I’ve given some advice on how to write profiles. Here is some advice on how to be profiled. One piece of advice anyway, but maybe the most important: bring the interviewer close to you. The closer the better. Some people are wary of interviews and keep their distance, assuming that distance means safety. So they’ll want to do the interview by phone, or – horror – by email, not in person.

This is a mistake, a big mistake. Distance is safety for the interviewer. It insulates them against feeling for their subject, and silences the scolding of their conscience.

Instead, draw the interviewer close. Meet them in person. Even better, meet them in your office or home. Make them tea. Make them a sandwich. Introduce them to your partner and your children. Clear the toys and phone bills off the couch so they can sit down. The journalist will snoop a bit, but your cooperation will give them a warm feeling inside. More important, they will have looked you in the face and drunk your tea. Their conscience works for you now. The guest–host obligation is still very strong, instinctive, hard to shrug off. It’s an ancient, beautiful, sacred part of the human experience. Exploit the hell out of it.

(Of course, none of this will work on the turd-hearted soul-gaps employed by some tabloid newspapers. Nothing will work on them. Remember that they are scripting an entire alternative reality. You are, to them, nothing but substandard copy, and the facts of your life will be edited to suit. This is the price of briefly featuring in the imagination of a rapacious billionaire. But for the profile editor of, say, a modern urban lifestyle magazine, this approach will work fine.)