SUPER, SUPER, SUPER!(David Frost)(Interview)(Biography)(The Talk of the Town)

Nine of David Frost's fellow-students at Cambridge went on to become Cabinet ministers, but Frost took a different path. Over breakfast last week at the Regency Hotel, the sixty-four-year-old British television personality recalled one of his early comedy routines: "It had an unctuous commentator trying to maintain the tone of a royal broadcast while commentating on the fact that the royal barge was, in fact, sinking." He cleared his throat: " 'And the Queen, smiling radiantly, is swimming for her life. Her Majesty is wearing a pale-blue taffeta dress, with matching lace . . .' " When Frost laughs, his long, fine eyelashes wipe the lenses of his glasses like scrubbers in a car wash.

By the age of twenty-three, Frost was the host of the popular satiric program "That Was the Week That Was." Soon he was hosting an American version of the show and then, in rapid succession, talk and variety shows on both sides of the Atlantic. He had a knack for the redundant, tripartite catchphrase: "Hello, good evening, and welcome!," "Marvellous, smashing, terrific!," and, of course, "Super, super, super!" Frost's bright, sedulous manner made his guests shine; when Richard Nixon decided, in 1977, to explain himself after his resignation, he selected Frost as his interlocutor. Nixon tried to break the ice before the taping by saying to Frost, "Did you do any fornicating this weekend?" For once, Frost was nearly dumbstruck.

Frost now embodies the establishment; he is, courtesy of the Queen whom he almost drowned in his imagination, Sir David Frost. Although his hair has thinned and his double-breasted blue suit protrudes at the waist, he remains springy and game. On Wednesday night, his newest show, a return to his roots in satire and sketch comedy called "The Strategic Humor Initiative," debuts on PBS. Frost will be based in a studio in London, and he will trade witty remarks, via satellite, with two younger co-hosts--Jimmy Tingle, in Boston, and Mary Walsh, in Toronto. ("Walsh, I am told, represents Canada's thriving satire industry," he said.) As he discussed the new show--amid lengthy digressions about the "smashing" interviews he had recently conducted with his good friends Vladimir Putin, ...