Page 23 - David Burr Rooftops Magazine Winter 2017/2018

“There was the interview with an A-lister, that had been worked on for months and then
dashed within minutes of my then-employer running a certain story about them on the front page.”
Richard Bryson
Publisher BBP magazines
The rock singer and broadcaster Steve Harley
There was the scheduled interview with an A- lister, that had been worked on for months and then dashed within minutes of my then-employer running a certain story about them on the front page.
Then, there was the rather random, but delightful, interview with Paul Daniels who ended our exchange by asking whether I wanted to audition for something as he liked my voice. I decided against sending a showreel, largely because I had no idea how to do one! To this day, I never quite knew how serious he was being.
But when it comes to my favourite interview, I always return to the late Barry Norman. He was someone I was privileged to interview twice.
It was our first conversation that stayed with me most. I had done my research, and had already read his autobiography as I was a big film buff and a fan of the ‘Film’ series presenter.
But I was still nervous. This was one of the biggest celebrity interviews I had done. I would say it still is.
Within minutes, he had put me at ease. Always treat any interviewee as if they were just a normal person, said Mr Norman, someone who had spent his career with the greatest names in film history.
He told me about some of his own famous exchanges, including the good (Michelle Pfeiffer), the bad (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and the almost ugly (Robert de Niro, who he nearly came to blows with). But he treated them all the same. It was those words of advice, and encouragement, which will stay with me throughout my career.
As an editor and publisher I’ve not interviewed many famous people - in the main I’ve spoken to those who are deliberately off the celeb radar. I can’t even claim to have spoken to an A-lister, unlike my eldest son who got the chance to interview Joanna Lumley while doing some work experience on The Lady magazine a year or two back.
Anyway, back to my encounters and perhaps the biggest surprise was the former Sun editor, turned author, David Yelland who was nothing like a tabloid rabble-rouser. He was quite serious, polite and magnanimous about former Fleet Street rivals.
Equally modest and charming was the former Westhorpe resident Jean Kent, the TV and film actress well known in the
1940s. She told me how they had to carry on filming one day as German fighters flew overhead and fired machine guns.
The cricketer and now broadcaster Jonathan Agnew, who I met in the mid 1980s, was interesting though he was in limbo leaving the game for a career in media and didn’t seem very relaxed.
You might expect the comedian and actor Roy Hudd to be jovial and he didn’t disappoint when I met him a few year’s back. “Would you like to see a proof of the interview,” I asked him. “No, that’s fine. If we don’t like anything we’ll sue,” he said with a wave and a smile. I presumed he was joking.
Ex Cockney Rebel singer Steve Harley, now living on the Suffolk/Essex border, is a former journalist and knew I wanted some good stories and he certainly delivered.
As for tricky interviews I vaguely recall (as a junior reporter on the Bury Free Press in the early 1980s) talking to Michael Heseltine during his visit to one of our local airbases. A few short answers and he was off.
23