My First Interview and the beginning of a Long Journey in exploring some of the world’s most fascinating people

My very first interview which was done for radio was far from a Prime Minister, a business titan, or a global superstar. It was with Australian country and western legend Buddy Williams—just weeks into my first job in broadcasting at radio station called 8HA in the wildly remote centre of Australia, Alice Springs. I was still in my teens.

Aside from 8AL, a repeater station of the ABC public broadcaster based in Darwin, 8HA was the only local radio station. The ABC signal, broadcast some 1,500 km away, was its only competitor. There was no television. 8HA was set up in what looked like a car wash but was in fact a purpose-built, two-studio station located 8 km south of town, surrounded by nothing but red desert and a transmission tower behind it.

The manager, who lived on-site in a house he had built, was the sole resident with his wife. With a technical background in radio, he had constructed the station and was the driver of what was, in its way, a considerable achievement. We had a landline to a station in Adelaide, and thanks to the flatness of the desert, our signal could be received at night hundreds of kilometres away.

It was an eerie place, especially at night—one announcer alone in a glassed-in studio with nothing outside but darkness and the occasional thunder of a road train. It was an auspicious beginning for a private school boy from Sydney now living in shared accommodation provided by the station and its ghastly manager. The animosity between us was mutual. His name was Ren Kelly. Still well-known in the Northern Territory, he’s a successful businessman and entrepreneur—but he would have liked to be a nice guy. He failed.

But this is about interviewing.

Buddy Williams was a lovely man and became my very first interviewee—a legend of the Aussie bush, known as the “Yodelling Jackaroo.” He toured the interior and eastern states in a circus tent, performing classic country music to packed crowds. I didn’t know a single one of his songs, but his lifestyle fascinated me. He travelled through the Northern Territory, South Australia, and Western Australia, performing to eager fans lined up outside the tent to see Buddy in the flesh.

Even from the beginning, my interviewing style was unique. Rather than starting with something predictable like “How does it feel to be back in Alice Springs?” or “What can we expect at the show tonight?”, I wanted to understand his life—what it felt like to live in some of the most remote parts of the world. It was a world without peers.

We talked for a long time, and I learned much from this warm-eyed man. I may have explained my background in classical music to him before we began, which he found fascinating. I still wish I had asked him more—especially about Australian society, how it had changed, and what he thought of city life. But I wasn’t yet advanced enough in my thinking to go further. Still, we covered a lot. He said he loved the interview and gave me a free ticket to his show. I attended, and he even mentioned our conversation on stage—probably everyone in town heard it. No photo was taken, of course. Selfies weren’t yet a thing.

The Craft of the Interview

Here are a few thoughts that apply to both radio and television. I’ve worked extensively in both—very different mediums. In television, the challenge is getting the interviewee to forget about the lights, the cameras, the backdrops, and the often distracting crew. Radio is a dream: you, me, a microphone plugged into a device—and we talk. With the right approach, radio can elicit extraordinary stories and emotions, either through an instinctual bond or, occasionally, by using discomfort to create tension.

With cameras, it’s much easier to set that dynamic. In a studio, with a floor manager counting down from ten as you say, “Relax…”—well, you get the idea. But I’ve developed the skill to make it feel like it’s just the two of us. The subject must be understood, reassured, and even seduced—or made to realize they’re on unsteady ground.

I’ve worked with some of Australia’s greatest interviewers, especially Mike Walsh and Ray Martin. I also interviewed the greatest interviewer of them all—Clive James. Like my interview with Mother Teresa, there was no script. I wanted to learn from him while I was interviewing him, which fed his considerable ego and his immense talent.

The Australian Television and Radio Museum has accepted around 100 hours of my material—not just interviews, but the topics explored. Some of it was good, some ordinary. The best is on this site under “TV History.” Some very old radio material is there as well.

Clive James once told me, when I asked if he ever got nervous sitting opposite powerful people, that for the hour of the interview, he was completely consumed by the subject. He’d know everything about them, obsessively. After the interview, he’d say thank you, walk out, and forget the person as if it had never happened. I was intrigued. He also described his style as “bringing it down,” whereas I tend to juice up the energy. He was cool. He was GREAT.

Gumbel, Sebastian, and Style

The greatest long-form interviewers in the world? Bryant Gumbel (NBC’s Today Show) and Tim Sebastian (BBC’s original HardTalk, now with Deutsche Welle). Opposites. My style is closer to Gumbel. Sebastian reminds me of Clive James: sharp, attacking.

