The six types of people you meet at Lunch with the FT For 30 years
The six types of people you meet at Lunch with the FT For 30 years, the FT’s flagship interview has featured a who’s who of our times. Henry Mance explains its magic
To explain the success of Lunch with the FT, you have to go back to the Middle Ages. Bear with me.
Medieval kings did not get much time alone. They would eat their meals in large halls or castles, in front of many of their subjects — a bit like a college dining room operates today, says Andrew Spencer, an academic at the University of Cambridge. Eating in public perhaps helped these monarchs show that they were alive and in control.
Our modern-day equivalents of kings and queens are different. They eat in private rooms that most of us rarely step into. When they appear in public, they are often giving speeches or interviews that have been carefully choreographed. At receptions, they nurse an iced water. These appearances communicate a message, but rarely communicate a human being.
This is where Lunch with the FT comes in. When the great and the good eat, they have to become human. No one can maintain a façade when fixated on a French fry. The genius of Lunch with the FT is that it encourages people who are trained not to relax in public to do exactly that. It allows them to show themselves in 3D. So it is, as one of the best publicists around puts it, “press for people who don’t do press”.
Lunch with the FT was born 30 years ago, in 1994, the same year that Oasis released their debut album. Have both been marked by egos, walkouts and financial excesses? It’s hard to say: I don’t know enough about Oasis. The key thing is that Lunch with the FT doesn’t need a comeback tour because it never went away.
What’s more, unlike Oasis on their forthcoming tour, Lunch cannot be accused of being in it for the money — almost the opposite. The format was the brainchild of Max Wilkinson, a former editor of FT Weekend, who wanted to counter the advertising department’s idea of a weekly interview sponsored by a car brand. He identified something great about lunch. Or as Tracey Emin would later put it over the cheapest white wine that Scott’s of Mayfair had to offer: “I love lunch more than dinner. I always get too pissed in the evening.” (That was one of her more family-friendly sentences.)
Looking back at the archive — the past 20 years of Lunches are available online; a selection of the best Lunches has also been published as two books — what strikes you is the range. There are dictators and dissidents, chief executives and communists, philosophers and fraudsters. We’ve interviewed a convicted murderer and a poet who died the next day. Plenty have gone on to win power and prizes. Some have gone on to jail, while others have simply reached out-of-court settlements with no admission of liability and retired from royal duties.
One Lunch guest, writer Joan Didion, described California as a selfish place, “a state settled by people who were careless — they had left everything behind”. Several other Lunch guests, including Elon Musk, have arguably proved her point. What the interviews have in common is an intimacy, whether the guest is Angelina Jolie (“I’m Angie”) or Sir Keir Starmer (“If I’m honest I prefer Keir”).
As a rule, people can have Lunch with the FT only once, though there have been exceptions, mainly for people who insist on living almost for ever — RIP Henry Kissinger. Lunch with the FT is also strictly a one-on-one encounter, but some guests come as a pair (Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, private equity barons Henry Kravis and George Roberts, the Pet Shop Boys) or stiff us with the bill for their four-man entourage (South African firebrand Julius Malema).
I’m lucky to have written quite a few Lunches with remarkable people — though I realise I will only ever be remembered as the journalist who got drunk with Nigel Farage. For me, Lunch with the FT is the ultimate intellectual stimulation — it is a form of heaven. In my experience, there are six types of people you meet there.
The star
The star is, at least on paper, the best Lunch guest. They have one big advantage: anything they say is automatically more interesting. Middling anecdotes, familiar opinions, usual career angst — all will shine if it’s a household name who’s speaking. A lot of actors’ interviews are, in effect, minor HR grievances; they can still be riveting.
The first principle of lunch — eating — is familiar even to the greatest stars, except athletes and fashion magazine editors. The second principle — not paying — is also surprisingly familiar. Things should go smoothly. But the star exerts a force field that makes normal interaction almost impossible. As an interviewer, your mouth will be fixed in a gormless grin, your cutlery will slip through your fingers.
