What to ask a famous person

My tips for celebrity interviewing, honed over years

This week saw me interviewing, if not Britain’s nicest chap, then certainly a National Treasure, namely Sir Michael Palin, all about his latest Channel Five travel show, a three programme series on Nigeria.

Me and a National Treasure. Do not ever take selfies with your interviewees, however. Bad form.

The highlights of that will be coming to you via the Radio Times in due course, but after the interview I hung around for a chat, as you do, largely because he was so delightful and his airy study so comfy that it seemed wrong to simply rush away.

In the course of general conversation I told him I had come from an earlier appointment at Clapton Girls’ Academy, a large secondary school in Hackney, where I had been talking to Years 12 and 13 (basically the entire Sixth Form, in old money), about Being a Journalist. My talk was courtesy of a booking by Speakers For Schools, the charity founded by politics hack Robert Peston, which aims to get a huge roster of speakers from varying backgrounds and professional areas into state schools across the UK.

What a great morning. What great questions from the young women. My top line? “You won’t make a fortune but you will have a fascinating time, and you will find you have a passport to go anywhere and ask anything.”

Inter alia, I gave my audience my Top Tips for interviewing celebrities. “What were the top tips?” asked Palin, who had just been an unwitting recipient of the formula. He was fascinated. It is a format honed by me over years of experience with red carpet types.

Firstly, turn up on time. As someone, probably Woody Allen, said during the time before he was cancelled, “90% of success is turning up.” And turn up, having done your homework. If you are interviewing a celebrity or creative about his or her film, make sure you see the film. Or have read the book, seen the play, etc. Make sure you show off about that, dropping comments about it as you go. You’d think this would be an obvious thing to do, but it’s amazing how many people sort of forget about it in their excitement. It’s not about you. It’s about them, and what you can get out of them. If you annoy them by clearly not having seen their work, they won’t give you very much.

Second. Do not make stuff up. Here I usually tell a story about interviewing Kirsty Allsopp on tape during which she told me she employed two nannies for her children. No problem, I said, and mentioned this fact in the subsequent piece. Allsopp, not happy, took to social media to complain I had invented detail. Millard, not happy with such slander, reminded her of the recording device in plain sight. Minutes later, the post on social media mysteriously disappeared. However, I thought that my student audience wouldn’t care that much about this anecdote, so I replaced it with one about interviewing someone I met during a search for the Loch Ness Monster who was called Mary Christmas (fact). “Life is so funny and odd, you don’t need to make anything up,” I said.

Do not cry. Crying at work is always a very bad idea. Sometimes you can’t help it, but it is to be avoided. If you are the cryer, your actions put a huge pressure on the cryee. I interviewed Terence Conran once. He was lovely but in the midst of the interview, he suddenly broke down. It was awful.

Listen to your interviewee, but don’t forget to ask that question. You are (probably) never going to meet this person again. Am I happy I asked Prince who his favourite Spice Girl was? You betcha. Also, remember to ask that particular question that your editor told you to ask. You may not think it’s a great question, but editors will look for it in your copy.

This approach, or something like it, won’t get you anywhere

Do not be rude. Telling an elderly chap at a classical music concert in the Queen Elizabeth Hall to stop eating his sandwich during the concert was a really bad idea when my interviewee, the eminent flautist Martin Feinstein,  revealed after the concert that said man, by then standing next to us backstage, was his father. Eek!

Read the email. All the way to the end. Arriving at the Whitechapel Gallery for a Goose Banquet with the entire British art world was great, until several glasses later, the director casually asked if I was excited about giving the Key Note Address, about The Art Market and Terrorism,  between the starter and the main course. At which point, I nearly fainted. That was a bad, bad moment. It even shocked my student audience. “If you are suddenly called on to say something in public,” I said, “just get up and say anything. With conviction. Most people will think you have said something and will be content.” The Goose Banquet experience is evidence that this theory has something to it.

Do not act as a fan. You are not a fan. Well, you might be a fan at other times, but not at this particular moment.  You are a journalist, and your role is to get at the truth, and not to take selfies, tell your interviewee how great they are, mention that your mum likes him/her, and so on. This rule can of course be broken, I said, smiling, to Michael Palin, as I took the selfie evinced at the start of this piece, and told him how fab he was.

Do not have imposter syndrome. This was perhaps the most important thing I wanted to impart to my audience. If you are a journalist, I told them, you have every right to be there and to ask what you need to know.

Oh Bear Grylls when can I interview you again?

However, do accept cups of tea from your interviewee. I once interviewed Bear Grylls in a sodden Swedish marsh during a Scout Jamboree. He was late, I was cross. “I’m going to give that man what for,” I thought, as I waited amid a cloud burst. “Bloody Bear. Bloody Old Etonian. I don’t care that he skinned a rabbit with Obama, or whatever.” Bear turns up. Turns to his entourage. “Bring this woman a cup of tea,” he commands. Putty in his hands. I still think he’s great.

Years 12 and 13 from Clapton Girls’ listened and laughed and put their hands up and asked questions. At the end, a young woman came up to me. “Before, I didn’t think journalism would be for me,” she said. “But having heard you speaking, I think I would like to try it out.” Honestly, it was a feeling even better than meeting Michael Palin, and that felt pretty good.