I usually dread the final 15 minutes of a celebrity interview: the awkward section during which the writer must steer the conversation away from the polite, mutually enjoyable discussion of whatever the star is currently promoting toward the juicy personal details that your readers really want to know and your subject really (and justifiably) wants to keep private. You sit in the consciously impersonal atmosphere of an upmarket hotel room with a total stranger, and broach topics you might spend decades dancing around with friends and family. I still have nightmares in which I blurt out lines worthy of Alan Partridge:
Yes, the bass line on that track is terrifically deep isn’t it! And talking of hitting rock bottom, would you mind running me quickly through the series of romantic humiliations, shocking paparazzi images and sudden bereavements that led to your recent stint in rehab?
On my way to interview the singer-songwriter Carly Simon in 2008, I hoped I’d have the nerve to ask about her string of famous lovers: Cat Stevens, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Kris Kristofferson and (possibly) Mick Jagger. I suspected it would be easier to draw her on these early dalliances than on her ten-year marriage to James Taylor, which crumbled in a mess of addiction and infidelity in 1980. He still won’t speak to her, although they have two grown-up children, giving her more reason to keep her famously lush lips sealed on the subject.
But within minutes of admission to Simon’s cosy New York apartment, we were perched together on the rim of her claw-footed bathtub, poring over old photograph albums, and she stroked the handsome, hollow cheeks of her ex-husband each time he appeared, still swooning over ‘those eyes, those eyes….
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