Often the thin question is the offspring of thin research. "I don't mind doing interviews," rock star Ian Anderson told Colman Andrews. "But I don't like answering questions such as 'How'd you get the name Jethro Tull?' or 'How many of you are there in the group, and which one of you plays the flute?' In a country like Japan or New Zealand or Australia, where we've just been on tour, people ask these questions because they're genuinely curious, and they don't have access to a tremendous amount of information. But I shouldn't have to answer those questions here. Jethro Tull has been around five or six years. We answered those questions the first, second and third time we toured here. All the facts about us are available in this country, because there are lots of press handouts here - which were done at my request to make life easier for me. So I shouldn't have to waste time answering those kinds of questions."

Ask a dumb question, and you may get a dumb answer. "Tell me, Miss Perrine, what do you took for in a man?" someone asked Valerie Perrine, who had been bombarded with intimate inquiries after starring in Lenny. "Oh . . . about ten inches," she replied.

Worst of all, the careless interviewer may draw the weary, all-too-obliging subject. "Some of the media ask questions that are not really questions," says baseball Hall of Famer Lou Brock once said. "They're requests for confirmation of opinions they have going in. They've already written the answers in their minds and what they want from me is reassurance. I'll give it to them to keep everybody happy, if it doesn't go against my conscience."