Lynn Barber's Celebrity Masterclass The Culture Show

Lynn Barber has been interviewing celebrity for over three decades.

She's done everyone, film stars, ballet dances, politicians, pop

stars, sports stars, writers, artists, you name it. Her revealing

audacious articles have made her one of the most admired and feared

journalists in the country. Does that look OK, or does it is look

peculiar? She is renowned for asking the questions no-one else dare ask.

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, they call her. You won't be able to

smoke that cigarette. Not on the television. Will you have to go

outside. You can't stop me smoking in my own house. You can

Newspapers sometimes ran interviews with famous people. Againly

politicians. Always in the news context. The what are your plans, Mr

Prime Minister? Is the idea of asking famous people nosy questions

about their personal life hasn't yet been invented. I was fortunate to

come along at just the right time. Who was the most difficult

interviewee you ever had? Well, it depends how you mean "difficult."

For me, a difficult interview is a perfectly nice, sane chap, liable

Michael P -- -- like Michael Palin. Where everything he says is sensible

and nice. If you mean "difficult" as in badly behaved, Alan Sugar was

pretty difficult. Certainly, staggeringly rude. Salvador Dali

Roald Dahl was shouty. Another very shouty one was Richard Harris, the

actor. I said "you are vain, aren't you?" He sort of ran around this

hotel lobby saying "do I look vain?!" . You are not phased by any

of this stuff? No. I then go into teen mode where I fight back. Those

sort of people can't cope with a soft response. An argue meantive one

is quite good. Most journalists of Lynn's generation started their

careers in provincial newspapers. Not Lynn. When she graduated from

Oxford in 1966, she went to Penthouse, to work for the soft porn

entrepreneur, Bob Guccioni. My duties at Penthouse including, among

other things, interviewing people with unusual sexual tastes. These

people were not celebs, they were foot fetchishists, voyeurs,

transvestites. It was actually good training. Learning to ask open ended

questions, designed to draw people out. It was very important not to

say, "then you did what?" Not to show disgust or embarrassment but

just keep on listening, Del me more show disgust or embarrassment but

- why did you find am pewees so attractive. Your a family were

slightly embarrassed by the fact you were working for Penthouse? Yes, my

family were. I didn't really care. Have you always been nosy?

Incredibly nosy. I still am, you know I think that is very much to do

with being an only child. In a sort of isolated family. My parents

didn't have any family or friends who ever came to the house. What I

was really nosy about was how other families were. I think - what is it

like having a brother, it must be strange? And things like - does your

father ever shout at your mother? I gather your father shouted at you? A

lot. Is that why you are beyond humiliation? Yes. I wouldn't quite

put it like "humiliation", I'm embarrassment proof. If I'm in an

interview and somebody loses their temper and starts shouting at me. I

feel quite cosy with that. I mean, it doesn't sort of freak me out at

all. It was when she was at Penthouse that Lynn landed her first

big celebrity profile. In 1969, Guccione sent to Paris to

interviewed with surrealist painter, Salvador Dali. I went over to

interview him at the Hotel Maurice, that is where he always stayed in

Paris. He liked having this retinue, that just sort of gathered. He would

say, you know, "this girl has come from England to interview me, come

and watch her". That was a bit disconcerting. I said, "I have to

get the plane home" he said, "no, no, we will do some more

interviewing. I haven't said the important things yet. I just hung

around there for about four or five days. It was such fun. To have that

as my first celebrity interview it rob blade gave me a somewhat over

rose-coloured idea of what fun it was and how easy it was to interview

celebrity. Another time Guccione sent me to Ravello Italy to

interview Gore Vidal. Vidal virtually interviewed himself.

