A Curious Career
Lynn Barber
Bloomsbury
R399
Pp 211
IN THIS slim but delightful memoir, famous British journalist (read celebrity interviewer) Lynn Barber writes that as a child growing up in the 1950s, her ambition was to be ?some sort of writer, probably a novelist?, but that her hobby ?was being nosy?. Little did she know then that she would make a long, successful career out of being nosy!
For Barber, who has never been shy of asking ?peculiar? questions?a skill honed during childhood?has interrogated a host of celebrities from politicians, musicians, artists and writers through her career, as she worked for Penthouse magazine, Sunday Express, Independent on Sunday, Vanity Fair, Observer and Sunday Times. As she writes: ?This became my career: asking questions that other people wanted to know the answers to but were too embarrassed to ask.?
At Penthouse, her duties included, among other things, interviewing people with unusual sexual tastes, people who were foot fetishists, voyeurs, transvestites and men who liked wearing nappies??…as an interviewer, I started at the bottom?.
But then, it was ?good training?, and she learnt to use a tape recorder?she always carried two. Her memoirs are a wonderful lesson on what an interviewer should be: curious, fearless, hardworking and intelligent. Being sceptical helps too.
For Barber, who has earned the name ?Demon?, a boring interviewee is a no-no. ?Give me a monster everytime?someone who throws tantrums, hurls insults, storms out and generally creates mayhem.? In that, her 2001 interview of singer and actor Marianne Faithfull stands out. After being made to wait for several hours, and as Faithfull flitted between charm and hostility, Barber admits that the question ?that was spinning round my head the whole time was: who does she think she is? She is a singer with one good album, an actress with one or two good films. Really, her main claim to fame is that she was Mick Jagger?s girlfriend in the 60s?.
For Barber, ?actors are difficult to interview…the trouble is they?re so fluent?. She tells us about her first trip to Hollywood in 1983 to interview actor James Stewart. He was 75 years old and retired, but four of his Hitchcock films were being reissued and so the interview. ?He was as lovely as everyone said he would be, but he refused to be photographed??It upsets the fans… If you look old, it makes them feel old?.?
For tennis fans?Rafael Nadal?s fans to be precise?her Rafa interview resulted in furious emails and tweets. ?I didn?t find him lovely at all?, she wrote in her Sunday Times interview of 2011. Actually, says Barber, no one can understand whether he is lovely or not because he ?lives within this tight stockade of team Rafa, and sticks to the script his minders have written for him?.
The interview that is surely the highlight is the one with journalist/writer Christopher Hitchens shortly before he died of inoperable oesophagal cancer. The March 2011 piece for Sunday Times is a treat, poignant and giving us more than a glimpse into a bright mind. Asked how did he feel, Hitchens said: ?Today I feel? normal. I hope it will be true tomorrow too.? Was he still writing 1,000 words a day? ?No. Can?t do that. There are days when I can only really read.? Hitchens told her the worst thing about the disease was that he had become housebound by fatigue. Usually, Hitchens would be on the first plane to the troubled areas of the world: Libya, Syria, Egypt. Asked why he was always so eager to fly into dangerous zones, Hitchens quipped: ?The flight from ennui.
I hate being bored. I?d rather go to a collapsing country than just sit around.?
Barber says she made a ?long, curious career? out of being interested in other people?s lives. Thank god for that, her interviews have kept her readers entertained.
Sudipta Datta is a freelancer