The interview as a genre courses through modern broadcasting. Morning punch ups to late night hectoring, professional interviewers who are household names, interviewees trained to give the answer they want to give not the one we want to hear, evasive and slippery or prepared to share their deepest sorrows. People talking to each other on the radio hoping someone is listening.

It wasn’t ever thus. On Radio 4 Extra we are repeating Frankly Speaking, which to modern ears may sound frankly old fashioned. But, in 1952, when it was launched on the BBC Home Service it was a completely novel and ground breaking series; novel because instead of the traditional pairing of interviewee and interviewer there were three interviewers. And ground breaking because it was both unrehearsed and unscripted. It wasn’t however, a new idea. Frankly Speaking was based on a French programme, Qui etes-vous? What were then considered unusual and unconventional questions were designed to discover the private person behind the public veneer, to determine through cross-examination, what traits made them successful.

The first issue was this. Would the format work for a British listener? The BBC producer was Joe Weltman and he was very conscious of possible differences between French and British sensibilities. Would his guests feel comfortable with this sort of cross-examination? Would British listeners find it simply rude and discourteous? In the end Weltman took a slightly softer approach, what he described as a “looser, more discursive style which contrasts sharply with the tidy, analytical manner of the French programme…an atmosphere not quite so athletic or tense”. Despite this he still thought in terms of “judgements” and “victims”.

Guests came from far and wide to be interviewed but early reviews of the programme found it a disquieting listen, as Weltman had feared they might. Critics described it as ‘unkempt’, ‘an inquisition’, called interviewers ‘Torquemada’; they wrote of the guest as prey being cornered, quarry being pursued, and called for the end of the unscripted interview.

The Listener magazine described it as “a very risky form. Like violin-playing, unless it is very well done it stirs horribly uncomfortable feelings in the listener.”
The producer of Qui etes-vous? on hearing the English version declared that his questions would have been much more indiscreet.

Conscious of a continuing disquiet Joe Weltman wrote in the Radio Times in 1957: ‘What kind of a person have you got to be – to achieve fame and success? Is it any one kind of person?....Are we sometimes too inquisitive, too personal? Even tactless? Perhaps our ‘victims’ can answer that one. Not one of the many distinguished men and women who have appeared in the programme during nearly five years has ever made such a complaint. Instead, they usually tell us how much they have enjoyed this process of self-revelation’.

Whether it was before or after he wrote this that L.S. Lowry is said to have walked out of his interview after just a few questions saying ‘Oh let’s call it off, shall we?” as he rose to catch the train home, it is difficult to know!

In today’s over-sharing culture where we tell all to everyone all the time without even being asked, Frankly Speaking sounds very much of its time. But the deft speed at which forthright questions are often asked can catch you unaware. In this collection of episodes on Radio 4 Extra, listen to Flora Robson being asked about her looks and consider her honest response. A later episode features Gracie Fields - she is asked several times to consider how she betrayed her fans when she left for America during the Second World War.

If the aborted Lowry is one programme we shall never hear because it was never completed, there are the many others that cannot be heard because as far as we can tell copies have been lost. These include guests such as Coco the Clown, Dr Benjamin Spock, James Thurber, Rebecca West, Walt Disney, Ronald Searle, George Simenon, Joyce Grenfell and perhaps most frustratingly of all, the arch interrogator himself John Freeman. However, he can be heard as one of the interviewers on some of the surviving editions. Radio Times previews of these missing programmes hint at what was spoken of but nothing can quite compare with hearing the cadence of the voice itself, the breath taken, the elongated pause, the laugh, the interruption.

If the format was ground breaking so too was the BBC’s decision to hire often unknown or very inexperienced broadcasters as the interviewers. The first set of three were Stephen Black, a journalist and film writer, Jack Davies, secretary of Cambridge University and Charles Wilmot of the British Council. They all passed their initial test well and went onto present many other programmes in the series. Other notable interviewers, all at early stages of their broadcasting career included John Betjeman, Harold Hobson, Elizabeth Beresford (who wrote The Wombles) and Katherine Whitehorn. Anthony Wedgewood-Benn, as he was billed, took part just once. As that audio is lost we cannot know why he was never asked back or declined further bookings. As the years went on the number of interviewers sometimes went down to two and in one or two instances, for example the Brian Epstein interview, to just one.

