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Ginny Dougary

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Hello and welcome to my new website. I have been a journalist for the past four decades and here you will find a selection of some of my interviews, features, restaurant reviews and travel pieces. I write freelance for both the UK and Australian markets and my work appears regularly in the Radio Times, The Observer, Daily Mail and Fairfax newspapers.

Over a lifetime of journalism, I have been fortunate enough to have interviewed some of the most extraordinary global figures in music, politics, art and literature. Each month, or so, we will be featuring an encounter From the Archive – from Benazir Bhutto to Donald Trump, from Madonna to Elizabeth Taylor, John Updike to Oprah Winfrey. These pieces will be featured with a new introduction by me putting the interview, on occasion, into some kind of historical perspective and in some cases describing the impact they had during and after publication, or perhaps how my feelings about the subject have changed in the intervening time. I hope this will be of interest to anyone revisiting the interviews or coming across them for the first time.

Richard Eyre on why he’s not a grumpy old man

12 March 2011 by Ginny Dougary

There’s something suitably retro about the church hall in a Pimlico council estate that is the rehearsal space for the cast of Betty Blue Eyes, the new musical of Alan Bennett’s well-loved film A Private Function. While I wait for Richard Eyre, the director, to finish his morning session I am handed the script to read at …

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Interview: Paul Merton – Have I got secrets for you

1 March 2011 by Ginny Dougary

There’s nothing disappointing about Paul Merton in the flesh. He is quick and funny – not exhaustingly so – but also friendly, thoughtful and fresh in his thinking. The only surprise, as I cannot help commenting when he enters the room, is how tall he is. This greeting comes back to haunt me, however, when …

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Press: There are no rewards for honesty

29 September 2010 by Ginny Dougary

Andrew Brown on Ginny Dougary’s interviews and specifically with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The long Ginny Dougary interview with Dr Williams in The Times was interesting for almost everything but the headline. “Gay Bishops are all right by me, says Archbishop” was no more than averagely misleading by headline standards. But was it really front-page news, as …

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Meet the Archbishop of Canterbury

25 September 2010 by Ginny Dougary

What a funny old life the Archbishop of Canterbury leads. The ABC, as he is known by his staff, loathes our celebrity culture – when I ask him what statement he is least likely to make, he says: “Our problem is that there aren’t enough reality shows on television” – and, yet, he is bemused …

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John Pawson: the man who made us minimalists

18 September 2010 by Ginny Dougary

John Pawson, the überminimalist designer and architect, is busily cluttering up his pristine surfaces. In between us, on a beautiful wooden table in the centre of the kitchen of his West London home, is a teapot of lapsang souchong, a plate of buttery French biscuits (with its empty packet left out — travesty! — on …

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Beth Ditto: ‘If we have a baby we’ll call her Yoko’

18 September 2010 by Ginny Dougary

Beth Ditto is wasted. She’s been on tour around Europe for the past eight weeks with her band the Gossip, and she’s barely had two hours’ sleep a night. So has the self-professed grandma of rock’n’roll – with her love of crocheting, baking and fixing her girlfriends’ hairdos – finally succumbed to its more grungy …

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A good pummelling among the olive groves

12 August 2010 by Ginny Dougary

At a tranquil monastic Tuscan spa retreat, Ginny Dougary submitted to a regime of detoxing massages, but found there was no gain to be had without pain. Tuscany may not be the first location that most sane people would choose to undergo a detox diet for a week. Imagine your sole summer holiday without a …

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Peter Mandelson, the interview

2 July 2010 by Ginny Dougary

Since Peter Mandelson is not a man on whom humility is known to sit lightly, you might think it would be galling for him to talk about other people rather than himself, particularly when he has his autobiography to promote. But Mandy — an abbreviation that seems singularly inappropriate when you meet him, so uncuddly …

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Gordon Brown interview: the election, Blair and family life

10 April 2010 by Ginny Dougary

Gordon Brown talks candidly to Ginny Dougary. Photo: Mitch Jenkins. By our third meeting, the Prime Minister’s skill at the public kiss had improved immeasurably. There was now definite contact between lips and cheek and no head clunking, although he still needs to work on his puckering technique. When I commented on his progress, in …

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Ricky Gervais in his most ‘postmodern’ interview ever

3 April 2010 by Ginny Dougary

The comedian talks about everything from relationships to body image. It started pretty badly. At one point, Ricky Gervais said it was the most difficult interview he’d ever done – and he was using “difficult” in the same way that someone says a dress is “interesting” when they mean “horrible”. The feeling, it must be …

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“May the dance never end, and may journalism never be controlled.”

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