I’ll never forget Sebastian’s first HardTalk interview with former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith. He opened with:

“Ian Smith, thank you for your time. You’ve been called many things—a thug, a white supremacist, a hater of blacks, and a murderer…”
The camera zoomed into Smith’s face—he didn’t flinch—then back to Sebastian, who said:
“And you were all of those things… WEREN’T YOU?”

I nearly fell off my chair. I never met Tim, though I worked at Deutsche Welle years before his time. He’s no longer young—but he was, and is, AWESOME.

Clive James and Confidence

Clive James seemed to like me. He might have thought I was lightweight, and he didn’t know I’d had only two hours of sleep after a blazing row with a lover. But by the end, I knew the interview was effective. A discreet producer later told me James said, “That guy is very, very good.” It boosted my confidence enormously.

Years later came another moment of validation after interviewing the great Sammy Davis Jr. He’d done thousands of interviews, but mine was different—offbeat, personal. Afterward, he was warm and effusive. I thanked him, and he disappeared with his entourage. But ten minutes later, the door burst open. He had returned from the Presidential Suite.

“Man, I went back to my suite and thought about your interview,” he said. “And I thought how good Jeffrey is! So I came back here to tell you—man, you are very good, and I enjoyed every minute!”

I was stunned. One of the greatest entertainers in history had come back to compliment me. The real compliment, though, was his grace.

A Difficult Chapter

My time at 8HA didn’t last. Three months later, I moved to 2RG in Griffith, NSW. Another terrible manager—Ray Gamble—seemed like Ren Kelly’s twin.

Another  executive, a closeted homosexual, invited me to his home, gave me wine, and attempted a sexual assault. I was uncooperative and he in temper threatened to have me fired if I didn’t cooperate. I left, and within weeks, I was fired.  There was no reason provided.

Media wasn’t the public service—it was rough. That executive, later charged with crimes against minors, became wealthy importing pornography through a loophole in Canberra’s local laws.

Griffith had a large Italian population—rumours of mafia syndicates abounded, but the people I met were lovely. The station still exists, though its television wing, like many rural stations, has vanished. My work there was unimpressive, but I met someone special and spent weekends exploring the Riverina. Moments of joy.

Has media changed in terms of bullying and harassment.  Maybe, a bit… Women are far more protected by like the #metoo movement, we seem not to exist.

But this is about interviewing. Back to it!

Perhaps the best Interview: Saint Mother Teresa

Perhaps the greatest interview of my life was for radio 2SM Sydney—with Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Then still “Mother Teresa,” she was visiting Bourke, a remote NSW town with a large, impoverished Indigenous community supported by the Sisters of Charity.

I stayed in a run-down hotel. For three days, I walked 3 km to the mission, tape recorder in hand, only to be told, “Not today.” Finally, on the fourth attempt, I complained bitterly. Overhearing this, Mother Teresa appeared behind her minder.

“Come in, come in!” she said.

She sat me at a long wooden table, asked a nun to make me a banana sandwich, and told me to stop eating so fast—we had plenty of time. She radiated warmth.

In a quiet prayer room, just the two of us, I discarded my scripted questions. I spoke from the heart. My first question was deeply personal and unorthodox:

“You astonish me. The things you do, the people you serve—I don’t know how you do it. Why are you so good, and why am I not?”

She responded passionately:

“My work is none of your business. I am nothing more than a little pencil of God. It gives me no discomfort. You don’t understand—it’s my calling. You are not me. But through that microphone, you can bring about goodness, honesty, truth. You too are a little pencil of God, just in a different way.”

I have photos of us together. The cassette tape, sadly, is lost—perhaps somewhere in my storage in Sydney. I’ve often hoped that, if she could glimpse me from far away, she’d smile and say, “He’s okay…”

She was wonderful. That sweaty boy eating a banana sandwich with a living saint—what a memory. The praise I received for that interview was some of the highest of my career.

It also changed my interviewing style, and I now only use paper with perhaps three-word topics so I don’t forget a key area of discussion. I can become so immersed in the subject and go off on tangents that it’s quite easy to forget the overall map of where the interview was supposed to go. I often give an example of an interviewer who doesn’t listen: a mythical interview with Michael Jackson, where he says, “I am prepared to tell you about my children. And who is Prince’s mother…?” The interviewer looks intently, as if fascinated. MJ stops speaking, and the interviewer then asks, “So everyone is talking about your new album. What should we expect and what’s the hottest track?”