The questions are direct and to the point, very straightforward. The inquisitors or interrogators, as they were sometimes described in those not always favourable early critiques of the programme, may have gone onto become personalities in their own right but here it is all about the guest, not them. And in the end the series won over its detractors.

 

The series has been rather neglected but there is one famous edition that is often referred to. It was the interview with Evelyn Waugh, which will be broadcast in full as part of this initial run on Radio 4 Extra. It was considered to be one of the most ill-natured interviews ever put out on air. Waugh later turned the experience into a scene in his novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold with one of his interviewers, Stephen Black, becoming the character Angel who haunts Pinfold in his hallucinations. According to Waugh’s grandson, Alexander Waugh, the writer had been under a lot of pressure at the time, drinking cocktails of bromide and crème de menthe to help him sleep. Evelyn Waugh, who had contempt for many things, particularly loathed the BBC, calling interviewers and journalists ‘electricians with their apparatus’. His grandson recalls that the interview plus the sleeping draught sent him 'rather mad'.

 

 

Frankly Speaking starts on BBC Radio 4 Extra on Tuesday 17th March at 6.30pm.

The series will feature the following people:

• Maurice Chevalier (interviewed in 1963 by Penelope Mortimer, Colin Macinnes & Carl Wildman)
• Evelyn Waugh (interviewed in 1953 by Charles Wilmo, Stephen Black & Jack Davies)
• Tennessee Williams (interviewed in 1959 by John Bowen, Peter Duval Smith & John Freeman)
• Dr Jacob Bronowski (interviewed in 1964 by Mary Stocks & John Maddox)
• Bette Davis (interviewed in 1963 by Peter Duval Smith & George Coulouris)
• Dr Mary Stocks (interviewed in 1964 by Audrey Russell & Leslie Smith)
• Brian Epstein (interviewed in 1964 by Bill Grundy)
• Harold Lloyd (interviewed in 1962 by Liam O'Leary & Peter Duval Smith)
• William Walton (interviewed in 1962 by Dilys Powell & Antony Hopkins)
• Flora Robson (interviewed in 1960 by John Freeman & Philip Hope-Wallace)
• Danny Blanchflower (interviewed in 1961 by Roger Bannister & Brian Glanville)
• Gracie Fields (interviewed in 1960 by John Freeman, Harold Hobson & Patricia Brent)

 

Last week I was in the lavatories of St George’s Church in Bristol when I came upon something really impressive. (Don’t worry it is safe to read on). It was a sign above the air dryer which said –“Please do not use when a concert is taking place”.

I was impressed because there was a considerable amount of stone flooring between the loos and the concert hall, and it would require superhuman hearing to detect the low hum of the dryer.

Perhaps superb hearing is what most Radio 3 listeners have, or else they have particularly sophisticated listening equipment.

Even from the outside, St George’s is an impressive building. Built in the 1830s just up from the Cathedral, and at the heart of Georgian Bristol, it claims to be one of the best musical venues in the country. It is certainly one of the most beautiful.

I was there to produce a feature for this week’s Feedback about what Radio 3 provides for the listener at home during the intervals of live concerts.

Audience members at St George’s popped out to the lavatories, now free to use the dryers, and picked up their drinks from the bars in the crypt, happy to chat to friends about what they thought of the concert so far. (The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment had been playing Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 4 and Cantata No 161. “Komm, du süße Todesstunde”, as part of the Bristol Baroque Festival of Music.) The Bristol audience had plenty to do but what about the audience listening at home or in the car?

On this particular evening there was to be an interval discussion in situ about Bach, featuring the concert’s conductor, John Butt, and the former Controller of Radio 3, Nicholas Kenyon. I talked to some of those involved about the features.

Many listeners told us they remember with great pleasure the interval talks given for many years by the composer Anthony Hopkins. I met the 90 year old last week and I am delighted to say that he is very well, extremely lucid, and that he got married recently. Perhaps there is more music to come.