Lunch is the opportunity to reveal the real person inside the star. On rare occasions, complications arise because the person departs too far from the persona. What if a national treasure turns out to be a chauvinist? Or an icon of cool turns out to be self-centred? Luckily, more often, stars understand themselves better than you expect. You start to see the iceberg, not just the tip.
The politician
The politician gives many interviews. They are used to talking and used to eating. For the most part, they will pretend not to be used to drinking — even if (especially if) it is common knowledge that they are. They will choose an unflashy restaurant, probably in the local area that elected them — except if they are French, in which case they will gently insist on somewhere decent.
What do you talk about? The past? You cannot expect the politician to admit their mistakes any more than you can expect an architect to bulldoze their own buildings. Some can’t bring themselves to admit their record is hugely flawed; others really believe it isn’t. At most they will say they should have been bolder or communicated better.
Nonetheless, politicians do have more insight than they are given credit for: they have met many people, and most have thought about society relentlessly. The best are truly brave, and the wisest know how to let down their guard without impeaching themselves.
The thinker
The thinker has written a book. This is a transformative act, because an author is keen to sell books in the same way that the person crawling across the desert is keen to drink water. They will arrive at lunch with a delighted look; indeed, they will probably have arrived long before you.
To be clear, this is not a criticism. The thinker has spent months, years, pent up in their study preparing to say something and now they can say it! They make excellent company, at least for a couple of hours.
The thinker-author’s political views will usually turn out to be more extreme than their audience’s. But they themselves tend to be thick-skinned. They might prefer that someone hadn’t published a detailed critique of their book, but their disappointment is outweighed by their pleasure at someone having read it. Very little is off limits.
The executive
Pity the executive. Corporate power, unlike stardom, does not make you more interesting. In fact, possibly the reverse. All that time in airport lounges — thinking of ways to cut costs, while racking them up yourself — well, it does not produce glitter. Many executives find it hard to change their register away from a shareholder meeting. Prepare yourself for more references to execution than at Hampton Court Palace.
Nonetheless, if any setting is going to make the executive interesting, it is Lunch. The executive probably dreams of being a star, and the meal is their stage. The executive is probably lonely, and you are their company. Once you get past their usual complaints about the quality of politicians, and their inability to justify their own pay, you may hear the wisdom that comes from being a person of action. Listen harder, and you may hear a cry for help. If you want the executive really to open up, you have to wait for them to be sacked or, erm, “leave abruptly”.
The maverick
Good news: the maverick is unashamed about enjoying good food and other luxuries because they feel they have earned it. They have succeeded where others have not dared to tread. They are also happy to opine on base human motivations — greed, power, laziness; topics that make others squeamish. Why? Because mentally mapping such things has been key to their success.
A lifetime of defying norms and dodging accountability can, however, lead to a certain lack of self-awareness. Be prepared for the maverick to order a fantastically expensive bottle of wine or drop in the name of the editor.
The humble achiever
No one can plan for one day rescuing a child dangling from a balcony or ensuring the flow of Covid vaccines. So the humble achiever has probably not imagined they would be interviewed over Lunch by the FT. They are generally unfazed by the experience. They are themselves. Their very normality is their selling point. They will remind you that a remarkable act does not require a remarkable ego.
What makes a good Lunch? Alcohol? Well, sometimes. But it’s not essential (OK, unless the guest is Liz Truss). Lavishness? In general, the quality of the conversation correlates with the quantity of the bill, although there are plenty of exceptions: Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary was a lot better than the €5.50 bagel he bought my poor colleague.