Telling a well-honed string of anecdotes. But I noticed that when

the tape ran out in the middle of of an anecdote he stopped and waited

while I turned the tape over. No point in wasting a good anecdote on

a silly girl when it was intended for the world! Please welcome, Lynn

Barber. After seven giggy years at Penthouse, Lynn took a break from

journalism to have children and write books, including this one, ,

How to Improve Your Man in Bed. It says here, "never tell him that his

penis is too small." It's all good advice! In 1982, Lynn joined the

Sunday Express. One of her first assignment was a profile of her old

boss, Bob Guccioni. It was at this point that she began to hone her

distinctive style of writing in the first person. I thought, I can't

write this as though I'm just a reporter meeting Guccione. For the

first time. It felt like writing the truth, finally. It also felt much

livelier and more interesting than anything I had written so far. Have

you never thought, celebs are so predictable, what about interviewing

really interesting people? Such as? Such as a brilliant neurologist or

whatever, someone whose name no-one has ever heard of No. Well, people -

actually people don't usually say that to me. They say, why don't you

interview real people? My postman has this extraordinary history. Why

don't you I like that sort of gloss of stardom. I like the fact that

they are tall poppies. I notice when I'm sort of looking up what's on

Desert Island Discs, if it's a neuroscientist, oh, no. If it's a

comedian, I'm always there agog. I think that is just my natural,

shallow taste, actually. Shallow or not. A string of eye-catching and

provocative profiles in the 1980s made Lynn Barber one of the most

talked about names on Fleet Street. In 1990, she became the celebrity

interview for the independent on Sunday. Since then she has written

for Vanity Fair, The Sunday Telegraph and the Observer. With six

British press awards behind her, she now writes for the Sunday Times. Why

would anyone agree to be interviewed by you particularly because you were

referred to, after you went to the Independent on the Sunday as the

Demon Barber? Yes. I think it was almost chance that when I started at

the Independent on Sunday I just happened to do three or four hatchet

jobs, one after the other. I hadn't planned it, you know. For instance,

one of them was Melvin Bragg, who I went thinking I'd like. Of course

the hatchet jobs were the ones that the readers noticed and got a lot of

publicity and attention. The one that really upset people was asking

Jimmy Savile if he liked little girls, you know. He had just got a

knighthood and readers complained that, here is this wonderful man,

who has raised millions for charity and just been knighted, how dare you

ask him if he likes little girls, you know. At least I asked! Can I

have a cigarette? All right. Yes, let us have a break. Do you ever

feel, I have to leave the room and go and have a f a g. I have

occasionally done that. The reason I got on with Rhys Ifans quite so

well. We were supposedly having lunch and we were going out the door

every five minute have a cigarette so is that was a happy bonding

experience. I tend to get on with people who smoke and with people who

drink fairly well. Some people have said - I expected you to be

fiercesome and you weren't at all. I think I should have been a bit more

fearsome. But, you know, I don't know. At some point in the early

noughties I got hooked on Meat Loaf and could never drive anywhere

without playing bat out much hel. I loved his voice, but also the fact

that he was middle-aged, dishevelled, hugely overweight. So

next time we had an ideas meeting I dishevelled, hugely overweight. So

said I'd like to interview Meat Loaf. They all looked at me, "why"!

I said, "I'm a fan of his music, I think he must be an interesting

man." Boy, was I wrong! He is very keen on golf, which, as far as I'm

concerned, means outside the realms of interesting, just like that. The

man I met was a grumpy old codger who barely said elhello before

launching into a great tie raid about the iniquities of British

journalists and how they always get their facts wrong. That was an

awkward one for me because I'd sold the idea of Meat Loaf as worth

interviewing. So I can't just come back and say - he's so boring,

forget it. He had written an autobiography a few years earlier. I

got stories and bits from out of his autobiography. He didn't actually

saying anything interesting, I don't think, at the time. It's rare for me

to do that. But I had to in that case. Half way through filming, Lynn

took me off to Golders Green, of all case. Half way through filming, Lynn

places. This is where she researchers her interviewees.

places. This is where she cuttings library, the likes of which

places. This is where she you've never seen before and you'll

never see again. You have been coming here for how many years?

Probably coming here since the 1980s, I also used her before that

when I was at Penthouse Magazine. The archive is vun by the amazing

911-year-old, Edda Tasiemka -- 91-year-old. Come in. How are you?

Is Do come in. This is Alan Yentob. How long have you been collecting?

About half a century. Half a century. Yes. You are a compete

orror to Google and Amazon. Never heard of them! Never heard of them?

Is I gather there is more and more and more, can you take us through? I

have stuff everywhere. After you. Follow me. We are following you.

Yes. Up stairs. Up, up, up. Oh, gosh. Footballers are in the loo.

You can sit here quietly and read up on a footballer. Theefrjts are

sport. Boxing, athletics. Tennis. Somebody wanted Gary Lineker. That

is a big file on him. All this here it's art, England. Jacob Epstein,

Lucian Freud. What have we in here? This is all showbusiness people. Oh,

great. You know what I found here? It's Lynn Barber. I wonder who she

is. How did she get here? I don't know. She is worthy of a file. Not

as big as some? No, it's not. Quite quite David Beckham style. Muhammad

Ali. Not bad. No. That is a nice fat file. Thank you. Yes. Have awe look.