By the way the Controller of Radio 4 will be coming on Feedback in a couple of weeks to answer your questions – so please let me have some!

Roger Bolton

 

•Listen to this week's Feedback

•Get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback website

•Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts

Forget Richard III in Leicester - my uncle once showed me the Goddess Aphrodite in Knidos. There wasn't much left of her, to be honest.

The 4th century B.C.E marble sculpture of the first life-size female nude, by the Greek artist Praxiteles, once stood proudly overlooking Turkey's Datca peninsula. One theory is that she may have been taken to a museum in Constantinople and subsequently lost in a fire. Back in Knidos, the remnants of an open air temple in which she stood remain, and there, they will stay.

As an archeologist, my uncle is a great believer in respecting the sanctity of the ancient world and sometimes, leaving things where you found them. As a child he'd take me to the Sussex Downs and kept stopping to pick up bits of flint: "Ancient axe head - early Bronze Age" he'd say, before tossing it back. He's spent his life excavating.

I went with him on a dig in Africa - we were in a cave for a week, using a small puffer brush to gently blow away surface layers of soil, to collect whatever rubbish primitive men and women threw away.

He was probably using me and some rather elderly but keen Americans to do all the hard graft. I remember one of those Americans asking him, first thing in the morning, as we were trekking back to the Swaziland cave - "Doctor? What's our itinerary?"

To which my uncle bellowed (insert your own expletives) "If you wanted an itinerary, you should have gone to Disneyland". The man laughed and shook his head in a "crazy British Professor" way. Old bones and extraordinary history on Saturday Live.

This week, we have Michael Dixon, the director of the Natural History Museum joining us. And remember we talked a few weeks ago about the Powell-Cotton museum in Kent, with hundreds of stuffed animals in it? A listener (and someone who works there) talks about one of the exhibits - a diorama of a lion killing a buffalo. It's the Thing About Him.

Another thing on the show is Len Rawle's Wurlitzer which lives in his Chorleywood living room. We’re also talking about adopted Chinese children, shipped here in the 1960s. An albino couple explain what decisions they made, when they were told that their children would have the condition and we explore Exmoor's Dunkery Beacon.

All this plus the Inheritance Tracks of popster, Katie Melua. Hope you can join us, at nine.

Listen to the programme: Saturday Live

Hear more Inheritance Tracks: Inheritance Tracks

Meryl Streep's foot and hand prints at Grauman's Chinese Theater by Loren Javier.

The venue was a small, trendy Soho hotel tucked away in a side street away from the madding crowd.

I go up the stairs past the candy pink sofas and expensive looking contemporary art. A PR person tells me Meryl is running late. She's jet-lagged and hungry so do I mind waiting while she has a sandwich. I'm shown into a comfy suite where I meet Meryl's personal make-up artist who is clearly a regular companion.

He's on the phone ordering the sandwiches. "She forgets to eat on these trips" he clucks in a maternal way. He's late 50s, grey haired, dressed in black, slightly camp but not in an over the top way. He asks us if we've seen the musical Priscilla. Apparently the make-up is stupendous. My producer, who is about to get married, gets some tips on applying false eyelashes.

After 20 minutes we are ushered along the corridor to meet Meryl.

It's dark outside and the light in the room is dim but I note that there is something luminous about her skin. The make-up is minimal, she looks almost bare faced, not a false eyelash in sight. Dressed in black trousers and a green silk top, I observe that she's smaller and thinner than I imagined, but then movies stars always seem diminished in real life, stripped on the lights, the large screen and the celluloid.

Meryl is clearly nervous, arms crossed over her chest. "I don't like radio interviews" she confesses. I wonder if she needs a camera to feel comfortable but keep that thought to myself. This is a performance for her but not one she relishes. As the interview progresses I conclude that Meryl Streep prefers to inhabit the skin of others, not her own, certainly not in front of a stranger and a journalist to boot.

We're discussing her role as Maggie Thatcher in The Iron Lady which I've seen the day before. She is nervous about the way we Brits will perceive her portrayal. It's flawless of course. The accent is pitch perfect and so is the body language; the purposeful stride made staccato by high heels, the large handbag gripped with just the right amount of force and the smile stretched rigidly across the Iron Lady's face.

