Ed Gamble has admitted on The Chris Moyles Show that he believed he could ‘be the one to crack’ the notoriously difficult interviewee Robert De Niro ahead of his ‘tricky’ episode of the Off Menu podcast, where the veteran actor failed to grasp the dream menu format.
Being interviewed by Moyles and Dominic Byrne he talked about Off Menu's various guests. "We've had De Niro on. Not one of the most giving guests.”
Dominic Byrne replied: “But brilliant though. It was brilliant. Listen, for that reason as well.”
EG: “Oh, it was amazing. And also, he's Robert De Niro. You know, it doesn’t matter. He can say what he likes.”
Chris Moyles: “Did you know, though? So, I'm a big De Niro fan, so I'm very aware of what he's like in interviews and on certain shows. So, you know you're going to be doing 99 per cent of the heavy lifting in the episode. But you can't say no, can you?”
EG: “Exactly. You can't say no to Robert De Niro. I kind of knew about that. I'd heard his reputation. But when you interview someone you know is a little bit trickier in interviews – you probably do the same thing – there's a thought in your head that goes, ‘I'll be the one to crack him.’”
CM: “And did you?”
EG: “No, absolutely not. He was lovely. He was so nice. But, you know, we're obviously asking him for his dream menu, and every time we got to a course, we'd say, ‘What's your dream starter, Bob?’ And he'd go, ‘Whatever's good.’ Okay, well, at one point we had to stop and go, ‘We will be asking you this quite a lot, what you want for the dream menu. And just to let you know, it's the format – we're not like being aggressive!’”
CM: “‘You know, this isn't actually a restaurant, and the food's not coming out.’”
DB: “‘James isn’t actually a genie.’”
CM: “‘Whatever you recommend!’ ‘No… How was this sold to you, Bob?’ ‘Can we eat here?’ ‘No.’ So was it face to face?”
EG: “Face to face. Well, you go to De Niro. You know, he's not coming to our little studio.”
CM: “You went to his podcast studio.”
EB: “Yeah, yeah. He’s got one in London, it’s great! No, it was in a hotel. We interviewed him in a hotel. And actually, on the way to the interview, and I sort of news rep, but I bumped into Rob Brydon, weirdly, on the way. And I said, ‘Oh, we're just off to do Off Menu. We've got Robert De Niro on.’ And he took me by both of my shoulders and looked me in the eye and went, ‘Good luck!’ That feels ominous.”
Tune into The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X weekdays from 6:30am – 10am and on Global Player**
Watch a video of the interview below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7yu3VWS56c
