Matthew Parris

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Matthew Parris bigraphy, stories - Journalist

Matthew Parris : biography

1949-08-7 –

Matthew Francis Parris (born 7 August 1949 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is a UK-based journalist and former Conservative politician.

Radio and television

Parris is now a radio and television presenter and pundit. [Cyclists.], The Times As an MP he took part in a World In Action documentary during 1984 requiring him to live in Newcastle for a week on £26.80, the then state social security payment set for a single adult by the government he supported as a Conservative. Thames TV, January 23, 1984 Published 4 May 2007, retrieved 16 July 2009 The experiment came to an embarrassing end when he ran out of money for the electricity meter. Twenty years later, in 2004, he attempted the experiment again for the documentary For the Benefit of Mr Parris, Revisited. ITV1, January 29, 2004

Parris resigned as an MP by applying for the Crown position of Steward of the Manor of Northstead and left Parliament specifically to take over from Brian Walden as host of ITV’s influential Sunday lunchtime current-affairs series Weekend World in 1986. The series, broadcast since 1977 with Walden at its helm, ran for two more years under Parris before being cancelled in 1988.

He presents BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives biography series, and has appeared on the comedy news programme Have I Got News For You and presented After Dark. of production company Open Media

In 2007, Parris presented two light-hearted but caustic documentaries for Radio 4 on politicians’ use of cliché and jargon, entitled Not My Words, Mr Speaker.

On 8 July 2011 on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions, at the height of the furore surrounding the alleged illegal and corrupt activities of News of the World journalists, Parris eulogised the newspaper and gave an enthusiastic appreciation of what he considered the virtues and positive achievements of Rupert Murdoch.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgvj

Personal life

Parris "came out as a homosexual in a late-night debate in the Commons in 1984 but, by his own admission, nobody noticed." He later announced he was gay in one of his weekly newspaper columns. In a live interview on Newsnight during the Ron Davies scandal of 1998, he famously told interviewer Jeremy Paxman that there were two gay members of the then current Labour Cabinet, one being Peter Mandelson. He has stated that there are between thirty and sixty unannounced gay members of the UK parliament. In August 2010, in a list compiled by the Independent on Sunday, Parris was voted the 49th most influential LGBT person in the United Kingdom.

In August 2006, Parris entered into a civil partnership with his long-term partner, Julian Glover, a speech writer for David Cameron and a former political journalist at The Guardian. At the time of their partnership, they had been together for eleven years.The Times, 29 August 2006,

Parris was a keen marathon runner, taking part in the London event several times. His personal best was 2:32:57 which he recorded at the age of 34. He decided he wanted to go out on top and arguing that serious running is not good for health, he stopped running marathons after that. No British MP – sitting or retired – had equalled Parris’s marathon timing in the 20th century.

He owns homes in Spain, Derbyshire, and the Docklands of east London. He is the honorary patron of Clare Politics, a student-run politics society at his alma mater (using the term in the US sense), Clare College, Cambridge.

Writing and journalism

Parris is a prolific writer and has written many books on politics and travel. In 1991, a compilation of his pieces in The Times appeared, entitled So Far, So Good. Since then there have been further compilations. Scorn, a book he has edited of quotations about curses, jibes and general invective, was published in October 1994.

His success has been as a parliamentary reporter, due to his knowledge and understanding of politicians and ability to express this well. He is regarded as one of the leading critics of Tony Blair, and is thought of by many as one of the most powerful commentators on Fleet Street. He worked as parliamentary sketch writer for The Times newspaper from 1988 to 2001. His writing has largely concerned current events rather than a historical account of his own time in politics. He has weekly columns in The Times and The Spectator magazine.