Blackadder's Ben Elton reveals how Stephen Fry responded to his "few-holds-barred" portrayal in new memoir
Author, comedian and dramatist Ben Elton found writing his autobiography therapeutic – but will the many famous friends he mentions agree?
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Ben Elton, it’s obvious, is slightly floored by the question – but it’s actually pretty straightforward: “Why does everybody hate you?” Maybe it’s because the query comes not from me, interviewing him over Zoom from Australia where he now lives. (In fact I find him the very opposite of hateable: frank, funny, thoughtful, self-aware and generous.) No, the question in question comes from the publisher of Elton’s new autobiography – and good friend – Larry. “When I took him the idea, it was his first comment,” says Elton. “Not ‘Oh great, I can’t wait to hear you on the subject of Blackadder’, but ‘You’ll have to address the question: Why does everybody hate you?’” The answer – like everything else in Elton’s book/life – is tackled with head-on humour. “Everybody doesn’t hate me. That’s why I’ve written 16 novels,” he says (modestly neglecting to mention the smash-hit musicals, seminal stand-up routines and million-dollar movies he’s written, nor even national-fabric sitcoms such as The Young Ones, Blackadder and Upstart Crow). “But clearly I irritate some people. My gaucheness, my enthusiasm, my Mickey Rooney tendencies – ‘Let’s do the show! It’s going to be brilliant!’ – I can see how that would irritate people, especially in Britain, which has a default approval of false humility. If my dear friend Stephen is doing an interview about his book, he’ll say [excellent impression of Mr Fry], ‘Oh, it’s awful, pure nonsense. Don’t read it, let’s talk about something else!’ – and people love that. “But I’ll say, ‘It’s the best thing I’ve done, I’m so pleased with it, please read it!’ – and that doesn’t seem to wash. In the book, I deal with a few people who’ve been mean about me [they really have, and he really does], but I think I’ve done it in a nice way and paid respect. I think I’ve got it just right – but there I go again!” So why write a memoir and not, say, novel number 17? “I started to think about an autobiography after Rik died [Mayall, Elton’s friend since university, suffered a fatal heart attack in 2014]. There were all these eulogies, which was bittersweet because he’d had some lean years and he could have done with a bit of that love while he was still alive. So I was in reflective mood, but not a particularly happy one.” Now, he says, he’s in a “good reflective mood”. At 66, he’s “got through most of my life – a decent slab of it, anyway. And realistically I’m unlikely to have many more significant pieces of work. Now my mum’s dead I’m the next generation to the grave: my friends and siblings and I are next. Rik’s gone, Robbie’s gone…” (Coltrane was another old pal.) Writing the book “wasn’t easy”, he admits. “My fractious relationship with Rik; his problems with alcohol; when Alexei [Sayle] turned on me out of the blue; IVF; my psoriasis – that was all painful to remember and to talk about. But I’ve never been in therapy so it’s been good to reflect.” Certainly the book’s honesty is a refreshing antidote to many celeb memoirs – but how do his famous friends (and enemies) feel about their few-holds-barred depictions? “I talk about Stephen a lot in the book, and it’s not uncritical. I didn’t want to ask his permission to say the things I said, because I felt I had every right; but I love Stephen and would never wish to hurt him. And I talk about Hugh [Laurie] quite a lot too, and although it’s laudatory in many ways, I also talk about his darkness. So I asked Hugh’s wife, Jo, to read it and see what she thought. “In the end, Stephen wrote me a very beautiful letter saying, ‘You may wonder what I think about ‘my’ bits, so to speak. And I 100 per cent applaud you for telling the story as you’ve done. It’s the right thing to do.’” There’s plenty of self-criticism too, but always the entertaining sort. One fantastic anecdote about blowing his chance of working with Elton John climaxes at a party with Janet Street-Porter (“fun”), Sean Connery (“dour”), Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys (“dryly witty”) and film actress Salma Hayek (“uninvited… and with two bodyguards for her necklace”). Yes, he’s shameless with namedropping (“Of course I am. I owe it to my publisher”), but it’s all part of that unconcealed enthusiasm. And really, if you can’t relish the fact that you once spent a day at Paul and Linda McCartney’s watching them bicker over the correct consistency of veggie burgers, then what’s the point? (They met through George Harrison, who “came over to me at a gig and said, ‘Thanks for keeping us amused in the 1980s’. I’ll never forget that.”) So does he, to borrow the phrase infamously used 14 times in Alan Partridge’s memoir, think ‘Needless to say, I had the last laugh’? “I’m always being invited to say, ‘Well, we won’ – especially about [his derided but hugely successful Queen musical] We Will Rock You. And no, I don’t feel I’ve had the last laugh. But I do feel I’ve had an awful lot of laughs.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. To order What Have I Done? My Autobiography by Ben Elton (Pan Macmillan, £25) for £22.50 including p&p, visit radiotimes.com/shop50. For all the latest RT Book Club news, interviews, Q&As with the authors, reviews of previous books and more, visit The Radio Times Book Club sponsored by Dr. Oetker Ristorante.
Bob Geldof talks always being bored of Band Aid, the end of rock 'n' roll and Taylor Swift
"I don’t think there's any more we can do with Band Aid."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Not many people change the world, but Bob Geldof did. So why is he so ambivalent about his achievements with Live Aid? Geldof and writer Paul Vallely discuss their new book Live Aid: The Definitive 40-Year Story. Let’s start with you, Bob. Or should we call you Bobsy, or Brother Teresa, as the new Live Aid book reveals you’re sometimes known? BOB GELDOF No, Bobsy is just something Freddie Mercury used to call me. He’d get on the phone and go, “Well, Bobsy darling…” And Brother Teresa is a joke I made up for the foreword of this book. Normally I’m just called things like “irritating”. Did you think in 1985 that we’d all still be sitting here talking about Live Aid 40 years later? BG: No. I mean, after seven years I got these silver models of the Band Aid logo made up and inscribed to say thank you to the guys who’d helped, because I thought, “That’s it, there’s no need for us to exist. We’re not going to be Save the Children and go on for ever.” So we had a dinner – everyone was overwhelmed that I was buying dinner, for a start – and I handed them out, and I gave one to myself, which is in the cupboard somewhere. And that was 33 years ago. But the need for us to press on became apparent. People kept supporting us. PAUL VALLELY: £2 million still comes in every year [through the Band Aid Trust]. BG: But I get bored so easily. In this case that’s mitigated by the effect Band Aid’s still having – it’s keeping millions of people going – and by the rage I feel when I see injustice. But, being very honest, often this s**t bores me. You’re bored of Band Aid? BG: It always bored me. So does making records, so does rehearsing. It bores the arse off me. I only did one day’s rehearsal for the current Boomtown Rats tour. Can’t stand it. If I forget the words, I’ll make them up on the hoof. That’s the way I am. PV: Let me contradict you, Bob. You are one of the most sustained, resilient, persistent, driven people that I’ve ever come across. You don’t act like you’re bored, mate. BG: Well I am. I don’t think there’s any more we can do with Band Aid. And I don’t think there’s any more that I can offer, save in the role of chairman or adviser. It’s hard to imagine a Taylor Swift taking up the mantle… BG: It’s not that hard; don’t forget her Trump statements. PV: Bob, you just say what everyone else thinks. You’ve no deference at all, whether to pop stars or presidents. An obvious example is when you told Margaret Thatcher, “Nothing is as simple as dying, Prime Minister.” But you are actually more nervous – and more considered – than you make out sometimes. You rehearsed the quiet tone of voice you’d use to talk to Thatcher, what you wore; it was all very studied. It was the same when you were trying to persuade Paul McCartney to do Live Aid. BG: Well, that was Linda [McCartney], really. Paul’s kids had been on at him to do it, because they were doing a school project on Live Aid, but he hadn’t played live since before John was murdered, and you lose your confidence. So he’s driving up to Wembley, and the radio’s on, and the excitement of it is growing – and he wants to turn back. He says “Look, I can’t, I just can’t do it.” And Linda just tells him to shut up and get on with it. “You’re headlining. It’s one song [Let It Be]. You know it back to front. It’s just you and the piano. What could go wrong?” Then the microphone breaks… Can Band Aid go on without Bob? PV: Now there’s the potential for a new generation – a new Geldof – to galvanise a different group of people in a different way. BG: It’s always evolved. After Live Aid, we wanted to move from charity to justice, to change the global structures of politics and economics. Luckily, Bono – having been this small oik when we started off in Dublin – had become a global megastar. But he was still my mate, and willing to throw his power into the ring and see what could be done with it. And what could be done was to extend Band Aid into a policy arm. PV: Maybe rock’n’roll doesn’t work in this age of digital and social media and so forth, but there will be something else. BG: The age of rock’n’roll is gone. What engages me is what’s coming down the track to replace it. I’m a complete technophobe, but that doesn’t mean I won’t gather people around me who can use tech to make change. It won’t be me because I’m 74. And I don’t want it to be me. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Audio coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Medieval Prince Harry "would have killed" William, imagines Young James Bond author – as he compares King Charles to a murdered monarch
Singer, comedian, actor, author... not one to rest on his laurels, Charlie Higson's latest book is a joyful and irreverent romp through 1,000 colourful years of the British monarchy.
When I thank Charlie Higson for joining me, he says, “Oh, it’s a pleasure to talk about myself!” Which is awkward, as we’re not really here to talk about him at all. It’s not that he’s not interesting: he’s been lead singer in an 80s funk-punk band; the genius behind 90s catchphrase-jackpot The Fast Show; and the acclaimed writer of James Bond novels, children’s books and several successful TV dramas. It’s just that the subject of his new book is even more interesting – red-hot-poker-up-the-bottom interesting, in fact. Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee is a history of our country’s kings and queens, from William I to Charles III. As Higson says, those “bemoaning the behaviour of present-day royals such as Prince Harry… [need reminding of the] alarming, violent, often sordid” stuff their predecessors got away with, including (look away now, Wills) fratricide. Had Harry been a medieval prince, reckons Higson, “he would have killed his brother, locked his father up, taken the throne for himself, and everyone would have said, ‘Hooray! Finally, a good strong king!’ That style of monarchy would have suited him. As an ‘army chap’, he’d have promoted himself as a warrior for his country. Out of all of them, he probably would have been the one who succeeded.” View oEmbed on the source website The outlook would have been less rosy for Meghan: “This idea that she’s corrupted him – turned him into a woke, Netflix-documentary-making poodle – would have seen her besmirched as a she-wolf, like Queen Isabella [of France]”. And not much better for Charles: Higson sees the current King as a modern-day Edward II (he of red-hot poker fame), whose “own wife shoved him into a castle, locked him up and murdered him. That would have been Charles’s fate”. My conversation with Higson took place before the latest revelations concerning the King’s own errant brother, Andrew, but the author’s not shy about making criminal comparisons. “It’s like The Godfather,” he says. “There’s this family dynasty, this appalling Mafia clan who slaughter everyone around them. But by the end of the film you’re cheering for them, because you’ve spent time with them. I think I’ve done that; it’s a kind of Stockholm syndrome. I’ve come down on the side of thinking that the monarchy is probably the least worst system of creating a head of state. “And if the alternative is an elected head of state, you could end up with a Liz Truss or a Nigel Farage, hustling and distorting things to try and gain power.” But wouldn’t we vote for someone lovely, like President Attenborough? “He doesn’t want to be head of state! Nice people don’t. There’s a certain type who wants to fight to the top, which is what we see again and again in this book.” Ah, so it’s President Higson, is it? “No, I’d be as terrible as the rest of them.” At least he admits to his dictatorial tendencies. Talking about the current Fast Show reunion tour, he says he and his co-stars “all get on very well”, but ascribes that to a clear hierarchy within the troupe. “One of the things about Monty Python was that no one was in charge, they were a democracy, which made them very competitive. But with The Fast Show, Paul [Whitehouse] and I were always in charge. We were like the parents of the family; we created the show, we produced it, we edited it and we put it all together.” That’s not to say he can’t collaborate. Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee (which takes its name – shared with Higson’s podcast – from an old rhyme that lists each monarch in order) is illustrated by Jim Moir. “He sent me the first couple of illustrations,” explains Higson, “and I could see he was thinking, ‘Oh, Charlie’s written a posh history book. I’d better try and do proper historical things’. And I said, ‘No, Jim, I wouldn’t hire you to do that. I want this to have the full Vic Reeves flavour.’” Which it certainly does: witness the picture accompanying the chapter on Henry III. “It’s my favourite anecdote in the book,” enthuses Higson. “Henry wins the battle, and Simon de Montfort is killed. One of Henry’s barons, a guy called Roger Mortimer, sends a gift back to his wife after the battle, and she must have been overjoyed when she opened it, because inside the box was de Montfort’s head with his testicles draped over his nose. “An idea to bear in mind, perhaps, if you’re a bloke reading this and stuck for a Christmas present for your wife. I mean, they can be difficult to buy for…” To order Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee by Charlie Higson, visit the Radio Times Shop. The latest issue of Radio Times is out Tuesday 18th July – subscribe here. Check out more of our Books coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Exploring Zambia, the star of BBC One's Kingdom
Drama, action, comedy – African wildlife has it all. So, how can you get exclusive access to the stars of Kingdom?