Hard work goes into a performance like that. She says she locked herself in a hotel room for over a week and watched tapes of Maggie over and over again going right back to her very first TV interviews in the 1950s when she was first elected as an MP to Finchley. Her voice was very different then - higher - says Meryl who then launches into an imitation of the sort of "elocution posh" we're used to hearing in post war British films.

I point out that the film will probably upset a lot of people. The Left won't like it because it's too sympathetic and the Right won't like it because it shows Thatcher as she is now, diminished by dementia. Meryl points out it's not her job to judge. She's just trying to empathise, to slip into Thatcher's skin.

After a while I try to change the subject from the Iron Lady to Meryl Streep.

But she's not having any of it. I begin to understand why we know so little about this Hollywood star. She won't let us in. I ask how she feels about three of her four children going into showbiz. She smiles fondly "Are you asking whether I would have preferred them to become bio-chemists or doctors instead of actors?"

A big sigh follows, "I worry for my two daughters with a mother like me but they seem happy" she tails off. There's a knock on the door. My time is up. I've met Meryl Streep but then again I'm not sure...

Kirsty Lang presents Front Row on BBC Radio 4

• Tonight's Front Row with Kirsty Lang, includes an interview with Meryl Streep, who plays Margaret Thatcher in the film The Iron Lady.
• Front Row is on BBC Radio 4 at 7.15pm and shortly afterwards online.
• Sign up for the Front Row daily podcast.
• Kirsty Lang has her own blog here and is also on Twitter as @bbckirstylang.

Jo Cornish came into BH to talk to Francine Stock about his new film Attack the Block on this afternoon's Film Programme. Listen again on the Radio 4 web site and download the programme to your computer by signing up for the free podcast. Mark Kermode reviewed the film a couple of weeks ago and Joe's long-time partner Adam Buxton has mixed feelings on the Adam & Joe blog. Listen to Adam & Joe's 6 Music show tomorrow morning at 1000.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of About the BBC

You won't catch her on the television chat show circuit. She won't be touring the radio studios to plug the new album. And as for a concert, forget it. So I'm slightly thrown when my mobile rings, flashing up 'private number', and a vaguely familiar voice says "Hello John, it's Kate Bush here".

In 2005 ago she broke a 12 year silence when she spoke to me on Front Row about her album Ariel. Now Britain's most successful solo female artist is on the line with a suggestion: "Would you like to come down to my house to talk about the new record?"

I didn't take much persuading and, last week, headed to rural Berkshire. Kate was charming, funny and hospitable. She has a beautiful home, a large Georgian property shielded from the outside world by mature trees and wooden gates. She guards her privacy fiercely.

We drank tea and chatted about gardening, our kids and art. Then we sat together on a plump sofa in the sitting room and - with the digital recorder rolling - discussed her re-return to the public eye. The new record Director's Cut re-works tracks from two previous albums, The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993), to create something new, warm and intimate.

Within moments of the edited version of the interview being broadcast on Wednesday's Front Row it was clear - from the internet-buzz - that the legions of Kate Bush fans wanted more. So here's a slightly longer version of our conversation, minus the music which I mixed in for the live broadcast. I know for some Kate Bush fans it still won't be enough, that they'll want to hear every pause, evasion, stone-wall response from the interviewee. But, trust me, in this case, less is more...

John Wilson has worked as a presenter and reporter on Front Row since it started in 1998

• Follow Front Row and John Wilson on Twitter.
• The interview with Kate Bush from the broadcast programme can be heard here.

 

Awkward legend, vegetarian curmudgeon, my generation's Proust: Morrissey is on Front Row tonight at 1915. It's not his first time on the programme (listen to his previous appearance from February 2009) but it's no less dramatic for that. Broadcasting House was all aquiver this afternoon and presenter John Wilson tweeted excitedly:

 

Moz was eloquent and charming. Tells me he's finished his autobiography, 660 pages long, now redrafting. Hear interview @BBCFrontRow 7.15less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyJohn Wilson
JohnWilson14

 

and

 

Morrissey tells me he doesn't follow @Johnny_Marr on Twitter. I told him he should, he's missing out. Hear @BBCFrontRow 7.15less than a minute ago via Echofon Favorite Retweet ReplyJohn Wilson
JohnWilson14

 

Morrissey has just been confirmed for Glastonbury in June and the Hop Farm Festival in July.

