Greatest interview ever told, by Frost, Nixon and Bakewell
FORTY years ago, David Frost and Joan Bakewell were already household names and decades on, they are still at the top of their game.
They were brought together last weekend for BBC2’s Frost on Nixon special in which Frost became the interviewee for the inquisitor Bakewell on the subject of what most people now agree was the greatest interview ever done: The Nixon Interviews of 1977.
Bakewell, now 78, quizzed the 72-year-old whippersnapper Frost like it all happened yesterday and not almost 35 years ago. You could see how genuinely fascinated she was by the story and made a perfect choice to interview the interviewer.
Frost was wonderfully modest recalling his achievements in that languid tone he has adopted in everything he’s done since from Breakfast with Frost to Through the Keyhole.
Imagine securing the interview in the first place, stealing it from under the noses of the US giants CBS and ABC. Imagine too the work that went into just preparing for it, months spent researching and going over every unturned leaf of information about the Watergate scandal in particular.
These days, if we are truly lucky, a politician might do 25 minutes with Andrew Marr on BBC1 or John Humphrys on Radio 4’s Today programme. But would a former PM or US President, allow 29 hours of interviews to be recorded over 12 days in what emerged as a classic cat and mouse game seen between the feline Frost and a wily old rodent Nixon.
Five 75-minute films were eventually recorded, an hour long extract of which was shown on Saturday, climaxing, perfectly with Nixon’s now legendary apology, : “I let down the American people down and I have to carry the burden with me for the rest of my life. My political life is over.”
It was extraordinary theatre, which of course it became. Frost has done much since then, but he has never done better. This was his finest hour and the BBC, all these years on, did a splendid job reliving it.
Another wily old hack, Jonathan Dimbleby, has been on A South American Journey over the past couple of weeks and fascinating it has been too.
Sunday’s finale was Brazil and what a belter it was. It started in Manaus, now a city of two million tucked thousands of miles up the Amazon and shortly to see the completion of a new road bridge that will eventually see populations drift seamlessly into the rainforest which stares at the city from 12km across river. We met Amazon Indians making their medicines and potions which the world’s pharmaceutical giants want to get their hands in, we met the people who tackle illegal logging, the gold prospectors and even the actual Girl from Ipanema who made famous the song. Dimbleby, an engaging, inquiring traveller, reminded us of Brazil’s constant need to protect and exploit at the same time. Next year this country overtakes the UK in the list of the richest countries and that’s before it has thrown open its doors to the world for the 2014 World Cup and the Rio Olympics of 2011.
South America is not a natural sphere of influence/interest for UK broadcasters, so this was a rare treat. If it had a flaw it could have done with one more episode covering the silent trio of this Hispanic continent: French Guiana (British) Guyana and, most of all, Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana) But you can’t have everything.
Less intrepid, but arguably just as challenging was Alex Polizzi’s - The Hotel Inspector - attempt to sort out Milton Lodge, a beautiful (from the outside) 10-bedroom B&B in deepest Dorset.
Run by 80-year-old Tom and his wife Maureen, 70, both seemed to have fallen out of love with it, Tom especially, who told us rather bluntly he’d acquired the place 23 years earlier while sat on the toilet reading Country Life.
Tom, who wore a sunhat with a red rose in it and whose sole front tooth peered through his bushy seadog’s beard had signs up on the door which hardly welcomed guests, koala bears hanging on to all manner of tacky pictures and trinkets and rooms where floral wallpaper was, well, everywhere. Tom, who just 20 minutes in had become a caricature of himself, explained to an incredulous Alex why the bathroom was pink: “This is for gays this room, they like pink”.
By the end, I wasn’t convinced the marvellous Alex had achieved an awful lot. She sorted out a few floral bedspreads and rugs, improved their marketing (not difficult) and utilised their function room for kids’ parties. But there wasn’t a paying guest in sight and I was still none the wiser how this undemanding couple had acquired such a beautiful home.
Hidden, a new four-part conspiracy thriller starring Philip Glenister as a sleazy, shambolic lawyer with a past, was terrific. I won’t begin to try to explain what’s going on but it was sufficiently comprehensible to plough on next week. Glenister is fantastic, streetwise, edgy, flirtatious and feisty and a collision between his criminal past and the political scandal embracing Downing Street is surely going to happen. Stick with it or get on board on your i-Player…
PS: Three of the above are original BBC productions. A reminder in this tough week for the corporation of what they do best.
Email to a friend
Print this page- BREAKING NEWS: Tributes paid to Niamh Curry as brave five-year-old loses battle against cancer
- BREAKING NEWS: Pensioner dies after collision at Northampton shopping centre
- Man tied to tree and beaten on Northampton Racecourse
- BREAKING NEWS: Seven-year-old boy dies following house fire in Northamptonshire
- Northampton binmen at ‘breaking point’
- Northampton binmen at ‘breaking point’
- Saints’ stadium plans get support as long as traffic issues solved
- Staff strike at Northampton school over academy plans forces closure
- Eastern European pupils helping school standards across Northampton
- Vow to crack down on anti-social behaviour across Northampton’s eastern district
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Northampton
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: East
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.