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Monday, September 22, 2008, 16:01
The 73-year-old brought down the curtain on more than 30 years of his chat show at the end of last year.
In an interview with the Radio Times, the star, who interviewed Fred Astaire, Richard Burton, Muhammad Ali and Orson Welles over his long career, said that he was told by ITV Chairman Michael Grade that he cost too much.
Parky told the Radio Times: "Michael Grade told me with a straight face that I was too expensive. Shortly after, we were talking about guests for the final show and someone at ITV mentioned Liz Taylor. They said they would go up to £250,000. Barmy idea - and I was too expensive?
"But I don't want it to seem as though we left in an acrimonious fashion, because we didn't.
"I would have liked one more series, to be frank, but my time had come to leave. I knew that."
Parkinson has previously described his TV programme as the "last of the classic interview based chat shows", saying: "The rest now are just comedy shows."
He said in this week's Radio Times: "I think the talk show, as a conversational performance between two people, has gone.
"What you have now is the American style, where you have the host who is a more important part of the show than the guest.
"But it's not what I can do, nor what I want to do."
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