Richard Barber is a freelance journalist interviewing the great and the good for a wide range of newspapers and magazines. Previously, he has edited nine magazines from Look Now to OK!, from Woman to TVTimes.
"I'm always asked who has been my favourite interviewee," he says, "and I always give the same answer. It's the last person I interviewed because they're the one uppermost in my mind. That said, Michael Douglas, Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli were among the best in America; Joan Collins, Cliff Richard, Brenda Blethyn and Rod Stewart in the UK.
"As a rule of thumb, writers make the best interviewees - Jilly Cooper, Richard Osman, Jackie Collins, for example - because they're the best with words.
"Whoever the subject, though, the most revealing interviews result from scrupulous research and creating an atmosphere of intimacy rather than intrusion."
