Sir David Frost at Al Jazeera

He was the man who made US President Nixon buckle, who went on to become a TV icon – and for the last seven years, Sir David Frost has been a central figure on Al Jazeera.

Headline interviews making headline news, celebrities lining up to be interviewed by him, a career that never failed to dazzle, sparkle and surprise.

Sir David Frost arrived at Al Jazeera as one of the world’s best-known interviewers and he made an immediate impact – not just with the viewers but with us, the Al Jazeera team. His presence and zest for life were an inspiration to everyone.

This was, after all, the man who took Richard Nixon to task in 1977, finally getting an apology for lying to the American people during the Watergate scandal.

Frost’s groundbreaking interviews with the former US president brought him to the world stage. And when he came to Al Jazeera in 2006, the top-line interviews just kept coming.

His first show featured an interview with the embattled then British Prime Minister Tony Blair – under fire over the war in Iraq. Blair’s big admission about a disaster in Iraq was the first of many headlines during Frost’s time at Al Jazeera.

In 2007, he spoke to Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s former prime minister, who was planning her return to Pakistan after an assassination attempt. He was not to know that it would be her last international TV interview. Bhutto was assassinated soon after the interview while campaigning for re-election.

Politicians and world leaders somehow found time to speak to him. They liked him, they liked his style, but they also knew his reputation as an interviewer who got to the heart of the matter.

In 2008, the film Frost/Nixon came out – the big screen version of Frost’s epic interviews with Richard Nixon.

Frost regularly presented landmark programmes. In 2009, the former leaders of the East and the West – former US President George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union – came together to mark the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In 2012, The Frost Interview took Sir David back to where it all began – a series of Nixon-style in-depth interviews with leading personalities and people who would help to change the world. He travelled far and wide but always took with him the questions that had to be asked.