Barbara Walters once revealed to the New York Times her five "foolproof" questions for the over-interviewed:

1. If you were recuperating in a hospital, who would you want in the bed next to you, excluding relatives?
   
   
2. What was your first job?
   
   
3. When was the last time you cried?
   
   
4. Who was the first person you ever loved?
   
   
5. What has given you the most pleasure in the last year?

Walters says that question three is "an especially good one for comedians. They're hard to interview because you're always the straight man."

When the Times asked Walters how she would answer her foolproof questions, though, she demurred, "Uh, well ... I don't think I want to. It would take too long to think of some good answers." (Which may confirm that the most difficult interviewees are often interviewers.)

Walters' foolproof question # 1, and many similar icebreaker questions, are hypothetical. And the interviewer skates at his own risk.

Walters recalls the time she asked Prince Philip of Great Britain if, in the event England elected a president, he would have enjoyed being a politician. Philip replied, without warmth, that this was a hypothetical question, which he normally didn't answer.

"I was crushed," says Walters, "but I learned a valuable lesson about talking to people in very high places: avoid the hypothetical question, of the sort that usually begins 'What if . . .' and then departs into some fanciful situation that never happened and never will. That type of question can be asked of creative people, for whom imaginary situations are intriguing, but practical, crisp people dismiss it as a waste of time."

When the subject is inventive and in the mood, however, hypothetical questions are fecund. Kenneth Tynan asked Richard Burton, "If you had your life to live, over again, would you change anything?" - a question that is as worn out as vaudeville. But Burton's reply was fresh and revealing, "I'd like to be born the son of a duke with 90,000 pounds a year, on an enormous estate.... And I'd like to have the most enormous library, and I'd like to think that I could read those books forever and forever, and die unlamented, unknown, unsung, unhonored - and packed with information."

Tynan's Playboy interview ended, in fact, with a string of hypothetical questions:

Tynan: You meet a man at the end of the world, and he asks you three questions which you have to answer spontaneously and immediately. The first is: Who are you?

Burton: Richard, son of Richard - for I am, both my father and my son.

Tynan: The second question is: Apart from that, who are you?

Burton: Difficult, devious and perverse.

Tynan: And the third is: Apart from that, who are you?

Burton: A mass of contradictions. As Wait Whitman said, "Do I contradict myself Very -
well, I contradict myself. I am large, and I contain multitudes."

There are multitudes of hypothetical questions, most of them or the office party strain. Some that may work in the rare, playful interview are:

• What three books (records, movies, Presidents) would you take with you if you were stranded on an island?
  
  
• If you were fired from your present job, what sort of work would you undertake?
  
  
• If you could live any time in history, what age would you choose?
  
  
• If you could be anyone you wanted to be today, whom would you be, and what would you do?
  
  
• If someone gave you a million dollars, how would you spend it?
  
  
• If your house were afire, what would you grab on the way out?

Such questions may not set an interview on fire - particularly with a Difficult Subject - but they should elicit an irreverent, penetrating detail which will enliven your article. Of course, you can gather such sparks with more direct and realistic questions. Mrs. Dorothy Schiff, publisher and editor-in-chief of the New York Post, once suggested these human interest questions:

• What person influenced you most in life? What book, if any? What do you do for relaxation?
  
  
• What was your greatest opportunity?
  
  
• What do you believe about people - can they be changed for better or for worse?

Indeed, a question about beliefs can be an intriguing icebreaker. "One thing, I have found out is that -almost any person will talk freely - such is human frailty - if you ask him the measure of his own accomplishment," said John Gunther. "One effective question is to ask a man what he believes in most; I have collected an interesting anthology of answers to this."

Above all: ask. Pursue the blind alleys; voice your human - as well as professional - curiosities. Ask intriguing, innumerable questions, with enthusiasm and only civil restraint. In the end, interviewing is less a technique than an instinct. An interview is simply a lively and thoughtful conversation. The more life and thought you invest in your questions, the more answers you'll get.