Pre-game nerves don’t come much nervier than when you’re waiting to interview the greatest statesman of a generation. So imagine my surprise when the international icon in question – born William Jefferson Blythe III, better known as Bill Clinton – confesses he’s been feeling twitchy about meeting me.
Before we’ve even shaken hands, the former American president booms from the other side of the room: “We have a walking landmark in our midst.” It takes me at least eight seconds to realise Clinton isn’t talking about himself.
You soon come to understand, though, that he would never refer to himself in those terms. The man, quite simply, is self-effacing and humble – and today he appears starstruck to meet yours truly.
“It’s the face of the BBC,” jokes Clinton. “I’m bracing myself for your trademark brand of questioning, Peter!”
I’m a touch taken aback by how familiarly he uses my name. His own moniker, meanwhile, is one which tells many stories. As a child he was known as “Billy” – and never knew his father, the second William Jefferson Blythe, who died in a road accident three months before his birth.
At the age of 14, Billy adopted his stepfather’s surname – and it didn’t take him long to make “Clinton” as familiar to the world as the iconic White House, the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes, or the erstwhile landmark BBC news bulletin at nine o’clock which, incidentally, was where he first came to know of a certain P Sissons, a year into his presidency.
“We used to have you piped into the West Wing,” quips Clinton. Or, at least, I presume it’s a quip – until he assures me he’s deadly serious. “The thing with the American networks was always that they were so close to the action. Baying for your blood just a few hundred yards away, down the corridor.
“Of course,” he insists, “there was some exceptional journalism there. Some truly important stuff. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s a real honour to have Pulitzer-winning pens looking to skewer you.
“But there was always just something about the BBC. Its view on America was fresh, somehow, and the commentary pulsed with plain quality. I don’t know what it was…” he pauses. “Maybe distance offers a truer perspective – or, more likely, it was the personnel.”
And here, he smiles at me with deference in his kindly, warm eyes. Deference: something you come to expect as matter of course during a distinguished broadcast career, at the top of your game. Deference: something only part of me had anticipated from the ex-leader of the free world.
But it turns out to be one of the less surprising turns in our short interview, itself the result of a chance encounter at an evening party in the University of New Hampshire, where my six-stop Stateside lecture series early in the new year drew to a close. Because it’s not a chance encounter at all: he knew I was coming. Or, to be precise, his wife did.
“Hillary’s a big admirer too. One of her staffers spotted the itinerary and I was hardly going to let that pass me by.”
With strikingly boyish charm, Clinton reveals he snuck completely unannounced into the final talk – on the declining standards of British broadcast media, and the potential implications for political discourse – before making sure our paths crossed.
It turns out that politics is far from the sole love we share, though it is the topic on which we most enthusiastically share views. He, too, is a devotee of the poetry of Yeats (he claims lines such as “the centre cannot hold” both haunted and inspired his presidency), he, too, is a Francophile, and we share a thirst for all things agricultural.
I suspect there is much more I could tell him – much more common ground we could chart together – but right now he wants to hear about the upcoming UK General Election, and he’s not shy of offering some views himself.
“You’re right, this really is seismic,” he says. “The landscape’s going to change, I’m sure of it. That doesn’t necessarily denote a change of government, but certainly a change in government. I was in England a few months back, and the mood is unlike anything I’ve known before.
“The rhetoric has always been more restrained.
I don’t think the British political arena is any less passionate than America, but it’s all about expression, and motive. Zeal has always played awkwardly in the UK, and there is a definite aversion to the knee-jerk. But the metronome has suddenly become more frantic, to my eyes and ears, so it’s a whole different tempo, and rhythm.”
He won’t be drawn on who he favours – although he has previously praised the current Prime Minister’s “big brain and good heart”, and he was a vocal fan of Tony Blair’s premiership.
What he is keen to stress, though, is where his early spark for politics first found true ignition. And that’s a place we both know rather well: University College. He came up to Oxford just a handful of years after I left my High Street alma mater – but, of course, that’s something he has figured out in advance of our meeting.
“We came pretty close, eh Peter?” laughs Clinton, who arrived at Univ on a Rhodes scholarship after a stint in Democrat Senator William Fulbright’s office. “We could have made quite the team!”
It’s a flattering daydream, but this is a man with whom you just feel that ‘click’ – and, although Oxford is thousands of imaginary and real-world miles from the echoing New England hotel foyer we find ourselves in, neither of us struggles to cast back to a pre-grey era; and to picture a double act which only just failed to find itself.
Oxford clearly made its mark. He remembers sensitively and animatedly conversations aired in the shadow of Shelley’s statue; remembers political battles fought in the tutorial arena (“tougher than Congress”); even remembers his favourite newspaper of the time. You guessed it – Cherwell.
“There were some brilliant young journalistic minds, not yet trained – but, importantly, not yet bound. Some of it was clumsy, but when the hand occasionally lacked grace, the belly never lacked fire.”
Even Clinton’s sense of expression reveals the importance of his time in England, because, I suggest to him, he speaks with a familiar American lilt shaped seemingly at will by the idiom of Blighty.
“That’s another reason why I loved the papers over here, and continue to follow the English networks. You guys just… I dunno, nail it.”
Time is ever cruel, and it feels there is a whole world left unexplored when our brief interview draws to a close. “Are you sure you can’t stay for another?” suggests Clinton.
But cabs must be hailed and planes must be caught, although it’s tough to turn down another bourbon with this president of charm.
As I leave the hotel, my thoughts turn improbably to the cult American detective Columbo. I find it hard to imagine President Clinton was ever an avid watcher – but he’s a dab hand at proving people wrong, at defying those who doubt. And there is, surely, a twinge of irony as he throws me his final words: “One more thing, Peter. Can Hillary have an autograph?”
Peter Sissons was Cherwell Sport Editor in MT63, and has gone on to present BBC News, ITN, and Question Time.
