Comedian Spike Milligan chose the unlikely title of Adolf Hitler: My part in his downfall for his autobiography about wartime
experiences. It’s similar for me writing about the late Sir David Frost, the broadcaster’s broadcaster, who died over the weekend. I never saw Frost in person. But his influence on my career was immense.
In 1992, my good friend Jerry Schuitema encouraged me to try my hand at broadcasting. The long-time economics editor at the SABC was keen on new challenges. He suggested if I took to the medium, a new career path could open up.
Having spent the previous 12 years as a print journalist, the switch to radio and television was daunting. In researching those who had moved across, I discovered most made a hash of it. The mediums require totally different skill sets. A fact, sadly, that’s still not fully appreciated by my industry.
Back then before the partial opening of South Africa’s airwaves, the internal view was a “good” interview was determined by how many times you got the subject to squirm. The highest rated of my new colleagues were those who consistently twisted their blunt knives deepest into a guest’s weak spot.
This wasn’t an exacting task, by the way. With lights, cameras, the fear of being “live” and lots of people buzzing around, a television studio is a terribly artificial environment. It’s enough to put even the most confident guest out of their stride. Which makes them easy meat for any belligerent party for whom the set has the familiarity of their Lazy-Boy.
I could so easily have followed in the footsteps of so many long forgotten broadcasters. Instead, one day while browsing I picked Sir David Frost’s autobiography. That day he entered my life. And forever changed the path of my career.
My well-used paperback’s title is David Frost: An Autobiography Part One – From Congregations to Audiences. For years I’ve scoured bookshops for Part Two. It looks like Frost never got around to writing it. Guess he was just too curious about life for time to knock together another 500 pages.
But there was more than enough in Part One to alter my path.
Like his directive to work hard at helping guests overcome the environment. And relax. That way everyone gets to see the real person being interviewed. Not some muppet trained by a “professional” who smiles inauthentically, keep answers short (thereby refusing to really engage) and is hell-bent on extracting maximum mileage by getting “their message” across. The more cerebrally challenged the interviewee, the more difficult it is to break them out of such straitjackets.
Frost was a great believer in picking his guests carefully and then helping them share what they were uniquely expert about – their own feelings, their own opinions, their own emotions. He always tried to transform interviews into conversations. As he advises in his book “whether by relaxing the diffident, ruffling the complacent, or just altering the body language.”
His words taught me there is no such thing as a self-standing brilliant question – that a question can only be judged by the response it evokes. Because, critically, the interviewer “is first and foremost a catalyst rather than a principal. He orchestrates, he makes things happen.” In other words, he knows the guest is the subject. Not himself.
My new job in television, Frost explained, was to make every relationship in front of the camera work. A great interview is one where the viewer hardly recalls who posed the questions. But they remember long afterward what the guest had shared.
Frost was unique in so many other ways. He realised long before it became popular that it is possible to be gainfully self-employed in an industry famed for the dominance of owners. A great believer in his own talent, Frost applied his entrepreneurial skills to great effect. That ensured his independence. So he was never forced to tow the line his employer of the moment thought he should.
This enabled Frost to break with convention by linking up with Al Jazeera at a time when the rest of the industry foolishly dismissed it as a mouthpiece for Middle East radicals. Frost did his homework and realized that even though popular opion was different, this was perhaps the most independent of all global news channels. So was prepared to swim against the tide.
While channel surfing on Saturday afternoon, I caught what must surely have been one of Frost’s last interviews. It was, appropriately, with Silicon Valley star and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. Another whose contribution has made such a difference in my journey. Witness Moneyweb.
The 74 year old Frost’s speech wasn’t as clear as it once had been. But those cardinal interviewing rules never changed. He spoke little and listened lots, guiding his relaxed guest into a fascinating conversation. we were left remembering what Andreessen, not Frost, had said. The kind of result with which the late Sir David would have been well pleased.
