Interview: David Dimbleby, BBC Question Time (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
DAVID Dimbleby is hoping for a "visceral" confrontation tomorrow night. For the first time, the three main party leaders will submit to a live Question Time inquisition on BBC1 at 8.30pm - not the head-to-head debate he had wanted, admittedly, but still 90 minutes, one after the other, in front of an unpredictable studio audience.
"They've arranged to come on and off without meeting each other," Dimbleby explains with a boyish grin. "So it's not going to be, 'Good luck, hope it goes well, good on ya ...'"
Still, considering that in 2001 it took three separate editions to entice the party leaders, this, he accepts, is a step in the right direction. "Though it would be a big service to the electorate, to politics in general, if they were to debate head-to-head," he adds. "The old argument was, 'Oh, we don't have presidential elections.' Well, watch the television over the past couple of weeks and it's clear a very large part of our election now is choosing our prime minister. Apart from the leaders, how often do you see all the other people? You can't do that in your politicking and then say it's inappropriate to debate head-tohead because we don't have a presidential system."
As the BBC's unofficial custodian of great national events, Dimbleby, 66, is in his element at election time. Sitting in the office where he has been busily preparing to lead election-night coverage, he is clearly fired up by an otherwise uninspiring campaign, chuckling, giggling, contriving exaggeratedly actorish expressions. Having lost out to Michael Grade to be BBC chairman, he remains, he makes clear, on his best behaviour, deflecting questions whenever a frank response might embarrass the regime. Still, his reputation for speaking his mind doesn't quite elude him - even if his main concern today is Labour's apparent evasion of both voters and the media.
"I do think it's very strange the way the campaign has been conducted, and the refusal to say where the party leaders - or rather the Prime Minister - is going [whenever a photo-call is planned]," he says. "It makes it all the more important that Question Time is genuinely 'candidates meet the public' and not 'candidates meet a few close friends and voters who already support them'.
"There have been occasions when Tony Blair has chosen to face an audience of 'enemy women' because of this extraordinary Freudian-masochism-gestalt-therapy theory about how to conduct a personal campaign, through which you apologise and so 'free everybody up' to vote for you again." Tomorrow's Question Time audience, by contrast, will be far more representative of the electorate.
THE programme, Dimbleby insists, "does democracy a great service". Yet Cabinet ministers, from Gordon Brown to Jack Straw, have for years refused to appear - even though turning up would be "the right thing to do". He bangs the table. "The message we get back is that their advisers say there's nothing in it for them. They mean that the attacks on the Government in their view become unfair and too fierce. But actually, that is what government is about. You ought to go on fighting your corner, not just in the Commons, not just in onetoone interviews. I think it's a great pity that they don't."
Could the aggressive Paxman-Humphrys style of political interviewing be partly to blame? After all, didn't Jon Snow complain last week that "lack of deference has gone too far on British television"? Dimbleby smiles and neatly sidesteps a minefield. "I believe in a catholicity of approaches to politicians and interviewing," he says deliberately. He relaxes a little. "Look, you can't invent a way of interviewing that isn't true to your character. It's not phoney, interviewing, it's a serious way of trying to elicit information and get at the truth. Sometimes things are revealed by questions repeated 20 times, sometimes, actually, they're even revealed by the soft sofa interview - by which I don't mean David Frost but the afternoon shows."
He quickly qualifies himself. "Though there is a danger, of course, that if the broadcasting organisations offer the softer interviews, there's a terrible temptation for politicians to take them and avoid the tougher stuff."
Dimbleby, though freelance, is the classic BBC lifer. He began at BBC Bristol in 1960, succeeded his father Richard in 1974 as presenter of Panorama, and moved to Question Time 11 years ago. Having sold his family's local-newspaper business four years ago to Newsquest, for a reported £12 million, he clearly has little need to work to support his family (he has a son with his second wife, Belinda Giles, as well as three children by his first wife Josceline).
So having applied twice to be the BBC's chairman, and once to be director-general, the big question-is what Dimbleby does next. "Well, I carry on very happily being a broadcaster, Question Time goes on, and I'm doing a series which comes out in June called A Picture of Britain," he says. "I'm having a ball. And no, I'm not going to apply to be chairman again, nor to be director-general. It's always been a long shot, and once it's over, I don't regret it. But all my ambitions to take over the BBC in that way have gone."
