Captain Moonlight: M'learned chat show host

CLIVE ANDERSON is a clever man and a barrister who has somehow ended up as a

chat show host. He is a very good chat show host; no transatlantic tics or gentle anecdote angling for him. Anderson teases, provokes, conspires in best music hall fashion with his audience against the guest; he is a double-act in search of a stooge, smiling, digging, niggling in that clever, sly English way. Jeffrey Archer and Roy Hattersley got very annoyed. But the guests keep coming.

The new series of Clive Anderson Talks Back began on Friday with Gore Vidal, Sir David Frost and Mandy Smith, a good Anderson mix, 'quite jolly, actually', as he puts it in his production company office. He himself is not quite so jolly in non-host mode. Off-chat, on- the-record, Clive Anderson Talks Back carefully. He is friendly, but guarded. This may be the man who told Jeffrey Archer there was no beginning to his talents, but this is also a lawyer.

Whyare lawyers so pompous? Clive takes this well. 'What a cruel question. I certainly agree that there are a lot of pompous lawyers. I suppose it's in the nature of the structure of the law: you've got to have a feeling for precedence and hierarchy, a self-confidence, in the case of barristers, to stand up and address a jury . . . they advise people . . . they are keepers of knowledge . . . these are the forces that make them pompous. Why so many find it hard to resist I don't know.'

Clive, who is keen on fairness and balance, goes on to say that some are modest, too: he is developing a concept of 'jobism', the universal and unfair attribution of occupational stereotypes to individuals, such as the completely erroneous view that estate agents are money- grubbing. And chat show hosts? Clive invites descriptions, so I offer insincere, bland and oily. Clive takes it well, but avoids the chance to say what he thinks about journalists.

But aren't chat shows trivial? Clive argues that nothing is entirely trivial, and says he has no regrets about not devoting himself entirely to the law, which now takes up something less than half his time. He believes in people spreading themselves: 'Most people tend to do one job in their entire

life, which is manifestly not fulfilling.'

And what about the view that the English are obsessed with humour and cleverness and wit to the detriment of industry and application? Clive, a man who has made it to chat show host from the net curtains of Middlesex via Cambridge, revue, comedy writing and comedy compering in Whose Line Is It Anyway?, refuses to be provoked. 'There's an element of truth in that,' he ventures; the solution is 'to work hard and be humorous about it'.

Why is he so cautious? Clive says it is because he has found that journalists do not always quote him accurately, so that he has been left with 'Chat Show Clive Slams Rival' when he has said some nice things about the rival, too. And they always want to talk about his private life - he is 40, married with two children, lives in north London - while he doesn't. Lately he has developed the trick of deflecting this line of questioning by saying that he is an inhibited Englishman and finds it impossible to talk about himself. The unfortunate result of this is that the headlines now say 'Repressed Clive'.

So we talk about the show, and Clive rejects accusations - cf Roy Hattersley - that some interviews are cut to make him look good. 'I take no part in the editing. Nobody cuts out witty comments by guests, we want to make an entertaining show.' He has always wanted Baroness Thatcher on the programme but 'she was too busy running the country, and now she's too busy running it down'. Clive thinks about that one: 'Perhaps 'government' would be better than 'country' . . .'

What does he think of Danny Baker, then? 'I think he will be very good . . . and you can construe that any way you like.' Thanks, Clive.

(Photograph omitted)