Never meet your heroes is the cliche, as everyone knows. Except me, apparently, because I have spent my career doing the opposite. In fact, it was down to my insistence on meeting people I admire that I have a job at all. The year was 1999, and I was not, contrary to what Prince had promised, partying at all. Instead, I was doing interviews for my student paper, because that sounded like a good way to meet people I’d always wanted to meet. These lucky folk included Ian Hislop, because I liked Have I Got News For You, and the late Richard Whiteley, because I liked Countdown.
My mother spotted a writing competition for young women in the Sunday Telegraph, and so I entered my Hislop and Whiteley interviews. (This is exactly how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein got their starts in journalism, too.) For the first and last time in my life, I won an actual competition. On the back of this, I was offered a job at the Guardian, where my first interviews were with Simon Amstell and Miquita Oliver, because I liked their TV show, Popworld, and Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish, because – can you guess? – I liked The Adam And Joe Show. I’d love to suggest I embarked on my career with a grand plan. But really, it was just me wanting to meet people I like to watch.
Somehow, I’ve maintained this fandom-as-a-career wheeze for the past 20 years. So in Weekend magazine on 21 November, I interview Michael J Fox, someone I wanted to meet since I was seven. This is the second time Fox and I have met, and he is officially my favourite interviewee of all time. Like parents, professional journalists aren’t supposed to play favourites, but I think we jettisoned any pretence of professionalism when I admitted I won my job in a competition. Worse, I told Fox he’s my favourite. (Did Woodward tell Deep Throat he was his favourite source?) Well, I am, above all else, an enthusiast.
This has not gone unnoticed. “Which 80s legend are you interviewing next?” I am occasionally asked by readers, who have spotted my unjustifiable obsession with the pop culture of my youth. Fox, Matthew Broderick, Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey, Ally Sheedy, Rick Moranis, Ralph Macchio – I’ve had ’em all, and, honestly, meeting my childhood heroes is still the biggest thrill I’ve found that’s legal. But it’s not, alas, always easy on them: often what makes your heroes heroic to you is something they did a long time ago, whereas they are desperate to talk about their – oh dreaded words! – “new project”. Poor Andrew McCarthy wanted to discuss his travel book, a subject I spent about five minutes on – the remaining 55 asking about St Elmo’s Fire, Pretty In Pink and Weekend At Bernie’s. The poor chap grimaced as I said the words “brat pack”, and this is where being a fan clashes with being a journalist: as a fan, you want to please; as a journalist, you need the stories. Well, my heart is full of fandom, but my head knows that my job is more important than the fleeting approval of a celebrity.
Grumpy ex brat packers aside, I’ve found that most people respond to enthusiasm, and often, showing your fannish side will get you stories. Nicolas Cage joined in when I performed a scene from Moonstruck (like I said, no professionalism). And when I told Rob Reiner how much I love his Cary Grant impression in Sleepless In Seattle, he told me Grant stories from his childhood.
Maybe I have amazing taste, but I have rarely been disappointed by my heroes (except for a certain once-beloved Hollywood actor who took one look at me and heartbreakingly walked out, outraged that he was being interviewed by “the work-experience girl”). A more common problem has been the occasional bout of starstruck-ness. It took me a moment to get past that with Judy Blume, Oprah Winfrey, Jon Stewart, Anne Tyler, Chris Rock and Keanu Reeves, all of whom were so nice about it that I eventually got over myself (or not, in poor Reeves’ case). True, gushing is never dignified, not in front of your interviewee or in the writing itself. But my favourite journalists convey their enthusiasms with enough detachment to draw in the uninitiated, and then with enough love to persuade. If I can get at least some of you to feel as deeply as I do about Teen Wolf, then I’ll have done my job.
I used to worry that meeting my heroes would kill my fandom, but it’s proved the opposite. Meeting them sharpens the pleasure I get from their work. Since interviewing Fox, I have watched Back To The Future twice, and each time my love for it somehow grows.
Meeting them also improves my work. It was Fox who taught me how to be an interviewer back in 2013. He was my first crush and is even better in person than he was on screen. Our initial encounter felt so special that I finally understood my job, 13 years after I started: it wasn’t just to meet people and get stories, it was to convey to others what it felt like to meet them. Marty McFly showed me how to work, just as he once showed George how to stand up to Biff. That’s the thing about heroes: they have a way of coming along and helping you, just when you least expect it.