What is essential is time. We want a guest who can speak in paragraphs — a guest who will be at the table long enough to reflect on an earlier answer and say: you know what, there’s more to it than I said earlier. It probably helps if they are, like the environmental author Kim Stanley Robinson, advocating a “post-capitalist view of things where time is not of the essence”. Special mention, too, to French actress Isabelle Huppert, who cleared her schedule for the 12-course menu at L’Arpège in Paris, and who, when the coffee finally arrived, sighed: “Ah, they’re not bringing any sweets with it.”
For some interviewees, used to endless media commitments, interviews can feel as if they are being mined for information. The best interviews are not extractive, but catalytic — inspiring thoughts that the interviewee themselves may not have even articulated before. As Jeff Bezos put it in his Lunch with the FT in 2002: “I mean, nobody likes answering the same questions 10,000 times, it’s dull. But hey, this is more fun than most interviews because you’re asking me some new questions.” Indeed, the promise of Lunch with the FT is that it will not be dull.
Who would we most like to interview? It depends when. Interviewing Boris Becker in 2023, shortly after his release from jail for bankruptcy offences, was a very different proposition from interviewing him a few years earlier, when he was in the midst of fighting off the charges. It’s surprisingly hard to tell who will be interesting over the next year.
It’s largely irrelevant whether readers like the Lunch guest. A better test is whether they can learn something from them. That is something the series has nearly always managed over the past 30 years, whether it’s Musk’s criticism of immortality (“It’s important that people die. How long would you have liked Stalin to live?”) or author Francis Spufford’s defence of Christianity (“Christianity seems to me more true than other stories of the world that I’ve come across, and it nourishes me”). Hopefully we will manage it over the next 30 years too.
Henry Mance is the FT’s chief features writer
What is your favourite Lunch with the FT of all time, and why? Leave a comment below and we may publish a selection of the best next week
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FT readers and journalists share their favourite Lunch with the FT
Another chance to read some memorable lunches with Nigel Farage, Muriel Spark, Ronnie O’Sullivan, the Pet Shop Boys — and many more
It’s Lunch with the FT’s 30th birthday, and to celebrate, Henry Mance has been delving into our very colourful archives — indeed, we all have.
Here, FT readers and journalists guide you through their personal favourites. Any glaring omissions? Feel free to add your own in the comments below.
‘Erudite people getting eruditely sloshed’
I liked Henry’s lunch with Nigel Farage. Not because I’m a Farage fan, quite the opposite; but I do see the value in hearing from people I don’t ordinarily make an effort to seek out and listen to. If they do turn out to be obnoxious, I get the frisson of having my priors vindicated; if they turn out to be decent, I get the virtuous glow of having ventured out of my filter bubble. And, of course, it’s always a pleasure to read accounts of erudite people getting eruditely sloshed.
— darksider, FT reader
— darksider, FT reader
‘Re-reading it made me tear up a bit’
I edited or helped to edit many lunches — from 2007-14 — and Henry Mance’s wonderful piece brings it all back. My favourite is a 2008 lunch between two remarkable women: Gloria Steinem and Chrystia Freeland. At the time, Chrystia was a senior FT editor and our former boss at FT Weekend. She’s gone on to be a Canadian leader on the global stage, and was the subject of a lunch herself in 2020. Re-reading Chrystia and Gloria, it made me tear up a bit. The path of women’s progress has barely been smooth since, but it’s a raw, beautiful and enduring conversation, full of wisdom, realism, anger — and sharing of profound grief. I love it.
— Isabel Berwick, host and editor of the FT’s Working It podcast and newsletter
— Isabel Berwick, host and editor of the FT’s Working It podcast and newsletter
‘Unrestrained, authentic with or without the booze’
Quite a number to salivate, reminisce, chuckle about — or almost choke with a giggle — several months or years after reading. The best for me are those that bring out the real personalities, unrestrained, authentic with or without the booze! Many, but the Nigel Farage, Julius Malema and Boris Becker interviews I remember sharing with many non-FT subscribers. Absolutely brilliant stuff. Thank you to Max Wilkinson [the former FT Weekend editor who started Lunch with the FT] and all who have been involved.
