Billed on The Times's front page as "the interview from hell," Janice Turner's piece on the actor Rhys Ifans is a must-read for journalists and, especially, would-be journalists.

It certainly lives up/down to its billing. It is a car crash. But its most interesting feature is not its uniqueness, but the fact that it is symptomatic of the absurdity of virtually all celebrity interviews.

As a journalistic genre, it has become increasingly clear that the whole process is a waste of time for everyone involved: interviewer, interviewee, PR "minder" and, most importantly, the reader.

Arguably, it went sour many years ago, as my wife - a former interviewer of celebrities for the Daily Mirror and The Times - has often pointed out.

And my step-daughter, an actor who sees the problem from the other side, would agree. Interviews suck. Most actors don't really want to do them, but they are leaned on to "do publicity".

The stage is therefore set for a dispute because the last thing the journalist (and his/her editor) wishes to do is to act merely as a publicity platform, while the actor - in most cases - wishes to say as little as possible (and often has little of interest to say anyway).

Most often, some kind of compromise is reached. The journalist pushes and the actor gives way - just enough. Sometimes, a nudge from the PR is required. PRs want big space and big headlines to justify their part in the enterprise.

Their clients - be they film companies or theatrical impresarios, or even the actor's own agent - pay them precisely to get as big a show as possible in the newspaper or magazine.

So the PR is the pawn in the interviewing game. He/she must ensure they please the actor - by protecting them from what they regard as intrusive journalistic probing - and, at the same time, they seek to please the journalist by ensuring they get enough meat to warrant that sought-after double page spread.

Incidentally, in this process, neither the journalist nor the actor really gives a damn about the sensitivities of the PR. The hosts have little time for the parasites.

As I say, most of the time the system works. But just occasionally the facade collapses to reveal the farcical reality, and that's what happened during Turner's interview with Ifans.

He didn't want to be there and not only made no attempt to compromise but decided to be as rude and offensive as possible.

Turner is an experienced journalist who knows what is required of a one-hour interview, as she explained in her article:

"The game is you listen politely while they plug their film, bang on about their 'method', the brilliance of their co-stars and directors etc. Then in return you hope they will offer up — without you having to prod and pester like some celebrity stalker — the tiniest nugget of anecdote, a shard of light upon their real selves. Because they hate the game too, and particularly since it is mainly conducted in hotel suites, you feel as if you're engaged in an odd form of prostitution, one where it remains unclear who is the hooker and who the john."

She had been warned by the PR not to touch on certain personal issues, such as his relationships with women. This prior restraint is common.

An actor who believes he is an 'artist'

Believing Ifans to be "a thoughtful man" who might like to discuss "important issues", Turner decided to begin by asking him about his Welshness. That's hardly a controversial subject, but Ifans decided to be obstreperous.

It went downhill from there and Turner soon detected that Ifans was being condescending because he "is one of those actors who believes that he's an 'artist'".

Accepting that he "has a low opinion of journalists" she asked him if he supported Lord Justice Leveson's call for statutory underpinning of press regulation.

After Ifans had consulted the publicist about whether he should talk about the subject, he mumbled something about the press requiring "liberty" but contended "they should also be curtailed when they fucking lie."

He then refused to say whether he had used the Press Complaints Commission and Turner was by now aware that the conversation had gone sour. Evidently, he was glaring at her fiercely.

"Every topic seems to irritate him more", she wrote. So she tried her "emergency question, the one guaranteed to flatter and distract conceited or angry interviewees." What book was he reading?

After saying he was reading about Rasputin, he descended rapidly into a expletive-laden response that, wrote Turner, "spirals downhill" until Ifans told her to "fuck off", adding: "I wanna end this interview now. I'm bored with you. Bored. Bored."

With Turner back at home to reflect on a "truly awful interview", the inevitable happened: the distressed PR, fearing the worst (no space! hostile headlines! bad publicity!) sent emails aimed at explaining away Ifans's behaviour.

It was all down to him taking "antibiotics" and "coming to terms with bad news he'd received a few weeks ago in Wales." Then came another transparent PR initiative. Flowers arrived with a message - in the florist's hand - saying: "Best wishes, Rhys".

Turner's piece exposes the demeaning nature of the whole mucky business. Ifans may have been unusually boorish, but the episode serves to illustrate the essential worthlessness of the celebrity interview.