16  Interview features and profiles

The US Army calls it embedding. Like Hollywood, the Pentagon has nightmares at the thought of freewheeling journalists reporting events outside the embedded system. Is there someone out there in showbiz Babylon still willing to resist embedment and keep the oriflamme of bloodyminded independence aloft? If not, editors might as well send along their secretaries to take the star’s dictation. Actually, I’m not sure they aren’t already. (Victor Davis, ‘The stars look down’, British Journalism Review, Number 2, 2003)

The best technique is to make tiny pricks in the subject’s ego and let him expel hot air slowly. (Humphrey Bogart, late film actor)

Our most vivid impressions of our contemporaries are through interviews. Almost everything of moment reaches us through one person] asking questions of another. Because of this, the interviewer holds a position of unprecedented power and influence. (Denis Brian, Murderers and other Friendly People: The Public and Private Worlds of Interviewers)

Skill in interviewing, as Chapter 8 demonstrates, is an essential part of the information-gathering process. In this chapter we analyse that skill more closely. When the feature is based on an interview (or interviews), when the interviewee or what the interviewee has to say is the whole subject, interviewing is a much more complex operation. We get back to telephone and email methods but it is the face-to-face ones that will demand most attention. The terms ‘interview’ and ‘profile’ are applied interchangeably to a feature about one interviewee, but I shall use the latter term more strictly – when talking about the longer, more rounded portrait of an individual derived from various sources (sometimes without a byline).

Study the best interviewers. Read The Penguin Book of Interviews (1993), edited by Christopher Silvester (republished in the USA as The Norton Book of Interviews in 1996), a fascinating anthology from 1859 to 1992, and taking in such luminaries as Karl Marx, Mark Twain (interviewed by Rudyard Kipling), Emile Zola, a taciturn Ibsen, a voluble young Greta Garbo, Freud, Hitler, Stalin (by H. G. Wells), a drunk Scott Fitzgerald, Marilyn Monroe, Margaret Thatcher, Bette Davis and Mae West. A 43-page introduction charts the journalistic interview through its history and analyses some psychological subtexts. Interviewers who are almost celebrities in their own right have published collections.

Note the great number of approaches, ways of asking questions, ways of writing up, and note how these aspects are influenced by the different personalities of interviewees, the different purposes of the features, the different audiences. This chapter will help you to decide what kinds of treatments are likely to be fruitful for different interviewees and different publications. Some subjects will have illuminating comments on the state of the world, others an oblique outlook on the world well worth anybody’s attention, or a wealth of humour to tap into, or exceptional courage to inspire. Whether the subject is famous or not, the trick is to discover how to open the tap, how to help the subject to find their best words for what they have to say, and how to develop a style of your own to colour the numerous shapes and tones that will emerge. Women are regarded in many quarters as having the edge when it comes to encouraging people to talk: tact, warmth, intuition and rapport are cited as evidence.

What’s certain is that you’ll need those qualities, and more. Some interviewees need to be kept on track: they will want to talk about their cats, perhaps, or their garden when your purpose is to talk about their study of a remote African tribe. Other interviewees, even among writers and academics, can be unforthcoming because worried about how you’ll represent them. The more famous they are, the more difficult they can be. They may have been asked the same questions over and over, and here they are again. They may have been frustrated by too many interviewers having done little preparation (for example, ‘Could you please give me the titles of one or two of your books?’ or ‘Have you done a stage play recently?’).

This chapter covers the following ground:

•  choice of interviewee

•  getting commissioned

•  setting up the interview

•  choosing the method

•  preparing the questions

•  interviewing techniques

•  editing the transcript

•  formats for writing up

•  following up.

CHOICE OF INTERVIEWEE

Before choosing your prospects prepare for these challenges by researching previous interviews and finding new questions. Find out as much as you can about how your prospect performs at interviews (from agents and from friends or acquaintances) and work out a friendly, professional, positive approach.

For the local paper there will be mileage to be got out of the head teacher retiring after 50 years, a businessman planning a factory, a councillor embroiled in a corruption allegation, the local girl who has won a part in a soap opera, the policeman who has been awarded the CBE. You keep your ears open in the pub and on the street and if you’re a freelance you try to beat the local paper reporter with the news.

Offbeat characters can be a fruitful field – accountants who are black belts in judo, greengrocers who become steeplejacks on Saturdays, plumbers who fly gliders, surgeons who perform in amateur theatricals.

If there are locally based celebrities (let’s call them ‘celebs’) they might make subjects for interview but have probably been done too often in the local press. You can keep an eye open for other celebs passing through. Thus Pete Best, the original drummer with the Beatles, was interviewed by David Male of the Kentish Times when he was on the road with his band, with dates in Croydon and Chatham.

When a book is being published by a well-known person, the author may well be interested in the publicity generated by reviews in the local as well as the national press. Thus Angela Wintle of the Brighton Argus secured an interview with Sir Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, when his book The Wages of Sin came out. No doubt feature writers of other local papers did too.

‘Ordinary but with an extraordinary story’ or ‘expert’ or ‘famous’ or ‘infamous’? You will have your preferences and those will no doubt change as you grow older or ambitions alter. Make sure you have a publication’s interest, if not firm commission, to interview somebody before you approach them.

Choose wisely when it comes to celebs. Decide, for example, after some preliminary research on a prospect, whether or not you could avoid increasing their boredom. You may feel that:

•  you haven’t got any new questions to ask

•  you can’t get excited enough about the task

•  you are so excited that you feel you wouldn’t avoid a deadly effect of sycophancy

•  you’re not yet capable of rising to the occasion.

If it’s celebs you’re after, note that big names tend to give interviews to established names. When you have impressed a few agents and editors with pieces on minor celebs you will find bigger celebs more willing to talk to you. (On the other hand, as will be seen, it’s too often expected that the interview will be on their terms, or the terms laid down by their publicity people, and that can mean a boring interview before you start.)

You have to keep up with the news of celebs, whether major or minor, so that you can get in first with proposals to editors, who will want publication of the piece to coincide with any event/public appearance in the offing.

GETTING COMMISSIONED

Do some preliminary research in order to get the approval of interviewee and editor. Study the press cuttings or the CD-ROMs for features about your subject. (Don’t forget the way errors are repeated and double-check where possible.) There may be news about a book coming out or a concert appearance, other news items in the press, a fairly recent magazine interview perhaps (in a different market from the one you have in mind). It will be wise to specialize as an interviewer in one or two fields in case such preparation time doesn’t lead to many commissions. Then at least you’re becoming knowledgeable about the subject area.

If you’re staff you’ll automatically get briefing. If freelance, don’t ask editors for commissions until you know their publications, know what treatments they give interviews, and know which interviews they’ve done in the past six months or more. Indicate that the sort of interview, in terms of content and treatment, that you have in mind would fit the target publication. You suggest, perhaps, that the main interest should be in the work, or in the private life, or in the mind or in the personality of the subject. Then you’re prepared to discuss the editor’s briefing. (Unless, of course, your track record is so good that the editor trusts you not to need any briefing.)