One also uses scripts if you need very accurate quotes or numbers. I certainly used scripts at CNBC, which was business-focused. But wherever a presenter can ad-lib questions and have an idea—or as I call it, a map—of where the interview goes, it is far more effective. With your best friend or your partner, it would be odd to be holding a note—or in the early days, clipboards were big! That may be different if you’re presenting a divorce settlement, but best to stick to the natural and not be afraid of slip-ups. Humans enjoy watching other humans. That said, it should still flow, and the curation of the discussion should be elegant in style. Of course, it’s inappropriate to interrupt, but if you are getting bored by an interviewee, then so is your audience—who have the ultimate power: the red button to change the channel.

I use my intuition for each and every interview. CNBC was slightly different; much of the technical financial jargon wasn’t in my head but on paper. That was perhaps the only time—apart from my earliest years—when I heavily relied on scripts. But I would still regularly go to the “Mother Teresa” position and just let it rip. CNBC was primarily about business, but I pushed the boundaries. The dynamics of people were as interesting as their companies’ plans and yearly results.

I once interviewed Sir Richard Branson on short notice. I looked at him, and two things came to mind: his height (he is huge but looks tiny on camera) and his background in music. He was not going to get off with simply smiling that endless smile and talking about his endless success with all the Virgin brands. My first question, which turned his grin to engagement and made his eyes sparkle, was: “Do you miss the days of rock and roll when you created Virgin Records?” I then moved into the challenges that more structured businesses like Virgin Atlantic presented. It was left of field. He seemed to like it. I didn’t care—I knew it worked. We got great response from that interview. Stay away from scripts where you can.

There are other kinds of interviews.

Years later, I created a high-end documentary series for international production house Beyond, which profiled piracy at sea. From the first day of research to finished production took one year. I spent much of that year gaining access to a particular gang of pirates—Islamic insurgents using the pretext of an independent state to loot and kill at sea. In Manila, in bars where girls sat behind me massaging my back, we negotiated with the dodgiest people imaginable to link to this gang and the terms and conditions under which this might be possible.

Mission accomplished—after many hangovers, lots of talks, and a set date and place. I interviewed the commander of the group responsible for most of the killings and terror. My crew and I travelled 100 miles south from an MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front) base to an island in the middle of a vast stretch of water, uninhabited except for a few distant villages. No one was there. Then one of our fixers used a radio, and 45 minutes later, two boats arrived—filled with the most dangerous and heavily armed-looking men imaginable, armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47s.

They spoke no English. We had an interpreter and a go-between, who suddenly became very nervous. I noted how those who had seemed so gung-ho before were turning to jelly. The sound recordist was banned by MNLF commanders from going with us—they believed he would not return. I don’t view myself as especially brave, but I don’t scare easily, which was helpful in this situation.

The rebel leader was the second-last to arrive on the island—really just rocks and trees in a bay. We locked eyes, I smiled, shook his hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Jeffrey!” He spoke no English. We had set up a position for the interview. From the ultimate saint to the ultimate sinners…

The commander asked me to sit on the ground and drink—using shot glasses from his pocket and a small bottle of Filipino gin. I had three shots (I don’t normally drink shots). I coughed after the first in a failed attempt to be macho and down it in one go. Oddly, this broke the ice. All the rebels laughed. Several minutes after the third shot, I was very high. Anyone who’s tried Filipino gin will know it’s not a refined drink—it could power a SpaceX rocket.

The entire interview was done quite drunk. It was very good. You can see part of the ‘wild reel’ under the History sub-menu on this site. After 45 minutes, the interview concluded. We were asked to lie flat on the ground as the group left the island—and not to stand up for ten minutes. SCARY!

Forty-eight hours later, I was sitting in First Class on my return to Sydney. I realised media was nuts. I had gone to the edge. The series was cursed. The people who worked on it had disparate ideas, and the six months I had spent crafting the series and writing its treatment were challenged and debated. I had specific ideas: to tell the story of modern-day piracy, but also the story of Vietnam’s refugees who fled Saigon after the city’s fall to the North Vietnamese. That was central to my narrative.

