Nicholas Parsons show whose audience peaked at over 21 million viewers (a record for an ITV game show). Parsons was born at 1 Castlegate, Grantham, Lincolnshire; he was the middle child of the family, having an older brother and a younger sister. His father was a general practitioner whose patients included the family of Margaret Thatcher; claims that he delivered her are unproven. His mother, born in Bristol to a founder of local company W.B. Maggs & Co, was training as a nurse when she met Parsons' father at University College Hospital, London. Parsons was born left-handed but was made to write
Karl Parsons designs at the Royal Academy and 25 September 1908 saw the birth of his daughter Margaret Rosetta. It was the architect Herbert Baker who had asked Whall to take on the Cape Town windows and it was Baker’s associate Fleming, who in later years was to invite Parsons to undertake other commissions in South Africa. Close connections with architects were important to people like Parsons and he was to have a similar relationship with Robert Lorimer in Scotland which was to lead to his receiving important Scottish commissions. Other important contacts were John Duke Coleridge, and Everard and Pick. Whall