David Frost life and biography

Sir David Paradine Frost was a British journalist, comedian, writer and media personality, best known for his serious interviews with various political figures, the most notable being Richard Nixon. Since 2006, he has hosted the weekly programme Frost Over the World on Al Jazeera English.

Life and career:

David Frost has been a British TV host and producer since the early 1960s, when he emceed the satiric show That Was The Week That Was. That and his follow-up, The Frost Report, served as a launch pad for many modern British comics (including most of the cast of Monty Python's Flying Circus) and propelled Frost into the limelight. By the end of the 1960s he was producing shows in England and the U.S., and enjoying as much celebrity as those he was interviewing on TV. During the 1970s and '80s he became known as a high-profile interviewer, thanks in large part to a series of 1977 televised interviews with former U.S. president Richard Nixon. Over the years Frost has interviewed dozens of celebrities and newsmakers, including Henry Kissinger, George H.W. Bush, Prince Charles, Margaret Thatcher, Reza Shah Pahlavi and Benazir Bhutto. Knighted in 1992, Frost is a British broadcasting legend who rubs elbows with the rich and powerful. He joined Al Jazeera English television in 2006 with the show Frost Over the World.

His Nixon interview in 1977 was the first major public appearance for Nixon since he resigned the presidency in 1974; the interview is the basis for the play Frost/Nixon (made into a 2008 movie starring Michael Sheen as Frost and Frank Langella as Nixon).

Frost died on 31 August 2013, aged 74, on board the cruise ship MS Queen Elizabeth, on which he had been engaged as a speaker.


Selected awards and honours:

1970: Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
1993: Knight Bachelor
1994: Honorary doctoral degree of the Sussex University
2005: Fellowship of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts BAFTA
2009: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree of the University of Winchester.
2009: Lifetime Achievement Award at the Emmy Awards.

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