The elephant in the room here is an actual elephant in the room. I’ve popped back to my safari camp suite for a post-lunch nap, you see, and found a 900-stone pachyderm in my sitting area. (The Albida Suite has open walls and it turns out Nelly and friends like to wander in to drink from its plunge pool.) This is one of the perks of doing a safari in Zambia rather than more touristed destinations such as Kenya or South Africa – and is possibly why David Attenborough and the crew of Kingdom chose Zambia for its epic four-year shoot. The natural history blockbuster, which follows four animal families over almost half a decade, was shot in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, and that’s where I began my own, sadly rather briefer, safari. Nkwali Camp, which I’d booked through experts Robin Pope Safaris (robinpopesafaris.net), gazes aristocratically down over a hippo-filled river, its collection of breezy wood-and-thatch cottages seemingly playing hide-and-seek with each other in a forest of ebony trees. Browse this safari holiday from Newmarket Holidays & experience your own trip to Africa Game drives are undertaken in 4WDs with a couple of rows of seats fixed high on the vehicle’s back end – so everyone gets a great view, and in a further crucial contrast with the sometimes cattle-truck experience of a safari in such honeypot destinations as Kenya’s Maasai Mara or South Africa’s Kruger, it soon becomes apparent that we have the animals more or less to ourselves. When, within minutes of the beginning of my first drive, we come across a small herd of zebras, I wait for what I previously thought was the inevitable chug-chug-chug of a dozen other vehicles joining us – and it never comes. “Exclusivity” is a much-bandied word in luxury travel, but here it’s more than a mere snobbish refusal to holiday with Ordinary Folk. Without a ravening pack of Land Cruisers waiting to descend every time an animal is spotted, you feel as if you’re really interacting with the landscape and the animals, rather than just watching them in an enormous zoo. Baboons eye you up curiously, their sprogs monkeying excitedly about for the cameras, thrilled to have such an appreciative audience; giraffes turn haughtily to face you, winking their doe eyes; skittish impalas bounce off as soon as they scent you, far enough down the food chain they think everything looks threatening; elephants stand four-square and purposeful in the middle of the dirt road, flaring their ears and trumpeting, daring you to try and drive round them – then mock-charging when you do, apparently well pleased with the alarmed squeals of a few timorous humans. View oEmbed on the source website Even more intimate are the walking safaris. In the company of an armed guard and an expert tracker, I followed a trail of footprints and faeces into the bush. With no engine noise, I was able to hear the buzz of the common bee-eater bird (back home I can’t tell one feathered friend from another, but out here they’re colour-coded – the bee-eater, bright fire-engine red; the lilac-breasted roller, opalescent peacock-feather violet). And with no petrol smell, I was able to catch the sweet honeysuckle savour of the wild rose tree, its flowers white with a yellow centre, like fried eggs wearing fragrance. Less appealing, but just as memorable, was the skin of a dead elephant. The bones had been gnawed by jackals and hyenas, but vultures circled above the hide. Looking on were marabou storks, earning their “undertaker bird” nickname, with wings like grey Dickensian morning coats, and baleful expressions that sit well with their taste for carrion. Request a brochure and get inspiration for your next holiday Elephants have an entourage while alive, too, it turns out – a phalanx of white egrets follows them around like the wake behind a speedboat, feasting on the insects disturbed by their five-ton footsteps. But the most avid members of the jumbo fan club are human, of course. Back at Nkwali that evening, plates of buttery rice and delicately-seasoned tilapia cooked in banana leaf were abandoned mid-mouthful when three elephants strolled past the dining room to take advantage of the camp’s waterhole. The youngest, unable to stand in the deep water, doggy-paddled endearingly through the lake and into the hearts (and camera memory cards) of everyone watching. In the Lower Zambezi National Park, I stayed at Chongwe River Camp, where I added lions, leopards and crocodiles to my I-spied list – the latter heart-racingly close as I canoed past them just yards from the grove of winter thorn trees that conceals the camp. It’s the winter thorns’ seedpods (as well as my plunge pool) that lure elephants into our quarters. So when nobody is looking, I gather a few of the pods and scatter them round the Albida Suite’s sitting room. Unlike Attenborough and pals, I haven’t got four years to hang around waiting for that perfect shot… Sign up to our mailing list to receive more content like this from Radio Times Travel, Shop and Money Kingdom begins at 6:20pm on Sunday 9th November on BBC One and iPlayer. Check out more of our Travel coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Sally Magnusson dishes on King Charles III reporting the weather – and why she doesn't miss Reporting Scotland following 27-year run
After an eventful three decades on TV news, broadcaster Sally Magnusson is refocusing her efforts on her literary endeavours.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Ask Sally Magnusson what she misses after finishing her 27-year run on Reporting Scotland six months ago, and the long pause while she tries to think of something is as telling as her actual answer. “I’ll be incredibly honest with you,” she says eventually. “I don’t really miss it. I miss colleagues, but I’m still on the WhatsApp group, and we meet up.” So she now gets all the perks with none of the work? “Well, yes. But I don’t get the money, either.” Certainly Magnusson earned her wages: across her years on Reporting Scotland, Breakfast Time and others, she recalls covering such dark times as Dunblane, Lockerbie, Zeebrugge, Princess Diana’s funeral and Covid – which she found just as harrowing in its way as those other, more dramatic stories. But there were happier moments, too (“so many!”). And, pushed for examples, this time there is no hesitation at all. “One of the most joyful was the day that Prince Charles and Camilla came and did the weather on my programme. That was a huge amount of fun, especially trying to get Camilla to do it. Charles read off the autocue with great aplomb and did the whole thing very well, but when I asked Camilla she said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly!’ Charles encouraged her, though, and he held her handbag while she had a go. She wasn’t quite as good as him… but be careful how you tell that story, because I don’t want to make it look as if she was terrible.” (If you’re worried that RT has just blown Magnusson’s chances of an honour, relax: she got her MBE in 2023.) Now, at any rate, the 70-year-old has time to write. Previously, she’d squeezed her literary output in around the day job and bringing up five children – all the more remarkable when you consider the breadth of her work, from a moving memoir of her mother’s dementia (“I wanted to describe her at each stage, so I would never forget how she smiled, or moved her hands through her hair, or put her lipstick on”) to children’s story Horace and the Haggis Hunter – via, naturally, Life of Pee, her semi-scholarly tome on the significance of urine in human civilisation. If there’s a unifying theme, it’s what Magnusson describes as “our need for stories” – and her new novel, The Shapeshifter’s Daughter, tells a fascinating one. “It’s a reimagining of the Norse myth of Hel, queen of the underworld, one of the most fascinating characters in the the Norse pantheon. But it’s also telling the story of a woman in the modern day, who comes back to her home, after 40 years away, to die. These two figures from two different worlds connect in one golden winter and begin to influence each other so that they both work out what they are really for.” (“Gosh,” she adds, “I hope that’s right. I need to re-read it myself!”) The novel – which will soon be featured on Sara Cox’s Radio 2 Book Club podcast – is set in the Orkney Islands, a place Magnusson describes as being “on the way” between Scotland and Iceland, thanks to its long history of Norse rule and Viking culture. “It feels like home,” she says, perhaps unsurprisingly as the daughter of a Scottish mother and an Icelandic father – the writer, scholar and original presenter of Mastermind, Magnus Magnusson. “I wonder now if this book was a little inevitable,” she muses. “I learned the Icelandic sagas at his knee. I grew up listening to the clack-clack-clack of his typewriter, and I’d go into his study and he’d have all these books and dictionaries laid out around his desk and he’d be wrestling with the Old Norse.” (His translations of the sagas are still, in many cases. the definitive editions.) “The Norse gods – those stories of Odin and Thor and Loki – are part of my hinterland, and my dad had an incredible fund of them.” Viking mythology isn’t the only thing Magnusson inherited from her father, though. When Magnusson Senior retired from presenting Mastermind in 1997, he was given the show’s famous black leather contestants’ chair – and when he died, it passed to his daughter. “I decided it wasn’t going to be a museum piece, so it’s there in my house and people sit on it – especially my husband, as it’s the nearest chair to the television. It got a bit scruffy over the years, so last October I took it into The Repair Shop – you can see it on iPlayer. They did a wonderful job, sprucing it up and giving it a new lease of life, but without taking away the knocks and scratches.” And was that disappointing? “Oh, no. It’s the knocks and scratches that tell the story.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. The Shapeshifter’s Daughter by Sally Magnusson is published by John Murray and releases on 6 November. Check out more of our Books coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Michael Palin reveals how a Monty Python sketch saved him from being thrown in a Venezuelan jail
Sir Michael Palin’s wanderlust is undimmed at 82, but how does the comedian defuse a dangerous situation?
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. You could almost hear the sigh of collective disappointment from the country’s female population. I’d asked Michael Palin – perhaps a little insensitively, given it’s only two and a half years since his wife of 57 years died – if he might be looking for a new travelling companion. And the answer was polite (of course) but emphatic: “I do miss Helen very much on holidays. I was away with all my children and grandchildren in Italy recently, and it was lovely, but I realised I was 25 years older than the next oldest person there. You do need someone your own age to share your perspective and roll your eyes with – but I’m not really in the market for meeting anyone else.” Bad news for the nation’s womenfolk, perhaps – anyone who’s seen any of his TV travelogues knows he’d be the perfect person to squire you around foreign climes – but at least we all get to accompany the former Python in his witty, insightful, lightly learned written accounts. The latest of these, Michael Palin in Venezuela, accompanies September’s three-part series of the same name. But why Venezuela? “The decisions on where we go are taken by myself and Neil Ferguson, the director. He’s the one who says, ‘I want to go somewhere else,’ while I’m saying, ‘I’d rather stay in bed for a couple more days.’ But I never really want to stay in bed or sit in one place too long: I love travelling. It’s a form of global fidgeting.” It sounds like he has a travel companion already then. Do they bicker like a couple? “Oh no, I’m far too agreeable. We have constructive conversations. I say, ‘I’m 82. I might fall over if I go there.’ He says, ‘You’ll be fine.’ And Channel 5 – who are presumably paying the insurance bill – seem very keen to keep me travelling, too.” That still doesn’t explain Venezuela, I point out. “It’s always been a mysterious country to me, but with something seductive about its name. It also fits the bill for what we try to do in these shows, which is go somewhere and find out what’s gone wrong. Venezuela is oil-rich, it’s got enormous mineral wealth, it has wonderful Caribbean beaches, beautiful mountain scenery – but nearly eight million Venezuelans [over a quarter of the population] left the country in the last ten years or so. They’re Latin Americans, so they like painting, colour, food, dancing, having fun, but they’re living under intolerable pressure in a dictatorship.” Perhaps inevitably, Palin and crew experienced some of that themselves. “We were filming in a town called Sabaneta. First, a couple of people asked what we were doing. Then some uniformed people came and did the same. Then there were people in slightly smarter uniforms. And finally it was men in totally black uniforms, with helmets and body armour and M16 rifles, working for the Intelligence Service. And they weren’t smiling.” Surely at this point, I venture, you tell them Who You Are? “They didn’t seem the sort of people to whom you’d say, ‘Actually I do comedy sketches!’ – you tend to keep quiet about the Spanish Inquisition sketch when you’ve got an assault rifle pointed at you. But eventually one of them googled my name, and the first thing that came up was a clip on YouTube of myself and John Cleese debating Life of Brian with Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark from 1979 – which is the only time I’d been really serious and angry on television. So they’re looking at this, saying, ‘He’s supposed to be a comedian?’ “At that stage, someone said, ‘Mike, show them some Monty Python.’ So I tell them to look for The Fish-Slapping Dance, and they laboriously type that in… and it worked its magic. They realised that anyone who got hit in the face with a pilchard or knocked into a canal with a perch couldn’t be a threat to the regime.” Yes, but did they laugh? “You couldn’t really see their faces because they were heavily masked and had goggles, but the security headgear began to shake slightly, and that was rather reassuring.” Fellow Python Eric Idle said recently that Palin’s “twinkly naughtiness” was on the wane, but Palin himself disagrees. “Eric can be a bit catty sometimes… And I think my twinkly naughtiness is still there. In fact I think there’s great scope for silliness in your 80s. You don’t have to worry about how long you’ve got to live, or what you should eat. You’re in the departure lounge. It gives you freedom.” That said, there are clearly no thoughts of exiting the lounge any time imminently. Venezuela, Palin mentions in passing, is the 100th country he’s visited. “But there are 204 or something in the world, so I’m not even halfway.” And, adds the octogenarian with an optimistic (possibly even naughty) twinkle, “I’m over three-quarters of the way through my life.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
As seen on Apple TV's The Last Frontier: Discover Alaska the luxurious way
Want to explore wild Alaska without the fear of frostbite? A cosseting cruise offers hot tubs and fine dining alongside spectacular scenery.
