A lot of people who agree to be interviewed by a TV or radio news programme make one huge mistake.

They, or their comms person, have been told by the programme’s producer or researcher that the topic of the interview will be X.

The spokesperson then diligently starts acquainting themselves with any areas of this topic with which they are not already familiar. By the time they enter the studio, they are as boned up as they ever will be on the topic of the interview.

Except…there’s one problem.

As Chief Financial Officer of Everyday Widgets, you’ve agreed to be interviewed on the Today programme, Sky News Sunrise or the Radio 5Live Breakfast programme on the impressive annual results your company has just notched up. You’ve briefed yourself thoroughly on the figures themselves. Your CEO has given you a thorough rundown on his ‘strategic’ vision for the next 12 months. You’re all set to go.

And indeed the first three minutes of the interview go swimmingly. You can almost feel the share price of Everyday Widgets rocketing as you speak, so impressive is your performance.

Then comes the body blow.

Next question: “And what about the reports overnight that the CEO of your rival company Day-to-Day Widgets was spotted yesterday having lunch with your CEO? Is a merger or takeover in the pipeline?”

Or: “And what about the overnight news from Brussels that the European Commission is to come up with a new EU directive that will radically reinforce quality control checks on widgets, leaving you with huge new quality control costs that could damage your long-term prospects?”

Gulp. “I didn’t know about either of these two stories,” you think. “I’m sunk.”

The lesson from such an incident is this: just because a programme has told you the subject of the interview is X, that doesn’t mean the interviewer won’t career off and cover topics Y and Z.

Just because the ‘secret’ meeting between the two CEOs broke only late last night, as did the Brussels directive, that’s no excuse for you or your comms team not knowing and not making sure you are briefed accordingly.

So, the guiding principle is this: make sure you have your radar screen training widely in the hours before you go on the air to check what other news is around that could crop up in your interview. Don’t assume the interview will cover only what you’ve been told will be the subject of the interview. The questions can easily stray into other areas the presenter deems perfectly reasonable to put to you.

So, if you are going on breakfast telly or radio, don’t turn in early because the taxi’s arriving at 5.30am.

Instead, go to bed and tune into the Radio 4 Midnight News – a comprehensive summary of the previous day’s news, but which also includes stories that are breaking overnight or running in the first editions of the newspapers. If you are still up watching TV, check the midnight news on Sky or News 24.

Then check again when you wake up and ask the taxi driver to turn on a news channel as you’re heading into the studio.

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Anyone concerned about the comparative blandness of breakfast television need look no further than the furniture. The sofa has a lot to answer for.

Sitting beside someone on a sofa induces a feeling of togetherness. Almost a case of “we are on the same side”. With that mindset in place, it is more difficult to conduct a demanding or confrontational interview. For a start, there is the basic body language, neither interviewer nor interviewee sitting square on the seat but each twisting to face the other and thereby subconsciously accommodating the other.

Sitting authoritatively on a sofa is not easy. Too often a relaxed, sofa-induced posture can lead to any excess body weight being pushed upwards into the chest, neck and jowls. Many politicians now realise that years of free lunches and late-night bar visits can only be disguised by leaning forward urgently on the sofa, some even apparently at risk of toppling forwards.

Contrast this with the web cam view of John Humphrys in action on the Today programme. The body is inclined forward, directly towards the interviewee. Eye contact is head-on and so is the questioning. On his desk, ready to hand, are his weapons, the background notes necessary to nail the victim – sorry, interviewee.

If you have any doubt about the bromide effect of the breakfast TV sofa, just imagine John H or Jeremy Paxman conducting their interviews from an Ikea three-seater.

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In the blog she posted earlier today my colleague Ann Bird analysed correctly why Nigel Farage is streets ahead of the other party leaders as a communicator.

So what are the mainstream party leaders getting wrong?

For a start, they’ve obviously received some very bad, or at least very old-fashioned, media training – the type of training that turns out robots rather than human beings.

Obviously, whenever you give an interview there are a certain number of key messages you will want to get across to viewers or listeners, but you don’t have to talk like a speak-your weight-machine.

Too often, politicians – especially party leaders and ministers – sound as though they are churning out a script written by one of their SPADS (special advisers) from which they have been instructed not to depart one jot. As a result, many of today’s politicians sound as though they’ve had all the blood sucked out of them.

This is why we hear ridiculous phrases from politicians like “across the piece”, “leveraging” and “strategic”.

Then, there’s that most vacuous political phrase of all – “engaging with”.