You should have some files of interview cuttings that include pieces done for various kinds of publications which you can compare. Pitch when you feel sure you can secure the interview. At the least obtain a ‘we’ll have a look at it’. You can then say to your prospect, ‘I’ve been asked to do an interview for …’.

SETTING UP THE INTERVIEW

The reporter gets used to barging into places, extracting a couple of juicy quotes and barging out again. Arranging to spend an hour or more eliciting substantial amounts of information or personal accounts of lives and careers is an altogether much weightier proposition. Interview feature writers require much confidence to set up an interview, and then various kinds of skills to carry it out. It may be wise to start modestly, if you’re new to the game, with a strategy for going up the scale, establishing your credentials in the eyes of both editors and interview prospects.

How to contact your prospect? This can be surprisingly easy. You get the home phone number from the telephone directory and ring up and you may be immediately talking to him/her. The prospect may be much more relaxed at home than in an office or hotel or other public place, but of course may be much less relaxed.

A husband or a wife or a secretary tells you that you will get a call back if the prospect is interested. Or you are asked to contact directly, by phone, email or letter.

It’s more likely, however, that there’s more than one intermediary: a spouse or secretary, then an assistant perhaps or a press officer, publicist, agent, promoter, show producer, union official, membership secretary or more than one of these. The intermediary listens to your pitch, says it will be passed to the subject (or to another intermediary), and if the prospect agrees to be interviewed you will get a call.

If you’ve concentrated on a particular field – actors, pop singers, authors, footballers, tennis players, IT experts – you can receive information regularly about prospects and their activities and whereabouts from intermediaries. Actors, writers and others have their unions, guilds and societies, which will divulge agents’ names. Spotlight directory lists actors and their agents.

Get yourself on such organizations’ mailing lists or log on to their websites and keep up to date with the news about their clients’ activities. Many of your prospects will have their own websites that regularly keep their story up to date.

Most of the tactics you need in setting an interview up come into play with celebs, so let’s use this area to describe those tactics. Otherwise watch the press for celebs’movements. If a pop singer you’re interested in will appear at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, find out from the box office the admin number for the venue. From there you will get the publicist’s number. Publicists will (you hope) get back to you to arrange the interview. At that stage, ask for, if you’re not offered any, information that will help you to prepare: a CD, an up-to-date bio (biography), newsletters, summaries of recent interviews, plans for the next few months (or years). If such information is not forthcoming there are cuttings agencies that supply them.

You may want to subscribe to a service that keeps you informed of the movements of celebs in the entertainment business, if it’s worth around £100 a month to you. The Celebrity Bulletin, for example, published by Celebrity Service Ltd., will give you daily news of who’s arriving in the UK, where they’ll be appearing, and whom to contact at venues and agencies, with addresses and telephone numbers.

Some people will appreciate the publicity you’ll be giving them, some need publicity to survive: in a famous phrase they ‘face the choice between starving and being eaten’. You will be rebuffed by some who have not been treated well by journalists in the past.

Getting past the minders

Without a track record you’ll find it difficult to get past the minders. Even with a track record you may be thwarted at the end by film stars and press agents. Silvester, in the introduction to his Penguin Book, explains how this works:

Lynn Barber’s first interviewing assignment for Vanity Fair was spiked because the interviewee, film actor Nick Nolte, disliked her attitude and instructed his press agent to refuse to provide exclusive pictures to Vanity Fair if they were to go ahead and publish. The Hollywood press agents, of whom there are only half a dozen of any significance, now operate a cartel. Unless the writer’s treatment of their client meets with their approval, they are likely to refuse not only future access to the client in question but also future access to any of their other clients.

This was the mid 1990s but things haven’t changed much. Fortunately Vanity Fair and such magazines will sometimes show their muscle; interviewee’s or publicist’s approval of the script will not be granted, despite the threats; the feature will be published despite the interviewee’s objections (and Vanity Fair have often done this); and interviewers will find imaginative ways of completing an assignment besieged by obstacles. But until you are a well-known interviewer yourself, attracting customers who welcome the challenge and the exposure, it’s best to probe gently.

You will confront obstacles at all levels and you must be persistent. Here are a few tips:

1  Ascertain from your preliminary reading, and if possible from talking to friends, relatives, colleagues or associates’ relatives, what kind of approach is most likely to work. For example, what has pleased your subject most and what has irritated most about past interviews?

2  Try to get agents, secretaries, prospects on your side with that good pitch. Your initial contacts are crucial. You must sell yourself as someone who can bring benefit of some kind to interviewees, bring good publicity, get their ideas or interesting personality across, produce a readable feature.

3  Get across to your subject why the commissioning publication is interested in the interview, your special interest and knowledge, how much you’re enjoying reading up about the prospect or the work.

4  Show that you’re passionate about the character or the activities of the person or about what you can find out that’s exciting and newsworthy.

5  Arouse the subject’s curiosity, especially if you have to encapsulate your request in a voice message. Try to avoid spelling out too precisely what you have in mind if there’s a chance that it may not appeal or that it may have been raised too often by past interviews. Try instead to indicate that you’ll be able to reveal the sort of things that past interviews have failed to discover (giving a clue out of what you’ve discovered so far).

6  Take any opportunity to convey to your subject that you can correct any misrepresentations that have been unfavourable, which you will no doubt find in past interviews.

7  Agree about the method: email, phone or face to face? Email has its limitations for feature interviews (see below). Even face to face can be done at a distance these days. Ian Reeves explains that his interview with the publishing mogul Felix Dennis in Press Gazette is being carried out via videoconference link in his house in Mustique. ‘I’m sitting in the Dennis Publishing boardroom in Soho [London] talking to a rather fuzzy, jerky image of its boss in a book-lined room 7000 miles away’ in his house in Mustique.

8  If you do get to do the Hollywood stars, don’t sell your soul (see the first quote at the start of this chapter).

How to be persistent

Even when agents are trying to be helpful, film stars and showbiz people can require obstinacy beyond the natural. I failed to get an interview with Dustin Hoffman for a magazine. He was at the Dorchester Hotel in London for three days before going to Paris to work on a film. I telephoned his London agent. ‘I’ll ring you back.’ While waiting I rang the Dorchester and was put through to Mr Hoffman’s secretary in his suite … ‘I’ll ring you back.’ The press officer at the Dorchester: ‘I’ll ring you back.’ The hall porter: ‘If you came along to the hotel you might ….’ The London agent called: ‘Mr Hoffman is very busy but he’s trying to fit you in.’ The press office at the Dorchester: ‘I’m so sorry. Mr Hoffman has just left for Paris – a day early.’

In one of the Sunday papers I found an interview with Dustin Hoffman. The hall porter: ‘Yes, he wouldn’t give up. He spent several hours in the lounge, and in the cocktail bar and in the restaurant, continually monitoring Mr Hoffman’s movements. He had a fair number of the hotel staff helping him. …’

Some interviews demand extra initiative. Albert Einstein was difficult to pin down. He was staying once in a small-town hotel in the United States. Big-name foreign correspondents crowded the lobby waiting in vain for a word or two. A local reporter put on dungarees, marched into Einstein’s room and said he was sorting out the telephones. He had a long chat with Einstein as he tinkered away. It was a scoop.