“This is Alaska,” says local lawman Frank Remnick (Jason Clarke) to his CIA counterpart as they consider the difficulties of rounding up 18 convicts on the loose across the state’s frozen wastes in Apple TV’s The Last Frontier. Daunting, sure, but “This is Alaska, too,” I think to myself as I accept some champagne and nibble a Princess Love Boat Dream – a “heart-shaped dessert with layers of chocolate-raspberry mousse and vanilla-raspberry cream on a shortbread cookie base” – on board the Grand Princess, where I’m experiencing Alaska in rather more comfort than Remnick or his 18 unwelcome guests. Request a brochure and get inspiration for your next holiday While The Last Frontier’s frostbitten felons check in (and, in some cases, promptly check out) when their prisoner transport plane crash[1]lands in the middle of a snowy forest, my Air Canada jet glides safely into Vancouver. There I spend a few very pleasant days among its excellent food markets, parks and beaches before boarding Grand Princess for my Voyage of the Glaciers cruise, which will wind its delightfully unhurried way north to Anchorage. Three ‘port days’ give me a flavour of the Last Frontier (also Alaska’s official state nickname); two ‘scenic cruising’ days provide spectacular views of glaciers and icebergs without my even having to leave the (extreme) comfort of my hot tub; and the itinerary’s single ‘sea day’ allows me to savour the ship’s spas, bars and even ‘Movies under the Stars’, where I happily goggle a Harry Potter on the open top deck’s huge screen, hunkered under a blanket with cookies. Slightly more adventurous are the 150-odd excursions available through Grand Princess (similar ones can be booked independently, of course). Options range from mild to wild, but each one drops you deeper into the landscape or lifestyle of Alaska than the ship alone ever could. Each port day, helicopters whisk passengers up to other-worldly icefields where huskies howl; floatplanes trace fjords and emerald inlets so narrow you swear the wings will brush the spruce. Whale-watching boats skim out from Juneau and return heavy with stories of humpbacks and orcas. In Skagway, the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway coils through the mountains, each bend offering another “surely not!” vista. Me, I watch bears effortlessly pawing salmon from the stream outside Ketchikan; canoe to the sublimely silent toe of the Davidson Glacier; and watch whale tails hang in the air, like my held breath, as the great creatures submerge mere metres from my observation boat in the waters off Juneau. Sign up to our mailing list to receive more content like this from Radio Times Travel, Shop and Money The ports themselves are an odd mix of touristy tat shops and true frontier township. Shops peddling novelty reindeer-fur bikinis and moose-logo baseball caps sit between Gold Rush-era saloons and brothels – some preserved as little museums, others still serving (the saloons only). Seaplanes bounce from the water with the cheerful impatience of dragonflies, yachts nose against tugs, fishing skippers swear at cruise ships performing three-point turns with the circumference of small cities. And from each city, walking trails take me out among glassy lakes, see-forever views and pine forests smelling of resin and cool earth. Still, the trip’s best days are spent adrift: those ‘scenic cruising’ days are showstopping. Glacier Bay is a theatre of ice. From the deck I watch an ever-changing carousel of cathedral-sized ice sculptures glide by like god-sized ghosts. The silence is immense: no roads, no chatter, just the occasional crack of calving ice, followed by a roar as a tower-block-sized slab collapses into the bay. Eagles circle overhead, seals lounge on floes, and suddenly you realise 2,500 passengers are standing shoulder to shoulder in reverent quiet, all hearing the same stillness. College Fjord, meanwhile, is subtler but no less affecting. The glaciers here were named by a Harvard-and-Yale-led survey expedition, which is why today you can gaze at Princeton Glacier while sipping your artisan gin and tonic, or watch Harvard’s icefall while enjoying a hand-cut beef filet tartare with plancha sear and fried quail egg. The water is calm as slate, the air sharp as cut glass, and the glaciers that carved this craggy landscape drape themselves down the valleys in frozen ribbons. If you’re planning a trip abroad, read our financial expert's advice on what to consider before going on holiday It’s an almost brutal beauty, and it’s strange to think how easily – how cossetingly, even – it’s available. This, after all, is Alaska. The Last Frontier airs new episodes Fridays on Apple TV. Check out more of our Travel coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Jane Goodall: 'We must all do our bit to make the world a better place'
The legendary conservationist on her life among chimpanzees, battling sexism, and why hope is hard work.
This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in November 2021, to promote the BBC Radio 4 drama In the Shadow of Man. Most people would be quite excited to have a play about their life on Radio 4. Ethologist Jane Goodall, however, admits she's "getting used to that sort of thing. And wait till you see who's playing me in the film that's being made..." She won't name names, but bearing in mind "it's got Leonardo DiCaprio behind it", we can expect someone fairly stellar. And perhaps, at last, Goodall will stop being mistaken for fellow primate expert Dian Fossey, who was played by Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist. "Everybody mixes us up," sighs Goodall. "But it can be funny. I was on a plane once, and the flight attendant said, 'It's an honour to have you on board, Miss Fossey.' I smiled, and didn't say anything, and thought, 'She's going to go and tell people who she had on her flight today, and they're going to tell her that Dian Fossey's dead, and she's going to think she's seen a ghost.'" Even if people don't know Goodall's face, they're living in a world profoundly shaped by her work. Transplanting herself from genteel Bournemouth to the jungles of Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park in 1960, she was the first to record evidence of tool use by chimpanzees. "I saw what we now call termite fishing," she recalls. "A chimp broke off a grass stem, pushed it down into the termite mound, then pulled it very carefully out and picked off the termites to eat. And boom! It was so remarkable – and I had such a mix of amazement and disbelief – that I didn't even send a telegram until I'd seen it on a few more occasions. Because at that time, Man was defined as the only creature capable of using tools." Put simply, Goodall's observations redefined humanity. Her discoveries helped convince a sceptical scientific establishment that chimps and humans shared a common ancestor. She saw their emotional depth up close, watching chimps hug, kiss and even tickle each other – actions previously thought unique to humans. "One incident I'll never forget is when two chimps I called David and Goliath made nests in the same tree," she says. "Goliath, although the alpha male, always wanted reassurance from the very calm David. And he reached his hand up towards his friend, and David reached down, and they held hands." Goodall also recorded "primitive civil war" between groups, and what she believes were the stirrings of spiritual behaviour, such as ritual-like gatherings at waterfalls. "If the chimps had language," she explains, "these might turn into an animistic religion – the worship of the sun and stars and things, like early humans." As a woman in a male-dominated field, Goodall was used to being patronised. She even doubted her own prospects. "When, as a child, I'd dream of my future, I'd dream myself as a man," she admits. "Because only men did the things I wanted to do, and women didn't." Today, the 87-year-old is one of the world's most decorated scientists – a Dame Commander of the British Empire, a UN Messenger of Peace, and one of Time's 100 most influential people. She continues to campaign tirelessly through the Jane Goodall Institute, promoting conservation and animal welfare. It's no surprise to hear she "likes some chimps much better than some people". She's still outspoken against animal testing. "There is very, very little animal medical research that has led to changes," she argues. "The law states you can't put a new drug on the market until it's been tested on animals. The vaccine for polio was kept off the market for two years because it didn't work on some kind of animal. Scientists have now got a little chip that can replicate the organs – but it'll take for ever to get through, because the animal research industry is worth billions." She's similarly blunt about politics. "Can we trust our current government? Not really." Nor does she believe enough is being done on the climate crisis: "I think what we're seeing from countries and corporations is only superficial change." Yet she remains stubbornly optimistic. "I lived through World War Two," she says. "That was a hopeless time – Britain stood alone, unprepared – but we got through." Her philosophy of hope is pragmatic rather than naïve. "Hope isn't looking at the world through rose-coloured spectacles and saying, 'Everything will be all right.' No, hope is like a very, very, very dark tunnel with a tiny gleam of light at the end. The light is hope, but we're at the other end of the tunnel, and to get there, we have to work really, really hard to navigate the obstacles that are in the way. That's why we've all got to get together now and do our little bit, whatever it is, to make the world a better place." Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Dame Jane Goodall: 'We must all do our bit to make the world a better place'
This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in November 2021, to promote the BBC Radio 4 drama In the Shadow of Man. Most people would be quite excited to have a play about their life on Radio 4. Ethologist Jane Goodall, however, admits she's "getting used to that sort of thing. And wait till you see who's playing me in the film that's being made..." She won't name names, but bearing in mind "it's got Leonardo DiCaprio behind it", we can expect someone fairly stellar. And perhaps, at last, Goodall will stop being mistaken for fellow primate expert Dian Fossey, who was played by Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist. "Everybody mixes us up," sighs Goodall. "But it can be funny. I was on a plane once, and the flight attendant said, 'It's an honour to have you on board, Miss Fossey.' I smiled, and didn't say anything, and thought, 'She's going to go and tell people who she had on her flight today, and they're going to tell her that Dian Fossey's dead, and she's going to think she's seen a ghost.'" Even if people don't know Goodall's face, they're living in a world profoundly shaped by her work. Transplanting herself from genteel Bournemouth to the jungles of Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park in 1960, she was the first to record evidence of tool use by chimpanzees. "I saw what we now call termite fishing," she recalls. "A chimp broke off a grass stem, pushed it down into the termite mound, then pulled it very carefully out and picked off the termites to eat. And boom! It was so remarkable – and I had such a mix of amazement and disbelief – that I didn't even send a telegram until I'd seen it on a few more occasions. Because at that time, Man was defined as the only creature capable of using tools." Put simply, Goodall's observations redefined humanity. Her discoveries helped convince a sceptical scientific establishment that chimps and humans shared a common ancestor. She saw their emotional depth up close, watching chimps hug, kiss and even tickle each other – actions previously thought unique to humans. "One incident I'll never forget is when two chimps I called David and Goliath made nests in the same tree," she says. "Goliath, although the alpha male, always wanted reassurance from the very calm David. And he reached his hand up towards his friend, and David reached down, and they held hands." Goodall also recorded "primitive civil war" between groups, and what she believes were the stirrings of spiritual behaviour, such as ritual-like gatherings at waterfalls. "If the chimps had language," she explains, "these might turn into an animistic religion – the worship of the sun and stars and things, like early humans." As a woman in a male-dominated field, Goodall was used to being patronised. She even doubted her own prospects. "When, as a child, I'd dream of my future, I'd dream myself as a man," she admits. "Because only men did the things I wanted to do, and women didn't." Today, the 87-year-old is one of the world's most decorated scientists – a Dame Commander of the British Empire, a UN Messenger of Peace, and one of Time's 100 most influential people. She continues to campaign tirelessly through the Jane Goodall Institute, promoting conservation and animal welfare. It's no surprise to hear she "likes some chimps much better than some people". She's still outspoken against animal testing. "There is very, very little animal medical research that has led to changes," she argues. "The law states you can't put a new drug on the market until it's been tested on animals. The vaccine for polio was kept off the market for two years because it didn't work on some kind of animal. Scientists have now got a little chip that can replicate the organs – but it'll take for ever to get through, because the animal research industry is worth billions." She's similarly blunt about politics. "Can we trust our current government? Not really." Nor does she believe enough is being done on the climate crisis: "I think what we're seeing from countries and corporations is only superficial change." Yet she remains stubbornly optimistic. "I lived through World War Two," she says. "That was a hopeless time – Britain stood alone, unprepared – but we got through." Her philosophy of hope is pragmatic rather than naïve. "Hope isn't looking at the world through rose-coloured spectacles and saying, 'Everything will be all right.' No, hope is like a very, very, very dark tunnel with a tiny gleam of light at the end. The light is hope, but we're at the other end of the tunnel, and to get there, we have to work really, really hard to navigate the obstacles that are in the way. That's why we've all got to get together now and do our little bit, whatever it is, to make the world a better place."
