Charley Rose

The art of the interviewer.

Watching Charley Rose, the American CBS talk show host at work is to watch someone perform at the very top of their profession. Almost as an aside he makes the person being interviewed centre stage. He gently prompts them with questions and allusions to things that had happened in their past or is about to happen in the near future.  The communication is as it would be having a chat, the camera and the paraphernalia  associated with the set are clearly in the background as his warm confidential personality sets up a conversation that in some ways excludes the audiences participation and focuses one to one. His ability to make the other person relax and feel they are in trustworthy company has to come from his aura or perhaps lack of it in that there never seems to be any tension.
One often sees the "late night jock show host" vying for the camera wishing to be the centre of attention the master of the joke. These shows can be interesting as a spectacle but one is never fascinated as you are on a Charley Rose show by the person there to questioned, not interrogated, the information teased out willingly as if the occasion was that of speaking and sharing to a friend.
I suppose it's that he seems so genuinely interested and it's as if the questions were as an aside to the overall conversation. The painstaking research and unearthing of what is interesting comes across as if the question had just popped into his mind. His consummate affability his courtesy and warmth are the traits you enjoy and appreciate in anyone no matter who but in his show they are magnified by the raw material sitting opposite. Someone who is famous for being someone different, someone special, a star in their own galaxy far away from our own grey environment who Rose makes human by his own humanity.