Brian Viner: The first law of interviewing is listen, don't talk

What a shame it is that Studs Terkel's batteries gave out just before Election Day in the United States. The great oral historian, whose tape recorder chronicled a nation's evolution, died on Friday, aged 96. A lifelong Democrat, he would doubtless have been thrilled to see Barack Obama as President-elect but probably not surprised if the America he knew so well found itself, at the last, unable to appoint a black man to its highest office.

Terkel was a hero of mine. His technique of prodding people's views and recollections with a few canny questions but essentially just letting them talk, and transcribing their words more or less verbatim, was the ultimate expression of the interviewer as facilitator.

It should hardly need saying, but the best interviews, whether broadcast or in print, are driven by the interviewer's ear as much as the interviewee's mouth. That's why I objected more to a particularly wired performance from Jonathan Ross on his so-called chat show a couple of weeks ago, before most of us knew that Andrew Sachs even had a granddaughter, than to his later, disastrous contribution to The Russell Brand Show. Ross is a talented performer, a comedian, a loose cannon, call him what you will, but not an interviewer. He's all mouth and no ear.

Terkel, by contrast, had one of the greatest ears. His obituary in these pages yesterday featured a fine example. In his book The Good War, in which Second World War veterans recounted their experiences, an old soldier told him: "It's a terrible thing to say, but it was the most exciting span of time that I ever spent. The most romantic. If you're lucky enough not to get killed or maimed, and you go through it, it's much like a hospital experience. You never remember the pain, you remember the ass of the nurse who came in and bent over you." Never mind descriptions of the whizz of the howitzers. As a real, honest perspective on wartime, that takes some beating.

Terkel also interviewed senators and sports stars, but mostly he should be celebrated for giving a voice to ordinary people, from cotton-pickers in Arkansas to cab-drivers in Manhattan.

It's not entirely true to say that ordinary voices don't get heard in today's celebrity-fixated culture – Channel 4's Big Brother springs to mind as a way of offering the limelight to ordinary folk, but in doing so it makes celebrities of them. Terkel's subjects said their stuff, some of it hugely insightful or poignant, then returned to their cotton lint, or their traffic jam on West 57th Street.

A couple of months ago, the octogenarian chairman of governors at my son's primary school, Ray Barker, died after a short illness. Not long before, I sat at his bedside and listened for about an hour as he rivetingly recalled his years on HMS Victorious during the Second World War. I resolved to go back with a tape recorder, but he died before I could do so.

Later, his daughter gave me two tapes of his wartime reminiscences, which had been recorded by someone at the Imperial War Museum. But these things don't need to be done officially, nor does the subject need to have led a life laden with adventure. As Studs Terkel knew, everyone has a story worth telling. Some tell theirs better than others, but their real worth is in the ear of the listener.

Careful where you tread in this cemetery

Highgate Cemetery in north London, where Karl Marx rubs bones with George Eliot, Alexander Litvinenko, Sir Ralph Richardson and Max Wall (an interesting fantasy dinner party), has topped a list of European burial places compiled by the travel company TripAdvisor. Runner-up is Père Lachaise in Paris, eternal resting place of Oscar Wilde, Frederic Chopin, Edith Piaf, Marcel Marceau and Jim Morrison

(arguably an even better fantasy dinner party).

This will please the dedicated members of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery, some of whom are very sniffy about Père Lachaise. I know this because as a reporter I cut my teeth on the Hampstead & Highgate Express, where it was frequently my job to talk to, or be browbeaten by, formidable representatives of local conservation groups.

Nobody was more formidable than Peggy Jay, the human dreadnought who ran the Heath and Old Hampstead Society, but her Highgate Cemetery counterpart was almost as scary, and once furiously berated a colleague for having the temerity to call her during Wimbledon fortnight.

Most imperious of all, however, was the woman who phoned to instruct us to give some coverage to the work of PHAFF. I begged her pardon. "PHAFF," she barked. "Primrose Hill Against Flash Floods!"

* The literary event of early 2009, in this house at any rate, will be the publication of my memoir – Nice To See It, To See It Nice – about growing up in front of the telly. I found it hard to wax nostalgic about shows that either resurface all the time on satellite channels, or are re-made for the 21st century, as is increasingly the case with programmes that loomed large over my childhood. But I never thought that anyone would want to breathe life (after inhaling helium, obviously) back into those twin pigs Pinky and Perky. I was wrong. The Powerful Pig Corporation, as Pinky and Perky have been re-styled, hit the nation's TV screens with a resounding squeak at tea-time yesterday.

* The splendid Lewis Hamilton has just stormed one white preserve by becoming the first black world motor-racing champion. Now Barack Obama must make it two white preserves in two days. But I'm not sure I'll be able to bear the tension if Obama, like young Lewis, has to overtake on the final bend.

More from Brian Viner