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Love him or loathe him, the one thing you can’t do with Jeffrey Archer is ignore him. Bristolians certainly won’t miss him on Saturday, when the original Weston peer launches his new novel in a blaze of nostalgia, with a 1920s-style tea party at the Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel. There is a good reason for…

People always say it’s a bad idea – meeting your heroes. They’re likely to disappoint; shattering the idolised image you have built up of them over the years. So I was a bit nervous about meeting Roger McGough CBE in the flesh. It’s not like shaking his hand at a book signing or a literature…

In a rare interview, John Cleese tells David Clensy about his plans to return to Clifton College; reveals he’s writing a new comedy reminiscent of Fawlty Towers; and predicts that ‘Barack Obama will transform the world’ When you’re due to interview John Cleese over the telephone, it’s difficult not to imagine him on the other…

As he prepares to unveil his final landmark documentary series, Life In Cold Blood, Sir David Attenborough talks to David Clensy about his life in broadcasting. Picture: Simon Galloway The world was a very different place back in 1979, when David Attenborough first unveiled his epic documentary Life On Earth.The ozone layer was a place…

There’s a wonderful irony to calling the Savoy Hotel to speak to Frank McCourt. He couldn’t have travelled much further from the Limerick slums of his childhood, which he immortalised in his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela’s Ashes. But as his voice flows down the line, calm and wise and gnarled by the decades like a…

Alan Bennett’s The History Boys is his best-received piece of work since the 60s. As tickets go on sale for its Hull dates later this year, David Clensy talks to the much-loved playwright For me, the idea of being in a theatre with Alan Bennett was on a par with marlin fishing with Ernest Hemingway,…

There can’t be many jobs further removed from poetry than working as a probation officer on the tough streets of Manchester’s roughest areas, so Simon Armitage has to be something of an inspiration to would-be writers everywhere. During his seven years working with troubled and sometimes aggressive youngsters in places like Moss Side can’t have…

Of course, there are many days, like today, when I don’t have anybody’s name scribbled down in my diary to interview. I figured it might be interesting if I took the opportunity of these lulls to look back at interesting earlier encounters. In November 2004 I picked up the phone and called Dr Mo Mowlam,…

Interviewing Bob Geldof is a rare honour, but a famous challenge for any journalist. There are support websites set up by battle-weary hacks to offer guidance on the art of surviving a conversation with the Irish rock star-cum-charity icon. There are probably underground therapy groups to aid recovery for those who have been through the…