The essence of a successful chat show is: a) be well briefed; b) you must be interested in people before you can interview them; c) listen. I have had a lot of difficult guests -
Robert Mitchum was one - and if I hadn't done my research properly it would have been awful. There is no substitute for research. You have to know the background. You're only as good as your research team. The interviews I did on
Sunday, Sunday (1982) with people such as
Audrey Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart (
James Stewart) were great because the researcher had done a proper interview in person beforehand and found anecdotes. Jimmy told my researcher a great one about how his father hated him being an actor and how he only found out that he had accepted it when he saw that his father had put his Oscar on show on top of his bacon slicer. He repeated it on TV with me. One or two seconds of silence seems like a lifetime. Your inclination is to leap in and fill the gap. In Mitchum's case I got brave and didn't and, once the silence was created, he came out of his shell. Then there was the occasion when
Freddie Starr burst through the set - which was hysterical. When something like that happens, laugh, join in. As he moved his chair closer to me with each question, I moved mine closer too until I was practically sitting on his lap. In the end you look an idiot if you try to fight this sort of thing.
