Halfway through our interview, disaster strikes. Sir David Frost's spectacles, which he is trying to clean, fall to pieces. I expect a cry of woe but, instead, he wanders to his desk and produces a carrier bag bearing the logo of an optician.
Inside is a case containing an identical pair of octagonal rimless glasses, which Frost sets on his nose with a flourish.
“I like to have a spare pair,'' he says. This example of a minor crisis averted seems a metaphor for Frost's career. At 68, he is a master of the seamless transition.
No project ever finishes without him first conjuring up a replacement. “Life is frantic, I must say,'' he announces. His latest show, The Frost Report Is Back, is a special for BBC4, featuring original footage from his 1960s satirical comedy series and interviews with participants such as Ronnie Corbett, John Cleese and Denis Norden.
“And Julie Felix sings. It's just very jolly but the highlight of the two hours is how funny the sketches still are.'' If Frost so wished, he could pontificate about how his programme incubated a host of comedy relationships, such as Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Two Ronnies. Although few would brand Sir David a modest man, he says: “So many shows came out of it, and I'm always overjoyed when I think of that.''
Prone to nostalgia, Frost, in some ways, is an unashamed creature of the past. He doesn't care for e-mail and can't text. But Frost is also gloriously a man of the moment. No one as ambitious as he dares wallow too long in bygone triumphs.
He has at present a show for the English version of Al Jazeera television news channel.
His production company is about to shoot a remake of The Dambusters as well as the 21st series of the BBC1 programme Through the Keyhole, which has now scrutinised 1,400 homes of prominent people. In addition, his early projects are still earning him accolades and wealth.
A film version of the play Frost/Nixon, a big success in West End and on Broadway, opens in Britain this year. Michael Sheen, who had the role of Tony Blair in The Queen, plays Frost in the story about how he raised $600,000 to persuade the disgraced president to speak to him instead of American networks.
Presidential parade
Since then, Frost has notched up conversations with seven American presidents and six serving British prime ministers. But Nixon's mea culpa to the American people, once the most-watched interviews in news history, remains a high watermark of his career.
Long after his gamble paid off, Frost is still gathering royalties from Frost/Nixon, which was written, staged and filmed with his permission, though not his involvement. Millions of pounds? “Oh, not that much,'' he says.
Obviously, Frost is rich. He has a home in London and a country retreat in Hampshire. His is a glamorous lifestyle: When we meet, he is planning to fly out with his wife, Carina, to Lord Lloyd-Webber's 60th birthday party in Majorca.
Although a relatively humble “sir'', Frost is an assiduous mingler in high society. He is, however, never snobbish. His father, Wilfred, a Methodist minister, instilled in him the virtues of hard work, and his mother, Mona, ran her household on £10 a week. When Frost took her to a Washington dinner hosted by Nixon, she told guests: “I'm missing a Women's Fellowship choir practice for this.''
Frost went to Cambridge University, where he took a degree in English and emerged as a get-ahead meritocrat who lived on Concorde and sleeping pills, filming eight TV shows in seven days. He is fond of saying that he used to have “a girl in every airport''. In general, the departure lounge romances ended badly.
His first fiancee, a model called Karen Graham, met another man as Frost was flying to his stag night. The second, the singer Diahann Carroll, remains a great friend despite cancelling the wedding on the day her dress arrived. He was briefly married to Peter Sellers's widow, Lynn Frederick, who later died, at the age of 39, after drink and drug problems.
Twenty-five years ago, Frost married Carina, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, with whom he fell in love “at 17th sight''. They have three sons, Miles, 23, who works in private equity in the city, Wilfred, 22, and George, 20, who are at Oxford and Newcastle universities respectively.
Frost is looking forward to his silver wedding. “We'll have a meal and go back, as we do every year, to the Cipriani hotel in Venice, where we spent our honeymoon.''
Does he think the durability of his second marriage is due to him or his wife, now 56? “Or to Cupid,'' he says, evasively.
“That's just his joke,'' he adds hastily.
“Time has rocketed by, and we're happier than ever — I can't think of a time when we ever questioned that we wanted to be married. I suppose I waited a long time to get married, and when we had children, I was just very lucky I'd chosen the right mother. Our life sounds very Pollyanna-ish.''
There was one exception. Five years ago, Frost returned home from an interview with George Bush Sr to find his wife unconscious on the kitchen floor. She was said to have taken an accidental overdose of prescription drugs.
Sir David has, in the main, refused to utter a word on the subject. He did, however, once tell me that the event was a “crisis'' from which their marriage emerged more solid than ever. “Yes, that's true. That's all I want to say about it. But it did bring us closer, I think. We were made stronger by it.''
Still going strong
Frost is hopeful of seeing his golden anniversary. “Maybe not diamond. Another 25 years would be overdoing it.'' He looks more pink-cheeked — no doubt because, unusually, he is not wreathed in a pall of expensive cigar smoke.
He could be forgiven if The Frost Report revival reminded him of his own mortality. Two of the greatest stars, Ronnie Barker and Graham Chapman, of Monty Python, are dead, and Frost himself has no expectation of great old age. “I think 85 would be about right. I want to work until I drop.''
In all the zigzags of his career, I suspect that the one great disappointment was the end of Breakfast with Frost, the BBC1 programme he hosted for 12 years before Andrew Marr took over.
Three years have passed, and — though Frost never says as much — there is a hint of pique or regret.
“It was one of those mildly mutual things and it was probably time to move on to something else,'' he says.
He tends to not watch the show. From what he has seen, does he like Marr's programme? “I promised him I wouldn't comment on his show.''
Frost is, however, staunch in his defence of Moira Stuart, who was removed as the show's newsreader, reportedly on grounds of age. “I don't think there is particular ageism in the BBC — [but] it did seem bewildering that they lost her or let her go,'' he says.
Meanwhile, he is immersed in other projects. Almost half a century after The Frost Report became the crucible of Britain's finest comedies, its host remains as ambitious as ever, and as hopeful. Sir David Frost sees the world through rose-tinted glasses. Or, since he is a practical survivor, through his new octagonal spectacles.
