Joanna Blythman on speaking frankly

What do Helen Mirren and Alistair Darling have in common? They let their mouths run away with them and must be bitterly regretting it. One, a polished actress, no stranger to the celebrity interview, has managed to sound laid-back about date rape. Ouch. The other, a highly experienced politician with a squad of advisers, stands accused of triggering a crisis of confidence by talking down the economy and acknowledging that voters are pissed off with his party.

Neither Mirren nor Darling can claim that she/he was misquoted. That they did indeed make the remarks in question is not in doubt. Both have tried to repair some of the damage. Mirren's publicist says she does not dispute the accuracy of statements attributed to her upcoming GQ article; "she merely asks that people read the article in its entirety before drawing conclusions". If they do that, she says, their conclusions will likely be far less sweeping and sensational than those drawn by some media commentators. Darling has also spent the best part of a week trying to put his remarks in a wider context.

I have some sympathy for the pair. Journalism is never the best forum in which to advance any nuanced argument or observation. The need for attention-grabbing headlines, and the editorial discipline of making some sense of what is often an incoherent dog's dinner of comments, means that subtlety is dispensed with.

I doubt very much that Mirren believes that women should accept date rape as a fact of life. Presented with these bald words in black and white, I bet she would have put a red line through them. On this occasion she has fallen foul of the Faustian pact that VIPs make with the media: "You give exposure to my book/film/policies (delete as appropriate), and I'll give you a little through-the-keyhole bit of me."

It's really no great surprise if this feisty actress goes off-message in the course of an interview with GQ. Date rape, and the complex legal and moral issues around it, are scarcely among Mirren's core competencies. Her opinion on it is surely no more informed than those vox-pops gathered by journalists on the street, so why be surprised, or pillory her, when she fluffs it ?

The stock-in-trade of would-be- respectable lads mags such as GQ are snippets of titillating spice buried in a celebrity interview. They love mouthy blondes, and positively encourage remarks about snorting cocaine, nude scenes and big tits, because they boost circulation. Mirren was up for playing the game, only on this occasion she lost control of her side of it.

Darling's predicament is rather different. We habitually denounce politicians as a bunch of dishonest, cynical careerists who'll say anything to get on, but when we get the odd one who lowers his guard and offers some honest, more complex observation, we criticise him for it. Yet a politician who strays from the carefully managed party line is rather endearing, almost irrespective of the content. Compared to those set-piece political interviews where ministers turn up to the Today or Newsnight studio, flanked by minders, coached to trot out hand-picked statistics and the same three platitudinous answers irrespective of what is thrown at them, an honest, unscheduled departure from the official script is positively refreshing.

And can you blame the journalist who feels duty bound to take the fullest advantage of such slips ? Some of the most telling disclosures from politicians come in the context of interviews, not with newshounds but with feature writers whose stated purpose, as in Darling's Guardian interview, is to give a rounder view of its subject. Relaxing your subject is a key part of any interviewer's technique. Truman Capote famously remarked that the knack was "to let the other person think he's interviewing you by telling him all about yourself, and slowly spin your web so that he tells you everything". His approach worked brilliantly with Marlon Brando, who afterwards remarked: "The little bastard spent half the night telling me his problems. I figured the least I could do was tell him a few of mine."

Politicians tackled by a Humphrys or Paxman with an edgy political question become defensive, stick to familiar territory and engage the more sequential, objective left side of the brain. Softened up by a less confrontational inquisitor posing apparently unthreatening questions about their parents, their kids and what they like to eat for breakfast, the more intuitive, subjective right brain clicks into gear. If a smart interviewer then slips in a tough question, it's more difficult for the interviewee to revert to left-brain mode, so out tumble the illuminating clangers. Herein lies part of the reason for Gordon Brown's personal unpopularity (as opposed to the unpopularity of his policies): his apparent inability to operate on anything other than left-brain mode. You'll get no unguarded moments or spontaneous disclosures from Brown, but equally, no indication of any well-rounded, thoughtful human being lurking behind that statesman's mask.

I like people with opinions that admit shades of grey, people who betray the odd flash of self-doubt. They're reassuringly human.