Come to an agreement about place and time and make sure your subject knows how to contact you in case of cancellation.

CHOOSING THE METHOD

There are face-to-face, letter, email and phone situations, as described in Chapter 8. There’s going to be some repetition here of what was said there, to match the different purpose and approaches.

Your choice will depend to some extent on distance, and to some extent on the brief and the format agreed for the write-up. If your subject is too far to warrant the expense and the travelling time for face to face, you (and your subject) will have to decide among letter, email and phone procedures. You’re going to need a notebook. Both for face-to-face and phoned interviews you can use a tape recorder as well. Let’s contrast these methods.

Face to face

Be as considerate as possible about time and place of meeting. But avoid meeting people who keep late hours early in the day, and meeting people in noisy places – film sets, TV studios, bars, restaurants. After you’ve listened to a tape of an interview done over lunch in a busy restaurant seated near the kitchen you won’t do it again. Avoid rooms with low ceilings where you’ll tend to get poor acoustics, or offices overlooking main streets with busy traffic. Try to avoid being interrupted by telephone calls.

Don’t sit opposite the interviewee as if you’re considering them for a job or suspecting them of a crime. Make it 90 degrees. Make sure you have a spare tape and spare batteries. If you’re worried about your tape recorder breaking down, use two. The spare tape may come in useful if your published piece confronts legal problems (see below).

An interview-feature containing a rounded portrait of the subject is best done after a face to face. You can play things to some extent by ear. Like any conversation, it’s an exchange of views happening naturally, so that you can judge by body language and facial expression as well as tone of voice how your subject is reacting. Interpreting these signs you can shape the interview accordingly – make the questions shorter and simpler than you had prepared, for example, or more demanding, or you may decide to start more gently when you find someone is more sensitive than anticipated.

Journalists used to have much better memories than they have now. Even a notebook, it was considered, would put an interviewee off. Many journalists would make a few brief notes surreptitiously. Until the 1960s notebooks were mainly used for interview features. The piece would be written up promptly while fresh in the mind. We have so many machines now that remember things for us, from digital diaries to sophisticated computer programs, that the capacity to listen and remember is being eroded.

As tape recorders became fashionable, from the 1970s onwards, old hands deplored the practice of depending on them for interviews. It was maintained, with some justice, that tape recorders encouraged laziness. Younger hands with excellent memories can do wonders with notebooks alone (see Hunter Davies’s selection, Hunting People, Mainstream Publishing). It’s true that tape recorders can encourage the devoting of less time to the actual encounter. They can also encourage the assumption that there’s bound to be something good on tape (there isn’t bound to be). They can, if you’re not alert to the danger, produce depersonalized features, with mechanical exchanges lacking nuances.

Tape recording with skill

There are still these dangers but the skill of interviewing with a tape recorder has been developed so that both parties (with the exceptions that are being noted) tend to be more relaxed than they used to be. The advantages have come to be increasingly appreciated. You can have much more eye contact if you don’t have to make many notes. You obtain a record of the intonations, of the manner of speaking, the accent. Much of the personality of a person comes through in these aspects. Furthermore, a tape is an insurance if you’re not sure if you’ll be able to write up immediately.

Most editors expect tape recorders to be used for features so that the printed account can be backed up if there are any complaints from the interviewee about misrepresentation, or even threats of libel action. People can be astonished when they see their casually bestowed words in cold print. ‘Did I really say that?’ Some frequently interviewed celebs like to make their own tapes of an interview, even of phoned interviews. It can be welcomed if otherwise the subject is likely to question the accuracy of what ends up in print.

In your unobtrusive way jot down details of setting, facial expressions, body language, clothes, and so on. Note key statements to help your memory to keep you on track. Transcribing will be easier if you select as you go, making a note of the numbers on the tape indicator so that you can quickly locate the best bits. You can compensate to some extent for that loss of listening art with a juggling art.

Write down all names and figures clearly. They may not be clear on the tape. Ask for names to be spelt. Go back over any figures you are doubtful about. ‘Did you say fifteen thousand or fifty thousand?’

By letter

Interviewing by letter, a valuable part of research on occasion, is not often done to achieve a piece for publication, unless what is wanted is, say, opinions of weight for an academic journal, with atmosphere and personality not required, and especially when such a subject is distant.

When time is short, the interview for information rather than personality can be done by email or phone.

By email

You or the subject may prefer to get a dialogue going by an exchange of emails, with time allowed on both sides for thinking, rather than have a one-off straightforward Q-and-A session.

Emails are particularly useful for interviewing the expert, when you don’t need the sound or tone of the voice. Information is almost everything, though of course some humanity should be allowed to creep in. The interviews with journalists in this book were done by email.

You can’t break in to follow up an interesting point raised. The email dialogue, however, can easily continue, so you can come back with new questions that have suggested themselves. Furthermore, the situation is relaxed because both parties choose the time when they want to contribute. Make sure, however, that your interviewee is aware of your deadline.

A word of warning. Make sure with emails (and even sometimes with letters) that you’re getting verbatim quotes and not versions of what your subject has to say sanitized by publicists. Print out longish emails that you’re responding to. When you depend on scrolling up and down a screen there’s a tendency to miss points.

If the email interview is going to be long, questions and answers can be sent, in the form of numbered lists, as attachments.

By phone

Especially when time is short, a ‘phoner’ can be ideal. This is an interview using a phone with a phone pick-up stuck onto the back of the handset and plugged into a tape recorder. For the phone you need to have a fair number of short questions, placed in a good order in a script, getting deeper perhaps as you go, so that awkward silences are avoided. Getting subtle or ironic on either side is problematic when you can’t see each other’s faces (a technology that’s on the way). You have to remember to put your friendly smile into your voice.

PREPARING THE QUESTIONS

You’ve been commissioned and you’ve set up the interview. Now continue studying your subject in the ways described above, going deeper and noting the questions you want to ask. Read one or two of the author’s books, a playwright’s plays (and see one or two productions), visit an artist’s exhibition or at least see some of the work. Walk round an architect’s building, watch a footballer play a few times, pore over the annual accounts of the businessman’s company. Consult such reference books as Who’s Who. Note as you do all this what you will want to talk about.

Read past interviews with the subject and collect cuttings. From what you now have learned about the subject, you should be able to discover some gaps – some areas of experience the subject hasn’t been asked about. Don’t expect interviewees to tell you these things. Pick out also old quotes that will now need to be updated. Note any errors that have been lazily repeated through those interviews and indicate that you’re correcting them. Your subject will be grateful for these signs of your research. But your credit will be small if you leave in a few of ‘the same old questions’.

It’s illuminating to look up past interviews with your prospect done for different publications (see below). As well as giving you different angles on your prospect you’ll be engaged in relevant market study: you’ll see more clearly what different publications tend to like in their interviews.

