Who is popular today?

After a journalist quoted my precise words, but didn’t convey the tone, I resolved to be more careful
A journalist called Nick, who once interviewed me for another newspaper, asked me for some help. He was putting together a webinar for some aspiring entertainment journalists, and was after my view on what, from the subject’s point of view, made for a good interviewer. I’ve been the interviewer more often than the interviewee by a factor of about 100 to one, but that didn’t stop me spouting forth. Spouting forth, of course, being the very thing interviewers are desperate for their quarry to do. For interviewees, Meghan and Harry arguably being exceptions proving the rule, spouting forth is generally to be avoided.
Being, like me, tragically eager to please is seriously risky. If a journalist was nodding along as I spoke, apparently hanging on every word, making sounds indicating their fascination with what I was saying, I found it almost impossible to stop. There was a showbiz journalist from the Sun who kind of played this in reverse. This cheeky rascal, who I’ll call Colin, because that’s his name, had a technique that enraged me, not least because it worked. It went like this: not long after I had started to talk he would stop writing, put his pen down, stare out of the window and even perhaps stifle a little yawn: a study in boredom and disappointment. This, it was later pointed out to me by an exasperated PR man, was a deliberate ploy that I should stop falling for. Without realising it, having assumed he was bored with whatever I was coming out with, I would start saying ever more risky things until he began to look interested. Fatal. Continue reading...