How to Give Good Interview
Media trainers coach normal people, usually businesspeople, sometimes footballers (the stories I could tell- if I cared enough about football to remember any of their names) sometimes civil servants, occasionally academics and other folks to do something completely out of their comfort zone which is to be interviewed by journalists.
I enjoyed the work but noticed a few common things about my clients that might be a warning for anyone ever being interviewed on telly particularly. Here are some of the pieces of advice that you would normally pay top dollar for but are actually very common sense.
1. Before the interview empty your pockets of anything you can click or jingle. Even if you don’t consider yourself a clicker or a jingler, or even a clacker or a jangler, you will instantly become one when the recording starts. This applies especially to blokes. If you’re in a head and shoulders tight camera shot, you’ll sound like you are jingling or clicking like a malfunctioning android. But even worse, if you are in a medium shot showing most of your torso, you’ll look like you are playing with your genitalia. Either isn’t good for your image, I suspect.
2. Not every journalist is Jeremy Paxman or John Humphries. Most are just asking you straightforward questions and you are probably not a politician trying to cover up the fact that you got your mistress pregnant the day you tabled a White Paper on “Family Values”. So when you are asked a question like “What led up to the incident”, don’t answer it by saying “Unfortunately that is a matter of national security and cannot be discussed at this time, but what I can say is how we are working together to provide a better future for everyone at the company and …..etc, etc” Just answer the flipping question, will ya? And remember people hate politicians, and the reason they hate them is because they use flannelly answers in interviews and are a bunch of liars. They should not be your role models. Check out the monumental interview by Jeremy Paxman and Michael Howerd on Newsnight if you want an extreme example of not answering the question. This is one of my favourite pieces of telly ever. Short version is here for the full interview is available on You Tube as well for those of you slumming it today.
3. Don’t look at the camera…fool! (Slaps forehead) Just look at the interviewer. No..keep looking at him, don’t take a sneaky wee peak into the lens of the camera, no not even a wee one, just stop it. Don’t think about the camera, don’t speak to it, don’t refer to it, don’t do a wee message to the “viewers out there” and please don’t talk to the cameraman afterwards about how you’re a keen amateur filmmaker and how much would one of “these babies” cost. Just do your interview and get on with it.
4. Don’t freak youself out by worrying about what the interviewer is going to ask you. If you’ve just had a fire in your building, that’s what you’ll be asked about. You won’t be asked about matters of political policy in Paraguay. And if you are, then point out that maybe the journalist might have taken a wrong turn at the roundabout. One of the most beautiful examples of this is here, I suppose but it’s an extreme example I put in just for fun. It’s the man who took a wrong turning straight into a BBC News 24 studio. when he was really only applying for a job and was mistaken for the correct interviewee. I think the word you are looking for is “bless”.
So there’s four things for free. And the reason I mention them is a ham fisted way of introducing an interview I gave about this blog to The Pakistani Spectator yesterday. Some of you lot are even mentioned in it. Happily for me it is only in print, so you can’t see whether I take my own advice or not.
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The Accidental Ambulance Chaser
Bizarrely, I am on the books for reporters for BBC News. It’s nothing to get excited about though. John Simpson’s job is safe and the country is protected from the widespread distribution of the type of ill-informed devil-may-care hyperbole so evident in the pages of the Misssives.
It seems that I am destined to benefit from the Beeb only where death is concerned. In fact, they may have even filed my name under “Use Only in Tragic Situations”.
They have only used me twice in 12 years. To explain; to them, I am a mere stringer . A stringer is used for interviews and gathering some cover footage which some BBC reporter will incorporate into and voice over the report you see on yer actual telly.
The two incidents I was used for were the death of Princess Diana and the death of the Queen Mum.
As I’m sure everyone will recall, the media hysteria over Diana’s death was getting a tad ridiculous in the week between death and funeral.
The news programmes were running out of stuff to say and show, yet they still seemed to have the remit of cramming their half hour shows100% full of Diana related material, lest anyone thought they were being disrespectful by covering anything else.
So, somebody somewhere had the bright idea of making a montage of mourners’ views from in key places from Diana’s life all across the country.
The key place I was nearest to was possibly Diana’s most hated place other than the seat beside Camilla Parker Bowles at a polo match. It was Balmoral in Royal Deeside.
This man has property all over the world and he takes her here on her honeymoon???
An early sign of a marriage in trouble, I’d say.
Now, Scotland ain’t the most royal-loving country, but in the Royal Deeside area they are all about the royal buttkissing. This is down to two reasons:
1. They know which side their bread is buttered.
2. Most of them are in some way related to Prince Philip as apparently the place is rife with his illegitimate children.
So, off I went to point mics at people who claimed they felt a personal connection with the Queen of Hearts and I am sure the Beeb were spoilt for choice when editing the resulting, shirt-rending vox pops together. Those folk from Deeside put the traditional Scottish reserve aside and were wailing and eulogising like Gwyneth Paltrow with a statuette in her hand. It was weird, frankly.
