'Demon' Barber - Lynn Barber Interview

Lynn Barber has never had sex with a dog. In fact, the veteran English journalist is at pains to assure me that she has never attempted intercourse with any kind of animal.

“No, absolutely not,” she cackles, expressively waving an ever-present John Player Special. “I’ve never even been tempted.”
Bestiality being a big no-no in most celebrity circles, it’s not a question that Hot Press would normally dare put to any interviewee. Nor is it one that Barber – who, at 70, is still regarded as one of the most feared interviewers in the UK press – would ever ask herself.
Still, as rude and insulting as it is, it begged to be asked today. The award-winning journalist once had to threaten Marianne Faithful with legal action after the iconic singer and actress began maliciously telling other journalists that Barber had asked her if she’d ever fucked a dog when interviewing her for the Observer in 2001.
As somebody who has probably received more than her fair share of them over the years, she’s not usually in the habit of sending solicitors letters.
“Well, that was really outrageous, actually,” she says. “I did take that seriously because if you’re an interviewer, and people think you’re going to throw questions at them like that, then you’re not going to get any access. I wouldn’t dream of asking anybody that. I never even thought people could possibly have sex with a dog. I don’t know why she made that up.”
Most likely Faithfull had been offended by Barber’s hilariously scathing Observer portrayal of her as a rude and stroppy diva whose reputation was far greater than her talent deserved.
They didn’t get on.
“I never thought it was a terrible interview. I thought, ‘Oh, she’s annoying’ and, ‘Oh, I’m going to get my own back’. She wasn’t boring. A terrible interview is a boring interview, isn’t it? She was somebody who, although it was a hostile piece, I emerged actually liking, really. I had respect for her.”
Barber’s entertainingly difficult encounter with Faithfull is just one of the interviews featured in her new book, A Curious Career. Part memoir, part anthology and part instruction manual, it offers a fascinating insight into the world of celebrity journalism and is an absolutely essential read for any aspiring print interviewers.
We’re meeting in the smoking section of the bar of Dún Laoghaire’s Royal Marine Hotel, an hour before her public appearance at the Mountains to Sea Book Festival. Midway through her third cigarette (a heavy smoker since the age of 17, she claims to still puff at least 35 a day), she suddenly remembers to tear off the nicotine patch she was wearing to get through the flight from London. Luckily, she didn’t fly with Ryanair.
“I interviewed Michael O’Leary recently because he’d announced he was a changed character and was going to really love his customers and all the rest of it. I didn’t think he did. I just thought he was a nasty piece of work, and said so. Putting a paper bag over his head is probably the best thing to do. They’ve got somebody else doing their press now.”
An only child and self-confessed nosey parker from a very young age, the Oxford graduate earned her journalistic stripes at Penthouse – where she routinely probed foot fetishists, masochists, voyeurs, and men who enjoyed wearing nappies. One of the perils of writing for a sex magazine is that people automatically assume that you’re up for pretty much anything carnally.
Apparently a lot of people proposed threesomes.
“Yes, a) threesomes were very popular at the time and b) Penthouse was always sort of advocating them. Well, it didn’t actually ever show a threesome, but it did often show two women together – and said they were sisters or something. So lots of people who wanted to try a threesome thought, ‘Oh, that Lynn, she works for Penthouse, she’ll be up for it’.”
Did she ever accept any of these indecent proposals?
“Maybe once or twice but that’s it,” she shrugs. “I wasn’t yet married, but I was fairly faithfully attached to my boyfriend by then.”
Her first big-name Penthouse interview was with surrealist painter Salvador Dali.
“It was incredibly lucky that I got it, but I had no fear,” she recalls. “If I was asked now to go and interview Salvador Dali in Paris, I’d be thinking, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to prepare this and do that’ and gotten quite uptight about it, actually, but I just sort of thought, ‘Oh, a day in Paris, that’ll be nice’.”
She actually wound up staying for several days.
“Of course, he realised within seconds that I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. He more or less interviewed himself. He was just encouraging me to ask silly questions to which he then had a very good elaborate answer, so I didn’t really get into anything serious.”
Barber gradually improved her interviewing technique, eventually becoming notorious for her unflinching interrogations of politicians, actors, musicians, writers, artists and other notables for such publications as Vanity Fair, the Independent On Sunday, The Observer and The Sunday Times.
Although Vanity Fair put her on a $250,000 per annum contract, she only did a handful of interviews in the two years she wrote for them. Her very first piece was with a touchy Hollywood actor. “I went out and interviewed Nick Nolte, and I thought it was okay. I didn’t think it was great, but I thought it was a perfectly usable interview.”
Regrettably, Nolte begged to differ.
“Overnight, he was on the phone to his publicist, his manager, his agent, [VF editor] Graydon Carter, everyone under the sun, saying, ‘Who’s this terrible woman asking these questions?’ Apparently, I hadn’t flattered him enough and I’d rather banged on about the fact he’d been married five times, so it probably wasn’t tactful. But the net result, Graydon found, was that he couldn’t get me any more Hollywood stars – and this was at the start of a two-year contract.”
Her VF contract didn’t allow her to write for any other publications. She was relieved when it finally ran out and she could go back to more regular work. Having bounced around a few broadsheets, Barber’s still in print – as we speak, her recent encounters with Margaret Hodge and Kim Kardashian have yet to be published in the The Sunday Times. Still, she maintains she’s ready to retire.
“I could sign off at any point with no regrets, but I’d be sorry to drop dead tomorrow,” she says through a defiant plume of smoke. “My daughters are married and they both have nice husbands and two children, so I sort of feel that I’ve done motherhood properly. I’m not so concerned about the work. It’d be nice to see my grandchildren grow up, but I don’t particularly feel I need to live much longer.”
While she’s still around, who’d be her dream interviewee?
“I want to get Rupert Murdoch before he dies, I really do,” she confides. “He’s gone completely off the leash, hasn’t he, saying he doesn’t like Page Three. I’d love to interview him, but it’s difficult because I work for the Sunday Times and if I’m nice about him everyone will say she’s sucking up the boss… but I admire him greatly.”

A Curious Career is published by Bloomsbury