OOH, he looks just like he does on the telly. Smart jacket and tie, a convivial welcome with that familiar hang-dog nod, and that smooth and relaxed manner is under way once more.

Sir David Frost, anti-authoritarian satirist, political inquisitor and talk show doyen, starts in after-dinner speaker mode, all bon mots and a run-down of television presenters' greatest gaffes, delivered with the deadpan comic timing that still lifts him above fellow television interrogators. This is his warm-up for recollections of his part in the birth of British satire on That Was The Week That Was and The Frost Report.

On a screen, he cranks up the Sixties' nostalgia with grainy footage of his flat-top hair days - "Whenever I see that hairstyle, I think how can I have chosen it," he says, with customary self-deprecation - and in his gently humorous, sage anecdotes he recounts how no one before had lampooned the Royal Family.

The second half turns tables on the Breakfast With Frost host. The audience asks questions; he responds. Which interviewees did he hold in most awe? Answer, Senator Robert Kennedy and Nelson Mandela.

From President Nixon's inability to talk small talk, to a wish for a new era of young satirists on British TV, Frost is constantly revealing.

Would he interview Osama Bin Laden? "That's difficult to do because you have a citizen's duty beyond journalistic duty and that is to shoot him," he says, with a satirist's unstinting radar for stirring debate.

Updated: 10:11 Tuesday, February 01, 2005