Watching this clip makes you realise just how generous an interviewer Des O’Connor is. He’s totally happy to set up the gags, and sit back and enjoy them with the rest of us. There’s a lesson there for some talk show hosts.
It feels like there are a few edits in here, and it would be fun to know what was excised and for what reason.
Compare and contrast with this interview, from roughly the same time, but with Michael Aspel.
https://youtu.be/YYRj42GQfvY
Now, Aspel seems to give Allen just as much room to talk, but there’s something tonally different going on. For a start, that set which can’t have put any of the guests at ease the way the cosy sofa of Des does. Allen is in a suit, and his demeanour here is much more like his stage presence. With Des, it’s more relaxed, comfier, nicer. Aspel laughs, and adds (sometimes interrupts) his own pretty good jokes, it’s just, not the same. The first was a chat, the second a performance. It also has a few clumsy edits in it.
Nice to see the old HTV logo at the start though, and some in vision continuity.
