These are rather good qualities for a journalist to possess and, in Piers's case, they are is synthesised into an ability to ask the most difficult, or personal, or audacious questions and get away with it.
In such films as "Father of the Bride," "The Cobweb," "Tea and Sympathy," "Designing Woman," and "Home from the Hill," Minnelli posed sophisticated and audacious questions about what it is to be a man, and then raised them to riotous heights in the gender-twisting comedy "Goodbye Charlie".
After all, he's the one who sets the tone for the interview, declaring up front that he's "petrified" and then lobbing out a clumsy but audacious opening question: "In the nicest possibly way, did you enjoy being ugly for once?
In a special series, we outlined how some scientists are asking big, bold, audacious research questions.
The destruction of the Na'vi habitat Hometree reminded commentators of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, one calling it a "tacky metaphor" and others criticizing Cameron for his "audacious willingness to question the sacred trauma of 9/11".
They were set deeply in their ways, and intolerant of audacious young men who questioned them.
It was an audacious move, and some questioned whether he would be able to fit in with a technology industry that had come a long way since the dot-com bubble.
Bridge is arguably the most audacious answer yet to the question of how to bring education to the masses in countries where schools are plagued by overcrowding and teacher absenteeism.
Its premise is at once straightforward and audacious: it asks big, specific questions about Donald Trump's famously mysterious business dealings, including those concerning possible connections between his Presidency and his profits; investigates them; and encourages listeners to pitch in and help.
