LONDON.- A new painted portrait of the journalist, author and broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson has been commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, London, where it will go on display for the first time from Friday 27 May 2011. Painted in a variety of brown tones, the portrait in oil on canvas by Jonathan Yeo is a ‘head’ executed from life over five sittings in the artist’s London studio. The intimacy of Yeo’s close-cropped composition gives a sense of how it might feel to be faced by Sir Michael as one of his interview subjects, a privilege usually reserved for the famous. Parkinson came to prominence as a talk show host during the ‘golden age’ of British television in the 1970s. Best-known as the presenter of the flagship interview programme Parkinson (1971-1982, 1998-2007), Sir Michael, popularly referred to as ‘Parky’, began his career as a reporter on local papers in Yorkshire be