SINGAPORE: The autistic, neurodivergent and learning-disabled interviewers are in The Assembly (ITV). If you haven’t heard of it, it is a clever, refreshing antidote to interviewers gushing about the celebrity’s latest boring book/film/tour/fitness video and asking kill-me-now luvvie questions such as: “So tell us, how much fun was it working with Dame Judi?”
The rules are that no subject is out of bounds and no question is off the table and, trust me, the inquiries are blunt. Within a few minutes a young man had asked Stephen Fry this of his sex life with his husband: “Are you a top or a bottom?”
Fry threw back his head and clapped. “Wow, that is as direct as it gets,” he said. “I’m going to leave that a mystery for people to guess. There is ‘V’ in the middle of course — versatile.” Well! It certainly makes a change from those carefully rehearsed “backstage at the Palladium” anecdotes that send me into a coma.
He took it in good humour (well, he had little choice) when another young man, Jacob, hinted that he might be an ad whore. He listed all the products Fry has helped to advertise, including “Heineken, Alliance & Leicester, Twinings tea, Pioneer hi-fi, Walkers crisps, Marks & Spencer, Honda, Virgin Media, Extra Strong Mints, After Eight mints, Sainsbury’s, Heathrow airport, Direct Line, EE and, finally, Whitbread”, then asked simply: “Is there anything you wouldn’t do for money?” A brilliant (and fair) question delivered without any “gotcha” malice, to which Fry could only reply: “I am a tart.”
I realise that some have reservations about this show. I read an article in which one autistic person wrote that the “mischief” felt manufactured and that it is condescending to paint autistic and learning-disabled people as “heart-warming” and “quirky” while perhaps “playing up” the quirkiness to serve up feelgood moments to a neurotypical audience. And I accept that.
All I am saying is that it feels like it is turning the chat show on its head, doing away with the sycophancy and BS and showing (highly paid) celebrity hosts that there is another, unfiltered way to do it. One that, frankly, is more fun to watch. It means that some snippy PR with a mouth like a cat’s bottom can’t outlaw all the interesting questions and insist they confine the chat to said boring book/film/tour/fitness video. Crucially, the guests aren’t plugging anything. There’s a hint of danger, raw honesty and randomness that also delivers an emotional timbre that you don’t get in other chat shows.
Nicola Sturgeon is the guest on the second show (broadcast on Friday evening, so spoilers ahead) and was reduced to tears when she was asked: “When you miscarried Isla Margaret what do you wish people had said to you?” Hearing the mention of her lost child’s name like that seemed to completely stagger her and the politician’s polish momentarily went. Just for a second she was lost in her thoughts and it was really quite moving.
Not all of it was like this. One man told Sturgeon that with her hair and face she looked like Mrs Doubtfire, then seemed to fret that he had offended her. Straight off the bat she was asked: “What does it feel like being divorced?” She explained that she isn’t actually divorced yet but separated, adding that “s*** happened”. Well, that’s one way of putting it.
There’s also an unfeigned moral curiosity to some of the questions. One woman, Caroline, wanted to know why Fry “went to Buckingham Palace to do drugs”. The first question Fry was asked was an unairbrushed one about his attempts to kill himself. Sturgeon was asked if she had been fingerprinted when she was arrested.
I’m not pretending it’s a perfect format (it is taken from a French show called Les Rencontres du Papotin), but even in its second series it still feels faintly radical. However, I do see that it might become a victim of its own success.
The types of celebs who agree to be grilled by the “smiling assassins”, as Fry called them, are generally good sports. They can’t fail to emerge well from it because they have made themselves vulnerable and delivered laughs at their own expense. It makes them considerably more likeable.
Might agents whose clients are down on their luck or suffering a bout of bad PR soon lick their lips and try to shoehorn them on the show for a popularity boost, maybe a light spot of “Assembly washing”? I’m going to go with “yes”.