgan, is a British journalist and television presenter. He is editorial director of First News, a national newspaper for children....
became editor of the Daily Mirror, Parsons was poached from The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
as a columnist.
In 1990 he wrote Bare, an authorised biography of pop-star George Michael
George Michael
George Michael is a British musician, singer, songwriter and record producer who rose to fame in the 1980s when he formed the pop duo Wham! with his school friend, Andrew Ridgeley...
. Despite the absence of a written contract with the singer, proceeds from the book were split equally between the two men. However, they fell out in 1999 after an interview Michael had given to Parsons was published in the Daily Mirror.
In 1993 he presented a film for the British television documentary series Without Walls, focusing on the controversy surrounding the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange (film)
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick...
. Director Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
and distributor Warner Brothers unsuccessfully sued broadcaster Channel Four in an attempt to prevent clips from the film being shown on television. In the programme, Parsons is seen taking a cross-channel ferry from England to France to watch the film, which at the time was still embargoed in Britain due to a self-imposed ban by the director.
Though it sold respectably on publication, the 1999 novel Man and Boy
Man and Boy (novel)
Man and Boy is a novel by Tony Parsons. It was awarded the 2001 British Book of the Year award.-Plot introduction:Harry Silver is a successful television producer about to turn 30. He is happily married, has a four-year-old son and drives a convertible sports car...
was a word-of-mouth success, and only reached number one in The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
best-seller list one year after publication. Despite the publication of a series of novels, Man and Boy remains his best-selling book, being published in 39 languages, most recently Chinese for its publication in the People's Republic of China (January 2009). Man and Boy won the British Book Awards
British Book Awards
The Galaxy National Book Awards are a series of British literary awards focused on the best UK writers and their works, as selected by an academy of members from the British book publishing industry...
' Book of the Year Prize in 2001.
In 2007, Tony Parsons wrote a series of articles about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from a beach in the Algarve in Portugal, in the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
. The tone with which these articles were written was later described as having a "touch of arrogant xenophobia" by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
's Marcel Berlins
Marcel Berlins
Marcel Berlins is a lawyer, legal commentator, broadcaster, and columnist. He writes for British newspapers The Guardian and The Times, presented BBC Radio 4's legal programme Law in Action for 15 years and is currently a Visiting Professor at City University London in the department.He was born...
. Certain comments and remarks made in the articles may have been xenophobic in nature. Indeed, the Press Complaints Commission
Press Complaints Commission
The Press Complaints Commission is a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines, consisting of representatives of the major publishers. The PCC is funded by the annual levy it charges newspapers and magazines...
that year received 485 complaints, a massive increase in the number of complaints in comparison to previous years, his article on the McCann affair being the one with the most complaints.. In an article for the Daily Mirror in 2007, entitled "Oh Up Yours Senor", he said of Portugal's ambassador to Britain, Senhor António Santana Carlos, "And I would respectfully suggest that in future, if you can't say something constructive about the disappearance of little Madeleine, then you just keep your stupid, sardine-munching mouth shut".
In 2009 Parsons signed a three-book contract with HarperCollins for two further novels and a non-fiction book called, Fear of Fake Breasts. Parsons also writes a monthly column for GQ magazine and a weekly column for the Daily Mirror.
British magazine Viz currently runs a recurring feature entitled "Tony Parsehole", a parody of Parson's weekly column in the Daily Mirror, and in particular the pieces in which he pays tribute to the recently deceased (e.g: George Best, The Pope).
External links
- Tony Parsons' column at The Mirror
- Let's get personal – The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 27 August 2005.- In depth interview and profile with extract from his new novel Stories We Could Tell.