•Raj Kamal Jha: Is there something like a David Frost school of interviewing and would there be four-five dos and don’ts that you still go by?

Yes, I think there are: first of all, do your homework. The more you know about something, the more freedom you have to go with whatever subject comes up. Preparation doesn’t shackle you; quite the reverse, it liberates you to go with something that nobody had thought would come up. The second thing is to engage the person personally, establish a relationship with the person. It is something mutual, not necessarily mutual respect, it could be mutual caginess, but you establish a relationship because the person you are interviewing wants to convince you of the rightness of his or her position. There is also the question of body language—you need to take control of the interview physically. You don’t want to be a long way away from the person you interview, you want to be close. Those would be three key things in the David Frost guide to interviewing. The fourth thing is that you need to have been born with an insatiable sense of curiosity.

•Shailaja Bajpai: Do you consider the Nixon interviews the highest point in your career? Can you rate three other interviews that are equally important in terms of impact?

I suppose the Frost-Nixon interviews were a landmark. There are two or three which are equally important. There was an interview I did with General N Schwarzkopf immediately after the first Gulf War when there was a controversy over the fact that President George Bush had stopped American troops on the road to Basra. There was a lot of discussion on whether he should have gone on to Baghdad—his son has since proved that it might not have been a particularly good idea to go on to Baghdad—and Schwarzkopf in the interview with me said that he had recommended the Americans continue on to Basra a day before George Bush made the decision not to go forward. We put out a transcript on a Tuesday night and one newspaper on Wednesday had a headline saying Schwarzkopf disagreed with the President, hyped the thing. That morning Cheney, then Secretary of Defence, attacked Schwarzkopf. People called Schawrzkopf a loose canon, They went berserk.

... contd.