Andrew Denton on his biggest interview blooper: "I interviewed Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark and it was a crap interview because I am not very interested in royalty. Having accepted to do the interview, I should have found a way to get myself interested. If I wasn’t interested, why would the audience be? That was a great kick up the bum for me. "

They've made a living out of grilling our public figures, celebrities and criminals. Now it's their turn to give some answers. Interviews with four of TV's most formidable interviewers - Jana Wendt, Andrew Denton, Kerry O'Brien and Laurie Oakes - about the art of asking questions.

ANDREW DENTON

Perth-born Andrew Denton, 45, is master of the personal interview. Colleague Kerry O’Brien describes the host of the ABC's Enough Rope as the “closest thing we have to a Michael Parkinson.” Denton sees himself differently; combining comedy and interviews with people both ordinary and extraordinary, including those outside celebritydom. He emerged in 1988 as writer and compere of the ABC’s Blah Blah Blah, followed by The Money or the Gun. In 1994-95 he hosted a late night chat show, Denton, for the Seven Network.

What is a good interview, and how is it achieved?

It’s no great secret. If the guest is enjoying him- or herself, they’re going to give a great interview. When the actor Gabriel Byrne was on the show earlier this year, one of my producers, Jon Casimir, came up with a brilliant idea. We found out that one of his earlier jobs was putting eyes on teddy bears in a factory. We got a teddy bear and sewed two eyes together on one of side of its head and during the interview I pulled out this teddy bear and said, “Is this one of yours?” He laughed so much. You knew you were seeing the real Gabriel Byrne. He was gone. That has far more value - and always will - than 15 well-thought-out questions.

With people who aren’t famous, aren’t used to being in this format, maybe have gone through a very stressful, difficult thing, or that may have something to hide, that’s a different challenge. You’re not trying to engage them by surprising them, rather just to get them to trust me, and slowly bring the shields down, one by one.

This year Michael Stipe from REM was a really good interview because he was engaged in a format in which he generally isn’t. We spent a lot of time thinking about what this man responds to. He’s known as a musician, but his great bent is visual. We recreated a night where his life changed while he sat listening to a Patti Smith album and eating a bowl of cherries.

So we got an old record player, and the original Patti Smith album, and we got a bowl of cherries, and we wheeled it all out, and he went, “No-one’s gone to this trouble before.” We played the music clips he designed, and asked him about them, and found his book of photography in New York, and brought it out, and said, “Explain this photo." If I were [that] guest, I would respond … and he did.

Why do people tell you things?

We have the one thing that no other show has: time. There is also a bit of an X factor to it. I never see the interview as being me versus the guest. I don’t see it as a colosseum. I try to be as vulnerable as they are. There’s no winner in the interview, we’re both out there. While the saying is, “Give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves”, my view is give them enough rope and if they’re good enough, they’ll do rope tricks.

Do personal interviews always require you feel empathy?

In many ways, I ask the same question of every guest: life’s hard, how are you going? I think you have to be empathic, and that can be challenging because sometimes there are people whose philosophy of life is directly opposed to mine. Like a lot of Australians, I found Pauline Hanson's politics at her peak to be divisive and ill informed and dangerous and unpleasant. But there was no point going to the interview [in September 2004] with that attitude because she’d already copped a thousand blows over the head from a thousand people. So the challenge of an interview like that was to put my prejudices aside and try to find out what drove her. I think what came through in that interview was that she was a genuine woman, absolutely, but that essentially she wasn’t bright. The interview [showed she] wasn’t going to be up to the actual challenge of holding the balance of power in the Senate.

One of the harder things to do has been to get stronger right-wing voices on the show, because it is perceived that the ABC is not a place where these voices will be heard. For me, key interviews have been John Elliott, Alan Bond, Pauline Hanson, and the US ambassador, Tom Schieffer. Not necessarily the best interviews, but I don’t want to have a show that is [based on] the usual liberal suspects. I think that’s predictable.

Do people make assumptions about your politics?

I think it’s an ABC assumption, I think it’s an assumption [about me]. I could generally be categorised as a liberal, left wing leaning, but, frankly, the older I get the less I know - which is a good position to be in. I eschew the political labels considerably. People might be very surprised to know how I voted over the past few elections - all over the place.

Do you have a golden moment as an interviewer?