In particular, that will make you aware of the effects of length. The longer interview, 2000 to 3000 words or more, provide room to go deeper, to explore the darker or more puzzling sides of the character. In a 1600-word interview with Sting by Serge Simonart in Saga (January 2002), we are told about the pop star ‘who is devoted to his family and conservation issues’. His communion with nature comes across in this way:

‘I do most of my thinking in the garden, and bring those ideas back to the studio. I’m glad you can hear nature in my music, because that’s one of my big inspirations, you know: listen to the grass, talk to the plants, hug trees.’ He laughs at this, but quickly shows his sincerity. ‘I mean it though: hugging old trees works, old trees are great ancient spirits, they’ve been here longer than we have, and will survive us, so they know more. And I think to interact somehow with their wisdom is a great thing to do.’

Sting’s interest in nature becomes an active interest in the environment in the profile of over 3500 words in The Telegraph Magazine by Neil McCormick (13 September 2003) and there’s more probing. We learn about the seven houses, the chef, the butler, the cars, pretentiousness, the lack of popularity in the media. Note the difference in style:

Sting enjoys the trappings of wealth and success. Yet there is a paradox here that he is acutely aware of, a contradiction between his image as an environmental activist and the conspicuous consumption that goes with being fantastically rich. ‘I have no excuses,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘But this is a conundrum faced by anyone who has a car, central heating, air conditioning.’

When accounts differ

At two extremes are interviews with the film actor Richard Gere: for The Observer Magazine (by Harriet Lane) and for Reader’s Digest (by Nancy Collins). Lane’s piece was memorable for the conflict described, which was a refreshing change from the sycophantic norm for such subjects. The encounter was cut short by 20 minutes by the publicist. Gere comes across as without humour, neurotic and repressed, over-earnest and hostile. Around the same time (February 2003) Collins showed the devoted father (‘How does it feel?’– ‘Incredibly vulnerable’), unpretentious, with his eyes welling up thinking about his father playing the trumpet (‘his playing is so connected to his heart’).

Make sure, then, if you’re preparing to meet Sting or Gere that you assess the different approaches of different publications, that you update what you get from research and that you find the most recent accounts as well as the history. You may find that a less pretentious Sting has become much more popular with the media lately, that a more articulate Richard Gere is in more recent interviews neither obnoxious nor sentimental. You have been helped by your preparation to formulate some questions but you must go into action prepared to have your impressions altered. Your subject may have developed in unpredictable ways.

Delve further into any errors or misleading statements that you have picked up about your subject or their organization by cross-checking through different sources. Showing that you have set the record straight (or at least straighter) will be an encouraging place to start the interview.

When researching note what you will want to talk about. Develop some crucial questions with the five Ws and the How in mind. But don’t list questions that have been asked many times before, for which the answers are well-known facts. The more you know about your subject the better your questions are likely to be.

I’m using ‘questions’ as a convenient term to include points to be raised, topics to be introduced, that are not necessarily introduced in the form of questions. To avoid turning the interview into one question after another, list them in such a way that you won’t be tempted to do that. Rather than ‘did you enjoy being a cabinet minister or are you happier as a backbencher?’, simply ‘cabinet minister and backbencher’ will prompt you towards conversation when the moment arrives.

What questions, in what order?

First you make sure you’re on the same wavelength as your subject, then you try to make your questions, on the whole, specific, open-ended and well ordered.

On the same wavelength

If you’re well prepared you’ll be able to get on your subject’s wavelength, use the jargon of their profession or trade, hit on their enthusiasms, get under their skin. Your questions will be aimed at obtaining explanation, opinion and interpretation rather than mere facts. You will either know the facts or have access to them – facts such as how long a company chairman has been in the job and what last year’s statement of accounts showed profits to be.

Even for a brief interview questions should be devised so as to make the best possible use of the time. Your purpose is to find out what your readers would want to know, things which the subject is most qualified to tell you. Your preparation will help you judge if the answers are comprehensible to your average reader. Have alternative forms of difficult questions ready in case answers are unclear. Be ready to rephrase questions on the spot.

If you’re on your subject’s wavelength you’re more likely to produce a desirable form of discussion rather than an embarrassing inquisition. Put questions into context: ‘I was interested to learn that you declined the invitation to join the campaign … Of course many others declined. Is it a fair account of your attitude?’

Specific

Questions should be asked one at a time and be clear and specific. Avoid closed questions, which encourage brief answers or yes or no.

‘Do you enjoy being a solicitor?’ is not a good question. It’s too vague. What good to you is the answer ‘sometimes’? ‘Which of the jobs you have to do as a solicitor do you enjoy most?’ is more likely to encourage articulate response, perhaps followed by ‘Which do you dislike most?’

Instead of ‘Do you agree with the new Education Bill?’ try the open-ended ‘Do you agree with the criticism that the Bill is likely to be divisive?’

Avoid questions that take you into a cul-de-sac. ‘What would have happened if you’d succeeded in that business?’Answer: ‘I would have become prosperous.’ (Well, what sort of answer did you want?)

Open questions develop a conversation. How and why questions, for example. Encourage articulate answers by contributing to the subject. For example: ‘Your colleagues tell me that you’re good at getting the best out of backward pupils. How do you do that? Can you give me an example?’ The hunt for anecdotes and examples is especially necessary with abstract matters such as relationships.

Questions for children need to be specific and carefully phrased. ‘Do you enjoy your weekends?’ is better explored by ‘What do you like doing best at weekends? Swimming? Playing football?’ Use words they can understand. On the other hand, they may know a lot more about certain aspects of life than you did at their age.

Avoid particularly ‘leading’ questions, which contain your assumption of what the answer is, whether the prompting is in your words, phrasing or tone of voice. ‘You’ve had a lot of arguments with the players this season, haven’t you?’ might provoke an angry as well as non-committal response. Find another way to approach the subject. If you know it’s true you can say, ‘I’ve heard from some fans [or I’ve read reports]that you’ve had a lot of arguments … Is that a fair way of putting it? … Do you want to comment on that?’

In a good order

Arrange your questions in an order you think will make a good conversation and elicit good answers. For example, you can site the awkward ones judiciously – immediately after a particular welcome question might be a good place, or near the end.

INTERVIEWING TECHNIQUES

Let’s concentrate now on the face-face interview techniques, which can be adapted to the phone and the email.

To what extent are you interviewing yourself as well, anxious to get across your own opinions or attitudes? There are two extremes. There’s the invisible interviewer. The format may be straightforward Q-and-A, where your questions are (almost) entirely designed to get information and opinion from your subject, or you may simply print the answers in a monologue as if you weren’t there.

The other extreme is the celebrity interviewer who is just as important as the interviewee and sometimes even more so. And there are all degrees in between. How far you get involved depends partly on what works for you and partly on what kind of interviewee you’ve got. A very quiet one may awaken any histrionic abilities you may possess.

After much preparation of the kind described above you have a list of well-thought-out questions in apparently the most fruitful order. You seem to be doing everything right. You’re using the notebook unobtrusively and effectively and are on the same wavelength. But the interview is unsatisfactory, just as a play performance can be great one night and flop the next, with the same script and the same cast.

Perhaps there are technical difficulties relating to your tape recorder or the venue. There may be unwelcome noise or interruptions although you’ve done your best to avoid them. Try to take these things in your stride: focused but relaxed. You may have failed to establish a rapport with your interviewee. That has to be done early. Turn the occasion into a conversation so that you take the pressure off the interviewee. Reveal yourself. If you are felt to be friendly and trustworthy they will be more likely to confide. Find some warm-up, non-interview remarks/questions to throw out on meeting. And smile.

