Who is the nicest celebrity you have ever met?
In an idle moment this week, I responded, as you do, to a random tweet, a bone tossed out for discussion in 240 characters or less: “Who is the nicest celebrity you have ever met?”
There were predictable nominations for Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, both legendarily decent and talented American movie stars. As a TV reporter and interviewer, I’ve met a lot of people, including the two above. I have no complaints about either of them. I’m just not that sure that celebrity and niceness are relevant to each other – except, of course, in the case of someone who is celebrated mainly for being nice.
My reply was Brit-based: “Roger Moore, Maureen Lipman and Margaret Thatcher”. Within seconds there were comments; “very eighties” and “was Margaret Thatcher a celebrity?”.
On the Thatcher question a tweet from @TheMontyDon endorsed one of my suggestions. “I completely agree about Margaret Thatcher. Whatever one thinks about her politics, she was one of the most charming and charismatic people I have ever met.
The great gardener has come across many people in his time, and he doesn’t seem to question her star quality. Not all politicians are celebrities. Actually most aren’t. Perhaps only one or two at any moment rise above their politics to true celebrity. Boris Johnson has been a celebrity for much longer than he’s been Prime Minister. Donald Trump is a celebrity, Joe Biden still isn’t.
Niceness is another matter. Thatcher’s niceness was manifested in her treating everyone she met equally, regardless of status, and taking what appeared to be a sincere interest in the personal affairs of those with whom she came into contact. There are many stories of her consideration and empathy for junior staff at Number 10. They would have been ordered about brusquely by other Prime Ministers, if they were noticed before. Thatcher put the noses of some of her ministers out of joint by failing to accord them deference or preference over secretaries and security men. She had little to gain. Had she thrown her weight around she would still have been the Iron Lady.
I’ve written elsewhere about Thatcher and about the late Roger Moore. For all his self-deprecation, Moore was a star and enjoyed it – his niceness was in his humorous sensitivity to the people he came across, ever ready to answer the question, “Who was the best Bond?” with “Sean, of course”. Moore was too mischievous. Thatcher too hard. Of the three, Lipman is probably closest to the accolade of “National Treasure”. I included her on my list for the great grace and kindness with which she looked after a couple of conceited student journalists who turned up in her Hampstead home decades ago to profile her late husband, the playwright Jack Rosenthal.
Often there are unseen barriers erected on both sides of an interview for practical reasons. Both the interviewer and interviewee have a job to do, which overlap but are not the same and which, in neither case, are about them personally. These days celebrities often have dozens of interviews written into their contracts and are well practiced in how far to go in answering. I look in wonder at the television interviews done by Michael Parkinson, David Frost and Dick Cavett in the last century when big stars opened up, seemingly responding to questions for the first time. Back then the concept of “a celebrity” was not fully formed and the circuit of promotional junkets barely existed. That may explain why my choices of celebrities were “very Eighties” – each of them are rooted in the comparatively undisciplined, and under exploited era.
Niceness is not a prerequisite of celebrity. It would be a great disappointment if it was. Jeffrey Archer wouldn’t be Jeffrey Archer if he wasn’t simultaneously bumptious and demanding. Imagine how boring it would be if the Gallagher brothers had good manners – worse than the Sex Pistols not swearing at Bill Grundy.
Most famous people are wise to develop a carapace to protect them from being destroyed by intrusive publicity. Only the very rare, such as Boris Johnson, prosper from letting it all hang out, and after soaring for years they may still crash out in the end. Monty Don, for example, invites millions into his garden at Long Meadow but never back into the house. Meanwhile he plays down his national heartthrob status. I was one of his guides around Westminster when he was making a series about “village” communities and saw how startled he was when Cherie Blair burst out of Number Ten and threw her arms around his neck. Mrs Thatcher would not have done that.
Genuine niceness is different from flattery because it has no ulterior motive and nothing to be gained. Some people have a natural ability to respond to others in a way that goes beyond good manners, most of us don’t. Some celebrities happen to be exceptionally nice, most of them are normal like the rest of us. Like the rest of us, famous people can have bad days. My less successful encounters include Warren Beatty going down with the flu in the middle of our interview and a famous actress being privately informed that she was unexpectedly pregnant during our recording.
Famous people aren’t always the same, they change over the years. At the first glimmer of celebrity many go through a demanding, “I don’t do stairs” phase, but they often get over it and come back to earth. The worst kinds of politicians to deal with are the wannabe and the nearly-was. Those who make it to Prime Minister or President have usually got politeness off pat. Genuinely nice? Not so often. That is a quality you can’t acquire.