Rob Brydon reveals why he initially turned down new BBC series – and what changed his mind
A new series sees Rob Brydon journey around the southern states of the US to discover the origins of country music.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Be honest, Rob. Do you actually like country music? I am genuinely very fond of it and genuinely keen to know more. When [the BBC] first offered me this [three-part series], I declined it because I thought, “I’m no authority on country music”, and it might be perceived as a little opportunistic. But then they came back with the angle of discovering it and I thought, “Well, that entitles me to do it”. Because when some Johnny off the TV like me swans off to make a documentary, I think there has to be a reason for it. You’re being too modest. You’re actually a country music superstar: your version of Islands in the Stream, with Ruth Jones, got to number one… That was a novelty record for Comic Relief! I tell my kids, “We were at number one for seven days”. But I do do a bit of singing in this series. Among other things, we go to an Elvis Festival in Franklin, Tennessee, and I meet all these Elvi. I put on my Elvis suit, they announce me, I go out on stage… and it’s blank looks all round. I’m not known over there, so it’s just this short, middle-aged Welshman singing Elvis. I really had to hold my nerve. This series takes you right round the southern states. What was your general impression? It’s a whole other country from the rest of the US. Down there, it’s work, play, family and God. We saw a lot of spindly white wooden church steeples, a lot of beautiful disused barns, a lot of lovely open front porches and a lot of food. They’re not on a health kick down there – even the “healthy” options come smothered in a blanket of melted cheese, and the trail mix has M&Ms in it. The people are wonderful though – hugely courteous and very friendly. Take Heidi Parton: she’s Dolly’s niece, and she performs at [her aunt’s theme park] Dollywood. She’s the epitome of southern hospitality – if any holiday-maker goes up and says “Hello”, she’ll stay and chat with them. There are a few “eccentrics” out there in the backwoods though, no? What about “Big Yeti”? He was great fun. He’s this huge mountain of a man – I suppose otherwise he’d be called “Small Yeti” – who took me fly-fishing in North Carolina. I didn’t catch anything, but I loved it, standing there in this beautiful river. I finally understood what Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer are banging on about; though I was concerned because it was bear country and we’re stood there looking at the river with our backs to the woods… If we can’t all tour the American South in its entirety, where should we go for the best music? Well, Nashville’s “strip”, on Broadway, has to be experienced to be believed. The music bars there go from 10 in the morning until I-don’t-know-when at night. There’s not just a band in each; there’s one on each floor of each bar, and they’re phenomenal. We bumped into Gary Barlow in Nashville; he goes out there for the sheer quality of the songwriters and musicians. You’re “breaking” America yourself, aren’t you? It was clearly your role as Sugar Daddy Ken in Barbie that made it the 16th highest-grossing film of all time… I ended up in that because Margot Robbie loves Gavin & Stacey, and knew me from that. I’d actually been asked to record a birthday video message for her, as Bryn, a few years ago, then I sort of forgot about it, because you never know if they really do like the show. For instance, a few years ago someone told me that Johnny Depp loved [Brydon’s 2000 comedy] Human Remains, and I remember thinking, “But does he really?” I’ve never met him, so I don’t know. Do you think maybe they’re mistaking you for Daniel Craig or someone? It happens all the time – or maybe Wendy Craig. But now, because of the internet, people can watch your programmes anywhere in the world, so you never know who’s seen it. Our [Gavin & Stacey cast] WhatsApp group still springs into life every so often – and when that Coldplay kiss thing happened [an extra-marital affair between colleagues was accidentally revealed by a crowd-cam at a Coldplay concert], there were all those kiss-cam memes, and Rob Wilfort [who played Jason in G&S] found one of him and me, and sent it to the group. Finally, which stop on this trip would you most like to go back to? Rosine, in Kentucky, felt really authentic. It’s talked of as the birthplace of bluegrass, and they have this jamboree there – it’s a bit of a drive to get to Rosine, but it’s so real and you can get so close to it all. I remember thinking all the time that I’d like to come back with my wife Clare, drive around and visit it at a more leisurely rate. I felt that everywhere. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Rob Brydon's Honky Tonk Road Trip begins Sunday at 9pm on BBC Two and iPlayer. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Gavin & Stacey icon Joanna Page dishes on her new memoir Lush! - and why she wrote it in the car at 5am
From career lows to Gavin & Stacey, Joanna Page’s memoir Lush! tells all. But why did she write it in her car at 5am?
“I’m probably not even allowed to say this,” confides Joanna Page, pausing for perhaps 0.4 seconds before saying it anyway. “I wanted to call my book ‘Breathe Through Your Anus’.” The explanation tumbles out just as quickly (“It’s something our teacher at Rada told us to do, and I thought it was quite a fitting title”), but it’s typical of the way the Gavin & Stacey star talks: winningly wide-eyed, utterly unfiltered, 19 (or 20!) to the dozen, and always on the edge of laughter. In the end – and in a nod to one of Stacey’s most repeated lines – Page has called her memoir Lush! It’s no less frank or relatable (or scatologically funny) for all that, though. “When I realised I was going to write a book,” she admits in the acknowledgements, “I got over-excited, thought I was Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City and went straight out to buy a handbag I could carry my notepad and pens in. Then I realised I was going to have to actually write the thing and s**t myself.” It turns out she was right to panic, as producing a book when you’ve got four young children, four guinea pigs and two dogs to look after is no breeze. “I’d go and sit in our garage to write, and my husband would be like, ‘I’ll look after all of them’ – but that apparently involves him popping in every five minutes to ask me something. So then I started going to car parks to write, just sitting there in my car trying to get it done in the middle of the night until I thought ‘This is getting a bit dodgy’ – or maybe a bit dogging-y – so I’d go back and park outside my own house, not daring to go inside in case I woke the kids, and keep writing in my car till five in the morning.” Refreshingly for an actor’s autobiography, she’s just as candid about her career lows: lad-mag photographers getting her drunk for raunchy shoots, mendacious directors tricking her into sex scenes, a handsy TV presenter trying to feel her up on set (she won’t name him because “he’s not on telly any more. He got his comeuppance”). And then there’s the story of missing out on a role, wandering the streets crying, retreating to a hotel where she “drank and drank and drank and said to my husband ‘I’m not coming back’. He phoned the hotel next morning – I think he thought I’d hanged myself because I was so low, and I thought, ‘I can’t carry on with this any more. I’m done.’ I went back to my job in a shoe shop and thought, ‘I’m happy with this.’ “Then two weeks later a script came in about a Welsh girl who falls in love with a boy from Essex, and it completely and utterly changed my life. It’s given me amazing opportunities, wonderful experiences and a whole new family.” Gavin & Stacey may have robbed the world of an excellent shoe-shop assistant then, but Page isn’t exaggerating when she says it gave her – and, arguably, viewers – a whole new family. Ruth Jones is like a sister to her (present the night before the birth of Page’s first child); James Corden, Mathew Horne and Rob Brydon like brothers (“Three naughty little brothers taking the piss out of you the whole time, thinking they’re a lot funnier than they are”); and Larry Lamb like… well, she describes him in the book as “very dishy”. So did she fancy him? “Oh, God, when I re-read that I was thinking, ‘That’s really bad, I’ve sexualised Larry Lamb.’ But you can’t not do that because he’s so lovely. Out of all the stuff I’ve ever done in my career, the happiest my mother has ever been was when she came to a screening and got to meet Larry. She kissed him on the lips and I was like, ‘Mum, could you just calm down?’” The G&S family is still together, it seems, even after the very final-feeling 2024 Christmas special (of which Page says, “I 100 per cent now think that is the end”). “We’ve got a WhatsApp group, called ‘Christmas is occurring’, and we send messages all the time. When Rob was doing Destination X, he’d send us photos and James would zoom into them and try and work out the locations. We’re always sending each other messages of support or arranging to see each other. And I’ve got a secret little chat with just me and Ruth, too.” In fact, the only things she hasn’t shared with the gang are details of the new show she’s filming right now. “I’m too scared because the producers said to me, ‘You’re not allowed to say you’re on this or who you’re working with.’” There’s a 0.4-second pause, and then: “It’s not me acting, it’s not me hosting, it’s…” Head to the RT Shop to purchase Lush! by Joanna Page. Did you know you can now order a previous edition of Radio Times magazine with our new back issues service? For all the latest RT Book Club news, interviews, Q&As with the authors, reviews of previous books and more, visit The Radio Times Book Club sponsored by Dr. Oetker Ristorante.
Adam Kay argues the NHS is the UK’s greatest institution but “one of the worst employers”
The debut novel of former doctor Adam Kay is a medical mystery that shines a stark light on the NHS today.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “Hopefully everyone out there thinks I look like Ben Whishaw,” says Adam Kay. And it’s quite possible they do: Whishaw played Kay in the BBC’s 2022 adaptation of his mega-selling medical memoir This Is Going to Hurt. “My main criterion when casting it was ‘extremely handsome’,” admits Kay. But he’s less concerned with the looks of the leading man in any screen version of his new book – and first novel – A Particularly Nasty Case. “There’s only 20 per cent of me in [the main character] Eitan,” explains the author. “He’s a very messy doctor, and I like to think that I wasn’t quite that messy.” “Messy” may be an understatement though: in the darkly funny thriller, Eitan is a consultant rheumatologist (“the least sexy part of medicine”), returning to work after time off with a bipolar condition, who becomes convinced that his manager’s death from a heart attack was actually murder. “So it starts not as a ‘whodunnit’ but as an ‘ifdunnit’,” says Kay. If you think that sounds far-fetched, think again. Kay writes with all the authority of a man who spent six years as an NHS doctor before becoming a writer, but nevertheless had a team of “medical advisers” check the manuscript. “I’m 15 years out of the game now – it would be a major roll of the dice asking me for medical advice – so I got some clever friends of mine to read the book and flag anything they thought wouldn’t work. Worryingly, they gave it a clean bill of health.” It was important for Kay to get the science right, he says (and he admiringly mentions Agatha Christie “because as a trained pharmacist, all the poison knowledge in her books is absolutely spot-on”). But what about the human side? Doctors don’t really do away with their rivals, do they? “Well, I hope I wasn’t the only student at medical school who listened to lectures and thought, ‘Oh, well that would be quite a good way to kill someone.’ Luckily, I had just about enough morals to never go through with it, even though I do have lots of enemies!” In an era where there has been much discussion about burnout and its impact on NHS staff, with millions of workdays lost each year due to anxiety, stress and depression, should we be worried about the mental health of our medics, though? “Obviously it’s a very live debate… Doctors are extremely bad at looking after their own mental health. They’re told they have to be tough: ‘You’re a bloody doctor, and you bloody just get on with it.’ But the suicide rates among medical professionals are extraordinarily high. One doctor takes their life in the UK every three weeks, and one healthcare professional takes their life every single week. “The NHS, I think, is the greatest institution we have in this country, but it’s probably also one of the worst employers. It’s a good decade behind the rest of society in terms of how it looks after staff who are struggling with their own health, particularly their own mental health.” Serious issues are glanced at in the book, then, but it’s driven by a propulsive page-turner of a plot and littered with laugh-out-loud lines and peep-between-your-fingers scenes of NHS craziness. “It’s certainly not cosy crime,” confirms Kay. “It opens in a gay sauna and doesn’t stop from there.” Correspondingly – and, perhaps, appropriately – he offers a health warning of sorts: “Given that my body of work now goes from picture-books for three-year-olds all the way up to murder books for adults, I think it’s increasingly important that parents ensure they pick up the right Adam Kay book in the shop. Otherwise the kids are going to get a very different bedtime story…” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. For this month’s midweek treat, Joanna sat down and read A Particularly Nasty Case, a murder mystery with all the classic elements of a crime novel. She paired it with a classic Mozzarella pizza from Dr. Oetker Ristorante. For all the latest RT Book Club news, interviews, Q&As with the authors, reviews of previous books and more, visit The Radio Times Book Club sponsored by Dr. Oetker Ristorante. You can purchase A Particularly Nasty Case by Adam Kay, our book of the month, at the Radio Times Shop.
