On learning from yesterday's Telegraph revelations about parliamentary expenses that our Tory MP, David Heathcote-Amory had claimed £380 for horse manure, I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or annoyed.
Should I be pleased because the news can't do the chances of our Liberal Democrat candidate for the Wells constituency, Tessa Munt, any harm at all?
Or should I be annoyed because I reckon I could have found some local manure at a lower price - which would have would have been a better deal for him, a better deal for the taxpayer and a better deal for me, as it would have let me in on a slice of the action for myself.
A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s questions
If you saw the recently posted clips of Clement Attlee and Edward Heath, you might enjoy another gem from my collection of memorable TV interviews from the past.
This time, it’s sunny Jim Callaghan in full combat mode, repeatedly refusing to answer questions about Roy Jenkins.
Although he may have succeeded in putting Robin Day in his place, whether or not it did the then prime minister's reputation any good is quite another matter.
However, compared with the way Gordon Brown behaves in interviews (see yesterday’s post), there’s something vaguely refreshing to see a politician being as open as this about his unwillingness to answer the questions put to him:
This time, it’s sunny Jim Callaghan in full combat mode, repeatedly refusing to answer questions about Roy Jenkins.
Although he may have succeeded in putting Robin Day in his place, whether or not it did the then prime minister's reputation any good is quite another matter.
However, compared with the way Gordon Brown behaves in interviews (see yesterday’s post), there’s something vaguely refreshing to see a politician being as open as this about his unwillingness to answer the questions put to him:
UK Speechwriters' Guild
Just launched today is a new website of the UK Speechwriters’ Guild, which can be visited HERE.
The Guild has been formed to:
• share knowledge on how to operate as a speechwriter in the UK
• establish guidelines for commercial rates for UK speechwriters’ work
• raise standards of public speaking, by providing training courses for speechwriters, giving awards, circulating information about jobs and organising events
• persuade UK business leaders, professional speakers and politicians of the great value which specialist speechwriters can bring to their commercial and public life
• publish a quarterly trade newsletter, with hints, tips and examples of fine speechwriting
To learn more about what it has to offer and how to join, have a look at the website.
Gordon Brown's interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg
Yesterday, Iain Dale posted a plug for a new book about handling media interviews and included the following observation (by Dale) about Gordon Brown (or 'Boredom Frown', as my granddaughters prefer to call him):
“Gordon Brown has catchphrases he uses over and over again. Whatever the question he’s asked he’ll come out with the same five catchphrases. Someone should tell him people are getting bored. They know what the answers are going to be. He doesn’t seem to have the ability to think on his feet in the way that Blair did. He doesn’t come across well in interviews like Blair.’
I think Brown’s problem is even more serious than this. More than 20 years ago, I heard the late great Robin Day complaining that the TV interview had been hijacked by politicians. In the good old days, he said, interviewers could have a really good argument with the likes of Harold Macmillan, who would perk up at the prospect of engaging in serious debate - whereas now (i.e. more than 20 years ago), they just treat questions as prompts to say anything they like about whatever they like.
If you missed one of my postings on this theme last September, here’s part of what it said:
In an age when coverage of speeches makes up an increasingly small proportion of broadcast political news, Brown’s supporters might offer the defence that dourness on the podium doesn’t matter as much as it did in the past. But even if there is some truth in this, the trouble is that their hero has a second, and arguably even bigger, handicap in the way he conducts himself in what has become the main cockpit of political debate on television and radio, namely the interview.
For at least two decades, viewers and listeners have had put up with the sight and sound of politicians treating interviewers’ questions as prompts to say anything they like, regardless of what they were asked, or as yet another opportunity to dodge an issue. As an exponent of how to carry this depressing art to its limits, Gordon Brown has no serious competitors among contemporary British politicians. When he was still shadow chancellor, one commentator noted that if you asked him what he had for breakfast, his most likely response would be ‘what the country needs is a prudent budget’ – and that would merely be the preamble to a lecture about his latest thoughts on the matter. I recently asked one of the BBC’s most experienced and best-known presenters what it was like to interview him. His answer was rather more outspoken than I’d expected:
"Brown answers his own questions, never the interviewer's, and is utterly shameless. He will say what he wants to say and that's it. And he'll say it fifty times in one interview without any embarrassment at all. I've never met anyone quite like him in that respect. I once spent 40 minutes on one narrow point and still failed to get him to make the smallest concession. He's extraordinary and is never anything but evasive and verbose."
If politicians like Brown think it clever or smart to get one over the interviewer with such tactics, they betray a staggering lack of sensitivity to two rather obvious and basic facts about the way people interpret verbal communication. The first is that viewers and listeners can tell instantly when interviewees are being evasive. And the second is that they don’t much like it. Politicians may say that they’re worried about their low esteem in the eyes of the public and growing voter apathy. But it never seems to occur to them that their relentless refusal to give straight answers to questions might have something to do with it.
