Considering the quality of the questions, I think Evelyn Waugh showed incredible restraint.

An unnecessary fuss on the part of the BBC.

He doesn't look nervous to me, or impolite. The interviewer seems more antagonistic.

That framing is so bogus. I keep trying to see Waugh as difficult or unpleasant but I just can't do it.

I feel that Waugh came out of this unscarred . Yes i thought that the interviewer was callous and direct . But , he got the honest answers he required . And that was the the purpose of the programme. O would like this kind of interview to return . Especially in the case ofpolitical interviewing. I am a Catholic and i disagreed with Waugh's statement about the Cathoilic branch of Christianity. Being the sole truth . Catholic Christisnity is just one of the oldest forms of Christianity and the one form most practiced around the world. But there is lots of good things as well as bad things to be said for non Catholic Christianity I wonder what Waugh would have thought about Vatican 2?

What a fool Joan Bakewell was/is.

A poor interviewer, far too many interruptions.

To the interviewer - there aren't twelve fruits of the spirit. There are nine. Galatians 5:22.

This seems mischaracterized. Waugh seems to handle the rat-a-tat questions fairly well. Curious about the interviewer's defensiveness in the intro. He definitely seems to be the more antagonistic. Or a bit of a dick.

“Oh no, I’m still a pure aesthete, but in middle life one doesn’t have to dress up in special clothes to enjoy architecture, you know?”

He answered every question directly without any drama. A lot of contemporary talking heads could learn from this.

Waugh actually seems quite agreeable.

i agree with Waugh, so many of the questions were perfectly stupid and pointless :)

He says he always realized that Catholicism WAS Christianity. Wow. What a load of rubbish. Catholicism is a made-up religion just as the whole of Christianity is a man-made, made-up religion. There is no evidence whatsoever that Christ had any intention of founding a church or a religion. This is completely and absolutely a man-made thing which all down through the centuries has mislead mankind.

Evelyn Waugh seems to be a jolly nice chap and a great writer

Waugh does not seem antagonistic at all. I think the interviewer, in recalling the event, was projecting his own uptight attitude onto Waugh. The interviewer seems like an utter prig.

I don't get why either Waugh or Freeman would be considered rude. Waugh's rudest moment is saying "I'm here for the money, just like you are"

So the description is about a 1953 radio interview, and this is a 1960 TV interview?

Pointless psychobabblers interrogating preening people about pay and peccadilloes are the pride of the Progs. Imagine if Bakewell Cake were ever told to leave the closed-shop and get a proper job to earn a crust. She'd need an hour of counselling (minus adverts) from Freeman or another pointless person.

What is the problem? Waugh seems perfectly pleasant and responsive to the interviewer and in a generally friendly mood. If anything, it's the interviewer that is a bit of a pill.

As many here say, I think Mr Waugh charming and amusing. Hindsight seems to be playing tricks. Are moderns so very different that Waugh seems taciturn? I am very pleased to have seen this old video.

He doesn't look nervous to me. He seems to be enjoying being interviewed and was quite forthcoming. How strange the BBC people are of the opposite view.

The interviewer is appalling. He is interogating Waugh, he makes no effort to engage personally with Waugh or follow Waugh's lead. Waugh is perfectly engaging, offering plenty of scope to Freeman who makes no attempt to be personable. Well done Waugh, poor show by Freeman

John Freeman's interview sounds more like an interrogation by a police detective investigating a crime. If Waugh's answers to Freeman unnecessarily deep probing questions were belligerent [which I hear no evidence of] he would be justified in doing so. This whole interview made me feel very uncomfortable for Waugh as well as myself. 🇺🇸

He was a nasty shite\ He was also a genius who i love There ya go

the interviewer is rude. Evelyn Waugh is not. in fact he is calm and elegant and intelligent.

A bit like an 1970s Mastermind episode. Expected the interviewer at the end to declare, 'Thank you Mr Waugh. At the end of your time, you've won 180 points'.

HE was bored? What about us?

Mr. Waugh appears to be uncomfortable and unwilling to open up or expound on any answers, most of which are in essence "yes" or "no." The cigar is a prop for him. Some famous individuals use the convention of limited response or even not granting interviews at all in an attempt to maintain a mystique about themselves or out of concern that they won't live up to their public persona. Bob Dylan would be another example.

This interview comes across as two middle picks sparring with each other!?

Are journalists a delicate lot? I found Waugh to be quite patient with questions that were quite accusative. If anyone was rude, it was the guy doing the interviewing.

Having seen this interview a number of times, I grow to like Waugh more and more.

The booze took its toll.

Delightful and far from rude ...

Waugh is courteous and obliging throughout

What a disingenuous smear job by BBC at the start of the of this video. Also the questions were bland and the interviewer was far from engaging.

The normally professional Freeman let himself down here. His questioning of Waugh was the problem. If you're going to try to upstage someone who was probably the greatest satirist of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the finest writers of his (and others!) generation, you better be on your game. Freeman most certainly wasn't on his game!

There are clear reasons that one is still a well regarded writer, of enduring popularity and great in terest even now...and the other is, sorry, who? Which is not to say that great interviewers dont exist, Dick Cavett and David Frost come to mind. The questions seem...badly researched and read off a list, rather than occurring in a well conducted conversation. Waugh wins.

The HIDEOUS POSH OXBRIDGE BBC BIGOTS!🤢🤮🤮🤮🤢🤮

I thought Evelyn Waugh a model of restraint. This interviewer, and his interviewing technique was ghastly, and as some other person here has stated, it was more of an interrogation!

What utter rubbish. Waugh was a perfect gentleman.

What a great novelist he was.

He seemed very relaxed, nothing like the way he was said to be at the beginning of the video. Perhaps the interviewers recollection was faulty?

He was enormously wise and probably distracted when engaged in routine interactions or professional obligations. He had a lot of abstractions to express to achieve his art. That might be a duty of genius.

I'd long assumed that Waugh was a dreadful rude snobbish pain in the arse - but he comes out of this interview very much better than I expected.

Religion is the opium of the masses .... and the cocain of the elites.

For a professional interviewer, freeman has a truly awful technique.. he asks many, many short closed questions which invite terse answers.

What blows my mind is the contrast between the way the interviewer describes Waugh decades later and the Waugh we actually see in the interview. And it's all the more accentuated by the interviewer's syrupy retrospective assurances that there is no one he ever interviewed that he respected more than Waugh. The truth I suspect being that there is no one he ever tried harder to trip up more than Waugh and who failed as utterly, because Waugh was utterly and completely comfortable in his own skin.

i feel like he is like a russian novelist like Dovstoeisky, very dense and almost incomprehensible

No. I think a no nonsense woke true interview.