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Face to Face

John Reith searches for the education amidst the entertainmentA GRUMPY JOHN FREEMAN (never seen) pelts doomed celebrities (in selfless close-up) with prurient questions about whether they cried as a child and whether they like HP Sauce. Encounters were preceded by a Gallery-style peruse through a portfolio of crap line drawings supposedly depicting the “essence” of that week’s subject, a conceit that probably did more to scare the guest shitless than any of Freeman’s interrogations. GILBERT HARDING blubbed, TONY HANCOCK gurned, ADAM FAITH philosophised, MARTIN LUTHER KING proselytised. Revived in the 90s with a looking-for-work JEREMY ISAACS on sticky-beak duties, entertaining the likes of KATE ADIE, KEN DODD, GERMAINE GREER and BOB MONKHOUSE.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Paul

    September 24, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    Ask The Family is back at long last! It’s GRRRRRRRRRRRRR-EAT!!!!

  2. Matt Patton

    March 15, 2010 at 1:10 am

    Beautifully sent up in the “Head to Head” sequence of NORBERT SMITH: A LIFE. He took the right approach to the ordeal and showed up blind drunk . . .

  3. THX 1139

    September 26, 2020 at 11:50 pm

    Jeremy interviewed David Mamet and got absolutely nowhere with him, he refused to answer anything, or he did in terse, one sentence answers. It was a complete waste of time. John Freeman would have had him in a headlock or something.

  4. Sidney Balmoral James

    September 27, 2020 at 4:58 pm

    Not sure the revival of Face to Face quite managed the same quality of subjects – in the 1960s we got Evelyn Waugh, Martin Luther King, Augustus John; in the 1980s/90s, Bob Monkhouse, Kate Adie and Ben Elton. Even the ‘class’ interviewees were a bit overexposed – it was not hard to find David Hockney or Anthony Burgess talking about themselves on telly. God only knows who would be interviewed these days – probably Alistair Campbell, Michael MacIntyre, and J. K. Rowling.

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