Do you mind if we open the Lynn Barber file. No. That is the movie

An Education. The Demon Barber. The Barber in the Chair. You got your

reputation for hatchet jobs and damaging people? I suppose, yeah.

There you are, with the fag in your mouth, as ever. Yeah. Let us put the

Lynn Barber file to one side. Here's something interesting. This must be

the notorious -- Marianne Faithful. Marianne Faithful certificate

interview. That was in 2001. She behaved so badly. I came out of this

interview thinking, "I'm walking on air. I can't wait to write

everything that happened." You know, she was shouting at me. Her

boyfriend was shouting at me. Then we went to a restaurant, were she

shouted at the waiters. It was just a sort of jangling, horrible scene

which I was keen to write about. You sound a bit like a predator. Yeah.

Are you? Not particularly - I wouldn't have said it was a

jangling, horrible scene unless it was, but she gave me hell. So I was

able to give her hell subsequently in print. Then, here is an

interesting one. Liam Gallagher. How do you cope - he is a man who's

language is... Yes. Well, I think it was OK with him because I think he

said - I wrote it as he pronounced it was sort of fooking. Spelt

f-o-o-k-i-n-g. I didn't have a problem with that. It is a problem.

If someone says an F-word in the interview. I think you should use

it. Sunday Times doesn't like it. In my Lady Gaga piece there is a

conversation about the size of her clitoris, you know. She used the f

F-word, I wasn't allowed to do it. Mad I think. Good photo. The other

thing is, there are lots of tabloid newspapers here. I think you must

have a soft spot for the tabloid press? I do. Absolutely. I respect

the tabloids. I mean, well, you know, if there is a good celebrity

scandal. Here, I notice, is a Fergie story. Yeah. Where she met the fake

sheikh and offered to introduce him to Prince Andrew for how much?

$40,000. When it comes to issues like press freedom or the people's

freedom of the individual to be free from the tabloid press, you're not

sympathetic? Is I'm more for freedom of the press. No rules, then?

Absolutely. Hacking? I was going to say - no, not hacking. That's

illegal anyway. You don't need a special law for that. The area that

I care about is that you have got to protect the children's privacy. I

don't believe that children should suffer from having famous parents.

Something like this, legitimate public interest, I would say. I love

reading it. Don't you love reading scandal? If anyone else tells me

what a lovely lad, Rafael Nadal is, I shall scream. He is not a lad. He

has just turned 25, which is admittedly young, but he is in his

ninth year on the professional tennis circuit, has won nine Grand

Slam titles and is worth at least ?68 million. I didn't find him

lovely at all. I go into his hotel suite. He is supposedly so

exhausted. All he has done is play one short tennis match all day. He's

lying on a massage table, sort of topless, and with his trousers

undone to show his Armani thing. You think, if a woman - he's supposed be

to so polite, charming, blah, blah. If a woman my age walked into the

room of a 20-something man, who was lying on a table showing his pants,

you would think there would be a word of apology or getting up, or

something, don't you think? It's complicated he had a PR or manager

or something in the room, who was supposedly translating. I mean,

actually I think Rafael Nadal speaks perfectly good English, but if he

wanted to consult manager, he would go into Spanish, and then come back

with some completely pointless PR answer. But at least that gave me

something to write about. What about the provocation about his

girlfriend, which you kept asking him that question? Well, he had "a

girlfriend" technically who very occasionally appeared in pictures,

but was supposed to be his childhood sweetheart. Apart from anything

else, he's on the road eight-months of the year. She has a job in a bank

or something. I kept asking about his girlfriend and said, "if you

only see her 30-days a year, it can't be a very fulfilling

relationship?" Rafael Nadal for the first time in his interview seemed

to turn his full attention on me, a laser stare". For a second I can

imagine what it must be like to stand on the baseline waiting to

receive his serve. He sort of said, "what do you care about my

relationship?" I said, "well, actually I don't give a toss, but

I'm trying to write an interview here." I've never done that before,

but I was so exasperated, but that broke the ice. He was sort of a bit

more yielding after that. That is the other thing, if things happen in

an interview, that I don't understand, there's a temptation to

neaten them up for the reader and make them understandable. But

actually, I quite like to, sort of, shove it to the reader. Here's a

problem for you. I don't understand what's going on, maybe you do. You

should always try to interview people at home, says Lynn in her

book. "A trip to the loo is often ininstructive" it's where people put

their awards and cartoons, things they want visitors see, but without

too obviously showing off." A down stairs loo like this is not very

revealing because they know it's a public place. I mean really naughty

journalists try to go to the bathroom and look in their medicine

cabinets. Do you? Into the loo. OK. That is a letter from Lucian Freud.