The divide was deep. Disputes with a now-disgraced producer meant I didn’t finish the final cut. I learned much about the politics of pirates and the brutality of the television industry. I saw the finished product just once. It lists me as creator, executive producer, and one of two producers. I didn’t like it.

After working with very creative people at one of the world’s great production houses, I decided my career should include Australia but not be limited to it. The global market offered more. I moved toward on-camera work, creation of projects, and production—but anchoring and interviewing remained my passion. Much was lost, and certainly, professional relationships were fractured or destroyed. I had put a lot into it.

I did that interview against specific advice from the military attaché of the Australian Embassy in Manila, who said my chances of being kidnapped were 50/50. All crew members were aware of the risks and the Embassy’s warnings. The fixers provided endless reassurances that “arrangements were in place”—right until they revealed their fear upon reaching the island.

Interviews with stars are about ensuring that, for the first five minutes—whether the camera is rolling or not—you don’t talk about them or their work. Should I ever get an interview with V or JK of BTS, I’d talk about a totally unrelated topic that interests them. You never kowtow, but you always show absolute respect and admiration for their talent. No bowing—except in Japan or Korea.

I once met Baroness Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, at an exclusive cocktail party in London. I hadn’t expected to meet her. Her lovely husband, Sir Dennis, approached me first. We spoke for 15 minutes about my decision to leave Australia and try my luck in Britain. He warmed to my optimism and insisted I tell her my story.

The Baroness listened intently. I said, “You know, I remember when you visited Australia thinking, everything you were seeing was curated. You would never see the real beauty or greatness of Australia.” She was astonished. “Where should they have taken me?” she asked. I spoke of the country towns, clubs, pubs, the magic of the landscape, the stars above Alice Springs—where I had begun my career. She was captivated.

Again, this was a social occasion, not an interview. But it confirmed my approach. The alternative would be the tried-and-tested fluff: “Oh, Baroness Thatcher, what an unexpected honour. In all your years in office, what do you remember most fondly about your Prime Ministership?” Fluff goes nowhere.

If I had interviewed Thatcher, I would’ve asked: “I’ve met people who love you and people who truly loathe you. Why do you think you are such a polarising leader? Does it hurt you? When you’re alone with your thoughts—does the venom ever sting, even if you believed you were doing your best for the people?” We’ll never know.

A colleague at CNBC once asked, before I interviewed Australian Prime Minister John Howard—our first guest on the first Australian broadcast—“What are you going to ask him?” I replied, “I want to know what he dreams.”

I didn’t ask that—but it shows how I approach human beings in power. The story of the person, the power, and their effect all must come together.

A great interview is a map of topics explored—with no preconception—because you face complex people in complex moods when the cameras roll.

At CNBC, which was owned by General Electric (then the world’s largest conglomerate), I once interviewed GE President Jeff Immelt. A thousand people were in a ballroom in Sydney; another audience of equal size was in Melbourne. Immelt rarely visited Australia. The stakes were high. It was him and me.

We hadn’t met before. He was tall, reminded me of Bill Clinton, and had that American affability that can be either ocean-deep or leaf-thin. Who can tell? I skipped my original first question—something generic about his grandeur—and instead asked: “As the head of the biggest company on Earth—do you have a staff number?”

He laughed, honestly and loudly. “Actually, I do.”

That broke the ice.

I followed up: “Do you ever log into the international GE system, or does someone do that for you?” He replied, “I log in myself—and the spinning wheel drives me nuts!” We were in it.

Two hours flew by. I used fewer cue cards than expected. He was relaxed. When the mics came off, he said: “Thank you, Jeff, you’re really good. I loved it!”

Jeffrey interviews: https://jeffreyjames.tv/interviews/

I’ll end this piece having raved about my own accomplishments—while conveniently leaving out the many disasters—by sharing an interview I had nothing to do with by Zsolt Bognar who hosts the youtube series Living the Classical Life.  Here he interviews piano sensation, Japan’s Mao Fujita, the 26-year-old Japanese classical pianist, currently living in Germany, and performing internationally in the the world’s most esteemed concert halls. His interpretation of the masters I find so gentle, passionate and nuanced as if he is channelling their stories through this young master. I love his work and his Lucerne performance of   Rachmaninoff Symphony Number 2, Opus 18 is perhaps the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard and Mao’s performance of it took my understanding of just how glorious a symphony orchestra of splendid talent, one of the greatest conductors ofn the world and ,at this moment, in my view, the most unique the world’s most talented and unique pianist.