Here are a few suggestions for getting the best out of an interview.

Keeping in control

That does not mean sticking strictly to the questions or the order that you’ve planned. It means creating a conversation in which the interviewee is encouraged to give the answers you require without feeling under pressure. Your list of prepared questions will be organized in a particular order: by topic perhaps or by chronology. This is a guide only. As you get to know your interviewee you’ll see how to adapt to the shape the conversation takes and judge how best to phrase your questions so that they appeal.

Listen carefully to the answers so that you can take advantage of any opportunity to follow a promising path. Without interrupting too often, you may want to challenge an argument or put the other point of view. Your interviewee might embark on themes or supply information that you didn’t anticipate. If this is interesting and relevant you may want to follow up, perhaps cutting out a few of your less interesting questions. But don’t be deflected from your purpose. Return to your agenda, if it hasn’t been discarded.

Getting the answer you want

Skilled interviewees become adept at giving what they want to give rather than what you want to receive. However brief, it’s a kind of marriage, with seductions and withdrawals involved, and so a trade-off. But don’t let the interviewee take over in this way:

Question: Do you agree that bad language and violent behaviour when criticizing your children are not the best kind of model to present your children with?

Answer: I agree that children should be encouraged at every stage. I constantly give my children encouragement …

Question: Have you now decided that you’re not going to use bad language in front of the children?

Answer: Have I now decided to take particular care to say ‘Well done’ when they do the right thing? Yes I have. …

Sometimes you have to say, ‘Answer the question please’ while remaining positive and tactful, especially if the question is crucial in terms of facts required. When the discussion is about non-personal, abstract/philosophical/political matters it’s often effective to keep your main questions general so that interviewees appreciate that they are free to express their opinions freely. They may even feel that they are influencing its direction to a greater extent than they are.

Getting over a lull

‘Could you describe your typical day?’

‘If you weren’t you, who would you like to be?’

‘Which age would you have liked to live in, given a choice?’

‘If your house were flooded, what are the first things you would try to save?’

Or find better ones.

Techniques for tough questions

Here are various techniques for tough questions, the first three being various versions of the classic ‘did you kill your wife’ formula:

1  Everybody approach: ‘Many people have been guilty of killing their wives. Do you happen by any chance to have killed yours?’

2  Other people approach: (a) ‘Do you know any people who have murdered their wives?’ (b) ‘How about yourself?’

3  The Kinsey technique (with an air of assuming that everyone has done everything): ‘As a matter of interest, did you kill your wife?’

4  The people say that formula allows you to be unobtrusively tough: ‘There are people who say that killing your wife/husband was going too far …’ (‘Perhaps they misunderstand your motives. …’)

5  The separate questions formula is used when the questions one after the other put together would impede a completely frank answer. Put other questions between ‘Are the regulations in your company about what can be claimed as expenses quite strict?’ and ‘I suppose you’d feel freer to pursue those activities if your company could stretch the rules on expenses a little …’.

6  Rephrasing the painful question. If a question appears too painful to answer, you might be able to return to it later, rephrasing it so that it sounds different.

7  Switching off the tape recorder. If your interviewee is going through a hard time and is finding it difficult to talk about it, you might try switching off the tape recorder. Or you might invite the person to ‘say something into the tape if you like’, explaining that you have to leave the room for a minute or two while the tape is running.

8  Finding the question you should have thought of asking. A possible last question: ‘Is there anything you’d like to add to what you have said?’ or ‘Is there anything I should have asked but didn’t?’

9  Returning to that evasive answer. You didn’t get a straight or a sufficient answer to a question but it was difficult to pursue it at the time. To repeat what was said in Chapter 8, page 137), you stop your tape recorder, close your notebook, and on the way to the door, or the lift, you bring up the question again casually, in different words, and this time you may get a good, relaxed answer. ‘I suppose it’s difficult to get on with the mother-in-law when …?’.

For difficult interviewees

The way you actually phrase your questions will depend on what sort of animal you’ve got in your cage. Busy and important people are often friendlier and more cooperative than hustlers on the way up. Just a hint of criticism or reference to unfavourable publicity in the past can upset some interviewees and big egos can delight in making the interviewer look small.

A drunken restaurateur declared he was the greatest in the world and then vomited over the lunch table. It made a dramatic start to the feature and the final result of such encounters, even when far from the original intention, can be illuminating, entertaining and superior to the more predictable result. But don’t aim for it.

Ann Leslie, doyenne of foreign correspondents, has some good advice for dangerous interviewees (she has seen a female colleague with a knife at her neck for asking drunken paramilitaries why they were killing people). Make friends with them first, she says. Discover interests in common and when you see danger signs ‘start twittering again about babies and sheep recipes … My mantra … is always one step forward, two steps back”.’

The most difficult interviewees, generally, are those who have not a great deal to say. They may be anxious that they’ll fail to do justice to themselves or their ideas, or they may be made nervous by the compromise of the interview situation. Establishing rapport thus becomes more difficult than usual. One solution is to get into a conversation where you do most of the talking: you reveal things about yourself that the subject finds it easy to respond to and begins to exchange confidences.

On the other hand, don’t finish a nervous interviewee’s sentences: you may end up with an interview more with yourself than with the subject.

The tactic with other interviewees can be the reverse. Talking too much yourself will make them clam up the more, and you can find that restraint and judicious silences on your part are more likely to make the subject open up.

Avoiding hidden agendas

You publish a favourable interview with:

•  a novelist who happens to be a friend who has reviewed as favourable a book of yours

•  a politician with whom you’ve collaborated in a campaign

•  a headmistress who then gives your child a place in her school, but your readers are unaware of the connection.

Matthew Parris, ex-MP, then parliamentary sketch writer and now columnist for The Times, expresses the dilemma well:

I am very troubled about the relationship between friendship and journalism. I never knew where to draw the line. We talk a lot in this country about corruption, in the sense of back pockets, people being paid money to say things or do things. But a very big corruption in all British journalism is the network of friendship and obligation between people who write and the people about whom they write. We have no codes and we make no declarations and we leave our readers in the dark.

If you have a sneaking feeling that you’re being sycophantic and you can detect some hidden agenda influencing you, tell the reader about it. But if there’s too obvious a friendship that prevents you being objective when you know you should be, it will be best not to attempt the interview.

But the kind of corruption Parris refers to can be insidious and you have to be on your guard against it in yourself, and in your interviewee.

Your job is to produce an interesting interview and it may not be entirely your fault if it’s not turning out that way. You know, let’s say, that your interviewee, veteran of many interviews, is highly skilled at creating a persona that is for public consumption (courageous, kindly, loving, modest, interesting) but which may be far from the truth. You go along with the picture and encourage it with your questions because you think the alternative would be a dull interview. There’s where the trade-off lies. And if your interviewee’s skill extends to knowing how to flatter you into submission (‘I’ve always wanted to meet you’ or ‘I knew we were going to hit it off’) you have to be even more wary.

