‘How can I help?’ and ‘Are they interesting, as well as interested?’ are good ways to see a potentially challenging situation in a positive light.

Take this curiosity into your research. When your values and passions are the same as the interviewer’s, an interview becomes a genuinely enjoyable experience.

•What do the interviewers say about themselves?

•What do they say about others?

•What do other people say about them?

You’ll find some interesting and useful ammunition for the interview, but it’s not enough. You have to get tough with yourself, and how the interviewers might see you. What doubts might they have about you? How can you allay their fears? Write the questions they might ask you from across the other side of the table. Think through all the information they will want from you, in your words and in your manner.

When you’ve walked a mile in their shoes, come back to your own.

Organize your thinking so that you can present yourself in a way that ticks their boxes. Sociologist Erving Goffman said that the pressure of interview called for what he described as ‘dramatization of one’s work.’ Like a playwright you organize your answers so you can ‘dramatically high light’, as Goffman puts it, the elements of you that you want them to see.

It’s the preparation that goes into the ‘natural’ performances that you see in TV presenters, newsreaders and radio hosts. A lot of work goes into making it look easy. Even the guests on chat shows have prepared their anecdotes in meetings with researchers.

Alan Cumming explains how it works. ‘If you only have to do it for a little bit, it’s like taking a deep breath and almost playing a character. It’s like when I go on a talk show I feel like I’m playing a version of myself, I don’t regurgitate funny anecdotes like that in normal life. I think you can do that for a short burst, you can play a version of yourself that you want to show.’

The important distinction is that you are choosing the impression you make, rather than morphing into what you think they want. You must be careful to avoid what Damian Lewis calls ‘trying to convey different aspects of yourself, maybe to align yourself a little bit to what you think they’re looking for . . . Just be yourself.’

The best way to be yourself is to rehearse beforehand. Practising your answers aloud is gruesome but crucial, because it always comes out differently from how you planned it. When you answer the questions you need to know what impression you want to make on the interviewers. Which criteria are you meeting? What message are you sending out? Be precise about how each answer meets the criteria, and most importantly allows you to be enthusiastic. Don’t waffle; find pithy, clear-thinking, enthusiastic answers.

It helps to obey the Einstein principle of ‘As simple as you can and no simpler.’