Whenever I hear a politician pledge that he or she, their party or their government intends to “engage with” somebody over a particular issue, my immediate reaction is that absolutely nothing whatsoever will actually transpire from the “engagement”. Its cop-out language. “Engagement” is a word politicians can hide behind. The phrase appears to signal that the politician genuinely intends to do something about a particular situation, but it cannily avoids giving any details.

Let’s say you’re the Minister of Potholes. The residents of Potholesville are up in arms because they now have an epidemic of the damned things and they aren’t being fixed by the local council. As minister, you visit Potholesville and at the end of the visit you address the waiting cameras and promise to “engage with” with residents of Potholesville about the problem.

“Yes, but are you going to get the bloody things repaired” would be the reaction of most people watching.

If you intend to march into the local council offices and read them the riot act, say so.

If you intend to freeze council funding until they fix the potholes, say so.

If you intend to pass a new piece of legislation making it mandatory for councils to have a pothole repair programme, say so.

Simply to express your willingness to “engage with” the locals suggests you know full well that none of the above will happen. You, the minister, are just issuing sweet words that you hope will palm off the residents and keep the media off your back for a few weeks.

So it’s a twin affliction from which many of today’s politicians suffer: reciting key messages as though they are a mantra; and uttering meaningless, jargon-ridden words that you would never hear in the Dog and Duck on a Friday night. It’s a foreign language shared only by the political class.

By contrast, the words of Nigel Farage would be understood at the bar. The locals would probably buy him a pint in return.

If the politician who gets the keys to 10 Downing Street were decided on media performance, Nigel Farage would be in there, already strolling up that staircase where illustrious and not-so-illustrious predecessors peer down from monochrome photographs, watching his every step.

Whatever you think of his politics – and today’s local election results indisputably show an increasing number are thinking about them enough to plant an “X” by his UKIP candidates’ names – when it comes to media interviews, he beats his rivals by a country mile (no Brussels “metrification” here…).

In the week when Radio 4’s World at One presenter Martha Kearney demolished Labour leader Ed Miliband, Farage deftly handled even the relentless John Humphrys on the Today programme on Tuesday and then played a blinder on the same programme today.

So what can the other party leaders learn from him? Well, Farage employs some clear techniques. He:

1. uses down-to-earth language, such as “..are they voting UKIP just to stick two fingers up?”. He even points this out!: “We’re run by career politicians, who don’t actually connect or talk in the same language as we do.”…“We are big enough and ugly enough to make our own decisions in our own lives”.
2. creates word pictures – perfect for radio, which is actually a very visual medium, e.g. “I remember the morning after Eastleigh [by-election] walking up the High Street, meeting person after person…”
3. uses effective examples to prove his point – in today’s interview he refers to the Reform party in Canada, which he described as going from a modest by-election gain to general election success.
4. provides a strong news story – the suggestion that what UKIP might really be about is forcing a change in the Conservative party. You can even hear Evan Davies suddenly sense he’s on to something here, as he describes a “reverse takeover of the Tory party”!
5. is prepared to admit when the party gets things wrong. In response to Humphrys’ reference to a photo of a UKIP candidate doing a Nazi salute, Farage takes the sting out of the criticism by responding, that “it doesn’t look very pretty, I agree with you”.
6. bridges brilliantly after acknowledging tricky questions, without ever sounding wrong-footed or caught out, to talk about what he wants to say. That only works with good preparation.

If the main parties want to stop Farage landing punches, they should stop their sleepwalking complacency and wake up to his media interview superiority.

Or else, to misquote Margaret Thatcher, who knew a thing or two about gaining power, Mr Farage might be telling them, “You kip if you want to, UKIP’s not for sleeping and boy, have we stirred the electorate.”

The newspapers this morning are reporting on a survey by the Institute of Leadership and Management which has found that management jargon is one of the things that most irritates office workers.

We have written in the past about how much jargon can irritate and confuse your audience. Here are some of our top posts on the subject:

Jargon merchants by Graham Leach

The power of simplicity by David Rogers

The curse of jargon by Neil Bennett

Time to bar corporate speak by Ann Bird

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One of the most disorienting interview formats for an interviewee is a “down-the-line” encounter or a “live two-way” as it’s sometimes called.

This is where the interviewee looks straight into the camera, not at their interviewer; the reason being, their interviewer is not with them.

Typically, the interviewee might be invited into the central London studio at Millbank of Sky or the BBC and then linked up with the station HQ at Osterley or Broadcasting House.