The best interviewers get the most interesting interviews by finding ways to get behind the facade.

Encouraging revelations

If you’re too friendly it will be easy for the interviewee to take control and hide the things you would prefer to know. Nancy Mitford, the English journalist who became a star interviewer in the US, was good at getting people to reveal themselves. She describes her techniques in the classic The Making of a Muckraker, which contains a collection of her articles. The following extract from one of the articles, ‘Let us now appraise famous writers’, first published in Atlantic (July 1970), illustrates her method. She interviewed Bennet Cerf, columnist, TV personality and Chairman of the Board of Random House Publishing Corporation, one of the ‘Fifteen Famous Writers’ who, according to the advertisements, taught you ‘to write successfully at home’. Ms Mitford has indicated that she is critical of the correspondence course:

‘I think mail-order sell has several built-in deficiencies,’ he said. ‘The crux of it is a very hard sales pitch, an appeal to the gullible. Of course, once somebody has signed a contract with Famous Writers he can’t get out of it. But that’s true with every business in the country.’ Noticing that I was writing this down, he said in alarm, ‘For God’s sake, don’t quote me on that “gullible” business – you’ll have all the mail-order businesses in the country down on my neck! ‘Then would you like to paraphrase it?’ I asked, suddenly getting very firm. ‘Well – you could say in general I don’t like the hard sell, yet it’s the basis of all American business.’ ‘Sorry, I don’t call that a paraphrase, I shall have to use both of them,’ I said in a positively governessy tone of voice. ‘Anyway, why do you lend your name to this hardsell proposition?’ Bennet Cerf (with his melting grin): ‘Frankly, if you must know, I’m an awful ham – I love to see my name in the papers!’

She listens hard, has charm, good manners and firmness, all valuable assets for the interviewer. She wouldn’t have got the admissions she wanted without them. Even so, it isn’t always easy to analyse why a subject will talk to one interviewer and not another.

Mr Cerf’s ‘don’t quote me’ raises the subject of what interviewees can expect to be ‘off the record’ and what not. The journalist has to be up to date with the law and with the editor’s interpretation of it (see Chapter 21). In general, your interviewee has a stronger claim to confidentiality if you are asked for a statement to be made ‘off the record’ before the statement is made than if you’re asked after it is made.

Preparing to follow up

Remember to exchange contact numbers at the end of the interview. You may need to arrange for photographs to be taken, to check points when transcribing, perhaps to ask for some additional information.

EDITING THE TRANSCRIPT

As soon as possible after the interview, before listening to the tape, jot down your immediate impressions of the event while they are fresh in your mind. A heading or an intro might occur to you.

One disadvantage of tape is that you may be inclined to let the interview go on too long, feeling that you can easily edit the transcript – but transcription can take three times as long as the interview. When you’ve taped a long, relaxed conversation you may wish you hadn’t when faced with the task of transcribing it. I have already suggested how you can make this easier by using the numbers on the tape indicator for selected playback. Type the pieces out and then find ways of linking them. Extract an attention-grabbing intro if you haven’t thought of one already.

For a major interview, though, you may want to have a complete or near-complete transcript to edit from. If so, it may be worth photocopying your transcript, in case your editing is going to be somewhat creative and you want to have the security of the original at hand. Study the photocopy to find a good structure, producing at some stage an outline to guide you. Paste up sections on A4 sheets, and arrange in the order in which you want to write them up. Space out quoted pieces, indirect speech pieces, background pieces in a satisfactory pattern. Leave space where you will need linking material. When you’re a veteran interviewer you’ll find your own kinds of shortcuts.

However well controlled an interview is, talk is more rambling and repetitive than written-up material, a quality more conspicuous to the eye than the ear. So cut out the wordiness, but not to the extent of being left with gnomic utterances. Get across your interviewee’s way of speaking – ‘you know’, ‘indeed it is’, ‘not me matey’. Indicate a person’s accent at the start if it is interesting or distinctive, but don’t produce slabs of incomprehensible dialect. Correct faulty grammar that leads to lack of clarity but leave it in if it’s a trivial matter that adds colour.

Summarizing

Summarize some of the bigger chunks that you’ve removed by using indirect speech. For example:

‘Do you think your team will get into the First Division next year?’

‘I have no doubt whatsoever. …’ (Here follows some history of how the club has gone in and out of the First Division for many years, but unfortunately you haven’t got room for it.)

‘What makes you so sure now?’

‘I’m sure because although they’ve had their ups and downs over the past few years – for example, last year … Nevertheless when you look at the record as a whole you see that there’s improvement more or less in the course of time … And if you look at what’s happened in the last three or four games you can see that from all points of view the lads are showing a definite improvement. …’ (Another longish answer but you’ve got what you want.)

So you write: ‘He thought his team would get into the First Division next season because it has been constantly improving in the last four or five games.’

Be careful as you edit not to misrepresent with your compressions and rearrangements. When you use quotes it is safest to repeat the actual words said and you must always be completely faithful to the speaker’s intention. When you don’t use quote marks make sure your summaries or paraphrases are quite comprehensible, that they don’t need for full understanding statements that you have weeded out.

You have had time to think about the interviewee’s character and achievements. Perhaps a feather-ruffling approach has encouraged revelations or psychoanalytic probings have unearthed a much more interesting and impressive person than was suspected at the interview. The editing of the tape or notes and the format used for writing up can produce a positive and informative piece that produces a good result even though the encounter didn’t seem promising. Conversely if your preparation was inadequate and if you failed to elicit responses that did the interviewee justice, no amount of tweaking and embellishment in the writing will produce a good result.

FORMATS FOR WRITING UP

The writing up, whatever the format, puts the interviewee centre stage, which is what your readers will expect (even when done by the interviewers who are read as much or more for themselves as for their subjects). You can leave out many if not all of your questions and probing techniques, and apparently yourself altogether, and concentrate on the answers. ‘Apparently’ because of course your formulating of the questions, ordering them and then reshaping the final result means that you are to some degree a subject yourself (even if readers have to be interested enough to dig you out).

The interviewer is quite invisible in the interviews under such straplines as Relationships in women’s magazines. Stories can be described as ‘As Told To’, about romance achieved out of Internet dating, for example, or about an adoption that had an inspiring message. Similarly there’s the case studies format: double-page spreads cover such TOTs as three women who suffered mightily from painkillers (‘A painkiller nearly killed me’ in Woman), each briefly introduced by the writer, with highly relevant statistics in boxes. In these ways we feel we’re being spoken to straight from the heart. Nevertheless the input from the interviewer may have been considerable.

The essential tasks are to order the material of your interview so that it will achieve clarity and maximum impact. That is rarely the order of the questions, which has to allow for informality, for some digression and the natural tendency of a conversation to be discursive rather than logically structured. Most obviously (to repeat) you don’t start with the normal gentle warming up exchanges of the discussion but with something extracted from it that defies you to turn the page.

We’ll look more closely now at the two formats that offer most scope: the Q-and-A and the narrative. Whichever of these is used, there is room for experiment as well as the need to create a satisfying structure. The essential principle is to be fair to your subjects and to reveal what it is about them that your readers want to know.

