WILL YOU LET ME FINISH?
The media: Paul Johnson
asks if the set-piece television interview is dying
IN HIS book of reminiscences, Grand Inquisitor, which will be published next month (Weidenfeld, £14.95), Sir Robin Day quotes part of a transcript of an interview he had with the then 14th Earl of Home at the height of the Tory leadership crisis in 1963. Day's object was to discover whether Home was a contender to succeed Harold Macmillan. Home's object was to conceal his intentions. With considerable persistence, Day put the question three times, cleverly varying his angle of approach and phraseology to avoid any obvious repetition. With equal if not grea- ter ingenuity, Home gently deflected the questions; showing he was fully aware of Day's tactics throughout and was not going to fall for them. Home, a cool customer and a much more cunning fellow than he wished to appear, was not at all put out by what some called his 'ordeal'. 'It doesn't matter to me, you see', was his comment, `because I never answer a question which I don't want to.' To insiders, however, he did. Reggie Maudling, who had himself been waiting to be interviewed, 'sitting on an upturned empty orange-box', remarked as soon as Home left the studio: 'Well, Alec is obviously going to run.'
I cite this particular episode as an exam- ple of civilised political television: the interviewer pursuing a relentlesg aim but within the clear conventions of gentleman- ly discourse, the victim making skilful use of a training in parliamentary question time to avoid divulging information he wishes to remain secret — between them, incidentally producing riveting entertain- ment: I still recall that exchange. No accident that the interviewer was Day: he remains, for me, as he has been for a quarter-century, the ideal man to put a politician of any party to the question. I thought it odd that the Observer Maga- zine's series, 'The Experts' Expert', this week gave the accolade of top television interviewer to Brian Walden, instead of Day. Indeed Walden himself picked Day. It is true, of course, that Walden has had some notable successes especially with politicians, in persuading them to reveal more of their thoughts than they wished. There is a certain magic in his contorted, wriggling line of questioning which acts as a psychological key to some closed boxes. But it often does not work. I was much struck by Walden's failure with Princess Anne, where his over-eagerness to please left her in a firm and smiling possession of the field, having revealed nothing more than that she has a good deal of brain- power. Besides, it is one thing to conduct a carefully prepared, set-piece interview on Walden lines, quite another to be also available, like Day, to cross-examine pub- lic figures at any hour of the day or night, as the news breaks. No one I have seen, not even the great Richard Dimbleby, has excelled Day at combining the skills of both the news and the background inter- rogation.
Day's book contains a number of sur- prises, notably the high regard in which he is held, and to some extent continues to hold, Ted Heath. There is also a fascinat- ing analysis of what he terms the 'comba- tive manner' of Jim Callaghan when on the stand. Callaghan's successful abrasive strategy, evidently carefully thought out in advance, is an instance of the fact, which Day's book confirms at many points, that an experienced politician need have abso- lutely no fear of a television interviewer, however formidable, Day (or his pub- lisher) calls himself 'Grand Inquisitor', as though the poor little party leader is a trembling victim. But the Inquisitor was in possession of damaging material, provided by Delators, the source of which he was permitted by law to keep secret. A televi- sion interviewer who tries this tactic, by beginning a question 'People say, Prime Minister —' exposes himself to the instant counter: 'Which people say? Who says?' Few interviewers can handle this, or any other, counter-question, not least because the viewer always rallies to the side of a `victim' turning the tables. Moreover, only the most incompetent politician contrives to make himself look evasive by avoiding an answer. There must be about a hundred different ways in which an eminent politician can successfully duck a question he can't afford to answer truthfully. When I was learning how to conduct a television interview, back in the 1950s, I was told: 'Never phrase a question in such a way that the answer to it can be Yes or No.' That is excellent advice — and I am amazed how often supposedly profes- sional television interviewers today do not follow it -- but it is useless against a self-confident subject. Once, conducting a television interview with Lord Attlee, notorious for his taciturnity and monosyl- lablism, I had prepared an ample number of questions, all of which abided by this rule. But Attlee, faced with an inquiry he did not choose to respond to, merely replied: `I-Imm. What's your next ques- tion?' Nothing could be more disconcert- ing. Indeed there is something to be said for a flat, if polite, refusal. If a politician, albeit holding high public office, simply says: 'You choose to ask me that question, Sir Robin, and I choose not to answer it,' it is by no means sure that he will forfeit the sympathy of the viewer, who tends to regard many queries as vaguely improper. But most politicians merely dodge, the past-master being Harold Wilson. His varieties of evasion were infinite, my favourite being: 'I'm glad you asked me that question, Paul. But before I answer it, may I just say this.' Then followed an excursion into quite different territory, the original topic being forgotten in the wrang- le that followed.
Day thinks the value and appeal of the set-piece interview has declined in the 1980s chiefly because both Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock refuse to allow an interview to be conducted: 'The inter- viewer's questions, or attempts at ques- tions, have been treated as tiresome inter- ruptions to the impressive flow of Thatch- erite statistics or Kinnockian rhetoric.' He quotes from papers by two York Universi- ty psychologists who have made a study of how the two leaders avoid answering ques- tions. They list 21 phrases Mrs Thatcher uses to prevent questions being asked, ranging from, `no please let me go on', and, 'may I just finish?' to, 'may I now and then say a word in my own defence?' and, but please'. Actually, the last time I interviewed Mrs Thatcher she said, not once but three times, 'Bernard [Ingham] has been telling me I must keep my answers shorter,' adding however that this was difficult, 'because, you see, there is much to say'. Well, so there is, and it may be that, in devaluing the television inter- view, women — in the shape of Mrs Thatcher — are at last having a perceptible influence on politics.
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