What makes a good interview?

By Gavin Esler BBC Newsnight

The secret of a good interview is rather like the secret of a good meal: take the best possible ingredients and stir.

What are the right ingredients for a good Newsnight interview?

But when interviews go wrong - as they sometimes do - it can be impossible to predict.

One recent disaster, which was not broadcast, involved me interviewing for 20 minutes the leader of a Very Important Country in the Middle East. Tact and diplomacy means that I won't give away which one.

I asked my first question, which was translated for the country's leader. He then began talking - and talking - and talking - without hesitation or taking a breath, for around 10 minutes in a language I do not understand.

What invigorated Mark E Smith's tribute to John Peel was his decision at one point to move towards the camera as if he was going to lick it

I tried to interrupt, but since the translator was waiting for a pause to begin telling me what the Great Man was saying, things became rather difficult.

When the Great Man paused, the translator started to offer a few words in English, but before he could finish the first sentence the Great Man started up again and talked over him.

At the end, he stood up and walked out. I told the officials from the country involved that we were not in the business of broadcasting sermons or lectures and that the Great Man could either consent to be interviewed properly or could talk to himself. The "interview" was going in the bin.

A very vigorous discussion ensued. I am not sure whether the Great Man will grant us another interview, but then I am not sure either that I want one.

I am the DJ

Perhaps the most memorable of the Not Entirely As Planned interviews I have done recently for Newsnight was with Mark E Smith at the time of the death of the broadcaster, John Peel.

Watch the interview

Smith was in Manchester, I was in London, and it was live. What invigorated Mark E Smith's tribute to John Peel was his decision at one point to move towards the camera as if he was going to lick it, and to respond to my questions by saying: "Are you the DJ now? Are you the DJ now?"

I had to admit that, indeed, if it pleased him to think of it that way, I was indeed the DJ.

The interview - which for a time had a cult following on the internet - didn't entirely work as I'd hoped, but I know that from somewhere up in Heaven John Peel was looking down and loving it.

Laughter and tears

Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

The ones which do work can do so in very different ways. Last summer, for example, I had the pleasure of interviewing the former President of Iran, President Rafsanjani, in Teheran, and a few days later, of interviewing Jane Fonda.

I'm proud to say that I made the mullah laugh, and Jane Fonda cry.

President Rafsanjani clearly enjoyed being challenged about Iran's flawed democracy - he responded by suggesting that Americans and British people were pretty apathetic about voting systems in the west and we had nothing to lecture Iran about.

His good humour shone through both the language barrier (he spoke in Farsi) and the difficult areas of the interview. I confess that I liked him - as indeed I like most Iranians.

Jane Fonda gave a sad and revealing interview

Jane Fonda is also immensely likeable - anything but a diva. She had just published her autobiography, and I was struck by something she had written about her children. She had to buy a book of lullabies and nursery rhymes, she said, because she did not know any of the words.

"That's the saddest thing I have ever read," I commented. She began to cry as she admitted that despite her famous father, Henry Fonda, and Hollywood childhood, no one had ever sung her a lullaby. How sad. And how revealing.

Memorable

Among the most memorable interviews, however, have been with senior world leaders who show their human side.

The 'extraordinary' Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton, whom I got to know even before he ran for the US presidency, was always extraordinary. One day I had an interview scheduled in the White House at 2pm. We set up the lights and two cameras in the Roosevelt room amid some very fussy White House staff.

At exactly 2pm someone flicked a switch and we blew out all the lights. Panic! BBC destroys White House electrical system!

"Don't worry! Don't worry!" I called out, to calm the team. "I have interviewed him many times - and he's always late!" Just as the words left my lips a big man in a blue suit opened the door and said in an unmistakeable Arkansas drawl:

"Late? Who's always late?"

And finally

This is an indelible memory - Margaret Thatcher. We were in a room in Houston, Texas. A man from Another Television Network interviewed the then Prime Minister immediately before me. When he finished I sat down and started my interview - but the other fellow, who had an urgent deadline, was trapped in a corner of the room.

Unable to leave without ruining my interview, he grabbed the tape of his interview and tried to pad out on his hands and knees behind the Prime Minister. Mrs Thatcher - who was lecturing me on the merits of the Special Relationship with the United States - stopped in mid flow.

"Oh do get up off the floor, you stupid boy," she said. The man from the Other Television Network flushed bright red. But he did what he was told.