Now this was an amusing interview, if ever there was one. Barnbrook arranged to meet us in Becontree:

‘There won’t be any problem with us doing our piece in that cafe’, he barked. ‘I did one for The Times recently; we’ll do it there’.

We arrived at the cafe a couple of hours early, to set up the interview and to scout around for best light quality etc (actually that’s a bit of a lie, we wanted to gorge on English brekka). We started speaking to the lady who owned the place and when we mentioned we were interviewing Barnbrook in an hour or so, she went potty.

‘I had them guys from The Times last week, and we’ve only just finished scrubbing the shit off the walls which someone came in and smeared everywhere after they heard we had let him in here’, she shrieked.

‘I’m sorry but you can’t do it in here.’

‘Ok then’, our plaintive voices echoing, as we backed out the door.

We ended up doing the interview in a nearby park. Someone walked past Barnbrook and waved. He fattened up with pride, grinning at us in a ‘I told you so, I’m really popular here’ manner. Unfortunately, his crumpled suit meant he couldn’t carry it off with as much panache as say, Mugabe.

Interview went without hitch. BUT – and this is the amusing bit, two weeks later, I texted a friend of mine; Richard, who was under my phone as, well, Richard. The text went something like this: ‘Richard when are we meeting up, are you around next week’.
The reply came back, within two minutes, asking me not to contact him for the next two weeks, but suggesting that after the newspapers had calmed down (This story had just come out about him) he would MORE than make up for lost time (etc.etc.)

I was rather affronted that an old friend had taken it upon himself to act like such a dirty dog, until I realised my mistake.

Scroll down for George Galloway behind the scenes of the interview

For all of the hype and surrounding press, George Galloway was a real gentleman before and during our interview. We first met him when he gave a lecture at the Frontline Club. Whilst leaving the talk, I asked him if he would give us an interview for eyebrow magazine. We chatted quite easily; I used to work in the Middle East and he used to write a column for one of the magazines we published so we had something in common. He was funny, kind and accommodating. Cracking jokes and smiling he gave us a lot of time, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact there was a hustle of people trying to chat to him.

He was the least patronising interviewee we’ve videoed (and believe me, there have been some absolute shockers), showed us round his work place (we interviewed him before his Talk Sport slot), and made heartfelt apologies about being late. We also buggered up the camera for the first part of our interview and he just laughed his way through it. We also made him late for his radio slot and even then he was kind, polite and patient, whilst we faffed around with our camera.

See what the Sunday Times had to say about our …