Whitstable Pearl offers a taste of the Kent coast – and the real star is the location
Inspired by the Kent-set crime drama Whitstable Pearl, our writer takes you to the real Whitstable – a working harbour town where salty breezes, shingle beaches and freshly shucked oysters are the stars of the show.
Kerry Godliman pioneered it, but I’m naming it. Whitstable Pearl is “seafood noir” – and if it hasn’t yet inspired a whole copycat TV genre (which it probably will), it has certainly inspired a few visits to its real-world milieu. The crime show, set on the Kent coast, is currently into its third series of salty, sinister murders and lingering glances across the shingle, with Godliman as the seafood-slinging sleuth. But the true star is the location: real-life Whitstable has all the bobbing oyster yawls, creaking hulls and fresh-fish-fuelled charm of the show, but without simmering suspense between mussels and main course. Browse our tours of the UK and Ireland here Truth be told, you don’t need a murder mystery to find intrigue in Whitstable. A short hop from London – under 80 minutes by train – it’s long on seaside appeal. The harbour is still working, the high street still hosts actual marine supplies stores among the Breton-top-toting boutiques, and there’s still the sense that locals would be here with or without the influx of weekenders and the occasional TV camera crew. Start, as Godliman’s Pearl Nolan herself might, with a wander along Harbour Street. It’s a pick ’n’ mix of vintage stores, artist-run galleries and those irresistibly browsable little shops where everything seems to smell of driftwood and lavender. A few steps farther is the Harbour Market, where oysters are shucked to order for just £2.50 each, and you can pick up nautical knick-knacks. It’s either delightfully authentic or one puff of wind away from twee, depending on your mood and how many Whitstable Brewery Oyster Stouts you’ve had from the open-air bar next to the oyster-shuckers… The beach itself is no golden-sanded sprawl; instead, it’s a salt-tang shinglescape, fringed with candy-coloured beach huts and shaped by centuries of North Sea breezes. It’s a beach for dog-walkers and daydreamers, not for sandcastles or sunbathing, though when I visited last month the water was warm enough for a brief paddle. Meanwhile, the sunsets are Turner-esque – all pink slashes and purple spillages over the sea – and they make a fitting backdrop to a pint at the Old Neptune, a pub so close to the tide it seems to be considering a life as a houseboat. When it comes to food, there are few wrong turns, but a definite right one is Pearson’s Arms (pearsonsarmswhitstable.co.uk). Tucked off the seafront, it fuses pub comfort with a wink of polish. Downstairs, it’s all low-beamed ceilings and comfy armchairs by the fire, but head upstairs to eat and things get more refined: from oysters to Kentish apple and blackberry caramel. It’s the sort of meal you imagine Pearl herself would settle into after another long day of coastal criminality – although she’d probably have the whitebait. (She might also be tempted by local institutions Wheelers and the Whitstable Oyster Company, both book-ahead-busy for good reason.) As for somewhere to stay, the Duke of Cumberland (dukeofcumberland hotel.co.uk) nails that Goldilocks balance: neither too posh nor too pubby, but just right. Each chic and unique room above the historic inn is comfortable in a way that feels cosy rather than showroomy, and you can hear the hum of the town winding down below, a lullaby of clinking pint glasses and distant gulls. The breakfasts wouldn’t disappoint Pearl either: local sausages, black pudding cooked to crisped perfection, eggs any way you like, and coffee that decidedly doesn’t taste like it’s been siphoned through a lifeboat. After that, you’re all set up for a day’s top-quality pottering. There are side streets to duck down; cycle paths snaking all the way to Seasalter; a small, sweet “castle”; a lose-yourself-for-20-minutes local museum with a mock-up of a Victorian oyster yawl and more maritime trivia than you ever thought you’d enjoy; and even a must-visit Wetherspoon, the Peter Cushing (he was local), inside a gloriously un-redone old cinema. Much of this stuff, naturally, has found its way into Whitstable Pearl – the show uses its setting not just as background but as texture, layering the stories with local grit. Sign up to our mailing list to receive more content like this from Radio Times Travel, Shop and Money - click here And even if you don’t consciously chase the filming locations, you’ll still spot them. That pastel-fronted fisherman’s cottage? Pearl’s. The alleyway between the deli and the wine shop? Definitely the scene of at least one suspicious exchange. The real joy here, though, is stripping the fiction from the reality. The show’s dark, brooding atmosphere? Fiction. The buttery, golden-hour light and easy-breezy loveliness of a perfect seaside weekend? Very much reality. Request a brochure and get inspiration for your next holiday Whitstable Pearl airs Fridays at 9pm on U&Drama. Check out more of our Travel coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Rhys James reveals why a US version of Mock the Week is probably not happening
Comedy is a way of controlling embarrassment for Rhys James – so did writing his memoirs burst his balloon?
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Did you hear the one about the stand-up comedian who’s actually a complete introvert? Well go ahead and laugh, says Rhys James, Live at the Apollo luminary and perennial panellist on BBC2’s Mock the Week. He describes his first book, out this week, as “a dread memoir” – then adds, hurriedly, “but funny”. “Sorry, it’s hard to explain your own book, because it’s like describing yourself on a dating app: ‘Aren’t I amazing?!’” he says. “But it’s not about the dark, horrible, scary kind of dread: it’s about the dread of small, social things, like having to go for a couples dinner, or go down the pub, or make a speech – and this massive underlying fear of things going wrong or being embarrassing.” In fact, You’ll Like It When You Get There is perhaps best summed up by its revelation that the sentence James feared most as a child was “Come downstairs and say hello”. And that when plans are cancelled, he still “celebrates with an Andy Murray fist pump”. And a howl-out-loud anecdote about pretending to be French to avoid conversation (in fact, three anecdotes about pretending to be French). So far, so relatable – but why then become a comic? “Introverts aren’t just those skulk-in-the-corner guys; it’s more complicated than that. If you go to the pub with me, I in no way seem like an introvert, because I’ll be dominating conversation – I won’t shut up. But that’s how introversion manifests for me: I’m ‘confident-presenting’. I’m desperately trying for there not to be a silence, because my introverted brain can’t hack it. "My ‘villain origin story’ is when I was 14 and had my trousers and pants pulled down in front of classmates, and I vowed to get laughs on my own terms for ever more – and actually stand-up comedy is a great way of controlling the situation. It suits an introvert because you’re basically saying, ‘All face me and I’ll speak!’ If someone shouts out, you basically go, ‘Shut up!’ And that’s what being an introvert is all about for me: ‘Can everyone just shut up a second? Listen to me, so I don’t have to try and jostle my way into the conversation.’” Writing a book must be an introvert’s dream, then, you’d think – but oh no. “Doing stand-up gives you constant feedback,” says James. “If I have an idea for a sentence, I go and say it, and I find out that night if it’s worth ever saying again. When you write a book, you have to really believe in what you’re saying. It’s like, ‘Will “future me” rate this when I read it back at a later date?’” And read it back he did: James also narrates the audio version of the book (released this week) – which turned out lucky for listeners and readers alike. “Josh Widdicombe advised me to read it aloud while writing it, because otherwise you will come to do the audiobook and think, ‘This isn’t how I speak’ and want to rewrite it all. But by reading it out loud, I had already realised which bits needed more jokes.” In fact there are laughs pretty much every sentence or two, but James also explains that he drew on very different kinds of material for the memoir than he would for a show. “In the book there are a lot of embarrassing anecdotes from my life that wouldn’t work in my act. My stand-up style is a bit cockier, and if I told these humiliating stories I’d become ‘low-status’ and it wouldn’t make any sense. “For instance, in the book there’s a story about me in the gym at the end of a workout on that machine where your legs are splayed and you move them in and out with your thigh muscles. I’m looking at my phone with my headphones on, then a hand touches me on the shoulder and it’s a personal trainer saying, ‘This man is going to demonstrate for us.’ And when I looked, there were 20 schoolchildren all waiting for me to do a demo of the most sexually charged machine, in shorts, completely knackered. "Obviously I could have said no, but I’m a stand-up comedian – I seek approval! – so I do it through the pain, and the trainer says, ‘Give this guy a round of applause!’ And no one claps. “I’ve had a few corporate gigs go the same way actually,” he adds, and there’s a similar sigh in his voice when he talks about the American version of Mock the Week that Amazon Prime were going to make with him and Trevor Noah. “I think that’s not happening any more. When the [US screenwriters’] strikes hit, a former UK panel show was somehow one of the easiest projects to cut.” It’s a shame, he concedes, because “satire is always necessary, especially now when people get very het up and find it harder to laugh at things they don’t agree with”. Fortunately, he’ll be fine without Amazon’s big bucks. “Actually,” says our introvert, tongue in audibly close proximity to cheek, “I’m an author now, don’t you know?” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
'Every character is a part of me, even the nutters'
More than 30 years on from the original, Irvine Welsh reveals why he’s written a new sequel to Trainspotting
Add Trainspotting to your watchlist. To order Men In Love for below its RRP, click here. Ewan McGregor as Renton, Robert Carlyle as Begbie, Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy… whether you know Trainspotting from having read the book, watched the films or just from the famous movie posters, you will undoubtedly find it hard to picture anybody else as those characters. Yet, there’s a cocky young upstart who thinks he could do a job there if Trainspotting’s sequel, Men in Love – published on 22 July – gets the adaptation treatment. “I could probably play them all quite well,” reckons Irvine Welsh, the 66-year-old author of both novels. “I think I could do a decent hard man for Begbie; the cynical outsider, like Renton; I can probably have a go at the lover, Sick Boy; and I can definitely do the hapless fool, lovable loser thing for Spud. It’s because every character you write is a part of you, even the nutters. All you can really hope for is that the nutters are repressed parts of you.” In fact, Welsh played small parts in both Trainspotting films, and when asked about a possible big ten-hour, Netflix-style series based on Men in Love, he says he’s “been working with Bobby Carlyle on something like that, but I’d love to just get some brilliant young actors and recast the whole lot again, starting from [prequel] Skagboys”. So could he pip McGregor to the lead role? “The casting people might have something to say about that. And the Hollywood financiers wouldn’t be too enthused either.” Still, stranger things have happened. Welsh expects his West End musical version of Trainspotting to open next year and he’s also collaborated on a “disco soul album” released as a companion to Men in Love this week. There are surprises in store for his characters, too. Although it picks up just after Trainspotting finishes, the story’s “heroes” are changed – or at least changing – men. Renton is, says Welsh, “looking for love”; Spud has “found the girl of his dreams” and Sick Boy is even considering marriage. Watch the original trailer for Trainspotting below: View Green Video on the source website “The book is about men who have to make big decisions around love and romance. Because we all get to our mid-20s and society compels us to make these decisions about relationships that we’re ill-equipped to make. You’ve basically been hanging out with your mates for ten years, and with your mum and dad before that, but then you’re suddenly thrust into this world and faced with these choices. And I’ve picked these poor guys from Trainspotting, who are probably the most ill-equipped guys you can imagine.” But why has Welsh written a sequel now, three full decades after the original novel? “It’s true,” sighs the author. “Sensible people who want to make money would have built a brand and published the novels sequentially rather than bringing the guys back together when I find a theme I want to write about. “But I think there’s so much hatred and nastiness in the world now, and I’m realising that my duty as a writer, in some ways, is to explore and offer up love. I’m finding myself more into trying to understand how people connect rather than the forces that pull them apart.” Does that shift in approach reflect a greater emphasis on love in Welsh’s own life? “Definitely. You get to that stage where you’ve been through a few big relationships, and when you split up you always think, ‘It’s because she was like this or like that.’ But then you realise there are a lot of bodies strewn in your past, so maybe the common denominator is you. “You have to develop some self-awareness, and I’ve been doing that a lot over the last decade. Because you also get to a point where you think: ‘I don’t want to mess this up again. It’s too costly – emotionally and financially – falling in love and breaking up.’ I like lawyers, but I don’t like paying them all the time.” It’s not entirely clear how much he likes publishers right now either. The book comes with an “Author’s Note” explaining that “As a novel set in the 1980s, many of the characters… express themselves in ways we now consider offensive and discriminatory…”. And when the subject of this apologia comes up, Welsh is quick to insist: “It’s not my idea. It’s the publishers. Their argument is that the internet is so powerful that it’s easy for people to take a line out of the book out of context. I was very opposed to that, because it’s fiction, it’s a novel set in the 80s, and that’s all the context you need. I thought [the note] was totally unnecessary – but we live in such charged times, and doing it seemed to make everybody happy.” There’s something else to make publishers happy, too. “When I wrote Trainspotting, Skagboys, Porno, Dead Men’s Trousers and The Blade Artist [all of which feature the same characters to a greater or lesser degree], I felt ‘that’s enough, I’m done with them’. But I’ve come off writing this book on a high, and I feel there’s much more to say about those characters through the 90s. You know, I think I will write about them again…”
Trainspotting writer Irvine Welsh teases potential sequel series - and whether iconic roles could be recast
