THIS is a book that grows on you, although its format is initially extremely off putting, based as it is on a series of interviews with well known media individuals, and presented in a question and answer format. The spirits sink even more with the realisation that the first question in each interview is basically: "who influenced you most, and why?"

This is a formula which works well enough on radio and television, and indeed the "who influenced you most and why?" gambit is one of the oldest in the trade, calculated to make even the crustiest interviewee settle comfortably in the armchair and begin to spill the beans. I used it once on a hostile General Gowon, then Nigerian Head of State, as the intro to an interview in the middle of the civil war in 1968, and a scheduled 5 minute session turned into three quarters of an hour.

But in a book? The impression given is that Oliver Donohoe was simply sitting there in front of the tape recorder, hitting the buttons, using the philosopher's stone of technology to transmute base metal into gold. It's not an accurate impression, thankfully, and the main reason is that Donohoe keeps on picking up the ball and running with it.

He does not make the mistake which some interviewers make, of preparing a list of questions and rushing at the interviewee head down until the end of the list is reached. He listens to the answers, and the subsequent questions ride on those answers easily and smoothly, conveying an intimacy which is by no means bogus and an intelligence which is well up to the task.

There are the inevitable stretches of banality, and the device of creating a "favourites file" at the end of each interview, in which the interviewees identify their favourite pot roast, piece of Mozart, character in history and whatever, is a mistake, not because of the choices, but because there are tantalising clues buried here to questions that weren't asked. There's nothing as bland as a list, but what lies behind a list can often be more fascinating than the full frontal interview itself.

What gives the book its Velcro quality, however, is the fact that interviewer and interviewees share two essential characteristics, which are also the characteristics of many successful journalists: a stratospheric boredom threshold, and an unfeigned interest in the human condition.

Charlie Bird tells us that he spends a lot of his time waiting, but is "extremely patient". In journalism, the long march is as integral a part of the job as the earth shattering exclusive, and practitioners of the craft need the tenacity to cope with one as much as the nimbleness which enables them to take advantage of the other. As Marian Finucane says: "As soon as I get bored the programme will get boring." The psychic yawn transmits itself effortlessly to the viewers and listeners; contrariwise, the probing and testing (which is not necessarily the same thing as confrontation) of the good interview exercises the imagination as well as, satisfying the audience's curiosity.

What do we learn? Among other things, that Gay Byrne prays for Russell Murphy every day. Mike Murphy thinks that the senior executives in RTE in the main are "hiding from their employees" and is looking forward to the end of the RTE television monopoly. Micheal O'Muircheartaigh tosses in a fragment from An t Oilanach which illuminates a whole page.

Pat Kenny's children make him feel tired. Miriam O'Callaghan has a soft spot for Eamonn Andrews, who gave her a helping hand and some good professional advice a few aeons ago. He also told Gerry Ryan: "Never do anything for nothing."

At one level these details could individually be regarded as insignificant. But they add up, in the end, to a deft series of portraits which has the additional advantage of giving us a peek into the human and social culture of the national broadcasting service. I can hear the sociologists rolling up their sleeves.