Why Five Mintues With… is frustrating me.

Just spotted this over on the BBC News website, a series of 5 minute interview with various people, chaired by Matthew Stadlen. They’ve just posted one for Michael Portillo, and it’s left me feeling a little bit… cheated.

It’s clear that a lot of preparation has been done by Stadlen on his subjects, and I can’t see any notes or list of questions, but there seems to be one thing missing in these interviews, and that is listening to the answers. The Michael Portillo interview is a good point here; partly because Portillo gives such short answers and Stadlen has to keep up with him. But at no point did I feel that he was reacting to what his guests were telling him, there was no deviation from the planned questions, it was on to the next subject with no ‘hold on a minute’ moments.

Now I’m far from the perfect interviewer, but always in my head I carry one major though; if I was a listener, what question would I want to ask? That should be my next question. Yes there has to be a flow to an interview, and there will be a destination, but a meandering route there makes it fun – taking the motorway is fast and simple, but all you see is motorway.

Even in five minutes there should be time to stop and admire scenery, do some investigating, and find out something new. If the choice is between looking back over a huge career, or zooming in one choice and finding out about that choice (and ergo more about that person) then I always like to choose the latter. Perhaps I’m old fashioned that way and the ‘MTV generation’ need the speed.