Or, the news channel might send a cameraman and a satellite truck to the interviewee, wherever they might be. This happens when the interviewee cannot get into a studio, because they don’t have time or are too far away, or because the interview will look better on location rather than coming from a soulless studio. The programme might cross to an MP attending a party conference, to a coast guard on the sea front as waves batter the coastline or to an aid worker in a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey.

Whichever it is, the interviewee’s only contact with their interviewer is via an earpiece. Often, the quality of the sound feed can be patchy. You might have traffic noise to contend with, not to mention those passing motorists who insist on hooting their horn every time they see anybody standing in front of a TV camera. There can also be the annoying intrusion of “satellite delay”. It can be quite a difficult interview to handle.

The most important requirement is that the interviewee should look straight into the camera. Eyes that divert here, there and everywhere are the eyes of an interviewee who is so unsettled at being questioned, they dare not look straight into the camera lens (and, via the camera, directly at the viewer) because they are terrified of revealing in their eyes the internal angst inside them.

Either that, or the interviewee is lying and knows it. Diverting their eyes from the camera flags up to the viewer that the interviewee is terrified of looking them in the eye in case their deceit is spotted.

Furthermore, an interviewee who is forever glancing off-camera can look as though they are so uncertain of what they are saying, they are looking at their press officer – either for moral support (regular thumbs-up as reassurance that they are doing ok) or because the comms person is mouthing to the interviewee the next message they should be delivering.

This would have been the impression formed by many Sky News viewers when the station conducted a down-the-line interview with acting Director-General of the BBC Tim Davie when he took over from George Entwistle who resigned over the BBC’s coverage of a child abuse scandal.

Watch this clip and ask yourself whether you’ve ever seen anyone look quite so uncomfortable in a TV interview.

In fact, one of the comments on the same page as the above link is from a Daily Telegraph reader who appears to have spotted the reflection of Davie’s press officer in the window behind him!

One final thought: never walk out on an interview.

All in all, the Davie interview is a case study in how not to do it.

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More usually an admonishment to fidgeting children, the above command should be directed with equal force to excessively mobile interviewees.

The trouble with TV interviews is that they cannot cope with distractions. The focus of most TV interviews should be on what is being said, not on what is being seen. Yet too often the behaviour and body language of the interviewee drags the audience’s attention away from the all-important conversation that is taking place.

It is not easy to remain calm and still, under the glare of the camera and the scrutiny of a very large audience. But I have sat opposite too many interviewees who swivel in their chair, switch from buttock to buttock (and back again) or throw their head nervously from side to side. Some, indeed, have attempted to do all three.

Keeping relatively still should be on your must-do list when tackling any interview. Make yourself comfortable before the interview starts. Are you going to cross your legs? Are you going to lean forward or sit back? How are you going to use your hands?

The best advice is, behave naturally. That can include hand gestures, as long as they are not repetitive, or obscuring your face. And of course nobody expects you to remain totally static through an interview. Move naturally, but not excessively.

For a child, fidgeting is usually a sign of boredom – definitely not the impression you want to leave with your TV audience.

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Let’s say you’re in the pub after work on a Friday night, having a pint or glass of Chardonnay with a workmate before you both head home for the weekend.

You want some advice from your colleague about whether you should apply for a position that’s become vacant at your company. It would mean promotion for you. Should you put your name forward? Would you be the right person for the job? Do you have enough experience? You’d really welcome your colleague’s view on this.

The problem is that when your pal starts dispensing their wisdom, their eyes are wandering all over the place. They’re looking over your shoulder, as if to check whether anyone more interesting than you is walking in through the pub door. They’re gazing up at the big screen TV as they talk about what the job entails. Their eyes alight upon you only fleetingly.

It’s not long before you start sensing that your colleague has no real interest in you, hasn’t the slightest desire to take part in this conversation and finds the whole question of your future extremely boring.

Either that, or they’ve already been tipped off that you are not going to get the job and consequently daren’t look you in the eye in case you spot their duplicity.

Either way, the wandering “eyeline”, as we TV-types call it, is the giveaway.

As with most things, this unfortunate mannerism is magnified on television. The viewer simply does not trust, or feel comfortable watching, an interviewee who won’t look at their interviewer, or directly into the camera if it’s a satellite link. Eyes that wander off to the left or right, or upwards as if in search of divine inspiration, are the eyes of someone who knows they are on dodgy ground.

In the eyes of the viewers, either the interviewee is spouting untruths and knows it, is unsure of the subject they’re talking about or just doesn’t want to be there.