More than 30 years on from the original, Irvine Welsh reveals why he’s written a new sequel to Trainspotting.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Ewan McGregor as Renton, Robert Carlyle as Begbie, Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy… whether you know Trainspotting from having read the book, watched the films or just from the famous movie posters, you will undoubtedly find it hard to picture anybody else as those characters. Yet, there’s a cocky young upstart who thinks he could do a job there if Trainspotting’s sequel, Men in Love – published on 22 July – gets the adaptation treatment. “I could probably play them all quite well,” reckons Irvine Welsh, the 66-year-old author of both novels. “I think I could do a decent hard man for Begbie; the cynical outsider, like Renton; I can probably have a go at the lover, Sick Boy; and I can definitely do the hapless fool, lovable loser thing for Spud. It’s because every character you write is a part of you, even the nutters. All you can really hope for is that the nutters are repressed parts of you.” In fact, Welsh played small parts in both Trainspotting films, and when asked about a possible big ten-hour, Netflix-style series based on Men in Love, he says he’s “been working with Bobby Carlyle on something like that, but I’d love to just get some brilliant young actors and recast the whole lot again, starting from [prequel] Skagboys”. So could he pip McGregor to the lead role? “The casting people might have something to say about that. And the Hollywood financiers wouldn’t be too enthused either.” Still, stranger things have happened. Welsh expects his West End musical version of Trainspotting to open next year and he’s also collaborated on a “disco soul album” released as a companion to Men in Love this week. There are surprises in store for his characters, too. Although it picks up just after Trainspotting finishes, the story’s “heroes” are changed – or at least changing – men. Renton is, says Welsh, “looking for love”; Spud has “found the girl of his dreams” and Sick Boy is even considering marriage. Watch the original trailer for Trainspotting below: View Green Video on the source website “The book is about men who have to make big decisions around love and romance. Because we all get to our mid-20s and society compels us to make these decisions about relationships that we’re ill-equipped to make. You’ve basically been hanging out with your mates for ten years, and with your mum and dad before that, but then you’re suddenly thrust into this world and faced with these choices. And I’ve picked these poor guys from Trainspotting, who are probably the most ill-equipped guys you can imagine.” But why has Welsh written a sequel now, three full decades after the original novel? “It’s true,” sighs the author. “Sensible people who want to make money would have built a brand and published the novels sequentially rather than bringing the guys back together when I find a theme I want to write about. “But I think there’s so much hatred and nastiness in the world now, and I’m realising that my duty as a writer, in some ways, is to explore and offer up love. I’m finding myself more into trying to understand how people connect rather than the forces that pull them apart.” Does that shift in approach reflect a greater emphasis on love in Welsh’s own life? “Definitely. You get to that stage where you’ve been through a few big relationships, and when you split up you always think, ‘It’s because she was like this or like that.’ But then you realise there are a lot of bodies strewn in your past, so maybe the common denominator is you. “You have to develop some self-awareness, and I’ve been doing that a lot over the last decade. Because you also get to a point where you think: ‘I don’t want to mess this up again. It’s too costly – emotionally and financially – falling in love and breaking up.’ I like lawyers, but I don’t like paying them all the time.” It’s not entirely clear how much he likes publishers right now either. The book comes with an “Author’s Note” explaining that “As a novel set in the 1980s, many of the characters… express themselves in ways we now consider offensive and discriminatory…”. And when the subject of this apologia comes up, Welsh is quick to insist: “It’s not my idea. It’s the publishers. Their argument is that the internet is so powerful that it’s easy for people to take a line out of the book out of context. I was very opposed to that, because it’s fiction, it’s a novel set in the 80s, and that’s all the context you need. I thought [the note] was totally unnecessary – but we live in such charged times, and doing it seemed to make everybody happy.” There’s something else to make publishers happy, too. “When I wrote Trainspotting, Skagboys, Porno, Dead Men’s Trousers and The Blade Artist [all of which feature the same characters to a greater or lesser degree], I felt ‘that’s enough, I’m done with them’. But I’ve come off writing this book on a high, and I feel there’s much more to say about those characters through the 90s. You know, I think I will write about them again…” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Carol Kirkwood on her new novel – and social media: 'No disrespect to Gary Lineker, but I’ll stick to weather’
With a busy TV schedule and her fifth novel – Meet Me at Sunset – published this month, the forecast couldn’t be sunnier for BBC weather presenter Carol Kirkwood. Just don’t cloud her horizon with thoughts of retirement.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Carol Kirkwood – weather presenter, novelist and the woman who rejected George Clooney for being too short. “George has the rest going for him,” she says appraisingly, “but somebody taller would be better.” She’s talking – ostensibly – about who would play the character of Nicolas, if her new novel, Meet Me at Sunset, were made into a film, but she’s clearly spent some time thinking about the handsome Hollywooder in non-literary contexts too. “I always go to George Clooney [when I’m trying to visualise a face] for Nicolas. But then, I go to George Clooney for an awful lot…” Kirkwood didn’t have to try too hard either to imagine a look for the other central character in the book, Camille. “She’s a successful designer who goes back to Majorca, a place she loves, though this time she’s running away from a shattered love affair, and the story’s full of betrayal, blackmail, lies, deceit, romance and lots of escapism,” she explains. “But the whole idea came from a holiday in Majorca a couple of years ago and there was a lady who came into the restaurant a few times and always ate alone… “People watching is one of my favourite things to do, and she was fascinating: very chic, slim, in a beautiful suit, with her hair in a French chignon. She always had a salad, a glass of white wine and she sat very upright – and looked out to the sea every night. I thought, ‘What’s her story?’ – and she was in my mind the whole time I was writing this book.” Meet Me at Sunset, published on 17 July, is Kirkwood’s fifth novel and she’s previously reached number two in The Sunday Times bestsellers list, so does the BBC stalwart now list ‘writer’ as her occupation on forms? “No, I would still put TV presenter.” So she doesn’t align herself with peers who use the #notaweathergirl hashtag to fight what they see as demeaning sexism in the profession? “I never think like that. I am what I am, and I don’t really care what anybody thinks of me. And in that sense, whether I’m a ‘weather girl’ or a ‘weather presenter’ or a ‘broadcast meteorologist’ doesn’t really bother me. “I’m just doing my job to the best of my ability and hopefully improving myself on a daily basis, whether people think I’m capable or not. Titles don’t really matter. And because of the industry I work in, I get so much abuse on a regular basis – you get some real vitriol on X, and some people even email you directly to say dreadful things to you – but that’s water off a duck’s back to me now. Or maybe that should be heavy rain off a duck’s back?” She’s certainly enjoying the contrast of novel writing and TV work. “Writing couldn’t be more different from my day job, and it’s such good fun. I actually get to decide what happens – which sadly isn’t the case with weather forecasts.” It’s hard work too, concedes Kirkwood (she wrote six different endings for her first novel before finding one that worked, she confides). “I would love to say I get up at eight o’clock every morning, have a cup of coffee, then sit down and write till midday. But at the moment I can only do that on Friday, Saturday and Sunday [her days off from BBC Breakfast]. Maybe one day, though.” So the 63-year-old is thinking of retiring from TV? “Don’t say that, you’ll get me sacked! And I love my job; I can’t imagine not doing it. There will be a day, obviously, when that happens, but for now I still love the weather. Each day is different, you know? We’re an island, and the weather changes all the time, so it’s always interesting.” She’s not bluffing, either: her own X feed is 100 per cent concerned with meteorology. “No disrespect to Gary Lineker or anybody else, but I’m sticking to the weather. There isn’t a lot of downtime on my work shift [to be tweeting about politics], and then when I get home I’d rather be reading, or having a glass of wine with friends, or going for a walk.” Ideally, she says, she’d be going for a walk with her husband Steve. In fact, it was on just such an outing that he announced himself as husband material: “It was a lovely sunny Sunday, mid-morning, and we’re out for a walk. I said, ‘Why don’t we take a picnic?’ So we find a nice place to sit, along the riverside, put out a blanket – and then he starts fumbling in his pocket. He produces a ring, but for a moment I thought it was going to be a quiche!” (No wonder she’s not that interested in George Clooney.) The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Where to see the world's wildest animals from Apple TV+'s The Wild Ones
Seeing animals in their natural environment doesn’t mean you have to compromise on comfort...
If you usually take an ex-Royal Marines sniper with you on holiday, you can stop reading now. For you, it will be enough simply to watch The Wild Ones (which starts on Apple TV+ next week) and copy the exploits of its presenters – wildlife cameramen Declan Burley and Vianet Djenguet, plus the former Royal Marines Commando who’s keeping them safe, Aldo Kane. From the deserts of Mongolia to the frigid oceans off Canada, the trio visit unpromising and inhospitable environments in search of tigers, whales, leopards and more, returning with the most amazing footage. But if you’re more “mild one” than Wild One, there are easy-breezy versions of each of their six trips – even as effortless as easing yourself onto a cruise ship… SO YOU WANT TO SEE... Tigers THE WILD ONES WAY Find the Malayan tiger (one of the world’s most endangered) in the rainforests of Malaysia. THE MILD ONES WAY Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan is one of the best places on Earth to see wild tigers (tourism.rajasthan.gov.in). Just a few hours’ drive from Jaipur – and its maharajas’-palaces-turned-luxury-hotels – this former royal hunting ground is now a protected sanctuary, where Bengal tigers prowl amid lakes, ruins and banyan forests. Guided jeep safaris run daily, but the best time to visit is between October and March, when the weather’s cooler and animals cluster near shrinking waterholes. Request a brochure and get inspiration for your next holiday SO YOU WANT TO SEE... Bears THE WILD ONES WAY Use thermal night imagery to track the Gobi bear across the Mongolian desert. THE MILD ONES WAY Alaska might sound even more extreme than Mongolia – except, of course, that it’s easily done by cruise ship (try princess.com). Almost all Alaska itineraries (by boat or car) include a stop in Ketchikan, from where you can take a short seaplane or coach ride to nearby spots such as Anan Creek or Neets Bay, where brown and black bears gather in summer to feast on salmon. Elevated viewing platforms mean you’ll get eye-level bear action from a safe, comfy perch – and possibly even a chair. July and August are peak season, when the rivers run red with spawning salmon and the bears turn up like clockwork. SO YOU WANT TO SEE... Leopards THE WILD ONES WAY Scour the Armenian highlands for one of the ten (ten!) remaining Persian leopards in the country. THE MILD ONES WAY Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park (yalasrilanka.lk) has one of the highest densities of leopard in the world, and the park’s open grasslands make it relatively easy to spot the elusive cats, with sightings most common in the dry season (July to September). Guided jeep safaris depart from nearby lodges, and you might also see crocodiles, sloth bears and some of the 300 elephants that call it home. The coastal town of Tissamaharama makes a convenient and comfortable base, with cold beer and hot curries waiting post-safari. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/06/28shutterstock2482269941-133b1c1.jpg" width="6368" height="3575" alt="Sri Lankan leopard, Panthera pardus kotiya, big spotted cat lying on the tree in the nature habitat, Yala national park, Sri Lanka.; Shutterstock ID 2482269941; purchase_order: -; job: -; client: -; other: -" title="Sri,Lankan,Leopard,,Panthera,Pardus,Kotiya,,Big,Spotted,Cat,Lying" /> SO YOU WANT TO SEE... Rhinos THE WILD ONES WAY Brave the active Anak Krakatau volcano and frequent tsunami zone of Ujung Kulon National Park, where the world’s last few Javan rhinoceros roam. THE MILD ONES WAY The greater one-horned rhino is almost identical to the Javan variety, so no one perusing your holiday snaps will even know you weren’t out there in the jungle with Kane and the boys. That means you can head instead for Nepal’s Chitwan National Park (chitwannationalpark.gov.np). Stay in a comfortable lodge in the village of Sauraha, and take guided jeep safaris or canoe rides through the park’s riverine forests and grasslands. Want just a little more “wild”? Try an elephant-back safari… Sign up to our mailing list to receive more content like this from Radio Times Travel, Shop and Money - click here SO YOU WANT TO SEE... Whales THE WILD ONES WAY In the ice-cold Labrador Sea, the Wild Ones TV crew came within a whisker of being capsized by the tail fluke of a North Atlantic right whale. THE MILD ONES WAY Cetacean spottings are better when you know they’re going to finish with a wallow in a gorgeous geothermic infinity pool. Fly into Akureyri, on Iceland’s north coast between April and October (northiceland.is), and sightings of humpbacks, minkes and even blue whales in nearby Eyjafjordur are so common that tour companies offer “whale guarantee” policies. Boats depart daily from the harbour, and trips last around three hours – with insulated suits provided, thankfully. Bonus points: puffins, dolphins and spectacular fjord scenery are often part of the package. SO YOU WANT TO SEE... Gorillas THE WILD ONES WAY The Western lowland gorilla is said to have the strength of eight Olympic weightlifters – so naturally the guys go toe-to-toe with one in Gabon. THE MILD ONES WAY Rainforest hikes in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park (visitrwanda.com) may not be exactly a stroll in the, er, park, but they’re well organised, led by a ranger, and take no more than a few hours. Permits are limited (and a little pricey), so you’ll need to book (and budget!) in advance; but the experience – spending a full hour just metres from a wild gorilla family as they play, bicker, laze and watch you watching them – is once-in-a-lifetime stuff. Afterwards, you can soothe yourself in some extremely fancy hotels (try oneandonlyresorts.com). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/06/28shutterstock2394160037-600236f.jpg" width="4877" height="3251" alt="Eastern Gorilla - Gorilla beringei critically endangered largest living primate, lowland gorillas or Grauer's gorillas (graueri) in the green rainforest, adults and child feeding and playing; Shutterstock ID 2394160037; purchase_order: -; job: -; client: -; other: -" title="Eastern,Gorilla,-,Gorilla,Beringei,Critically,Endangered,Largest,Living,Primate," /> The Wild Ones is available to watch from Friday 11th July on Apple TV+ – sign up to Apple TV+ now. Check out more of our Travel coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Walking The Salt Path like Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs
You don't need to walk all of the South West Coast Path to appreciate its wonders.
