Part Two - The Good, the Bad and the Boring

 Mike Bodnar continues his series on famous people he has interviewed...

And welcome back. In the last post I told you about my experiences with Captain Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe) and Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson), two completely contrasting people from the interviewer's perspective. This time round, more contrast, in the form of Irish comedian Dave Allen, the legendary Dame Edna herself Barry Humphries, and an obnoxious up-himself British author.

Dave Allen on stage. Image courtesy Extra.ie

Let's start with Dave Allen, the famous stool-sitting, missing-fingered, whiskey-drinking, cheeky-grinned Irish icon. In the 1970s, 80s and 90s he was a firm television favourite, his shows commanding huge audiences whichever channel he happened to be working with.

He was particularly popular in Australia, where he also had his own TV shows, but whichever country he was screened in his material often caused controversy as much of it took the mickey out of religion, and Catholicism in particular. I think we all remember how he used to end his shows, with: 'Goodnight, and may your god go with you.' That catchphrase pretty much summed up his attitude.

Dave Allen came to New Zealand in the 1980s for a tour, and his manager got in touch with us on the TVNZ regional news programme Today Tonight to ask if we'd like an interview. We thought about it for a nanosecond - and I don't need to tell you the answer.

Luckily I was in the hot seat at the time and got to know Dave (as I call him) over a period of three days while he was in Wellington. He was just as charming and likeable as he was on his TV shows, a very genuine person who was as interested in you as you were in him. 

His manager - Graham Atkinson - suggested I meet him first at the venue where he would be performing, the Michael Fowler Centre. The MFC - named after a former Wellington mayor - was a modern construction with an auditorium that part-encircled the stage. After curtseying to Mr. Allen and fawning over him I went with him and his agent into the auditorium as Dave wanted to see where he'd be performing. 

'Have you sold those seats there?' he asked Graham, pointing to the tiers behind the stage. Graham sheepishly admitted that some had sold, and Dave immediately said, 'No. Move those people somewhere in front. I can't have an audience behind me.' He wasn't angry or being awkward, he genuinely could not envisage how he could perform to or make eye contact with people who would be behind him. Graham nodded, although if the venue had sold out I couldn't see where he would put them. But anyway, who wants to go and see a Dave Allen show and spend the evening looking at the back of his head? I was on Dave's side.

Sure 'tis himself at Il Casino, Wellington, NZ

The next day I met St. David The Funny for an interview, over lunch at the iconic Wellington Italian restaurant Il Casino. The candid photo here was taken while the crew set up the camera and tripod, which is why he's looking somewhat bored or distracted. In reality he was great to interview, and once that was done we enjoyed a longer chat over lunch. (It turned out the owner, Romero Bresolin, had opened up just for us and had his chef come in early, so in fact we were the only ones there!)

The usual quid pro quo for interviewing a performer was that we would get tickets to the show, and this was the case with Dave Allen. (And no, there was no audience behind him, so Graham Atkinson somehow solved that dilemma!).

Not only did we get to see Ireland's funniest man perform live, he invited my wife and I and another couple we were with backstage afterwards for a glass of Champagne, before we then all went back to Il Casino for dinner along with his manager (who paid for everything!). It's one of the highlights of my broadcasting days to have found myself sitting on Dave Allen's left at dinner over a wonderful couple of hours, and I still have to pinch myself now to realise it actually happened.

To this day I can't remember what I interviewed him about, or what we talked about over lunch and dinner - unforgivable I know - except one thing that has always stuck in my head; during dinner he said, 'Mike, how do you know what you read in the newspapers is true?' I was surprised at the question but said something about newspaper content being factual because 'it must be', or something equally naïve. He pushed harder, 'Yes, but how do you know it's true?' I said that I'd worked in a newsroom for a while and I hadn't seen any evidence of news being falsified. He just smiled at that. I can't remember whether we reached any conclusions, but in hindsight he had come from Britain where the tabloids by then had well-established themselves as 'shock-horror' organs with inflated 'news' stories and sensational headlines, so maybe his experiences of the media and mine were on different levels.

Anyway, it was one of those golden evenings and I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to spend so much time in his company. Sadly Dave Allen died in 2005 at the relatively young age of just 68. He has gone with his god. R.I.P.

Hello Possums!

Dame Edna. Image: Wikimedia Commons

During the same era Australian legend Barry Humphries also came to town for a show, and
once again the opportunity for an interview was presented, but this time live in the studio. 

While Mr. Humphries was in make-up - getting ready as himself, not as Dame Edna - his manager took me aside and said, 'One thing: you are not to ask him about him being Dame Edna.' My disappointment must have shown on my face because I had indeed planned to ask him about 'being' Dame Edna. 'No,' asserted his manager, 'Barry doesn't want to destroy the illusion of Dame Edna as a real person. He will talk about her in the third person, but not as being a part of him.'

So that was that. I went into the make-up department and introduced myself, and Humphries was very genial, softly spoken and seemed keen to be there, something that wasn't always the case with guests who well-knew that TV appearances were all part of the publicity machine. His handshake was regal, in the sense that he offered his hand to me rather than shaking mine, but then I was, once again, in the presence of comedic royalty.

The real Dame Edna.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The interview was, as usual on our limited-duration live programme, fairly short, but Barry Humphries was easy to interview and proved an entertaining guest. As instructed I didn't question him about 'being' Dame Edna; instead we talked about 'her' and her persona, and he really did talk of his character as a genuine someone else, as he did with Sir Les Patterson. In a way I'd rather have had him come on as Dame Edna so that I could have interviewed her about Barry Humphries, but I can't complain.

It was a lesson to me that actors with well-known on-screen personas do need to protect their integrity, and that a character, once established, takes on a life and credibility of its own. Mr. Bean would be a fine example, so too would Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat or Paul Reubens' Pee-Wee Herman.

Sadly I didn't get to go to dinner with Barry Humphries, but given that he's got multiple stage personalities we would have needed to book a very large table.

Jeffrey Archer. Image: Wikimedia Commons

You Wouldn't Read About It

And finally, the bad apple in this bunch: Jeffrey Archer, now 'Lord Archer'. However, when I met him in the 80s he was simply Jeffrey Archer, Author, having already by then written a clutch of best-selling mysteries and thrillers.

Archer was in Wellington to promote his latest novel, either The Prodigal Daughter or First Among Equals - I can't remember and have little interest in doing so. He came out to the studios for the live interview and I met him either in make-up or the Green Room before the programme and we chatted briefly.

He said to me, 'When I got off the plane earlier and met my agent I said to him, "If my book's not the first thing I see on the display stand in the airport bookshop, you're fired."' 

I nodded in agreement that yes indeed, such slovenly representation should be met with ruthless counter-measures, while thinking, 'What a prat.'

And in my opinion that's exactly what he was. I've rarely met anyone so self-centered, uninteresting or unpleasant in my life. The interview was pedestrian as I recall - I could summon up little enthusiasm for talking to him - and he rabbited on about himself endlessly. It was one of the few interviews where I was pleased that we were limited to only five minutes at most, and I suspect by then most of our audience had left their televisions to go and make a cup of tea, and wouldn't give tuppence to listen to him. In fact, not a penny more, not a penny less.

And no, I didn't find out if the agent got fired, and mercifully I didn't get to go to dinner with Jeffrey Archer either.

Coming up soon in Part Three: how I met Hitchhiker's Guide author Douglas Adams, almost had Dr. David Bellamy round for dinner, and how one of Britain's successful 1980s TV comedy duos turned out to be extremely unfunny...