A Curious Career

by Lynn Barber

  Soon afterwards, I left Penthouse and spent several years as a full-time mother. (There was no question of maternity leave in those days.) David and I were married in 1971 and had our first daughter, Rosie, in 1975 and our second, Theo, in 1978. We lived in Finsbury Park which was considered a dangerously rough area in those days, though I notice that nowadays it counts as ‘desirable’ and has been renamed Stroud Green. I did the usual rounds of mother-and-baby club, playgroup, nursery, and made some good friends. David was teaching media studies (a brand-new subject in those days) at the Regent Street Polytechnic, and I had some residual income from two sex books, How to Improve Your Man in Bed and The Single Woman’s Sex Book, that I wrote while I was at Penthouse. During these playgroup years, I wrote a very different book, The Heyday of Natural History, on a subject that then interested me, Victorian popular naturalists. It got rapturous reviews when it was published in 1980 and gave me a sort of respectability but I look at it now and think: What a waste of time. I dedicated it to my mother, thinking it would make up for my sex books, but she only said she liked the illustrations! Weirdly, it is still in print in Japan and brings me an annual royalty cheque of £60 or £70.

  Once both daughters were settled at school, I was desperate to get back into journalism. But it is hard – and I feel great sympathy for young women today – to apply for jobs when you have known nothing but playgroups for several years. I’d forgotten what office clothes even looked like. But by the happiest of happy chances my original boss at Penthouse, Harry Fieldhouse, who taught me to be a journalist in the first place, had moved to a newly launched colour supplement, the Sunday Express Magazine, and asked me if I’d like to do a series for it called ‘Things I Wish I’d Known at 18’.

  This was one of those ‘back of the book’ features, like the Sunday Times’ ‘Life in the Day’, which entailed interviewing a celeb, and cobbling their answers together into a single long quote. It was a boringly narrow formula, but it did give me a very wide experience of dealing with celebs and getting over the inevitable beginner’s problem of being star-struck. Finding celebs was easy in those days – you could often get their addresses, or even their phone numbers, from Who’s Who – there was none of the nonsense of having to pre-negotiate everything with PRs. And I soon learned that actors who were stuck in long West End runs were desperate to be interviewed – after the first-night excitement died away, they often felt forgotten by the world.

  In 1983 a new editor, Ron Hall, joined the Sunday Express Magazine, and promoted me to writing ‘big’ interviews – no longer back of the book, but proper 3,000-word profiles. My breakthrough came when he sent me to New York to interview my old boss, Bob Guccione. Up till then, I’d been writing all my profiles in the third person, as was the custom then, but I thought: I have to say I used to work for Guccione, it would be mad not to. So I wrote the piece in the first person and felt that at last I was writing without constraint. It was a really joyous, liberating moment, the point at which I found my writing voice.

  I won my first British Press Award in 1986, and my second the next year, which reassured me that I was on the right track. Older, stuffier journalists lectured me about ‘objectivity’ and told me it was wrong to put myself in my articles, but, with two Press Awards under my belt, I was happy to ignore them. In 1990 the Independent launched a Sunday sibling, the Independent on Sunday, and hired me as their interviewer. It enabled me to write very long (5,000-word) interviews, which I preferred, and won me a couple more Press Awards. But I also acquired the nickname ‘Demon Barber’ which was a pain for a long time. It gave the impression that I only wrote hatchet jobs, which was unfair – I probably only wrote one or two a year, but they tended to be the ones that stuck in people’s memories. And, for all the glittering company at the Independent (Ian Jack, Zoë Heller, Sebastian Faulks, Blake Morrison, Nick Cohen, Alexander Chancellor, Francis Wheen, Michael Fathers), I found it an unhappy ship, riven by internal feuds and institutional sexism. So I was glad to move on to Vanity Fair, and then the Telegraph and the Observer, before settling into my present home, the Sunday Times.

  People sometimes ask why I’m still doing interviews as I approach my seventieth birthday, in a tone which suggests I could be doing something more respectable like – oh! – writing books. To me that’s a bit like saying to a good cook, ‘You don’t still need to cook meals, do you, when you could afford to go to restaurants?’ But why give up something you adore doing? Once in a while, when it’s my third actor in a row, I might start grumbling, ‘This is a waste of my time,’ but basically that phone call from my editor – ‘Do you want to interview Pete Doherty? Miranda Hart? Eddie Izzard?’ – brings a little leap of excitement to my heart. Even when the name is someone I’ve never heard of (Lady Gaga, shockingly, but it WAS the very start of her career) my reaction is always to say yes, and then to do some frantic Googling later.

  The only people I flatly refuse to interview are ones I know to be boring (usually because I’ve interviewed them before or met them socially) or ones I don’t think are worth five pages of the readers’ attention. I also have a block about doing what I think of as ‘wives’ (they could also be husbands, or lovers) who are only famous second-hand by virtue of their partner, and I deeply hate doing ‘victims’ or people with heart-breaking stories to tell. I want my subjects to have achieved something in their own right, even if it’s the sort of something that broadsheet readers don’t necessarily approve of. I once got a lot of flak for interviewing Kerry Katona – why were posh Observer readers supposed to be interested in her? Actually I thought her achievement – to survive a hideously chaotic upbringing and forge a career as a pop star, columnist, and all-round celeb – was pretty impressive, even heroic. I think we despise such people at our peril.

  Being so nosy, and being a professional interviewer, makes it hard for me to be a guest at dinner parties. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not actually polite to ask, ‘What happened to your last girlfriend?’ Or (which I have been known to do), ‘What happened to your face?’ You have to waste time fishing around and even then you often come away without a proper answer. I find it frustrating, maddening – I can’t actually do dinner parties. On the other hand, if I get stuck in and start asking all the nosy questions I want answered, people are sometimes a bit too flattered, a bit too thrilled. They are apt to phone me afterwards wanting to continue the conversation: ‘When I was telling you about my last girlfriend . . .’ And, worse, they expect me to remember everything they told me before whereas, without a tape recorder, the chances of my remembering anything at all are slim. The great thing about interviews is that you can have a very intense conversation, and then switch off your tape recorder, write the article, and forget about it. Celebs understand that. But it is harder in real life.

  I have quite often been described as ‘fearless’ which makes me laugh. Just see me in a field full of cows, or in a lift that gets stuck between floors. Try taking me on the Tube. I am fearful of many things, including fish, but I am not on the whole fearful of asking people questions. After all, it is very unlikely that anyone would commit murder in an interview and I suppose I have the advantage, as a woman, that no one is likely to punch me.

  But by fearless I think people mean I don’t have the normal English fear of social embarrassment. I don’t worry about making a fool of myself or seeming stupid. I’ve never felt any desire to be cool. And if a conversation takes a nasty turn, if I provoke someone into losing their temper or shouting at me, well it’s all familiar stuff because I spent eighteen years in Twickenham being shouted at by my father. I think this is something that perhaps confuses people about me. I have a genteel accent and come over as (I think) a harmless middle-class woman. But actually, I’m not the pussycat I appear. I’m quite tough, as my interviewees sometimes find out.

  When I started, I was often asked why I chose to interview stars, why didn’t I interview ‘real people’? The obvious answer is that readers are more interested in s
tars. But then, so am I. I admire them for their talent, but even more for the courage it takes to become a star, to leave the cosy camaraderie of the herd. And I’m always interested in what gave them the drive to do that. A few stars like to maintain that it all happened by accident (Michael Palin is the worst offender) but I don’t think it ever happens by accident – there has to be some special talent and then, much rarer, there has to be the drive to keep on keeping on through all the discouraging years when nothing seems to be happening. There are no easy routes to stardom, despite the delusive propaganda of shows like The X Factor. Even someone like Susan Boyle had a long history of singing in talent shows before she made her big breakthrough. Nearly all comedians – Paul Merton, Michael McIntyre, Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard – plugged away for years on the club circuit before literally ‘getting their act together’ and being noticed. It’s quite rare to meet a star who hasn’t been on the dole at some time. But that’s what’s impressive: they would rather live in squats and survive on benefits, following their dream, than take a safe job.

  I admire people who have taken risks – I always feel I’ve played far too safe myself. And I like it best if they’ve come a long way. My ‘journey’ has taken me all the way from Twickenham, west London, to Highgate, north London, my furthest detour being the three years I spent at Oxford. Contrast that with someone like Rudolf Nureyev – born in Ufa in a remote Soviet republic, the son of a minor Party functionary, got himself to Leningrad to star in the Kirov, went on tour with the Kirov abroad, heard in Paris that he was being sent back to the Soviet Union and decided on the spur of the moment, at the airport, to defect to the West. He had no time to say goodbye to his Kirov colleagues and friends; he would not see his mother again until the very end of her life. At that stage he barely spoke English or French – by the end he was fluent in at least five languages, was director of the Paris Opera Ballet, and a collector and connoisseur of antiques and paintings. He told me it seemed amazing to him when he tried to remember his boyhood in Ufa – so long ago, so far away, it felt like a different world.

  Nureyev, like so many of my interviewees, educated himself as he went along, all through his life. He learned almost nothing at school, but when he wanted to learn ballet, he found a ballet teacher, when he wanted to learn French, he found a French teacher. This is something that has struck me time and again while interviewing people – that all their most valuable education happened outside school. An amazing proportion of them – possibly a third – say they were useless at school, often because of undiagnosed dyslexia. But also, perhaps, because they didn’t take orders easily and didn’t accept the goals their schools were pushing. They were the brave souls, the mavericks, the awkward squad, who said they wanted to do something different with their lives. I hugely admire them.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As Good As It Gets

  My idea of a hellishly boring interviewee is one who is obviously nice, sane, polite, who chats pleasantly, is happy to answer your questions and clearly has nothing to hide. Where’s the fun in that? Give me a monster every time – someone who throws tantrums, hurls insults, storms out, and generally creates mayhem. So welcome, Marianne Faithfull! This is probably the most enjoyable interview I’ve ever done. It won me my fifth Press Award. I came out of our encounter thinking: I can’t wait to write this up. And when my editor rang the next day to ask how the interview went, instead of my usual laconic, ‘Not bad,’ I said firmly, ‘It was great!’

  From the Observer, 15 July 2001

  Marianne Faithfull once said, ‘I am a Fabulous Beast, and as such, I should only be glimpsed very rarely, through the forest, running away for dear life.’ How wise she was. If I were ever asked to interview her again, I would turn into a Fabulous Beast myself and hightail it to the forest. I first glimpsed Her Fabulousness ages ago at a restaurant in Notting Hill, 192, where she was sitting all alone at lunchtime reading the papers. 192 was a very sociable sort of table-hopping restaurant, so I thought there was something faintly sad about her solitude. But then a man joined her – it might even have been my future nemesis, François – and she simply handed him a slice of newspaper and carried on reading right through lunch. It was so devastatingly drop-dead cool that all the chattering at the other tables somehow died – we farmyard animals knew we were in the presence of a Fabulous Beast.

  So when I heard she was coming to London (she lives in Dublin) to publicise the film Intimacy, I jumped at the chance to interview her. It all seemed quite straightforward: she would go to David Bailey’s studio at 12.30 p.m. to have her photo taken – she likes David Bailey, they ‘go back a long way’, to the 1960s – and I would pick her up at 4 p.m. and interview her till 6 p.m. when a car would take her to the airport for her flight back to Dublin. My only worry (ha ha, in retrospect) was where I could take her between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., because I thought that as a reformed junkie she wouldn’t fancy a wine bar. Silly old me.

  At 1 p.m., the publicist phones to say Marianne has not yet arrived at Bailey’s – she was still in bed when they rang at 12.45 p.m. – so everything has been put back an hour. Fine, or fine-ish. I arrive at Bailey’s studio eager-beaver at 5 p.m., and walk into an atmosphere you could cut with a knife. Marianne, trussed like a chicken in Vivienne Westwood with her boobs hanging out, ignores me, Bailey likewise; half a dozen assorted stylists, hairdressers, make-up people stand around looking tense. The PR is friendly but apologetic – she says the photographs will take at least another hour and I should push off and have coffee. A Frenchman who looks like Woody Allen but without his suavity and charm introduces himself as François Ravard, Marianne’s manager. I wait for some apology or explanation of why they are running two hours late – it never comes. Finally I say, ‘You’re running late?’ ‘Ah yes,’ he says with a shrug. ‘You know how it eez – it eez always the same.’ Really? ‘But don’t worry,’ he adds, ‘we have dinner later.’ Thanks a million, mon frère – I was supposed to be having dinner with friends. I push off to make calls cancelling my evening.

