Michael Parkinson: I look back and wonder whether my behaviour towards women was "entirely appropriate"

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Sir Michael told GQ: "Men are in a quandary. I mean, certainly if I was doing now what I did then, I would have to watch myself. I could get ­arrested."

He added: "But there isn’t a man of a certain age who doesn’t look back and wonder, 'Was my behaviour entirely appropriate?'"

The interview comes in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, the MeToo movement and the Time's Up initiative which aims to expose and root out sexual harassment and abuse.

"There was a bar on Fleet Street [where] women were treated disgracefully, like second-class citizens. It was woefully un-PC," Sir Michael told the publication.

Asked about his "personal regrets", the talk show host said: "Oh, no. I used to try to kiss Shirley MacLaine whenever I could... An outrageous flirt."

Oscar-winning actress MacLaine, who starred in Terms of Endearment, is now 83.

His only personal regret is that he didn't take on the editor who "exposed himself" to his wife Mary Parkinson.

"I regret not doing something to an editor – who shall remain nameless, for now – who exposed himself to my wife, at my house, no less,” he explains.

But at the time, he didn't throw him out into the street: "No. I should have, shouldn’t I? It’s a ­wonderful thing hindsight, isn’t it?"

When it comes to disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein himself, Parky pulls no punches. Literally.

Asked how it would feel to interview Weinstein, he said: "You would have to stop yourself from punching him first."