The second job the Beeb asked me to do was to interview a lifeboatman who had been personally invited to the Queen Mother’s funeral. I was to meet the guy at Aberdeen Airport on his way to the shindig and squeeze as much info out of him as to the kind of lady the Queen Mum was. This wasn’t that easy as the bloke really couldn’t fathom out why he’d been invited in the first place, having only met the woman once. Still, I got him to say some nice things about her to keep my name in the “Use only in Tragic Circumstances” file for future jobs.
The ambulance chasing continues with this blog.
A couple of weeks ago I get my highest ever stats by a long way and creep up to the number two slot in the Scottish websites site for one reason. Sadly, it was not because I wrote an amazing post capturing the Scottish zeitgeist*, which the whole of Scotland read and congratulated me on.
No….last year I posted a piece called “Jeremy Beadle, j’ accuse!” which has a rather unsavoury joke referring to the late Mr Beadle’s withered hand at the start but otherwise, isn’t really about Jeremy at all.
A couple of weeks ago, I notice that I’ve had over 450 hits in an hour. I investigate. They are all for Beadle. I suss out something must have happened to the prankster before I even hear of his death on the radio.
At one point, in the days following the TV star’s death, I am the top Google search return for “jokes about Jeremy Beadle”. I feel utterly ashamed to be at the forefront of the inevitable office sport of quickly coming up with the sickest joke following the death of a well known person. I can only hope that Beadle’s grieving family don’t find out.
Thankfully this joke took over mine as the top Google Beadle related sick joke
Still, once again I am to benefit in a very small way from somebody’s death.
I am the Accidental Ambulance Chaser.
*what the blazes would that be? Answers in the comment box please.
Sadly, My Daddy was just A Bank-Robber
Nepotism in action, yesterday
Yes! I’m doing that Gap Year thing like a twat.
Thinking of writing a blog whilst you’re there?Yes! I figure if Misssy M can do it, then so can I!
The perhaps the Guardian might showcase it on their website?
Oh that’d be lovely! Flipping heck that was easy! I didn’t have to spend years building up a readership or anything.
What is it? Oh, will the blog have to be good? Maybe original or refreshing?
No, no that’s not a problem. It’s just, well…your Dad’s not a travel writer on first name terms with the travel editor of the paper is he?
No, my Dad works for the gas board.
Oh dear. Better sling your hook then. Get to obscurity and damn your insolence!
For those of you who haven’t seen this story already. It’s this:
A 19 year old man-boy has hugely dull and unimaginitive first blog post showcased on the Guardian Travel site. What has he done to garner such a gig? He’s got the right parents. Luckily the site’s commenters sussed this out straight away. Read the blog, but then, even better, read the comments. Some comments are evil (some Guardian site commenters make Genghis Khan look like a pussycat) but most are extremely funny.
Just a little note to all my overseas readers writing incisive, witty and dedicated blogs about life abroad. You know who you are. My dears, don’t be down about the fact that the Guardian chooses to showcase the mutterings of an annoying teenager traveling the well beaten track of Thailand courtesy of his Daddy’s connections in the travel writing game.
Don’t be annoyed that they chose to do this instead getting off their arses and actually reading any of the quality blog writing already out there with a proven track record, authenticity and readers.
Don’t be disheartened ….because poor little backpacking Max Gogarty will be lucky if he can get a letter posted without vitriolic comment when the Guardian website regulars are finished with him.
Read of the week, this. Says a lot about the media today, I think.
Read the original post here.
And then read the response from the Travel Editor who needs a kicking here.
The World’s More Full of Weeping
Where is Madeleine McCann?
Like everyone else I’ve been switching the news on every morning hoping to God that this four year old girl has been found. Madeleine is the same age as my daughter. Is there anything that strikes at the heart of society like the story of a missing child?
In today’s society we are still holding onto dreams and hopes that Madeleine has been taken by a person desperate to have a child but who is essentially looking after her. Maybe a mother who has lost their own child has taken Madeleine out of deranged grief. Maybe she has been taken by someone who has sold Madeleine to a childless couple. We hope that although stolen she is being cared for at the very least.
Out of those hopes we pray that the person who has taken her might come to their senses and leave her somewhere to be found by the police and be returned to her parents. But of course underneath we all fear the worst, but we don’t even want to say the P or the M words, as if it’s tempting fate. We just can’t go there yet.
The McCanns’ attempts to keep the Madeleine “story” on the front page is all they can do to have some measure of control over the situation. The more they do to get the cameras clicking, the more column inches will be devoted to their daughter and the more her image will stay in the public eye. They have been orchestrating press conferences, daily photo opportunities masquerading as walks along the beach and to church.
Yesterday they generated even more press by visiting the Pope. Visiting the Pope, of course won’t directly help find Madeleine ,but it will guarantee that the McCanns stay on the front pages for another day at least.
It is a brave step they are taking in conducting this massive media campaign. Keeping it together whilst watched by the media must be incredibly difficult. Having to face the undoubted questions about their actions on the night Madeleine was taken must be even worse. We have all asked ourselves the question, “Would I have left my three children alone in an apartment?” Some people have been less than kind in their responses.
If the person who has stolen Madeleine ever thought about giving themselves up, the intense media coverage may just be the reason they have decided not to come forward so far. What if this person realises they have made a mistake? What if they are ill and mentally unstable anyway?
See the Madeleine McCann site here:
