Books do furnish a TV series

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When I was younger, I used to think, ‘If ever you become famous, on no account agree to be interviewed by Lynn (“Demon”) Barber.’ The call never came; but, if it had, I hope my resolve would have remained adamantine, whatever her blandishments.

You can see what she made of her victims in her collected profiles, Mostly Men (1991). Richard Harris has ‘a very surprising habit’: he ‘plays pocket billiards’ throughout the interview. ‘He puts his hand down inside his tracksuit and sort of rearranges things.’ Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, is in floods of tears most of the time, even blubbing into his meat pie at lunch. Most savage of all — one can only gasp at the woman’s originality — is her taking the cut-throat razor to Melvyn Bragg:

Melvyn Bragg has an awful lot of friends, and I seemed to bump into dozens of them while writing this article.