Join one travel writer’s gloriously half-hearted homage to The Salt Path – the extraordinary true story of Raynor Winn and her husband Moth’s 630-mile trek along the South West Coast Path, now a major film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. In contrast, this luxury-loving imposter tackles just 40 miles (some by bus), fuelled by hot tubs, fish and chips, and samphire-scented hand cream. From cliff-hugging trails and Cornish pasties to barefoot beach walks and indulgent dinners, it’s a long-weekend escape that proves you don’t have to rough it to feel the magic of the coast. I’m a cheat. A charlatan. A fraud. Raynor Winn and her husband Moth – played by Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in new film The Salt Path – walked the full 630-mile length of the South West Coast Path, flimsy eBay tent on back, after Moth was diagnosed with terminal brain disease and they were made homeless. Request a brochure and get inspiration for your next holiday I, on the other lavishly moisturised hand, am doing about 40 miles – several of them by bus – over four days, based at a luxury hotel (hence the grapefruit-and-samphire-scented mitts). Dishonesty never tasted so good, though, I reflect as I demolish my first ill-earned cardboard carton of fish and chips… or so necessary. It took Raynor and Moth two summers to complete the Path, between 2013 and 2014, and the official recommendation (southwestcoastpath.org.uk) is to allow 52 days. I’ve only got a long weekend, so have lasered in on a section in Cornwall that bulges like a badly stuffed backpack with clifftop drama, sheep-nibbled meadows, irresistibly paddle-able beaches… and great public transport links for if/when I need to bale out of a walk and head back to the Watergate Bay Hotel (watergatebay.co.uk) for a sole-soothing spell in the sunset-view hot-tub and a Huckaback IPA. In fact, it’s an effort to get off public transport. The train from London (gwr.com) arcs within splashing distance of the sea in places, with Panavision views through those widescreen windows, like a Coast Path walk for couch-potatoes , and I’m tempted to stay on to the end of the line. Instead, a ten-minute taxi from Newquay gets me to Watergate Bay, where the eponymous hotel sits about six feet from the sand. The Coast Path is even closer – if it ran any nearer to my gorgeous New England-styled room, walkers would be able to wash their feet in my rolltop bath – so there’s no excuse not to get a couple of miles under my belt. The stretch just north of here is a peach: infinite Atlantic views to the left, gently curving wildflower-strewn hills to the right. And the Path leads me to Mawgan Porth, where I pair that chippy dinner with a pint of Sharp’s from the pub next door and a picnic table on the beach opposite. Another 40 (now fully fuelled) minutes get me to Bedruthan Steps, a National Trust beauty spot where jagged sandstone stacks scattered offshore are said to be a giant’s stepping stones, but look more like he’s spat out a pack of half-chewed Mountain Bites or whatever it is giants snack on. I watch a sunset rich enough to scarlet not just the sky but the ocean too, then taxi back to base to see its long afterglow haunt the horizon for another half-hour. The next day I head south out of the hotel, a little hesitant because the Path passes through Newquay in that direction, and my memories of the place are largely of stag-dos (and indeed don’ts). With the weather on my side, though, I find I can bypass the town altogether by simply whipping off my walking shoes and barefooting it across the vast beaches here, each one the delicious colour and buttersoft consistency of Cornish fudge. My feet get damp and sandy, but dry off in minutes under a hot May sun, so I shortcut along the beaches of Porth, Tolcarne, Towan, Fistral and Crantock, too – rushing now to make it across Gannel Estuary at low tide, or it’ll be more than my feet that gets wet. Sign up to our mailing list to receive more content like this from Radio Times Travel, Shop and Money - click here I stop there for a vegan pasty “so good it will turn you vegan!”, says the lady who sells it to me (and it really might have been, if the sausage roll I got alongside it wasn’t even better). View Green Video on the source website Ending up at Holywell Bay – clearly recognisable from the film, as is Fistral – I stop, swim and get the bus back to the hotel and its fantastic Zacry’s restaurant, where the monkfish tail was as good as the views out to sea. I need an early night because tomorrow is a 20-miler to Padstow. Morning finds me on a track that heaves and plunges along cliffs speckled with thrift and sea campion, swooping past lighthouses, lifeboat stations, kestrel-heavy headlands and secret coves of improbable aquamarine. The Path hugs the cliff edge – and occasionally my soul – all the way into Padstow, where I hit Rick Stein’s Fish & Chips (rickstein.com/steins-fish-and-chips). This time I order a meal so big it comes in a pizza-sized box (it’s called the “Catch & Compare”, which perhaps suggests it’s meant for two…) but so downright delicious I happily eat it all myself. Life feels so good there on the old harbour wall, I can see why someone would want to do the full 630 miles. But next morning my calves are having none of that. Instead I spend a morning on (actually, mostly off) a surfboard, hired from Wavehunters, just ten mercifully short steps from the hotel (wavehunters.co.uk). I’ll catch up with Raynor and Moth Winn another day. Take a look at our UK & Ireland escapes - book your next holiday here The Salt Path is out now in cinemas on Friday 30th May 2025. Check out more of our Travel coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Simon Reeve reveals embarrassing moment cut from TV broadcast: "I felt guilty and stupid"
Simon Reeve is headed to Scandinavia in his new series.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Wait… You gave Cornwall a whole series, but Scandinavia only gets three programmes? "You’re trying to get me into trouble immediately, aren’t you? Well, yes, we’re squeezing more than a million and a half square miles into three shows, but that’s telly – skipping in a shallow way through massive issues. I’m not claiming this is an encyclopaedic take; it’s just me pottering around an area I find interesting. And I did Russia in three programmes too, you know!' You’ve snuck Iceland and Finland in there as well, and they’re not even Scandinavian! "I was mildly worried about that, but it’s not as though I’m going to start a religious war. Obviously I’m only ever one major mistake away from being cancelled, but I think the Scandis are too nice to get worked up about it. I might get a few eggs thrown at me, but BBC viewers don’t normally express their views violently. I did get a bolt chucked at me in Belfast: it was a chunky M24 one, like you’d use to rivet down an oil tanker. "But that was during a riot, so I’m not sure it was aimed personally at me because they hated my second series or something. Anyway, we wanted to incorporate the drama of Iceland and the issues of Finland, which has this incredibly long border with Russia and which is now a bit of a flashpoint where they’re worrying about potential future conflict." And you? Were you scared of getting hit by a stray missile? "No, it’s just so beautiful and glorious there – a magical, frozen winter landscape, with snow on the ground but the trees perfectly covered in snow, too – that you can’t imagine anything terrible happening there. But that’s not the historical reality. The Finns have been invaded multiple times in horrific ways, so after the Cold War, while other countries demilitarised, the Finns were thinking, 'Hang on, we’re going to wait another century to be really sure.' And now they’ve got this massive army – 900,000-strong, the largest in Western Europe. "One of its units, the Jaeger Brigade, trains British and American forces in Arctic warfare, so I visited them for the programme, and they made me jump into a frozen lake at night, to up my levels of sisu, which translates as guts and resilience. I won’t be doing it again. I’m not a fan of cold-water swimming: I’m a wuss – unless there’s a camera running, and then it’s remarkable how quick I toughen up." Can you recommend anything more "holidayish"? "We got quite touristy in Iceland, trying to find the most beautiful spots to take selfies as well as footage for the show; and we went in a massive ice cave in the glacier on top of the volcano Katla [see southadventure.is]. We also scootered around Stockholm and biked round Copenhagen – and Bergen was a lovely surprise: it’s sort of an oil-boom town but it doesn’t look like Abu Dhabi – it’s more like Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. Then in Lapland, I went to meet the elves at SantaPark (santapark.fi), which a lot of Brit tourists love. "It’s a huge, cave-like grotto, and a lure for visitors from around the world, but it turns out to be a massive nuclear bunker, too. The Finns have thousands of them across the country: if you visit an ice rink or a sports centre in Finland, you’re very likely to be going into a nuclear bunker. In Britain we’re just told to stock up on bog-roll and hide underneath those." And what shouldn’t we do in Scandinavia? "Don’t insult the governor of Barentsburg! It’s this Russian mining settlement in Svalbard in Norway, but I’ll tell you something we didn’t put in the programme and I haven’t told anyone else. I’d met the governor, then in the evening we were in a café in our hotel, I’d had a couple of vodkas and I was doing a little impression of him for the rest of the team. It’s possible I might have done his accent a bit and waved my arms around a bit too. "The whole place was completely empty except for us and a couple on a far table. Lo and behold, the couple got up and came past us. And it turns out to be the bloody governor – who stands over us and says in a very menacing voice, like a classic Bond villain, 'Have a good… evening.' We weren’t followed by his goons the next day or anything, but I felt guilty and stupid. It was an act of supreme muppetry on my part – so don’t do that!" The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Scandinavia with Simon Reeve continues on Sunday 1st June at 9pm on BBC Two. Add Scandinavia with Simon Reeve to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
5 travel spots where you can discover the dinosaurs of the past
Want to walk with Earth's ancient inhabitants in real life? Here’s how to discover your own inner palaeontologist.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. If the new Walking with Dinosaurs has got your inner child – or actual child – roaring with excitement again, we’ve got some brontosaurus-sized news for you. The scarily well-rendered CGI brutes on screen are more lifelike than in their last outing, 26 years ago, but still nothing beats the real thing – walking where T rex once stomped, or staring into the fossilised face of a triceratops or two. And it’s surprisingly easy to do: here are five prehistoric holiday hotspots for which the word “roarsome” was (nearly) invented... Dinosaur Provincial Park – Alberta, Canada Alberta’s Badlands look like someone let a T rex loose on a giant chocolate cake: all jagged ridges and sticky, swirled mudstone. This Unesco World Heritage Site (albertaparks. ca/dinosaur) has coughed up more than 50 dinosaur species – even casual hikers can trip over fossils. The park offers guided fossil safaris, where palaeontologists let you dig up 75-million-year-old bones. You can’t keep them, but you’ll leave with the kind of smug dinner-party anecdote no one can top. (“Oh, you went to the Maldives again? I found a hadrosaur femur.”) Base yourself in nearby Drumheller, home of the excellent Royal Tyrrell Museum (tyrrellmuseum.com), where the exhibits look like Hollywood sets but come with scientific credentials. Request a brochure and get inspiration for your next holiday Lark Quarry – Queensland, Australia When the new Jurassic World film hits cinemas in July, it will be hard-pushed to offer more drama than Lark Quarry – home to the world’s only recorded dinosaur stampede. Here in the Queensland outback, one day about 95 million years ago, 150 tiny two-legged dinos were ambushed by a predator – and panicked, leaving behind over 3,000 footprints in the mud. That mud hardened, time passed and now it’s like standing on an ancient film still. The on-site interpretive centre (dinosaurtrackways.com.au) is brilliantly informative, but it’s the footprints themselves – caught mid-sprint, mid-squabble – that bring the moment alive. It’s a kinetic, chaotic little scene frozen forever, like Pompeii with claws. Getting there takes effort (fly to Longreach or Winton, then brace yourself for serious road-tripping), but that’s time travel for you… Dinosaur National Monument – Utah/Colorado, USA Straddling the Utah-Colorado border like an argentinosaurus, Dinosaur National Monument is practically a greatest hits album of prehistoric life (nps.gov/dino). This national park’s star