Michael Portillo Quotes

If you don't have the smoking gun, then it's pointless to hector interviewees. Because you just shut people up instead of opening them up.

I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start.

I very much dislike being interviewed by the kind of journalist who tries to dig into your private life.

I like to push people till I get the truth out of them.

I didn't confess. I was interrogated. They acted like my answers were wrong. They told me I was wrong, that I didn't remember correctly, that I had to remember correctly. And if I didn't, I would never see my family.

Pummeling an answer out of someone never works. You cannot intimidate someone with aggressive language and think they'll be more forthcoming... that's a caricature of interrogation, part of the TV culture of what it looks like.

Going into a locker room that's not even yours to begin with is certainly like you're entering the lion's den.

When I was playing Jimmy White in those finals, I could tell when he was under pressure.

There are too many organisations - and the BBC is a fabulous organisation - that seem to think it's OK to badger, hector and threaten people.

There are few people I can talk to about the worst parts of what happened during Gamergate.

Personally, I don't think IPL is very tough.

I have had an actor squeeze himself up against me during a shot in a song and whisper in my ear that he was so glad that I was in the film with him. When I threw him off me and refused to speak to him again, he made my experience miserable.

In 'Casino,' there was this scene where Bob De Niro tape-records Sharon Stone's phone call. Then he asks her about where she's going, and he catches her in a lie. It was a great scene, especially for Bob's work, but we found that, in light of the whole film, it wasn't needed.

You can sit and imagine what it is like to go into a hostile stadium, or what it's like to play for the AFC championship, but you never know until you do it.

Generally I don't say too much on the field. However, I am a fast bowler and with that comes the responsibility of saying a word or two and getting in a guy's face.

Of course, I'm not saying that news interviews can't be adversarial. Sometimes, you have to be nasty Columbo or we'd never get to the truth.

I was going out with a few girls and we were in a local. A girl started shouting 'Gogglebox' at me and became really intimidating. I left but I lay awake crying, wondering if the girl knew where I lived.

I think it's always difficult to go against people with big match experience in finals.

As players we know pressure is part and parcel of what we do.

I can go in front of thousands of people on stage and not be afraid, but when there's just a few people, that scares me.

I'm more comfortable performing in front of 50,000 people than five people - it's easier. When there's that many people, I feel like I'm alone. When I perform in front of only a few people, it's scary.

Everybody has an angle. The only time I say no to an interview is when someone says they don't have an angle. I know right away that that's not honest.

Bollywood is a tough place to be in and survival isn't easy.

I enjoy putting teams under pressure, forcing turn-overs and just being a pain really!

I go to the British Comedy Awards and, you know, quite a few people were making jokes at my expense. It just made me feel awful, because I am there with my wife and she has gone out and bought a dress. And it is my big night and I won, and yet the overriding experience was that of nastiness.