Q-and-A

The Q-and-A format is used for a serious debate leaving out personalities, but it is also used as a way of ensuring that the interviewee is centre stage. At any level debates, discussions or more casual conversations may be preceded by an introduction to the interviewee with perhaps some back story, descriptions of clothes, appearance, setting and writer’s comments that would otherwise be difficult to incorporate in the dialogue.

Popular magazines use the Q-and-A format for fast-moving, concise accounts of a person’s views, a standfirst or a brief paragraph serving for the introduction. FHM has an interview with Ray Liotta under ‘The Narc [film]star on Grand Theft Auto [voice-over on computer game], receiving horses’ heads and touching beating hearts …’ and She does Harry Connick Junior under ‘The 36-year-old king of swing talks to She about his new comedy role, family life and why his wife couldn’t care less about his on-screen loves’.

Some interviewers use the Q-and-A format to get closer to the interviewee. The descriptive material can make an informative introduction. The feature then becomes more like the dialogue in a play, with feelings exposed.

This format doesn’t therefore guarantee that the subject is represented more objectively or more fairly than any other format, although it appears to do so. There are still all the many editing activities mentioned. Some Q-and-As, notably those that appeared over many years in Playboy and Paris Review, were several thousand words long yet distilled from several meetings and many hours of talk. The Playboy reviews were for a long time vetted and rewritten by the subjects and/or their publicists.

Let’s have a look at one or two examples of this format:

The serious debate

If you’re aiming to get inside somebody’s highly respected mind, it will be wise to have some research notes alongside your questions, ready for unexpected depths.

The interviews in the bimonthly magazine Philosophy Now, which brings philosophy down to earth, are good and entertaining examples of serious debate. The sports issue of May/June 2003 has a Q-and-A introduced by a standfirst only:

Myles Brand has just become President of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Formerly a philosophy professor, his academic research is into the nature of human action. Tim Madigan finds out how sport’s new philosopher-king sees his new job.

Since the interview covers one page only and the questions are short and deferential, one can assume that the longish answers represent the unadulterated views of the interviewee. The beginning of each answer gives the flavour of this kind of interview:

What is a philosopher like you doing in the crazy world of sport?

This is the first non-university job I have had since I was seventeen and pumping gas …

What are the biggest ethical challenges you think student-athletes face today? Have these challenges increased in recent years?

They have indeed. One good example is sports wagering …

What are your views regarding rewarding schools for their graduation rates of student-athletes?

I believe that strong incentives and strong disincentives are necessary for the current reform movement in inter-collegiate athletics to be successful …

The sportswriter Dick Vitale recently argued that student-athletes should be paid to play sports. What is your view on this?

I am opposed to pay for play …

Do you still have time to philosophize, and if so, how do you do it?

I cannot stop philosophizing. I am pathologically addicted to it …

This final answer ends:

… I expect that I will expand my interests to philosophical issues in cultural studies. So, rather than diminish, my philosophical interests are likely to broaden and deepen.

On the following page there are comments by two contributors on points raised by the interview and finally readers are asked to give their opinions about what is cheating and what is an unfair advantage.

The Q-and-A profile

This combines several formats in one with the aim of being comprehensive; the life story as well as the now. Adrian Deevoy’s account of the Canadian singer Shania Twain in GQ (August 2003) has a 1000-word preamble followed by a Q-and-A of about 2000 words.

The preamble is in the commonest narrative form, interwoven with quotes, an interview feature in itself, but stopping just before the present occasion. This means that the life story research can be pillaged for the most interesting facts and quotes. After charting her successes in recent years (34 million sales for the country-pop album Come On Over), Deevoy describes his first meeting with her – at the American Music Awards early in the year in Los Angeles. He needs a link between the end of this section and a jump back to her early struggles. He does it like this:

… As Shania walked away, she pecked the air affectedly and flapped her hands in the pampered manner of a ditzy diva. In five days, this was the only sight of Shania’s inner bitch.

When asked to describe herself in one word she chooses neither ‘kittenish’ nor ‘playful’ but ‘impatient’. Others opt for ‘professional’, ‘driven’ and ‘perfectionist’. You’ll also hear ‘friendly’ and ‘fun’ but often in the same breath you get ‘inscrutable’ or ‘unreadable’.

Much of this remoteness stems from Shania’s sad and strange life. In 1987 her mother and stepfather died in a road accident leaving her, at 21, to single-handedly support her younger siblings …

When the story arrives at now we get the Q-and-A interview.

The narrative

The narrative interview has to keep moving, just as a work of fiction does, interspersing the quotes with the unfolding story and yet juggle at the same time with various insights into the subject. These insights come out of the ways of speaking, the mannerisms, the appearance, the way the subject fits into the surroundings. Note the juggling in these extracts from ‘Let your fingers do the nicking’ by Val Hennessy (no relation) in You, magazine of The Mail on Sunday. It starts with a teaser-bridge-text intro:

Old thieves never die. They simply fade away. Take veteran pickpocket, 76-year-old Rose Jones who, last spring, shuffled out of a London court on her walking-frame and announced, ‘I’ve had a good run for my money. Maybe it’s time to call it a day, though. Having to use a walking-frame means I’m not as quick on my feet as I used to be, which is a bit of a drawback in my line of business’.

The offence, on this occasion, had taken place when Rose went ‘on the binge’ in Harrods during the January sales and lifted three purses. They had yielded £50 and Rose was just hobbling gleefully into Harvey Nichols to pinch a handbag or two for luck when the law caught up with her. Faster than you can say ‘electronic eye’ two store detectives were propelling Rose, and her walking-frame, into the back room for a search.

She drew herself up to her full 4 ft 5 in. and was about to let forth a volley of verbal but, suddenly, her heart wasn’t in it. She sensed that the game was up. Harrods had been the last fling in a ‘line of business’ that has resulted in 30 convictions for pickpocketing, dating back to 1926, and a total of 20 years in prison. This time Rose got off with a conditional discharge and strict instructions to cooperate with her social worker.

A lengthy interview with a celeb will probably need to add to the juggling of some commentary, favourable or unfavourable, on points made by previous interviewers. Sting had suffered from criticism, mainly from popular papers, and McCormick in The Telegraph Magazine interview already quoted from applies himself to some of this. Seven houses in different places and the conspicuous consumption that goes with them contradicts his image as an environmental activist. The extract on page 269 continues:

‘I don’t know how to alter the paradox. I could go and live in the middle of Hampstead Heath with a blanket around me and eat grass. Maybe as a gesture that might be heroic and even considered useful.’

Actually it would probably be considered pretentious and risible, attracting the same kind of risible mockery as did his appearance in 1988 daubed in body paint alongside Amazonian Indians to draw attention to the destruction of the rainforest. Sting-baiting is practically a national pastime among British journalists. Much fun was had at his expense in 1995, for example, when it was revealed that his former accountant had siphoned off 7 million without Sting’s noticing.

‘I didn’t know how much was in the account in the first place,’ he shrugs, which seems quite reasonable when you consider that estimates of his wealth tend to vary wildly between 85 million and 200 million. ‘I really resent being on those rich lists that they keep publishing. For one thing, it’s nobody’s business how much I earn. It just makes people envious. And for another thing if you’re on the list then you see that Phil Collins has something like five million more, it makes you so f* competitive!’

