Who has surprised you the most?
People surprise you in different ways. Lou Reed because he was such a bastard. I’d heard he was difficult but there’s difficult and difficult. Ed Miliband – in how much I liked him, and how different he was from how the media portrayed him – he was empathetic and much more impressive. Norman Tebbit was surprisingly charming, Bernard Manning surprisingly vulnerable (it turned out the statue of Enoch Powell on his mantelpiece was a candlestick with a wick coming out of his bottom – “Couldn’t stand the fucker,” he said.) Alex Ferguson was much more likable than I imagined (I’m a Man City fan), and had a brilliant way with the public (but this was before his last mad days at United). Scott Walker was supposed to be a scary recluse but was incredibly sweet. Ronnie O’Sullivan – in one way we couldn’t be more different but, in a weird way, we are soul sisters. Banksy – because nobody had interviewed Banksy before, and I didn’t have a clue what he would look like or indeed if he was Banksy.
What’s been your biggest faux pas?
Maybe suggesting that Ryan Giggs was a wonderful family man in an interview (perhaps he is if that extends to sleeping with your sister-in-law). Forgetting Emma Bunton’s name in an interview, and having to check my hand, where I’d written it, and her noticing. Asking Leonardo DiCaprio the following tactless question: “Leo, you know your early films were great, would you agree that the ones which came later were a bag of shite?” I was thrown out of the interview, and the film company withdrew advertising from the Guardian.
How much research do you do?
I try to do lots. I’m a bit of a research obsessive. But it’s easy to do too much, so you’re stuffed with information that you don’t know what to ask. It’s insulting to under-research. Say you’re meeting a great novelist and you’ve just skim-read the latest book, it’s disrespectful. Also, it puts you in a weak position; if you want to to criticise somebody, challenge them, you have to do it from a position of strength/knowledge. I nearly always feel under-prepared. Once I was sent to interview Daniel Day-Lewis with 20 minutes’ notice, so I could hardly do any research. It turned out to be a really successful interview. We got on very well. Maybe I didn’t have time to be nervous.
Is it all five-star hotels?
Are you kidding? Lucky if I get a Best Western. Actually, I hate doing interviews at the Dorchester – the five-star hotel of choice for big film companies. I love doing interviews in people’s homes where you’re surrounded by all that’s personal to them. I recently did David Hockney at home, surrounded by self-portraits (on iPad), pictures of his dogs in Bridlington, eating fish and chips, and drinking whisky. I was in heaven. I also like going on the road with people. I spent three days with Alex Ferguson when he was doing a book tour. Ditto Gazza. You get a much better sense of the person. I also like meeting people on a few different occasions. So, with Tom Jones, I saw him on the set of Later … with Jools Holland, in the radio studio with Terry Wogan, at a photo shoot, and then we did an epic interview over Martinis. I’d never had a Martini before. By the end, I was picking the olives out of his glass. That was a good night. Drink can be a very good lubricant for interviews.
Anything every go really, really wrong?
God, yes, of course. Getting chucked out (Lou Reed, Leonardo DiCaprio and others). Tape not working. (Always take two). Getting Andy Murray’s mother Judy to ring up in an interview with the then long-haired Andy (he didn’t know I knew her), me passing over my mobile and her saying to him “Get your haircut, son”. He didn’t think it was funny and described me as the strangest man he’d ever met in his autobiography.
Who’s on your wish list?
Hillary Clinton, Michelle/Barack Obama, David Bowie, Aretha Franklin, Muhammad Ali with his daughter (he’s incapable of doing an interview by himself because of his Parkinson’s), Sly Stone, Kanye, Putin and a few dictators.
Simon’s five most memorable interviews
Snoop Dog: Smoking his blunt and trying to hold myself together while being totally out of it. At the end, the publicist asked me whether I was OK. I said I was fine. He said, “Why are you crawling on the floor?”
Duwayne Brooks: Duwayne was the best friend of Stephen Lawrence. He was incredibly mistrusting of me when we met, and challenged me about everything. But we ended up being very close, and I ghostwrote his book, Steve And Me.
Amanda Knox: It was late in the afternoon, the room was very dark, and she broke down but was desperately trying to stop herself crying. It was very moving. This was a few days before she was re-convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher. Earlier this year, that conviction was overturned for the final time.
Desmond Tutu: I just felt I was in the presence of a truly great spiritual/political man. But one who knew he had plenty of weaknesses, and no sanctimony.
Thora Hird: Nothing beats getting drunk with Dame Thora. And the unpublishable stories she told me about Charles and Diana …
