The veteran television broadcaster and writer, Sir David Frost, has died at the age of 74 following a suspected heart attack.

Frost, who was knighted in 1993, had a career that spanned many decades and genres – he first reached acclaim in the UK for his 1960s satirical programmes That Was The Week That Was and The Frost Report. However he found international fame in 1977 when a series of interviews with Richard Nixon induced the former President of the United States into admitting guilt over the Watergate scandal. These interviews inspired the 2008 film, Frost/Nixon, and also paved the way for Frost to become a serious political reporter. He went on to be the only journalist to interview every British Prime Minister who served between 1964 and 2010, and every US President between 1969 and 2008.

David Paradine Frost began as a student at the University of Cambridge in 1958, accepting a place to read English at Gonville and Caius College after turning down a contract with Nottingham Forest Football Club. While at the University, Frost had stints at editing both Varsity and the literary magazine Granta, as well as being secretary of Footlights. It was here that he met the up-and-coming satirists of that generation, including Peter Cook, John Cleese and John Bird. His time at Cambridge also saw him make his debut television appearance, on Anglia Television’s Town and Gown series.

In an interview with The Cambridge Student in 2010, Frost admitted that he had been “quite relieved to get a degree at all”, considering how much time he spent working on Granta and the Footlights.

“The competition at Cambridge, in the theatre and things like that, was almost greater than when one got to London because we had so many people there; Peter Cook, John Cleese, Graham Chapman”. He also described Trevor Nunn, another Cambridge contemporary, as “the greatest director in the world” and said that collaborating with such peers at university was “a sensational preparation for what was to follow in terms of opening up one's intellectual frontiers.”

He added: “I remember going to the Societies Fair and two of the biggest booths were for Granta, the magazine which was then purely a Cambridge publication, and for the Footlights. I remember thinking then; I'd love to run that and edit that and I was very lucky to be able to do both.”