Steve Bowbrick used to edit the Radio 4 blog and now edits 'About the BBC'

• Front Row, Radio 4's live arts magazine programme is on at 1915 weekdays, right after The Archers.
• Follow @BBCFrontRow and @JohnWilson14 on Twitter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ym8bb

Tony Hancock opened tonight's Archive on 4 about Face to Face, the hugely influential interview programme that ran on BBC television from 1959 to 1962. In the programme, produced by Chris Ledgard, Sue MacGregor interviews producer and creator of the programme Hugh Burnett. We learn about its presenter John Freeman - who didn't want to participate in this programme - and the many remarkable people who appeared in the Face to Face chair.

According to Wikipedia, Freeman interviewed 35 guests during the first series of Face to Face (the programme was later revived - between 1989 and 1998), only two of whom were women - Edith Sitwell and Simone Signoret. These photographs of Face to Face guests, taken during production by unnamed staff photographers, come from the BBC's picture library. The captions are just as they appear in the archive.

Listen to the programme on the Radio 4 web site and watch BBC Two's heartbreaking profile of Hancock on the iPlayer.

2. Gilbert Harding

Gilbert Harding appeared in Face To Face on 18th Sept 1960

3. Martin Luther King

Dr Martin Luther King, Minister of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, talks with producer Hugh Burnett in artist Feliks Topolski's home before taking part in BBC TV's 'Face To Face' programme on Sunday, 29th October 1961. The Negro leader in the struggle for civil rights in the Southern States of America flew to London for this special live transmisson of 'Face To Face'.

4. Edith Sitwell

On May 6th 1959 the distinguished author and poet Dame Edith Sitwell was interviewed on her life, her ideals and ambitions by John Freeman

5. Stirling Moss

Stirling Moss. World famous racing driver appeared on Face To Face with John Freeman on 12th June 1960

6. Cecil Beaton

Cecil Beaton with Felix Topolski and Hugh Burnett on 18th February 1962

7. Bertrand Russell

John Freeman, Bertrand Russell and Hugh Burnett, 4th March 1959. The last survivor of a dead epoch - this is how the distinguished philosopher describes himself. Now is his eighty-seventh year, he has used his long life to challenge the accepted ideas and conventional attitudes of the day. Lord Russell discusses with john Freeman his appearance, his achievements and his unfulfilled ambitions

8. Carl Jung

Professor Carl Gustav Jung and John Freeman in Jung's home in Zurich in 1959

9. Henry Moore

Picture shows Henry Moore being interviewed by John Freeman in 'Face To Face' (for transmission Sunday 21st February 1960). The programme moved out of its usual setting in the studio. For the first time in the series the interview was recorded by television cameras in the subject's home; in this case, Mr. Moore's studio at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire. An interview with Henry Moore is something of a rarity, for he says 'It is a mistake for the sculptor to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tensions needed for his work'.

10. John Reith

The subject of 'Face To Face' on Sunday, October 30th 1960 at 9.45pm is John Reith - first Lord Reith of Stonehaven - the man who inspired the pattern of broadcasting not only in Britain but in all the other countries which took the BBC as a model when setting up their own broadcasting systems. He was Director-General when the BBC started the world's first regular television service in 1936, but this will be the first time he has taken part in a television programme.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006slnx

Which Today programme presenter reportedly said he wants to "upset" more people?

Dead easy.

John Humphrys surely?

Well, no actually.

Step forward Mr Nice-Guy himself, the ever courteous Justin Webb, widely admired by many Feedback listeners for the way he doesn't interrupt every few seconds. Naturally he appreciates the admiration but he's gone public in his admission to up the ante with harder interviews and interruptions.