— oyesoji oyeleke, FT reader
— oyesoji oyeleke, FT reader
‘A beautiful illustration of how important it is to stay humble’
There have been many memorable ones, but the most impressive has been a relatively recent one with the Pet Shop Boys, especially as their lunch came shortly after Liz Truss. Why? Because two heroes of my youth proved to be funny, full of humility and critical self-reflection. I read this lunch back-to-back with the Lunch with Truss and it just was a beautiful illustration of how important it is to stay humble.
— Greatdreamer, FT reader
A ‘fearless’ economist and an inventor who takes 30 morning pills
For the lunch where the guest aligned fully with how those of us who know her have known her to be — articulate and fearless: [economist] Mariana Mazzucato. For the breakfast (“That is not lunch!” you say? Tell the FT that) that featured “30 morning pills (his daily intake includes coenzyme Q10, lutein and bilberry extract, glutathione IV, vinpocetine and pyridoxal 5-phosphate)” and reminded me of the joke about life being long versus life feeling long: [inventor] Ray Kurzweil.
— Maya, FT reader
— Maya, FT reader
‘A portrait of an entire society’
Mine is David Pilling on [former Australian prime minister] Kevin Rudd, from 2011. I mean, read it. It’s a portrait of an entire society, as well as a rich insight into a very thoughtful, awkward, stubborn guy. By one of the FT’s very best writers.
— Audere est facere, FT reader
— Audere est facere, FT reader
Two lunches, two Ronnies
Too many to list but two of my favourites were two Ronnies. [Rolling Stones guitarist] Ronnie Wood’s lunch in Ireland took place against the backdrop of the tabloids about to do a story on him. [Champion snooker player] Ronnie O’Sullivan’s lunch is not only brilliantly written but is the favourite among those I’ve been involved in editing. Being a top sports star, Ronnie had an agent who, after establishing that we didn’t pay a fee for interviews, decided he wanted to sit in on the lunch himself. I volunteered to go along to Roka to keep him occupied and we had our own lunch while the real one took place. An alright bloke as it happened.
— Neil O’Sullivan, associate editor, FT Weekend Magazine
— Neil O’Sullivan, associate editor, FT Weekend Magazine
‘A huge bowl of pasta in front of a roaring log fire’
I remember visiting Muriel Spark high in the Tuscan hills in midwinter under five feet of snow, snaking up the twisting road behind the village snowplough, having to ditch my tiny rented Fiat and walk the last half mile. There was no question of getting out to a restaurant, so lunch was a huge bowl of pasta made by her companion Penelope in front of a roaring log fire. Dame Muriel (who was very dressy) was more concerned with the state of my suede boots than talking about her new novel. And yes: they were a goner.
— Jan Dalley, outgoing FT arts editor
— Jan Dalley, outgoing FT arts editor
‘Great writing that lets readers piece things together’
I love an interview with someone hesitant to discuss their true thoughts (for political reasons or otherwise), but where the great writing still lets the readers piece together the interviewee’s feelings. Demetri Sevastopulo’s interview with [retired US military chief] Mark Milley was a masterclass.
— Aiden Reiter, FT financial reporter for Unhedged
— Aiden Reiter, FT financial reporter for Unhedged
‘Lunches inevitably reveal something by accident’
I started reading the FT as a student, in part because it explained what was clearly a world-changing event — the global financial crisis — in a way that I understood, but I stayed for the lunches. What I love about them is that they inevitably reveal something by accident — Julius Malema turning up with his entourage, the visible menace of Emmerson Mnangagwa’s lunch, but my favourite has to be one of the first I read: Alec Russell’s lunch with FW de Klerk.
— Stephen Bush, FT columnist and associate editor
— Stephen Bush, FT columnist and associate editor
‘You are not to feel bad about this’
Many wonderful pieces, but nothing can top the culmination of the Gavin Ewart lunch: “There are two things you need to know,” [the poet’s wife] said. “The first is that Gavin came home yesterday happier than I have seen him in a long time. The second — and you are not to feel bad about this — is that he died this morning.”