He is joking, by the way. I feel duty-bound to point that out because so much can be lost between the lines when a throwaway comment is printed in hard black and white. Like the twinkle in his eyes (which are a lot warmer than might be judged from photographs). And the sudden burst of comical energy in his voice. Yet he is often described as being humourless.

That interpretation of the ‘throwaway comment’ reminds us that such comments need to be watched out for and put into context. If there are complaints about the published piece it may be unfair to point only to the words as evidence that you’ve been fair.

The hatchet job

The Queen of Mean, Lynn Barber, Interviewer of the Year in the British Press Awards more times than anyone else, has a reputation not entirely deserved but her putdowns are memorable. For example (guess who, if you don’t know):

‘I don’t want to give a cool appraisal or even be snide. I just want to boil him in oil.’

To paraphrase, a symptom of the British class system which confers undue respect on gravely talking men in pinstripe suits who are ‘uttering complete nonsense’.

‘Are you thick?’

‘She is a difficult so-and-so. What might be called a proper little madam were she not such an improper and enormous madam.’

The fact is, she gets very good answers and she strings them together to best effect. Way back in 1985 (27 October) an interview with Jimmy Boyle in the Sunday Express Magazine is a revealing example of her style and of its merits. Boyle was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1967, was released in 1982, had become an author and was running a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts in Edinburgh. Barber worries that ‘the Jimmy Boyle of the present is so respectable, so assured, so word-perfect in the lingo of social concern, it is hard to believe he is the same man …’

All this sweetness and light and universal forgiveness has the effect of making me feel more acid and I ask if he has ever read Tom Wolfe’s book Radical Chic. He hasn’t, so I explain: ‘It’s about the sort of trendy scene where you have terrorists and murderers going to cocktail parties with judges and celebrities, and being treated as celebrities themselves.’

He takes a deep breath before replying: ‘Look, let me tell you, I could move into London tomorrow but I don’t want to get into that trendy shit. There’s all these middle-class trendies and academics who think they’ve got the answer to everything, and meanwhile they just leave people on the scrapheap while they stand around having intellectual arguments. But really the only people who can find the solution is the scrapheap, and I’m right in the thick of it, working at street level. Yes, I have acquired middle-class tastes, but my roots are still in the Gorbals and I wouldn’t be doing the work I’m doing if they weren’t.’

A good answer, though any pretence of friendliness between us has now hit the dust. ‘Why are journalists so cynical?’ he keeps asking. ‘Because it’s our job to be cynical,’ I keep telling him.

Humphrey Bogart’s tip at the start of this chapter is useful. But before you become a celeb-interviewer go easy.

The profile

The variously-sourced, research-based assessment is the most fruitful kind of profile for our purpose. The present tense is often used to indicate the cuttings-based origins of quotes. Here are three variations:

1  The personal profile, average length to longer, much like the typical interview feature but drawing on various sources and sometimes various meetings rather than being based on a one-off meeting. Some are too obviously written at a distance, scissors-and-paste jobs with an overuse of material gathered from cuttings and publicists.

2  Serious, overall assessments. They may be unsigned, thus putting the publication’s authority behind it, though it is more often signed nowadays. Typical examples are those of The Observer, which has been signed for several years, The Sunday Times and New Statesman.

3  The long literary profile, notably done in The Guardian, more like an essay than a piece of journalism.

The personal profile

An example is a 3000-word profile of Elizabeth Taylor in Woman’s Own in 1985 by Donald Zec, pegged on the film star’s emergence from the Betty Ford clinic after treatment for drugs and alcohol dependence. Zec is able to enliven it by memories of a relationship going back over many years:

I remember early on in our sometimes friendly, sometimes abrasive relation, finding myself alone with her in the back seat of a Rolls, in Rome. Embalmed in the limo’s exotic upholstery, with Elizabeth Taylor looking as seductive as (to quote Burton) ‘an erotic dream’, I had the uncanny feeling that she was nestling all around me. The euphoria ended abruptly as she murmured, ‘You know you’re a shit, Donald dear.’

This unsolicited testimonial, I was to learn, stemmed from some taunt of mine printed a couple of years earlier about her role in Cleopatra. Something like – ‘57 varieties of cleavage scarcely adds up to a performance …’. For some reason she never forgot it.

The overall assessment

Liz Hurley in an unsigned profile in The Sunday Times was accounted for by:

•  Liz Hurley quotes at key moments of her career, derived from interviews

•  Quotes from others: a radio comic, an American film critic, teenage contemporaries

•  Anecdotes illustrating key moments of her life: a nose ring, being banned from pubs …

•  The liaisons with Hugh Grant and others

•  A picture of someone who is demanding, tactless, determined, ambitious, mellowing.

The anonymous writer doesn’t judge.

The New Statesman profiles are signed and concerned to balance merits and faults, approaching an elegant essay style, especially in intros. David Cox’s profile of the TV interviewer Martin Bashir begins:

The confessional interview has become the most sacred ritual of our contemporary secular religion, celebrity. At unpredictable intervals, totemic figures sanctified by fame, however acquired, bare their souls for our worshipful attention. From their quavering lips come paeans, sometimes of penitence, but more often of petulant self-justification, their credence depending heavily on the congregation’s faith. We, the laity, marvel at the utterances of these demi-gods. If we dare, we snigger a bit as well, and leave the sofa chastened, excited and slightly ashamed. (New Statesman, 6 May 2002)

Words indicating his character include ‘courteous’, ‘charismatic’, ‘elusive’, ‘pushy’, ‘therapist’, ‘diffident’, ‘self-effacing’, ‘ambition’.

The long and literary

Even more essay-like are the Guardian articles collected in Lives and Works: profiles of leading novelists, poets and playwrights edited by Annalena McAfee for Atlantic Books and Martin Amis’s The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America. These and others (see the Bibliography) are a highly recommended read when you feel you need to temper a prurient and contriving mood induced by the more journalistic kinds described above. These books contain pieces that have the length to go much deeper into the works of the subjects, with reliable and relevant insights derived from study of the lives.

Unusual formats

A final tip: after studying the interview formats of the publications you’re aiming at, look for unusual ones. Editors want what they usually want but a bit different, newer, something special that fits the subject. If you interview a writer who has a very distinctive style you may want to borrow the style for the whole of the write-up (as was once done in the typically long sentence structures of the columnist Bernard Levin). An interview with an actor who has played James Bond could be related in deadpan, ironic James Bond-speak. Sometimes it’s a good idea to send yourself up.

FOLLOWING UP

Check on the phone by reading out extracts or send your interviewee a typescript or paste extracts into an email if you’re anxious that points have not been made clearly or that there may be some misrepresentation, but don’t normally allow changes or grant subjects or publicists approval of your script.

You may need to make arrangements for your subject to be photographed. Add your subject’s contact numbers to your script in case subeditors need to follow up. Add such contact numbers to your own records as well. You may want to do future interviews with a subject or benefit from their contacts.