Comedian Jenny Eclair has condemned a new artificial intelligence podcast that uses Sir Michael Parkinson’s voice, calling it “a terrible idea” and saying she “can’t compete” with the late chat show presenter.
Parkinson died aged 88 in 2023, but a new podcast, Virtually Parkinson, uses a computerised version of the presenter’s voice to interview a number of real-life guests including singer Jason Derulo.
Its first episode, featuring Derulo, was released on Monday (13 January). The singer can be heard answering questions about his upbringing, fatherhood and fracturing part of his neck.
Speaking about the podcast on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Eclair, 64, said she was “furious”.
“There are living people like me who’ve still got mortgages, I’ve just actually mostly got rid of mine. But there’s not enough room,” she explained. “I know he was dearly loved and that sort of thing but there’s loads of back catalogue content that people can help themselves to.
“This is a terrible, terrible idea, we’re all fighting over the same space you know, the podcasts and the telly, and everybody’s desperately trying to say ‘me over here, please listen to my stuff’.
“I’ve got a podcast and I don’t think I can compete with Michael Parkinson, even when he’s not living and breathing.”
Eclair co-hosts the podcast Older and Wider with Judith Holder, who she worked with on BBC Two show Grumpy Old Women. In 1995 she was the first woman to win the Perrier Award at Edinburgh Festival, then the UK’s top comedy award.
Across his decades-long career, Parkinson interviewed celebrities from boxer Muhammad Ali to superstar singer Madonna, musician Elton John and movie star Tom Cruise.
Sir Michael’s son Michael “Mike” Parkinson Jr told Good Morning Britain last year that the eight-part series had come after his father had told him he wished he could “bring back people I never had a chance to interview”.
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Parkinson Jr said the podcast was not “bringing my father back” and was instead “just paying tribute to his legacy”.
Benjamin Field, from producer Deep Fusion Films, previously told the programme it has fed more than 1,000 hours of Sir Michael’s interviews into AI, and added that the company is “not passing it off as Michael Parkinson”.
In response to Eclair, the production company said: “Jenny’s comments are precisely why the podcast was created – AI is a subject which people have strong opinions about, but is AI as scary as people think it is?
“Is it really coming for people’s jobs? Virtually Parkinson exists to explore the relationship between AI and humans, it simply couldn’t do that without having an AI host, so this is not a case of an AI replacing a human job.
“In fact, the podcast is launched at a time when the creative sector has been hit very hard and many find themselves out of work and Virtually Parkinson has created 15 jobs, which otherwise wouldn’t have existed.”
A new report in The Guardian suggests that one star interviewed on the podcast was not very impressed with AI Parkinson. “It was less satisfactory and less interesting than I thought it was going to be,” gardening presenter Monty Don told the publication. “There’s no response to what you’re saying at all. There’s just a pause and then another question… Even if you’re doing radio, people will laugh or butt in or respond. So I’m interested in what they’re doing here, but there’s a long way to go.”
Additional reporting by Press Association