How to survive interviewing Bill Cosby live on air

Interviewing celebrities live on air is one of the hardest parts of my job.  Because we're a local radio station, we usually don't have the luxury of doing a pre-interview. The only interactions we have with the celebrity before we go live are some quick back and forth emails.  Once the interview begins there's no telling what kind of mood or level of sleepiness will be waiting on the other side of the studio or phone line.  Luckily, we've been able to adjust pretty quickly and haven't run into any major disasters (well, besides a very confusing few minutes with Jon Lovitz).  But still, there's always a level of trepidation going into any interview, and that level of nervousness seems to increase with how famous the celebrity actually is.

I was warned ahead of time about interviewing Bill Cosby.  The man has a lot to say, and seems to have lots of time on his hands to say it.  Any interview I've ever seen with him on TV has appeared to have been edited with a butcher knife. A question is always answered with a long story that leads into another story to explain a story about something that may or may not answer the original question.  But, of course, that's the beauty of Bill Cosby.  The man is a master entertainer and chopping him down to 5 minutes of air time is like playing the 2:53 edited version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.  If you can't play the 17 minute version, why even bother? But it's Bill Cosby, and we just couldn't pass up talking to a living legend.

Bill was extremely gracious and fascinating to listen to, and although we couldn't spend as much time as we wanted talking with him, we spent way more time than we were supposed to.  For the whole Bill Cosby experience, make sure to catch him live at The Mid Hudson Civic Center this Thursday, May 15th.  But if you missed our interview this morning, here it is in it's entirety: