Antique's Roadshow legend Michael Aspel, 91, reveals only time his phone rings - 'my main job'

He was once one of the kings on primetime TV. But Michael Aspel says the only time his phone rings now is when he’s asked to give tributes to a showbiz friend who has passed away.

The presenter and chat show host, who is 91 years old, has enjoyed a career spanning seven decades and outlived most other TV stars of his generation like rival ..

Aspel has read the news, fronted tea-time favourites Crackerjack and Ask Aspel, hosted This Is Your Life and Give Us A Clue, presented his own talk series Aspel and Company and taken charge of .

After retiring in 2008 and hoped that he would still be busy appearing on the odd TV show as he misses being on the box but he has ended up with a more sombre line of work.

Aspel admits: “I decided when the Antiques Roadshow gig came to an end that I might as well announce my retirement because a lot of people who have retired then become busier than ever before.

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“After that I got quite a few shows .. luckily the evacuation story was being celebrated and I was an evacuee so I presented several programmes on that theme.

“I do miss being on television and one of the things I miss is being away for a few days every now and then. Life now is very pleasant but I don’t go places like I used to. And I do miss that.

“I do get called every now and then to say a few words when someone has died. That is my main job in life.”

Over the years, Aspel has appeared on so many programmes that he became the butt of jokes that he was never off the telly.

But in a new documentary paying tribute to his career, he laughs about the tag and even takes a cheeky pop at today’s rather slim batch of presenters.

Speaking on the new Rewind TV channel(PLS REF), he jokes: “I’ll take this opportunity to apologise (for being on TV so much). You are right. There was an awful lot.

“Although nowadays six people seem to be doing every television programme so I am not that guilty.”

Asked to respond to claims that he was once the highest paid star on the box, Aspel – who has had three failed marriages - laughs off the suggestion.

But he adds: “Well that is a claim that is made every other week isn’t it?

Somebody has got to be. Possibly I was but we never knew what each other earned anyway. If that’s what they thought – good. I was certainly one of the busiest put it that way.”

In the 1980s and 1990s the mild-mannered presenter fronted a very popular chat show called Aspel and Company on and managed to attract big name guests including Margaret Thatcher, Kate Bush, Oliver Reed, George Michael and also Beatles Ringo Starr and George Harrison.

But he now admits that after a few years, he actually started to become ‘’disappointed’’ and ‘’underwhelmed” by some of the stars booked for the show as they never lived up to their hype.

He tells the TV special: “That is what happens quite a lot. It is not because you think you, yourself, have become important, it is the fact that they are simply disappointing people and had no depth in the flesh.

“They don’t have the depth or the actual nature that you attribute to them from the screen. Occasionally they are so lovely as people as well as performers that it restores you to your original open eyed wonder. But quite a lot of the time they are no more than ordinary.”

His chat show came to an abrupt halt after US actors Arnold Schwarzenegger,

Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone were booked to appear and littered the TV special with endless plugs for their newly opened Planet Hollywood restaurant.

This was frowned on by his bosses who pulled the plug on any more programmes.

Aspel now says: “Not only was it a disaster of a show .. I blame myself for being very cowardly the whole way through. I should have just taken over and tried to do something about it but it also marked the end of my career as a chat show host because that was it. We didn’t have another series after that and we said goodbye. The only reprimand I received was in the lift a couple of days later when the chief executive was in the lift and he said ‘A little bit of product placement Michael’.

“I had never spoken to him before.. or since. I didn’t think it would be the end of my career but I was bitterly disappointed because I had always enjoyed interviewing people. I would have liked to have finished on a high.

Perhaps with Elizabeth Taylor.. who knows?”

Asked if it was true that he had once crowed that he was ‘’better than’’

fellow chat show host Michael Parkinson, he explained his boast.

He said: “I said that but I should have said a little more that you have got to have a conceit of yourself to succeed. You cannot go into a show thinking ‘I’m not really good enough for this’.

“Occasionally I’d think ‘I can handle that better than him’. But he was a journalist and I wasn’t. He got what he wanted from the guest.

Despite a long career in front of the camera either delivering the news,

presenting game shows or interviewing people, the star does admit his original ambition was to be an actor in Hollywood.

He says: “America was always my dream. I would have liked to have been a film actor certainly. I always wanted to be an actor. That was my original ambition. I did appear in one film once but it wasn’t American. I thought it was pretty good.”

And the one chance he had to work in the States was taken from him.

In the 1990s he fronted a paranormal documentary series called Strange but True? which proved so popular that the format was bought for the US.

But Aspel reveals: “The show was sold to America and I thought ‘Ooh perhaps I will be going across and I will be having an American career’. But then this American turned up and he was going to be the bloke in America taking over the show so that was the end of that.”

The last primetime TV series he fronted was Antiques Roadshow.

When he joined the show in 2000 following the departure of former presenter Hugh Scully, it seems not everyone welcomed him with open arms.

He explains: “Hugh Scully left the show and I was asked to do it. Not welcomed by all the experts who thought I was a little light entertainment and shouldn’t be doing that programme but I did it for eight years.”

However his exit in 2008 was not the way he wanted it.

He felt forced out of the role as the wanted Fiona Bruce to take on the role as presenter.

And he says: “The last programme I did which was the Antiques Roadshow I was really given the chance to fall on my sword to allow Fiona Bruce to step in so I do miss that very much.”

These days having been married three times, he lives with Irene Clarke, his partner of almost 30 years who was originally his production assistant on This is Your Life.

In 1994 he left his third wife, actress Elizabeth Power and their two sons for Irene amidst a blaze of headlines. He also has another son from his first marriage to Dian Sessions (1957-1961), and twins, Edward and Jane,

from his second marriage to Ann Reed, which lasted five years.

He stays fit by doing a series of exercises each say as well as lifting weights and running on the spot. For the last 20 years, he has lived with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which he controls with a tablet. There are no symptoms.

When quizzed about how he would sum up his incredible career, he recalls a story of an encounter with Parky saying: “I remember meeting Michael Parkinson many years ago now in the hairdressers.

“His wife was having her hair done and I’d just had mine done. He had come to pick her up and we just stood there for a couple of moments and we didn’t know each other and he said ‘We had the best of years. Didn’t we?’

"And I have to admit he was right.”

The Rewind TV special with Michael Aspel airs on October 26 on Freeview 95 and Sky 182 at 7pm.