Life at 70 with Frost

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33654, 2 October 1974, Page 4

Life at 70 with Frost

Few viewers could with any justification disagree with David Frost when he commented at the end of last evening’s "Life begins at 70” programme that it had been a memorable show. With an audience of people able to look back over the changes in their lives, Frost managed to home in on the wisdom and experience of old age. This time he adopted a low and sympathetic profile. He listened carefully and made due allowance for human weaknesses, such as deatness, slower speech, and reactions that once were quicker. Elderly drivers, poems, a certificate from the Queen to mark a one-hundredth birthday, the recipe for a happy! marriage— all helped to give the programme interest and variety. Mr Frost was armed with some good questions on how the over-seventies viewed the world, what they thought j of current permissiveness, and what advice their parents gove them when they were young. He even managed to introduce two oldies recently married after a chance meeting in a bus and a one-month courtship. The poem, “The Golden i Age,” almost threw theq articulate Mr Frost, and he

| • seemed stuck for words Ln a moment after the old dear recited how she read the ' obits in the morning paper • and then got back into bed The showman tn Dav id Frost threatened to take ow here and there, but he man aged not to appear con descending. Every interviewer knows of the tendency of the elderlt to reminisce. The programme could easili have been a disaster, but the Frost technique. and ease patter, in jected just the right amount of humour and control into the show. In a happy atmophere, with the audience obviously enjoying them selves, comments flowed freely. The inclusion of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park athe star of the second half was a brainwave. Now aged well over 70, he recalled vividly and precisely the (decisive days of the Battle of Britain. His recollection of the turning of the tide, when Hitler flew into a rage at the ibombing of Berlin and ordered London flattened made excellent television And with a deft turn David Frost invited his audience to give their advice to the young of today. Thus ended another successful piece in the “Frost Over New Zea land” series in which the interviewer certainly earned (his fee and viewers were both enlightened and entertained —KC