Furthermore, an interviewee who is constantly gazing away from the interviewer or camera can look as though they are touching base with their press office who’s standing to one side pointing to a list of the key points their spokesperson should be making.

Let’s face it, if we really believe the words we are speaking, we reinforce our words by looking straight into the eyes of the person we are addressing. Whenever I interviewed Maggie Thatcher, she rammed her words home with a penetrating eyeline.

So, going back to the pub chat, if your colleague won’t look at you while giving the job advice, you know the job is not yours.

If an interviewee does the same thing on TV, either they don’t care about you, the viewer, or they know they are lying to you. At least, that’s the impression they create.

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@marywhenman responded:

@commschat @endajoyce77 The person who is the most empathetic to the audience & gravitas for the situation #commschat

— Mary Whenman (@marywhenman) April 15, 2013

@stackieb wrote:

Style of message delivery is more important than who. They need to be confident and able to not just recite a script #commschat

— Stacey Atkins (@stackieb) April 15, 2013

So here’s the dilemma: when a crisis breaks does the best media performer go in front of the media or the big boss?

You might be tempted to think they’re one and the same: the big boss ought to be the best media performer, but all too often this is not the case. This misconception might well arise because that chief executive or chairperson is so confident of their ability to shine in the boardroom or dazzle shareholders at the AGM, they think that skillset will serve them well in a crisis. Alas, too many discover too late that it won’t. But it can take a brave PR person to warn a CEO they lack crisis media skills and urgently need training!

The real answer to who you should put up for interviews is this: it depends.

It hangs on these key points:

- firstly, how big a crisis is it? There’s a world of difference between a book publisher admitting to printing guidebooks with the title mis-spelt, to a cruise ship running aground with a high number of fatalities. The former calls for a response from the marketing director, whereas only the CEO or chairperson will do for the latter

- secondly, what needs to be communicated? If it’s a technical issue, such as the recent network outages affecting a mobile phone company, there’s a good argument for putting up someone with a real understanding of the issue, who can speak knowledgeably, but without “geek speak”, so perhaps the technical/operations director

- thirdly, what sort of interviews are required? Our training has often highlighted that senior executives in organisations have different media strengths – just because you’re a brilliant communicator on radio, your quirky facial ticks or distracting hairstyle may make you a poor candidate for TV, for example. So if it’s possible and appropriate, consider using different spokespeople for different media, but always ensure the messages are consistent

- finally, how long is the crisis likely to last? If it’s big enough, the demand for interviews, briefings, press conferences etc can be overwhelming and if the issue continues for many hours, even days, with the best will in the world, your key spokesperson is soon going to look tired, ragged and not 100 per cent in control. Using both the CEO and a chairperson means the burden can be shared, without compromising authority, gravitas and credibility.

In truth, you might only discover who your best spokesperson is when a crisis breaks. But all the above shows how much good preparation can help and that should include regular and robust training and testing. By that we mean the kind of crisis training that increases the pulse rate and gets the adrenalin pumping. It might seem daunting, but so it should…otherwise you could be facing something far worse than daunting in a real crisis.

As @TheWriter put it last night:

It’s a v simple equation: Poor comms response = probably guilty / lying / got something to hide #CommsChat

— The Writer (@TheWriter) April 15, 2013

And that adds up to one thing: disaster.

A surprising number of people still think it is acceptable to take notes into a broadcast interview. It isn’t, and here’s why.

It immediately removes a great deal of your authority. The audience assumes that, since you have been chosen to represent your company or your organisation, you know everything that is important about how it works and what it does. If you have to read your answers off a bit of paper, you are no longer in a position of authority, you are simply reading out something that has been written for you. (The only exception to this is a company statement in the event of a crisis, when the precise wording of the message to the media may be crucial.)

Written notes in a broadcast interview create other problems too. In a TV interview, concentrating on written notes prevents you establishing a firm eye-line to the interviewer, removing much of the impact and credibility your answers should have.

But, you may ask, surely it’s fine in a radio interview where the audience can’t see you? There are two reasons why it is not a sensible strategy. Firstly, many radio programmes now use a webcam, in which case your reliance on notes will be plain for all to see. Secondly, if you are constantly consulting notes and trying to find the information relevant to your answer, you and the interviewer stop having a natural conversation, with the result that the interview will become boring and lifeless.

The truth is that if you need notes to help you with your answers, you are probably trying to cram too much information into the interview. Keep it simple, brief, and avoid too much detail. If you need a note or two as a last-minute reminder of important figures or a key message, that is fine. Just get rid of the notes before the interview starts.

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