In Feedback this week I ruthlessly cross examine Mr Webb about this apparent change of heart, interrupting him frequently and insisting he answers my questions. I also put to him some of the embarrassing emails from listeners who were delighted when the Today programme was taken off-air as a result of the recent National Union of Journalists' strike and replaced by birdsong from The Wash.

How did Mr Webb respond to my aggressive questioning? Did he fight fire with fire? Do you care about interviewing style?

Roger Bolton is the ever so polite and inoffensive presenter of Feedback.

• Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
• Feedback is now on Twitter. Follow @BBCFeedback.
• Justin asserted that he'd like to upset more people in an interview with James Robinson in The Guardian. Gillian Reynolds in The Telegraph was one of those who enjoyed a morning without Today.
• The picture shows Justin presenting Today with Sarah Montague

Crime writer and radio pugilist PD James has won one of the most prestigious awards in British journalism - the Nick Clarke Interview Prize. She won it for her on-air punch-up with BBC Director General Mark Thompson, during her guest editorship of the Today Programme on Radio 4 last new year's eve.

Quoted in The Guardian, Evan Davis, full-time Today programme interviewer said: "She shouldn't be guest editing, she should be permanently presenting the programme..."

The shortlist for the award included a number of other heavyweight full-timers: Owen Bennett-Jones, from the World Service; Andrew Hosken, also from The Today Programme; Jeff Randall from Sky News and Mark Lawson courageously challenging Russell Crowe on his accent on Front Row.

The Press Gazette has the story (and the full shortlist), The Guardian covered PD James' Today stint and here's the running order from her excellent edition of the programme. Mark Damazer, Nick Clarke's friend, introduced the prize on the blog last year.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

Here it is. Mark Damazer's final interview as Radio 4 Controller.

Twenty minutes of fascinating discussion with Broadcasting House presenter Paddy O'Connell, touching on pressure from politicians and civil servants, on opening up Thought for the Day to secular voices and on not cancelling Woman's Hour - among many other issues. A really fascinating retrospective glimpse of life running Britain's most important radio station. And you'll learn Mark's favourite Radio 4 sound too (I bet it's not what you expect).

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• The picture shows Mark and Paddy recording the interview in a Radio 4 studio on Tuesday.

Leader of the opposition David Cameron came into Broadcasting House this morning to talk to Jenni Murray. I headed over to meet him as he entered the building and got a few photographs of the big event. The other pictures are on Flickr and you can listen to the interview - the second of the programme's interviews with the main party leaders - here for the next seven days. Gordon Brown is next.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr

It is a grand moment to get Desert Island Discs (DIDs) on the iPlayer. We have always had good relations with the family of the programme's founding father - Roy Plomley - but the programme was conceived in a pre-digital age and so we needed to work out with the family how to make the programme available online as well as for its two transmissions.

We have now sorted it all out and we have plans to make the website an all-singing, all-dancing affair - encouraging people to compare their choices with the choices of castaways, looking at the most selected tracks etc. etc. And we will end up podcasting DIDs too.

For the time being we're off to the races with Barry Manilow - and the programme will be available to listen to on the web site - along with the rest of the Radio 4 schedule.

It is a great programme - doing wonderfully I think with Kirsty Young.

DIDs' moments? Princess Margaret with Roy Plomley (a curio), Sue Lawley and Simon Cowell (not a great meeting of minds), Kirsty and Humphrey Lyttelton, Kirsty and Andrew Neil (moving), Kirsty and Yoko Ono, Sue and Isaiah Berlin and many, many more. It's a treat in my week. I rarely miss it and I now have no excuse.

I still yearn for Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama, Madonna, Arsene Wenger etc. etc. Stay tuned. We're trying.

• You'll be able to listen again to Desert Island Discs on the programme's home page, starting with today's Barry Manilow episode.
• The picture shows the programme's inventor and long-time presenter Roy Plomley in 1942, the year the programme was first broadcast. The picture is from the BBC's picture library and the caption reads: "Roy Plomley, script-writer of 'Hurrah for Hollywood', 'Show Souvenirs', 'Lady from Texas' and 'Desert Island Discs' series; actor and compere, 1942." You can see some more Desert Island Discs pictures from the archive here.