The fuller story can be seen HERE.
“Gordon Brown has catchphrases he uses over and over again. Whatever the question he’s asked he’ll come out with the same five catchphrases. Someone should tell him people are getting bored. They know what the answers are going to be. He doesn’t seem to have the ability to think on his feet in the way that Blair did. He doesn’t come across well in interviews like Blair.’
I think Brown’s problem is even more serious than this. More than 20 years ago, I heard the late great Robin Day complaining that the TV interview had been hijacked by politicians. In the good old days, he said, interviewers could have a really good argument with the likes of Harold Macmillan, who would perk up at the prospect of engaging in serious debate - whereas now (i.e. more than 20 years ago), they just treat questions as prompts to say anything they like about whatever they like.
If you missed one of my postings on this theme last September, here’s part of what it said:
In an age when coverage of speeches makes up an increasingly small proportion of broadcast political news, Brown’s supporters might offer the defence that dourness on the podium doesn’t matter as much as it did in the past. But even if there is some truth in this, the trouble is that their hero has a second, and arguably even bigger, handicap in the way he conducts himself in what has become the main cockpit of political debate on television and radio, namely the interview.
For at least two decades, viewers and listeners have had put up with the sight and sound of politicians treating interviewers’ questions as prompts to say anything they like, regardless of what they were asked, or as yet another opportunity to dodge an issue. As an exponent of how to carry this depressing art to its limits, Gordon Brown has no serious competitors among contemporary British politicians. When he was still shadow chancellor, one commentator noted that if you asked him what he had for breakfast, his most likely response would be ‘what the country needs is a prudent budget’ – and that would merely be the preamble to a lecture about his latest thoughts on the matter. I recently asked one of the BBC’s most experienced and best-known presenters what it was like to interview him. His answer was rather more outspoken than I’d expected:
"Brown answers his own questions, never the interviewer's, and is utterly shameless. He will say what he wants to say and that's it. And he'll say it fifty times in one interview without any embarrassment at all. I've never met anyone quite like him in that respect. I once spent 40 minutes on one narrow point and still failed to get him to make the smallest concession. He's extraordinary and is never anything but evasive and verbose."
If politicians like Brown think it clever or smart to get one over the interviewer with such tactics, they betray a staggering lack of sensitivity to two rather obvious and basic facts about the way people interpret verbal communication. The first is that viewers and listeners can tell instantly when interviewees are being evasive. And the second is that they don’t much like it. Politicians may say that they’re worried about their low esteem in the eyes of the public and growing voter apathy. But it never seems to occur to them that their relentless refusal to give straight answers to questions might have something to do with it.
The fuller story can be seen HERE.
Eye contact, public speaking and the case of President Zuma’s dark glasses
Having just watched Jacob Zuma being sworn in as South Africa’ new president (HERE), I was reminded of the importance of eye contact in holding the attention of an audience.
It wasn’t so much that he hardly looked up from the text, which was excusable given that the importance of getting the words right when reading out an oath, as the fact that he was wearing dark glasses at all.
Readers of my books will know that I regard some of the widely circulating claims about body language and non-verbal communication as being at best over-stated, and at worst false (e.g. see Lend Me Your Ears, Chapter 11). But eye-contact is definitely not one of these.
In fact, here’s what I wrote about the subject twenty-five years ago that bears on the case of President Zuma'a dark glasses:
‘.. humans are the only primate species in which the irises are framed by visible areas of whiteness, and it is generally considered that the evolutionary significance of this has to do with the communicative importance of our eyes: the whites of the eyes make it relatively easy for people to track even slight movements over quite large distances. An illustration of the importance of eye visibility for holding the attention of an audience is provided by an anecdote in the autobiography of the Oxford philosopher, A.J. Ayer (Part of My Life, 1977). He reports that, after sustaining a black eye as a result of bumping into a lamp post during a wartime blackout, he took to wearing dark glasses. He goes on to say that he subsequently found when lecturing in them that it was quite impossible to hold the attention of an audience. Given his reputation as an effective speaker, this suggests that the invisibility of a person's eyes can seriously interfere with his ability to communicate with an audience. It may therefore be no coincidence that there have been very few great orators who have worn spectacles, even with plain glass in them, when making speeches.’ (Our Masters’ Voices, 1984, pp.89-90).
There’s much more on why eye-contact is so important for effective public speaking in Lend Me Your Ears (pp.36-43), but an additional point about President Zuma’s choice of dark glasses is that it tends to make him look more like a South American dictator than a democratically elected president, an implicit association that he would presumably be quite keen to avoid.
All of which is to say that, if I were advising him, I’d definitely tell him to get some new glasses.
I'd also suggest that his aides should pay a bit more attention to camera angles and back-drops, because there's someone just behind him wearing a black bowler hat, the brim of which at times pokes out from the sides of the president's head - a seemingly trivial point perhaps, but I bet I'm not the only viewer who found it distracting.
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