A Very Private Celebrity by Hugh Purcell

brand new programme format. 1
    So the interview unfolded. Freeman’s speech was unhesitatingly firm and precise, his pace unrelenting, his manner persistent. Unlike TV interviews before that time, there was nothing deferential or reverential about his manner. Unlike TV interviews of today, there was nothing hectoring or impolite. Freeman told Anthony Clare in 1988 that his intention most of the time had been simply to ask ‘the sort of questions I thought an intelligent person, given the chance, might want to ask’. In the case of Birkett, that must have been true:
    FREEMAN: Did you always believe in the innocence of your clients when you defended them?
    BIRKETT: To be quite, quite frank, no – I just ought to add that whatever your belief is, you’re not allowed to state it in the court. You’re allowed to speak as an advocate, but you mustn’t give your opinion.
    FREEMAN: Did you ever personally have any qualms about defending someone on a murder charge whom you thought was guilty?
    BIRKETT: None. You see, the view I took of the advocate’s duty is this: he’s there to present one side only, and he must do it to the best of his ability, and what he thinks really is irrelevant.
    FREEMAN: Would you think it your duty as counsel to use every possible trick within the law to get your man acquitted?
    BIRKETT: I would be against tricks of all kinds, but if you would alter the question to saying, ‘Do you regard it as your duty to do everything within your power to get him acquitted?’ then I would say yes.
    FREEMAN: Yes. And that would include bamboozling a jury?
    BIRKETT: Well, shall I say, persuading a jury.
    FREEMAN : Have you ever got a man or a woman acquitted on a murder charge whom you believe in your heart to be guilty?
    BIRKETT: Yes.
    FREEMAN: Any regrets about that?
    BIRKETT: None.
    FREEMAN: Have you ever defended a person on a murder charge whom you knew to be guilty?
    BIRKETT: No. Indeed, you’re not allowed to. You may think he is guilty, and of course it’s really quite impossible for any man of sense to defend a man and read all the facts without coming to some conclusion in his mind, but that’s quite irrelevant. He’s not the judge. 2
    Over four million viewers watched that first Face to Face , and they loved it. Its reaction index (a BBC viewer panel evaluation) was 83 per cent – the highest of all the interviews that were shown over the next three years. Face to Face became history. It was the most famous interview series on British television, and the Topolski sketches and Berlioz signature tune became its brand label.
    Face to Face sold throughout the English-speaking world and, on its fiftieth anniversary in 2009, the BBC released a DVD box set of all thirty-five interviews. The series became a benchmark for later generations of TV interviewers, like Michael Parkinson: ‘People of our generation revered John Freeman as one of the foundation stones of early television. I watched him with a mixture of awe and admiration. He was a great man and the present generation who know not of him don’t know what they are missing.’ 3
    Despite the world fame of many of the contributors to Face to Face – Carl Jung, Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King etc. – it is known as ‘that interview series with John Freeman’. It is the work he is best known for, yet he disliked the celebrity status the seriesconferred. In his Who’s Who entry, he didn’t even mention the BAFTA for Outstanding Television Personality he won for the series in 1960.
    Kingsley Martin, the editor of the New Statesman , growled sourly: ‘John is the only man who has made himself celebrated by turning his arse on the public.’ Undoubtedly, his anonymity contributed to his celebrity. He was a man of mystery and the public loves trying to uncover mysteries. Exposing the real person behind the celebrity was, of course, exactly what he was doing with