I pestered Lucian Freud for years saying, "please, please let me

interview" that is one of his rude responses. Dear Mrs Barber, your

letter to me is based on the assumption that there is some reason

or need for you to interview or write about me. I do, as you rightly

suppose, occasionally eat something and, as a result, go the to dentist,

but that some way from agreeing to be cat on by a stranger. Sincerely

Lucian Freud." I said to him, I know you are working all the time, but

there must be some time when you have to break off to go to the

dentist or get something to eat, I'll just tag along. The fact that

he bothered, it's really good. Where do you write? At the top of the

house. I wouldn't film all the way up. It's chaos. I would have tidied

up... This is where I write. That's my current tape recorder. This is

the tape I'm currently tran scribing, which is Margaret Hodge am

There is her voice. You can hardly hear it. Well, I can. I mean, by my

standards, that's quite good. This is a very sophisticated piece of

equipment. I've got lots of tape recorders, but that's the one I've

got in current use. That's another old tape recorder, is it? Yeah. Then

I have somewhere got a wizzy, modern one. Which I take along, but I don't

trust it really. (Plays tape). That's a typical question from me.

It's short. What if they say, "I hope you're not going to use that"

Well, it's quite rare that anyone says anything that is so valuable

that you've got to fight for it. But I have sometimes done that. I think

in my interview with Shane MacGowan said something about his girlfriend

saying, she would kill her grandmother to meet someone famous.

He then asked me to take it out. I went to the girlfriend and said,

could I say this. She said it was OK by her and that it is totally true.

She is a good girl. I liked her. Yes, Lynn likes her. She loves

popstars too. The trouble is, many of the people she's asked to

interview are actors. She doesn't really like them. Oh, God, actors

are difficult to interview. The trouble is, they are so fluent. They

babble away unstoppably. You think you have quite interesting stuff.

When you tran scribe the tape and strip out all the fawny accents and

expressive gestures and the whole actory business - You realise you're

left with some very stale old anecdotes, which might work fine on

a television chat show, but not on the page. Absolutely. Ladies and

gentlemen, Meg Ryan. Actors obviously work well on chat shows,

they are used to being facially interesting and making gestures, but

that is actually fatal on the page because most anecdotes, if you tran

scribe them fully, would take about two pages. The punch line wouldn't

be worth it, you know. What I find a problem withle actors

is that their attitude is often, sort of, what do you want me to be

like? Is what I'm trying to say is, well, just be like you are.

All journalists dread the hotel circus, when a film company puts a

herd of actors in a hotel for a day to plug their new film. They expects

them to give interviews from dawn to dusk. Of course, it's an article of

faith that they never slag off the director or the other actors,

everyone they work with is always "wonderful." Though when I

interviewed Robert Redford about the Horse Whisperer he couldn't bring

himself to praise any of his fellow actors, not even the horse. Do you

write your questions out? I do have a list of questions, but I think

it's also quite important to be able to deviate from it. I certainly

don't go through them in order, but I don't know if this ever happens to

you, there is always at least one moment in an interview where my mind

goes completely blank and I often can't even remember who this person

is. At that point, it's quite useful to have a sheaf of papers to

shuffle. I always type in big letters, "Margaret Hodge or Lorde,

or whoever it is" at the top of the page, so it sort of comes back to

me. Lynn Barber has been in the interview business for over 30 years

now. Her interviewees these days are getting younger and younger. I like

the fact that they sometimes send me somebody who is famous to the young,

who I've never heard of, so I have to do a crash course in Lady Gaga or

Lorde, or whoever. The one thing I really admired about Lady Gaga, but

you probably won't let me say this, I said, "can I go on the balcony and

smoke?" She said, "oh, we can smoke in here" she expertly did something

or other with the smoke alarms. She actually knew what to do to disable

smoke alarms. I wished now that I'd asked her how you achieved that. At

this point, I'm going to have to apologise for all the smoking in

this film. I did try to stop her, but she doesn't listen. People

sometimes ask me why I'm still doing interviews, as I approach my 70th

birthday. Once in a while, when it's my third actor in a row, I might

start grumbling. Basically, the phone call from my editor, "do you

want to interview Pete Doherty, Hart Hart, Eddie Izzard, " brings a leap

of excitement into my heart. Maybe I should warn the Sunday Times that I

would never voluntarily retire. They will have to prize my gnarled

fingers from the keyboard and I will kick up an almighty fuss. That's

assuming newspapers will still exist by then.