HE HAS previously spoken out against the "terrible error" of keeping Panorama on Sunday nights, and of the BBC's "crazy" ratings obsession. What, then, would he have done had he become chairman? He will not say, as "it would be unfair on the new gang". So he'd change nothing about BBC News and Current Affairs? He laughs. "You can't assume that from my answer. Ha ha ... But I'm tacit now. And the mood has changed, things are improving."
He is cheered by signs that ratings are becoming less of a goal. "It won't be easy," he says. "It's the old oil tanker, isn't it? But it's the change of attitude that matters in the BBC. It's a funny organisation. It's really hidden anarchy. Every producer, every editor has strong ideas of what they want to do. But equally they have to respond to the signals that come down, which get interpreted differently.
"But there's certainly a move away from so-called reality shows and BBC2 doing its 'how's your garden' stuff," he adds cheerily, "to something sli-ii-ghtly more interesting and revealing." So he won't be watching Celebrity Big Brother, then. "I always watch Celebrity Big Brother," he says. "Bits of it. Not lots." Another laugh.
As for that other reality contest next week, he promises a "hugely entertaining" election-night programme, put together by a team of 800. ITV, by contrast, is taking an avowedly glitzier approach, with a body-language analyst and celebrities such as Kevin Spacey and Richard Branson invited to a riverboat party. Dimbleby sounds unimpressed. "They've got Jonathan Dimbleby, what do they need Kevin Spacey for?" he splutters.
Ah, his little brother. Won't there be an element of fraternal competition? "He's my brother! How could we compete on election night?" he responds. "No, there isn't, actually. We deliberately don't talk to each other about what we're doing. Only my mother sees us both, and she certainly doesn't have a favourite. She has two television sets, and two remotes, and when she sees a mouth move on one, she flicks to hear what we're saying."
Still, doesn't he find it odd to have two Dimblebies interpreting the national will? After all, Jeremy Paxman once wryly remarked that "it's part of the constitution of this country that all events have to be presented by a Dimbleby".
"I don't think he meant that," Dimbleby replies. "It was just a bad hair day." He laughs once more. "I'm just a jobbing broadcaster who happens to be called Dimbleby, that's all. Nothing to it."
(Evening Standard, April 27 2005)
DAVID Dimbleby is hoping for a "visceral" confrontation tomorrow night. For the first time, the three main party leaders will submit to a live Question Time inquisition on BBC1 at 8.30pm - not the head-to-head debate he had wanted, admittedly, but still 90 minutes, one after the other, in front of an unpredictable studio audience.
"They've arranged to come on and off without meeting each other," Dimbleby explains with a boyish grin. "So it's not going to be, 'Good luck, hope it goes well, good on ya ...'"
Still, considering that in 2001 it took three separate editions to entice the party leaders, this, he accepts, is a step in the right direction. "Though it would be a big service to the electorate, to politics in general, if they were to debate head-to-head," he adds. "The old argument was, 'Oh, we don't have presidential elections.' Well, watch the television over the past couple of weeks and it's clear a very large part of our election now is choosing our prime minister. Apart from the leaders, how often do you see all the other people? You can't do that in your politicking and then say it's inappropriate to debate head-tohead because we don't have a presidential system."
As the BBC's unofficial custodian of great national events, Dimbleby, 66, is in his element at election time. Sitting in the office where he has been busily preparing to lead election-night coverage, he is clearly fired up by an otherwise uninspiring campaign, chuckling, giggling, contriving exaggeratedly actorish expressions. Having lost out to Michael Grade to be BBC chairman, he remains, he makes clear, on his best behaviour, deflecting questions whenever a frank response might embarrass the regime. Still, his reputation for speaking his mind doesn't quite elude him - even if his main concern today is Labour's apparent evasion of both voters and the media.
"I do think it's very strange the way the campaign has been conducted, and the refusal to say where the party leaders - or rather the Prime Minister - is going [whenever a photo-call is planned]," he says. "It makes it all the more important that Question Time is genuinely 'candidates meet the public' and not 'candidates meet a few close friends and voters who already support them'.
"There have been occasions when Tony Blair has chosen to face an audience of 'enemy women' because of this extraordinary Freudian-masochism-gestalt-therapy theory about how to conduct a personal campaign, through which you apologise and so 'free everybody up' to vote for you again." Tomorrow's Question Time audience, by contrast, will be far more representative of the electorate.
