In the hot seat: Barry Norman will talk about four classic films and answer questions from the audience
Miriam Craig talks to Barry Norman,
who presented the BBC's cinema review
programme for 26 years, ahead of his
visit to Millfield Arts Centre
Barry Norman is not happy with the way films are reviewed on television nowadays.
Presenters try to persuade their audience that the film is a masterpiece "when you know and they know that it's a piece of junk," he says. "I think movies are a very serious art form, and they should be taken seriously."
As a child living in Edgware and frequenting the Ritz Cinema in Station Road, Norman's appreciation of film was nurtured by his father, film director Leslie Norman. Barry says: "If I was ever sitting around at home with nothing to do, my Dad would say, Look, there's a good film on, why don't you go and see it?'"
Norman, 74, started as a reporter on the Kensington News and became showbusiness editor of the Daily Mail in the late Sixties, where he appointed himself deputy film critic, "on the basis that it's a dirty job but someone's got to do it".
After being made reduntant by the Mail in 1971 - "the best thing that could have happened" - he was offered the chance to
present the BBC TV show Film 72.
He says: "I wasn't remotely interested in being on TV. I was doing very well as a freelance journalist and was enjoying myself enormously. But when they phoned, I grabbed the opportunity, just to get the experience."
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His insatiable appetite for films as a child and long career as a critic mean he has seen more than 12,000 films. At the height of his career, he had difficulty remembering them all, and would often be convinced he had not yet seen a film, only for his colleagues to point out his notes about it in his notebook.
He says: "About 70 per cent of films range from acceptable to really awful. If you're very lucky you get ten per cent that range from damn good to possibly great. I think that's always been the case, whatever decade you're talking about."
Norman gave up presenting the BBC's film review programme in 2001, and it has since been presented by Jonathan Ross, who is related to Norman by marriage.
Norman says: "He's someone I get on with extremely well; he's very quick witted and is a fine TV presence.
"But I don't think he would describe himself as a film critic, as that's only a small part of what he does."
Of Mark Kermode, who reviews films for several British shows and publications, he says: "Mark is a serious critic. Apart from his fatuous obsession with The Exorcist, which he insists on saying is the greatest film ever made."
Whatever their flaws, Norman is clear he cannot be tempted back onto our screens. He's far too busy discussing recipes for pickled shallots, his version
of which he hopes to bring out by Christmas, after the success of his pickled onions.
It may be a while yet before he is more famous for pickles than for film, though: "At the moment it's just a fun enterprise. Believe me, there's not that much money in pickled onions."
Barry Norman will be at the Millfield Arts Centre, in Silver Street, Edmonton, on May 23 at 8pm, talking about four classic films, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, Dirty Harry, and Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood, and answering questions from the audience.
Tickets cost £16 and are available from the box office on 020 8807 6680.
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