Bryan Appleyard

The star interview is one of the hardest tasks to handle in all journalism, so I thought it might be useful to put on display, for the benefit of beginners, just how an expert goes about shaping up the raw material once he has secured it. There are excellent reasons for thinking that Bryan Appleyard's interview with Monica Bellucci, obtained in 2004, remains a benchmark of the genre. First of all, it's got Monica, about whom I, even in my dotage, feel the same as Appleyard does, along with millions of other doting admirers all over the planet. And we feel that way, of course, not just because she is beautiful, but because she is talented. Second of all, Appleyard, appreciating both those attributes to the full, doesn't let awe throw him.