— MountainState, FT reader
— MountainState, FT reader
My first boss was one of the world’s greatest lunchers. Editor of a magazine about the film, television, advertising and music video industries in the 1990s, a decade when you could have a perfectly respectable career in the audiovisual world without ever troubling to produce anything, she was a legend in Soho. She would take me to lunch at the boozy hidey-hole Andrew Edmunds, the vast and chrome-sparkly Terence Conran megalopolis Mezzo or the perfect institution Vasco & Piero’s Pavilion. Everywhere we went, she would be warmly welcomed, air kissed and visited by industry luminaries from the surrounding tables. As we staggered back to the office, I’d feel inducted into a way of life.
She taught me many things about journalism, but the most important thing she taught me about working life was that relationships endure and relationships created over lunch endure for decades. Work in television halted between 1pm and 3pm, and being able to secure a table at Sheekey’s or The Ivy between these hours was something to boast of unironically. Name-dropping the proposed restaurant was a way to secure a meeting. An opening glass of champagne and a half bottle of Chablis was standard. With hindsight it’s less of a mystery why so many working relationships were, er, problematic.
Thus, starting out, I most often found myself the junior partner in meals with the most celebrated and self-mythologised lunchers — men in media. These were invariably booked through assistants who hinted at the unimaginable glamour of their fixed reservation at a top-flight restaurant (“He lunches on Wednesdays, will Nobu in four weeks suit?”). I had no complaints. I was paid £13,500 in my first job in 1995, but no one would blink if I filed an expense claim for an £80 lunch. My answer to the conspiratorial question, “Shall we have a look at the pudding menu?” was always “Yes”, because then I could skip the expense of dinner. The media men of the 1990s stole my cigarettes and taught me how to drink at lunch (I did once have to go and lie down in the sick bay after a three-hour spectacular). I learnt it was important I fight to pick up the tab (flattering to one’s senior), occasionally give in graciously (“my turn next time”), pass on as much gossip as I pick up, fair trade being no robbery, and always ask about the wife and kids. Of course, it was a ridiculously inefficient way to do business. In a sense, that was part of it. My skin still prickles with mortification remembering the time I kept the controller of BBC1 waiting because I was stuck in traffic and he had to eat soup alone. The shame!
When men talk nostalgically about the golden days of lunching, the well-brought up now remember to caveat it with a reminder that they were, of course, a terrible boy’s club. But they only remember the lunches they were present at. At the turn of the millennium, all over the media, women breaking through glass ceilings were eyeing how the men were doing it, and it’s fair to say we rose to the challenge.
I was lucky enough to be part of girl gangs who had boxes at the races and the dogs, went gambling at the Ritz casino, took private rooms at Nobu and the River Cafe and special tables at The Wolseley or The Ivy. Events at which eight or 10 of us, from cabinet ministers to newspaper editors to TV channel bosses and mega TV producers, would prove women bond just as successfully over vast amounts of booze and jollity, and absolutely behave just as badly. I can recall public singing, an incident where two fierce egos challenged each other to an arm wrestle, someone demonstrating how you’d add sign language to porn to comply with new regulation and the destruction of a rather beautiful hat.
We were loud, but we were few. It was not until I moved to New York in the 2010s that I realised women networking over lunch was a global game. A PR as kind as she was mighty organised a welcome lunch at Michael’s, a media powerhouse restaurant in Manhattan of such stature that network presidents had regular tables and the front desk would tweet daily lists of the execs and celebs who had crossed the threshold. She invited only women. I was the editor of a yet-to-launch website, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would come, but we all ended up in Page Six, New York’s reigning gossip column, so someone knew what they were doing. The guests brought gifts of Diane Von Furstenberg scarves and recommendations of eyebrow groomers. This was a serious step up from our “feminine” traditions in London of lovely, handwritten thank-you notes on arty postcards, and the fact we’d actually remembered the names of each other’s children.
