Maureen Cleave Maureen Cleave Maureen Cleave (born October 20, 1941) is an English journalist who worked for the London "Evening Standard" from the 1960s conducting interviews with famous musicians of the era, including Bob Dylan and John Lennon. Over the next 40 years she continued as a distinguished interviewer of people in all walks of life, in the "Standard", the "Telegraph Magazine", "Saga" magazine, "Intelligent Life" magazine and elsewhere. In her "Standard" interview with Lennon on 4 March 1966, titled "How does a Beatle live?", she quoted him as saying that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now". Five months later,
A Quiet Word With ... had interviewed anyone on television, and the first time he interviewed anyone by himself in twenty years. Some time later Martin viewed an "infuriating" interview with American comedian and actor Will Ferrell on the Nine Network's "A Current Affair" that involved the reporter attempting to get Ferrell to repeat catchphrases from the film "" rather than containing anything of substance; Martin regarded this interview as an embarrassment to the nation. These two factors gave him the idea for a more substantive interview program, and inspired him to create "A Quiet Word With ...". The first episode, featuring Martin conversing with