  When I return to Bailey’s, the atmosphere is even worse. No sign of Marianne – she has gone off to change – Bailey looks like thunder. Various sotto voce conversations are going on around me and I hear the ominous phrase from Bailey ‘as long as it takes’. Time for my tantrum, I feel. Choosing my spot carefully, I stamp my feet like a flamenco dancer and address the studio at large. ‘There is no point in taking photographs,’ I warble, ‘unless there is an article to stick them in. And there is no article unless I get my interview NOW.’ The hair and make-up people stare blankly – so uncool! – but Bailey’s assistant and the PR seem to get the point and agree that they will shoot one more pose and finish at 6.15 p.m. This news is relayed to Bailey with much fierce muttering and hostile staring at me. I decide to go outside and do some deep breathing.

  When I get back, Bailey is at the camera; Marianne, in a black mac and fishnet tights, is sprawling with her legs wide apart, her black satin crotch glinting between her scrawny fifty-five-year-old thighs, doing sex-kitten moues at the camera. ‘Oh please, stop!’ I want to cry – this is sadism, this is misogyny, this is cruelty to grandmothers. I wonder if Bailey actually hates her – I wonder if this is her punishment for turning up late. I hear the agent and the Frenchman muttering behind me – ‘They won’t use this, they can’t.’ So why is Bailey shooting it then?

  Suddenly, the session is over, and we – Marianne, the Frenchman, the PR and me – emerge into the street where a chauffeur-driven limousine has been waiting all this time. It is now 6.45 p.m. and Faithfull has still barely said hello. The PR says we can eat at the Italian restaurant at the end of the street. Marianne says she can’t possibly walk, so we pile into the limousine to drive 50 yards to the corner. It is a sweet, friendly, family-run Italian restaurant that has no idea what hell awaits it. No sooner have we been ushered into a private room downstairs than Marianne is muttering, ‘What do you have to do to get a drink around here?’ Order it, seems the obvious answer, but that�
��s too simple – François has to order it for her. Unfortunately – my huge mistake – I have let him and the PR eat downstairs with us, albeit at a separate table, and even more unfortunately I have placed Marianne against the wall, where she can see François over my shoulder. I could smack myself: what’s the use of serving all these years in the interviewing trenches if I still make such elementary mistakes?

  Suddenly, Marianne is shouting at François, ‘Get it together!’ and he is shouting back, ‘What do you want, Marianne?’ ‘I don’t know. What have they got?’ she counters, drumming her feet under the table and moaning, ‘I. Can. Hardly. Bear. It.’ François keeps asking whether she wants wine or a cocktail. I’m thinking rat poison. Eventually she tells François a bottle of rosé. The waiter brings it with commendable speed and starts pouring two glasses. She snatches mine away – ‘We don’t need that. Where’s the ice bucket?’ The waiter goes away and comes back with an ice bucket. ‘I’ll have the veal escalope,’ she tells him. He waits politely for my order. ‘Veal! Vitello!’ she snaps – she can’t understand why he is still hanging around when he should be off escaloping veal. ‘I’ll have the same,’ I say wearily.

  I’m already fed up with her and we haven’t even started. But at this point – a tad late, in my view – she suddenly flicks the switch marked ‘Charm’ and bathes me in its glow. ‘Cheers!’ she says. ‘Sorry I yelled. A slight crise there. It’s been a long day.’ (Really? She was still in bed at one, it is now seven, hardly a full shift at the coalface.) But anyway, she is – finally – apologetic. And I in turn put on my thrilled-to-meet-you face and tell her that I deeply enjoyed her autobiography Faithfull (1994), which I did. It is a truly amazing story – a pop star at seventeen, a mother at eighteen, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend at nineteen, reigning over Cheyne Walk – and yet by her thirties she was a heroin addict living on the street in Soho. Even if she didn’t write a word of it (David Dalton was co-author), she deserves some credit just for living it. For a while she basks in my compliments and then switches off the charm and snaps, ‘But I’m not going to talk about the book, I want to talk about the film.’ Huh? Too late I realise my mistake with the placement – obviously there has been some signal from François.