Perhaps if you can find another link or two to any audio I can have a listen too. Happy to receive a PM too.
6 minutes here http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/audio/2011/jan/30/jeremy-bamber-murder-appeal-audio
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/01/31/the-jeremy-bamber-files-exclusive-audio-extracts-of-the-convicted-killer-discussing-his-case-115875-22887323/
Had not heard that before. Thanks.
He should shut up. He gives himself away all the time. Just my opinion.
Are you being fair to Jeremy, Abs? If you were interviewed by a broadcasting company about a highly complex subject that you must simplify, something you care deeply about, how well do you think might do? Do you think you would be able to explain yourself clearly, make your points in a natural, 100% accurate, honest and compelling manner and come across as you do here? In my experience, it is most unlikely that you would do so.
I've been interviewed a few times by the media in respect of protest campaigns and a charity I'm involved with and I can tell you that the experience is not at all how you might think it would be. Being interviewed by the media is not something the average person does very often. It's a surreal and stressful experience. I am in awe of anyone who can do a good interview without becoming so stressed out that they mess it up: which is what happened to me.
On one occasion I was interviewed, I was first approached by a researcher a week or two prior to the interview. She was lovely and very sympathetic to our campaign. She asked me lots of questions, gave me time to think about my answers and wanted all the background information she could gather in order to understand our protest. I was left with the impression that the interviewer would interview me just as the researcher had done. Another time I had to go to the BBC studios to be interviewed. Neither experience turned out as I'd expected.
In the intervening period until the day of each of the interviews, I worried about what I would say: would I remember to make all the key points or would I say the wrong thing and mess it up? I kept rehearsing what I wanted to say in my head so that I could reproduce these points in the interview.
The interview at the BBC was a nightmare. I sat dripping with sweat in an otherwise completely darkened, windowless room with this fiercely hot, bright lamp shining in my face. I couldn't see the interviewer, I just heard this disembodied voice that I struggled to hear going over and over and the same points and questions. I felt pressured to give different answers each time. It was so surreal, I can't see how I could have behaved naturally under such pressurised and artificial circumstances. The interview took ages and kept stopping and starting. I became so confused and stressed that I ended up giving nonsensical answers, I just wanted to get out of there.
The other interview was recorded at a demo, so should have been better, however, I lost track of the points I wanted to make when the interviewer I'd expected to be sympathetic began by attacking us: "This protest is unlikely to change anything, is it?", he said and it got worse from there on.
The, heavily edited, final versions of the above interviews seemed manipulated and to bear little or no relation to what I'd said. The interviewers' questions were edited out and a number of sections of my replies seemed stitched together as though I was making an - incoherent - statement.
Unlike Jeremy Bamber, I hadn't been locked away in prison in a surreal and artificial, 25 year time warp when I was interviewed. My freedom did not partly depend on how well I might do in those interviews. How hard must it be to come across as natural under such circumstances!
When I listen to these clips of Jeremy's interview I recall the dreadful interviews I did. Given the circumstances, I'm not all surprised that I messed up my interviews, nor am I surprised that stressed out Jeremy messed up his: perhaps it's in the nature of the media beast to distort and manipulate interviews, abs.