In New York, I recognised that I was being admitted to a set where the rules were subtly different. Contact building was about rapid intimacy accelerated by expenditure but not necessarily on dining. A journalist once invited me for lunch but led with “I know you live near me and have a daughter about the same age as mine, why don’t we take you both for mani-pedis?” Now that’s a fresh take on a life-work balance.
Do we blame the internet or the budgets for the slowing down of the lunch invitations? In a sense, the internet separated the advertising from the media and as the revenues went programmatic, so did the contacts. Those who inducted me are now very sadly starting to leave for the great never-ending lunch. Let’s be honest, it’s not a lifestyle associated with longevity.
All that was left were the sorts of lunches I wouldn’t have been seen dead at back in the day: the ones that sold tickets, beginning with the words “Women in”, often run by a brave senior woman in an organisation full of men, trying to facsimile the clubs to which they weren’t invited. The problem with these lunches wasn’t their intentions, but the lack of spontaneity in execution. There’s little opportunity to bond in a speed networking event. And, in truth, the few actual powerful women in any given industry had no availability between work events and family.
This is not to deny the benefits of more formal networking. The rules of entry to the informal kind are opaque and excluding, and I can’t pretend that my girl gang was any more thoughtful about our various privileges than our male counterparts. I remember taking some younger colleagues out for lunch at a fancy Edinburgh restaurant to hear their hopes and dreams, hoping to show them that I thought them important, but realised immediately it was way too formal and I risked doing the opposite. It’s undeniably healthier that young women can now express ambition through application for mentorships and paid trainee schemes. I will never, though, get over my fundamental disapproval of a po-faced event where, after one glass of warm white wine, everyone exchanges a business card.
When I invite people to lunch now, they are pleased but baffled. I feel slightly as if I’ve sent a coachman round with a calling card. These brutal days of computerised booking schedules and automated emails are of course more efficient and more democratic, but the clout, ladies! The sheer clout of wandering into a “famed eatery in London’s West End” to be greeted by a glass of champagne and “Congratulations on your promotion.” You would never feel you were in the wrong club and neither would your lunch guest.
Except, except! Perhaps there is still another way. On a recent trip to Manhattan, where everything happens first, a former colleague and expert networker announced that lunch and Midtown and power restaurants are back, along with everything ’90s. The personal connection, the intimate confessional bonding, the sense of order in a chaotic world established by a maître d’ knowing your name and which table you like, an antidote to anonymity and social media socialising. How thrilling and relieving.
My advice for women who would like to participate in this throwback trend is as it was handed down to me by my foresisters. Consolidate your expense account spending. Blow your budget in one or two restaurants and those restaurants will repay your loyalty. Invite people out. These days you can split the bill, but nothing says “I enjoyed this and we’re doing it again” like “You can do next time.” Make your own gang. Invite someone from your world and get a pal to do likewise. Do not underestimate the power of a small sin, be it pudding or booze or being slightly late back to work, and always, always, order chips for the table.
It’s unlikely that I’ll be a leading light in this hopeful new wave. True networking should be for your twenties when all lies ahead and you can still tolerate alcohol before 6pm. But if you’re lucky, not only will you learn so much more about your job, you’ll gain a bit of life too.
My best ever lunch started perfectly straightforwardly with a senior TV executive I barely knew. Somehow, at 5pm, it was still going on, as the staff around us began relaying the tables for dinner service, pausing only to reassure us that though life must go on around us, they didn’t want us to feel we should take a hint. “We love that you’re still here,” they egged us on. It finished at 7.30pm when she revealed she had to go to a dinner with Rupert Murdoch. She remains my closest friend and godmother to my child, but we lunch on our own time these days.
Janine Gibson is FT Weekend editor