To me the only type of golden moment is honesty, because television is not supposed to be honest. The often talked-about moment was when Rachel Ward started crying when I asked a really simple question, “Why Bryan [Brown, her actor husband]?” Everybody went, “What happened there?” including her.

The other golden moment was with a schizophrenic man called Alan and his mum Jill, who were in our audience. It was just eight minutes of television and the most intense silence I have ever heard from a studio audience in my life. It was the silence of people being sucked into another universe. Our camerawoman was crying as she was filming. The audience response to a man who didn’t speak in a way that was easy to listen to, and his mum, was more intense and more emotional than any famous person we have had on the show.

I have met so many people that have overcome obstacles, big and small, that would have crushed me.

Have you ever felt a chemistry that transcends the interview?

Years ago, Ben Elton came in to do an interview with me on Triple J, ended up staying two hours and we've been friends since. Why? An immediate meeting of minds comedically – we both think [the late English TV comedian] Eric Morecambe was a comic genius – and just a total comfort in each other's company. I also felt a real affinity with Ruth Cracknell. There was a devil in her that won me.

Is there an interview you wish you could do again?

At the start of the year, I did an interview with Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark and it was a crap interview because I am not very interested in royalty. Having accepted to do the interview, I should have found a way to get myself interested. If I wasn’t interested, why would the audience be? That was a great kick up the bum for me.
It’s a lesson – I’ve learned it many times, but you always have to relearn it – just when you think you’re good at something, you find out what you’re not good at. It just reminded me, you can’t ever be lazy about it.

Can you tell if an interviewee is lying?

Not always, no, but often. [Convicted con man] Peter Foster was the classic case in point. He lied [during the interview], he was challenged on it, he objected, and he was challenged further. After the interview, he then spent a week playing all sorts of games, trying to get us to change the interview we had done. I knew [he was lying during the interview]. When there are issues of criminal record, I get very anal about research. With people like [Alan] Bond and [John] Elliott and Foster, and Rene Rivkin [in May 2003, after the Sydney stockbroker was convicted for insider trading], we do a very large amount of research because you can’t let people like that have a free ride.

Speaking of Rivkin [who committed suicide in May 2005], are you conscious of interviewees’ vulnerability?

At the time of that interview, which was a very tumultuous night, he had just been sentenced, and I don’t think anyone - but perhaps those closest to him - was prepared for the state of mind he was in. The depth of his illness only became apparent to me and to a lot of people in the months afterwards. I wished I’d known more. I wished I’d realised more. It was a very difficult night, because it was confrontational. Rene was expecting me to take his part bu] it was now a matter of criminal record. So it wasn’t my job to be his mate. So I didn’t take his part, I challenged what he’d done. He was so taken aback that I’d challenged him that he became quite hostile. So when he said [during the interview] that he would probably kill himself, it came up in an atmosphere that wasn’t as empathetic as I would've liked. You can never account for the state of mind someone comes into an interview with. It was difficult.

Was that the hardest interview you’ve done?

That probably was the hardest interview in some ways but it had a lot to do with the atmosphere around it. There was a lot of pressure at the time from a lot of people, intense scrutiny, people trying to break into the ABC to be there. That afternoon, my phone rang, and it was [former Labor powerbroker] Graham Richardson, asking me to go easy on him.

How do you break through spin?

It is difficult sometimes. You try to paint a picture in a different way. [Federal Immigration Minister] Amanda Vanstone came on the show last year, and of course I engaged her on children in detention as the minister responsible. Of course, she was utterly political in her answers. But we did a broader interview than that, and talked about other things in her life. One thing that has brought her to tears are her dogs. She loves weimaraners and when one died, she wept. By the time we got to children in detention, what became apparent was a woman who had had to make herself professionally hard. A lot of people did pick up on this, which had been part of the intent of the interview: I’ll put it charitably, and say the requirements of [her] job. Here was a woman who could cry over her dogs, but have no sympathy in her heart for children locked up for three or five years.

How would you rate your interview with the former opposition leader, Mark Latham?

I'll pass on this question, if you don't mind. There's such a maelstrom around Latham at the moment that anything connected to it seems to be somehow distorted. I loved doing it, though! What a complex man.

What is the best skill an interviewer can bring to the job?

Research, clearly. Listening, obviously. And leaving myself open to the possibility it won’t go the way I expect.