[originaltext] (I -- Interviewer; M -- Michael)I: With all your experience of

(I -- Interviewer; M -- Michael)
I: With all your experience of interviewing, Michael, how can you tell if somebody is going to make a good interviewer?
M: Oh, I say, what a question! I’ve never been asked that before. Um...I think that the prerequisite obviously is curiosity; I think that’s the, er, a natural one, not an assumed one. I think the people who have um done my job, and the graveyard of the BBC is littered with them, their tombstones are there, you know, who failed, have been because basically they’ve not been journalists. Um, my training was in journalism, I’ve been 26 years a journalist and, er, to be a journalist argues that you like meeting people to start with, and also you want to find out about them. So that’s the prerequisite. After that, I think there’s something else coming into it, into play, and I think again, most successful journalists have it. It’s a curious kind of affinity with people; it’s an ability to get on with people; it’s a kind of body warmth, if you like. If you knew the secret of it and could bottle it and sell it, you’d make a fortune.
I: When you’ve done an interview yourself, how do you feel whether it’s been a good interview or not good interview?
M: I can never really er tell on air. I have to watch it back, because television depends so much on your director getting the right shot, the right reaction -- you can’t; it’s amazing. Sometimes I think "Oh, that’s a boring interview" and just because of the way my director shot it, and shot reaction, he’s composed a picture that’s made it far more interesting than it actually was.
I: How do you bring out the best in people? Because you always seem to manage to, not only relax them, but somehow get right into the depths of them.
M: By research. By knowing when you go into a television studio, more about the guest in front of you than they’ve forgotten about themselves. And, I mean that’s pure research. I mean, you probably use, in a 20-minute interview, I probably use, oh, a 20th of the int...of the research material that I’ve absorbed, but that’s what you’ve got to have to do. I mean I once interviewed Robert Mitchum for 75-minutes and the longest reply I got from him was "yes". And that, that’s the only time I’ve used every ounce of research and every question that I’ve ever thought of, and a few that I hadn’t thought of as well. But that really is the answer -- it’s research. When people say to you, you know, "Oh you go out and wing it." I mean that’s nonsense. If anybody ever tries to tell you that as an interviewer just starting, that you wing it, there’s no such thing. It’s all preparation; it’s knowing exactly what you’re going to do at any given point and knowing what you want from the person.
I: And does that include sticking to written questions or do you deviate?
M: No, I mean what you do is you have an aide memoir, I have. My, my list of questions aren’t questions as such; they’re areas that I block out, and indeed, I can’t remember, I can’t recall, apart from the aforesaid Mr. Mitchum experience, when I’ve ever stuck to that at all. Because, quite often you’ll find that they spin off into areas that you’ve not really thought about and perhaps it’s worth pursuing sometimes. The job is very much like, actually, a traffic cop; you’re like you’re on point duty and you’re, you know when you’re directing the flow of traffic, well you’re directing the flow of conversation, that’s basically what you’re doing, when you’re doing a talk-show, in my view.
I: Have you got a last word of encouragement for any young people setting out on what they’d like to be a career as an interviewer?
M: I, I, envy them, I mean, I really do. I mean I’d go back and do it all again. I think it’s the most perfect job for any young person who’s got talent and ambition and energy. And the nice thing about it is that the proportion of talent is indeed only 5 per cent. The other 95 per cent is energy and no examinations to pass. I’d love to do it over again.