THE programme, Dimbleby insists, "does democracy a great service". Yet Cabinet ministers, from Gordon Brown to Jack Straw, have for years refused to appear - even though turning up would be "the right thing to do". He bangs the table. "The message we get back is that their advisers say there's nothing in it for them. They mean that the attacks on the Government in their view become unfair and too fierce. But actually, that is what government is about. You ought to go on fighting your corner, not just in the Commons, not just in onetoone interviews. I think it's a great pity that they don't."
Could the aggressive Paxman-Humphrys style of political interviewing be partly to blame? After all, didn't Jon Snow complain last week that "lack of deference has gone too far on British television"? Dimbleby smiles and neatly sidesteps a minefield. "I believe in a catholicity of approaches to politicians and interviewing," he says deliberately. He relaxes a little. "Look, you can't invent a way of interviewing that isn't true to your character. It's not phoney, interviewing, it's a serious way of trying to elicit information and get at the truth. Sometimes things are revealed by questions repeated 20 times, sometimes, actually, they're even revealed by the soft sofa interview - by which I don't mean David Frost but the afternoon shows."
He quickly qualifies himself. "Though there is a danger, of course, that if the broadcasting organisations offer the softer interviews, there's a terrible temptation for politicians to take them and avoid the tougher stuff."
Dimbleby, though freelance, is the classic BBC lifer. He began at BBC Bristol in 1960, succeeded his father Richard in 1974 as presenter of Panorama, and moved to Question Time 11 years ago. Having sold his family's local-newspaper business four years ago to Newsquest, for a reported £12 million, he clearly has little need to work to support his family (he has a son with his second wife, Belinda Giles, as well as three children by his first wife Josceline).
So having applied twice to be the BBC's chairman, and once to be director-general, the big question-is what Dimbleby does next. "Well, I carry on very happily being a broadcaster, Question Time goes on, and I'm doing a series which comes out in June called A Picture of Britain," he says. "I'm having a ball. And no, I'm not going to apply to be chairman again, nor to be director-general. It's always been a long shot, and once it's over, I don't regret it. But all my ambitions to take over the BBC in that way have gone."
HE HAS previously spoken out against the "terrible error" of keeping Panorama on Sunday nights, and of the BBC's "crazy" ratings obsession. What, then, would he have done had he become chairman? He will not say, as "it would be unfair on the new gang". So he'd change nothing about BBC News and Current Affairs? He laughs. "You can't assume that from my answer. Ha ha ... But I'm tacit now. And the mood has changed, things are improving."
He is cheered by signs that ratings are becoming less of a goal. "It won't be easy," he says. "It's the old oil tanker, isn't it? But it's the change of attitude that matters in the BBC. It's a funny organisation. It's really hidden anarchy. Every producer, every editor has strong ideas of what they want to do. But equally they have to respond to the signals that come down, which get interpreted differently.
"But there's certainly a move away from so-called reality shows and BBC2 doing its 'how's your garden' stuff," he adds cheerily, "to something sli-ii-ghtly more interesting and revealing." So he won't be watching Celebrity Big Brother, then. "I always watch Celebrity Big Brother," he says. "Bits of it. Not lots." Another laugh.
As for that other reality contest next week, he promises a "hugely entertaining" election-night programme, put together by a team of 800. ITV, by contrast, is taking an avowedly glitzier approach, with a body-language analyst and celebrities such as Kevin Spacey and Richard Branson invited to a riverboat party. Dimbleby sounds unimpressed. "They've got Jonathan Dimbleby, what do they need Kevin Spacey for?" he splutters.
Ah, his little brother. Won't there be an element of fraternal competition? "He's my brother! How could we compete on election night?" he responds. "No, there isn't, actually. We deliberately don't talk to each other about what we're doing. Only my mother sees us both, and she certainly doesn't have a favourite. She has two television sets, and two remotes, and when she sees a mouth move on one, she flicks to hear what we're saying."
Still, doesn't he find it odd to have two Dimblebies interpreting the national will? After all, Jeremy Paxman once wryly remarked that "it's part of the constitution of this country that all events have to be presented by a Dimbleby".
"I don't think he meant that," Dimbleby replies. "It was just a bad hair day." He laughs once more. "I'm just a jobbing broadcaster who happens to be called Dimbleby, that's all. Nothing to it."
(Evening Standard, April 27 2005)
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