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Status record

Michael Parkinson TV and radio

AN ATTENTIVE SHELL

Councillor raises question of long-running broadcast to single amphibian

Existence confidence provisional
A generated photo of an anonymous stranger. It is not the person named.
Michael Parkinson counts out coins at a bus station ticket window in Mexico City, examining each denomination with the intensity of someone waiting for a confession.
Location
A converted barn near Saint-Étienne, two kilometres past the Esso station on the D42
Currently
N/A
Last confirmed sighting
Thursday, sitting with a tortoise, continuing mid-sentence from 1987
Observations
Has interviewed the same tortoise every day for six months; the tortoise has not blinked once.

Michael Parkinson has been performing his customary role in a barn outside Saint-Étienne since March, seated across from a large, unresponsive tortoise in a wingback chair. The creature has made no contribution to the proceedings. Local authorities were alerted after a farmhand noticed continuous talking emanating from the building at all hours.

The interviewer's notes, scattered across a desk, list three persistent observations: the tortoise's eyes remain fixed forward, his prepared questions have begun to repeat verbatim, and the tape recorder has run for 288 consecutive hours.

By Monday at 9 a.m. he had completed his opening monologue. Tuesday brought a full hour of biographical enquiry. Wednesday saw him circle back to 1968. Thursday morning, at 3 a.m., his voice could still be heard, now addressing the tortoise directly and asking what it thought of his career.

Guidance for the public

Audience of any kind should ensure they have adequate leg room and a high pain threshold.

Actual status (not satire) Died 16 August 2023, aged 88. Source: Wikidata

E&OE. The Registry accepts no liability for misclassification, temporal displacement or loss of personhood arising from this record. Photographs are computer-generated approximations and almost guaranteed to show a different person entirely.