attraction is Quarry Exhibit Hall, where you can see more than 1,500 dinosaur bones still embedded in the cliff face: stegosaurus, allosaurus, diplodocus – the Jurassic gang’s all here. But this is only the epicentre of the area’s ancient action: cruise down Route 191 and you’ll pass Utah’s Prehistoric Museum, Jurassic National Monument and slightly less serious Moab Giants (where lifesize model dinos grimace unconvincingly at visitors) before arriving at Moab itself, sandwiched between Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. The jaw-loosening geology at these two would be worth the trip alone, but here the remains are so plentiful they don’t even get fenced off from the public – you can walk right up and step literally in the footprints of dinosaurs. Solnhofen – Bavaria, Germany Solnhofen might not be a household name, but it should be – because it’s where archaeopteryx, the world’s most famous almost-bird, was discovered. This delicate, foot-long feathered fossil bridged the gap between dinosaurs and modern birds, and it’s still turning palaeontological heads over 150 years later. View oEmbed on the source website The local limestone is absurdly good at preserving things, capturing not just bones but feathers, fish and soft tissue with photographic clarity. The Jura Museum down the road in Eichstätt (https://snsb. de/en/jura-museum-eichstaett/) and Munich’s natural history collections have the best displays, but some nearby quarries let you do your own digging. Fair warning: you’re more likely to find a fossil fish than a flying dinosaur – but stranger things have evidently happened in Solnhofen. Base yourself in Eichstätt, too: it’s a lovely old town with a strange and splendidly named old castle – Willibaldsburg – in the middle. The Bendricks – Barry, South Wales Proof that you don’t have to cross continents to find dino magic, Bendricks Bay (beside Barry, near Cardiff) is a low-key legend. Here, at low tide, you can walk among hundreds of Triassic era dinosaur footprints – some of the best preserved in the UK. There’s something brilliantly British about the whole thing: modest signage, a car park that’s half mud, and no entry fee in sight. But follow the shoreline footpath and you’ll soon spot the three-toed prints, just sitting there on the flat rock like they were made last week. Even better? You’re only five minutes from a decent chip shop and a beachside pub (not to mention the Barry Island seafront immortalised in Gavin & Stacey). It’s like you’ve gone back 220 million years, but with scampi fries and a nice pint of Brains bitter. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Walking with Dinosaurs begins on Sunday 25th May at 6:25pm on BBC One and iPlayer. Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Larry Lamb: 'I miss Gavin & Stacey – but it's not up to me if we'll see Mick again'
The actor spoke to Radio Times magazine about his debut novel All Wrapped Up.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. So, why on earth does one of the country’s most beloved actors write a novel? I work in an interesting business. People think it’s about glitz and fame, but it’s not about that. It’s about how regular working people deal with situations – they do a job that from the outside appears glamorous, but most of the time is quite the opposite. It’s not about red carpets; it’s about going out and doing a job and making a film. I wanted to celebrate that, so I wrote an adventure story set on a Caribbean island, all seen from the point of view of the first assistant director – who is really the central person on any film or television shoot, because they’re the one who deals with anything that goes wrong through the course of a shoot. It’s not about the actors, it’s about the people who pull together to get the film made. Sorry, that was a bit of a long sentence – as I read the book back to myself, I thought: "Wow, you write some long sentences!" There are some fairly short and, ahem, "pithy" sentences too… Well, you’ve got to be true to your subject, right? There is plenty of tough, fruity language, but it’s not coarse, it’s witty. And it’s the women as much as the men, and the middle class as much as anyone else. I know a lot of middle-class families who are far more foul-mouthed than I am! And All Wrapped Up is about the real-life people doing extraordinary work. As a film or TV actor, the first time you meet your co-actors is at the read-through, and you might not see them again until you all get together to watch the film. But the people you see every single day are the crew: they meet you as you arrive, they put you in your caravan, they put you in your costume, they get your makeup done, they get you a cup of tea – they’re the ones that become your family. So it’s the crew who have all the juicy stories about Larry Lamb being a real diva? You do hear a bit of that stuff from them! They certainly know where the bodies are buried, so if there are actors who aren’t nice to work with, word gets around very quickly. They don’t suffer fools gladly, but as long as you don’t get too fond of yourself, you’re going to have a good time with them. There’s a bond, and they’re not going to go blabbing your secrets around. The difficulty is when you’re playing a villain, like Archie in EastEnders: the process of getting a character on film is so intense that you can’t be drawn off; you’re really focused and can’t really get involved with other people. And are the characters in the book based on real people? Is that difficult leading man James Corden, for instance? No, quite the opposite! There are parts of some characters that are very definitely based on factual individuals, but they’re all mixed up with elements of my imagination. Writing was like an ongoing improvisation session: the characters wrote themselves! It feels like there’s a bit of your Gavin & Stacey character, Mick Shipman, in the book’s hero, Killy… There’s a streak of Mick in him: he’s a regular working guy who’s gained respect because of situations he’s had to sort out, and he’s there making sure everything rolls along smoothly. But there’s a bit of Mick in me too now. Playing Mick made me a much more bearable person! He’s level-headed, straightforward, a problem-solver, and I’ve taken that from him. Mick has made me understand that you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth, so I’m more calm now. That goes well with my age, too: you think, “I’m pushing 80, I need to calm down!” You could always stick him in your next novel though, right? I miss Mick, I miss Pam, I miss the whole thing. Alison [Steadman, who played Mick’s wife Pam] lives not ten minutes’ walk from me, but we very rarely see each other. The minute we do, though, the whole thing just picks up and we’re back, we have that relationship again – she and I will always have that. So there’s a kind of sadness that it’s finished. But write my own Mick Shipman story? No, no, no, no, no – they [show writers Corden and Ruth Jones] created that. That’s their world. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Gavin & Stacey is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Martin Clunes says Greenland would be full of "massage" parlours for the military if Trump took over
Clunes is discovering more about the islands of the Atlantic.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Last year we saw you in Islands of the Pacific, this time it's Islands of the Atlantic. When do we get Islands of Poole Harbour? "I'll get there! If there’s an appetite for it, I would love to go on doing these programmes, because I think islands are fascinating studies in human nature. The more of them I see, the more I learn about the commonalities of island life: people are tackling the same problems but in their own ways that are unique to their culture. For instance, this series takes us from the tropical Bijagos Islands off the coast of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa to Arctic Greenland – but all the islanders have to work so hard to live." And you mucked in to help out? "Well, I did try and get out of it in the Faroe Islands. I was supposed to be diving for mussels, in a dry-suit, but I thought about throwing a sickie, because I’ve used one before and it was a disaster. The act of diving means pointing your head towards the bottom of the sea, which means the air in the suit goes to your feet, so your feet inflate like a lifebuoy and you become a victim of the waves, thrown around like an idiot. "But they do work hard, these islanders. Nobody has just one job. For instance, still in the Faroes, we met this farmer called Harriet Olafsdottir – she's a shepherdess, she runs an Airbnb and she also primps up and decorates her sheep, photographs them and sells the photos online." Sign up to our mailing list to receive more content like this from Radio Times Travel, Shop and Money - click here Life must be easier on the tropical islands that you visited, surely? "Well, that’s interesting. On São Tomé, off the west coast of Africa, the oceans are full of fish, food literally grows on trees – children can just pluck a mango off a branch – but there’s real poverty. People are carving out their life in the ruins of the Portuguese empire, where the jungle has started to consume the buildings, and they kind of squat in them. There was a lady there who was eking out a living shelling peanuts she’d picked, and she got really cross with us for filming and invading her space, but really it was just a ruin. "Then we were filming down where the fishermen would come into shore with the boats, and the ladies would go down to meet them, bully the men into getting fish, then carry the fish off in these beautiful baskets on their heads. I think it’s fair to say the men on some of these islands don’t make great husbands – I don’t think they’ve really embraced fidelity – and in fact we were offered two babies. I was standing around and a lady asked where we were from, and we said England. "She said, 'I was doing really well at school until I got this,' and she was talking about the baby asleep in her arms and her three others. 'Now that’s it,' she said. 'That’s my education finished now, and I’ll never get a good job. Please take this baby, give it a life, because I can’t afford to.'" How did you feel as an obvious outsider? "It was amazing to be in some of these places where we were clearly such an oddity. In the Bijagós Islands, kids were thrilled that these bleached-looking things had turned up, and we couldn’t move for kids hanging off our arms and climbing up our backs. They thought the whole thing was hysterical." Request a holiday brochure from one of our partners You weren't the only oddity, surely? Aren't islands famous for their eccentrics? "Yes, there’s always room for eccentricity on an island. Take Prince Renato. We met him in Madeira, where he had bought an island – just a rock, really, before it was connected to the main island by a sea wall – and he says that because the connection is artificial, the island is its own principality, called Pontinha, and he’s the prince of it." Sounds a bit like how Donald Trump sees himself in terms of Greenland. Having been there yourself, how do you think he'd fare there? "I went to Guam for Islands of the Pacific, where there’s another air base and fuelling point for the US forces. Every other business is a 'massage' parlour servicing the military, and that's what I imagine they'd do to Greenland. But for the moment, at least, the place is absolutely mind-blowing. We were kayaking at nine o’clock at night, in blazing sunshine; another day, we went out in a boat through the icebergs, up to the glacier, and watched it fall into the ocean. Our captain pulled a bit of ice out of the water, smashed it up and put it in glasses, so we had whisky with 60,000-year-old ice in it. Honestly, I've never been anywhere like that – ever." Take a look at out holidays from Riviera Travel The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Martin Clunes: Islands of the Atlantic will air on Friday 2nd May at 9pm on ITV1. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Tour de Fred: Following Fred Sirieix's trail through Northern Ireland and Donegal
Follow Fred Sirieix's tracks around the north of Ireland – taking in wild seascapes, walks with alpacas and a pint of Guinness.
I look at my companion’s skin and contemplate, accidentally aloud, how warm it would keep me. “We’ll soon be selling beanie hats made out of it,” nods John, our guide. In my defence, I should perhaps point out that it is very windy indeed here on Ireland’s Atlantic coast – and that the companion whose hide I’m eyeing up is an alpaca, like a llama but with softer, more wool-like fleece. John keeps 50 of the sweet-natured beasts on a ruggedly beautiful patch of emerald upland called the Knockamany Bens, leading guests on hour-long walks with them (wildalpacaway.com). On mine, I rubber-neck furiously, torn between the photogenic furballs themselves and the breath-robbing views – the honey-coloured beach of Five Fingers Strand one-way, dramatic cliffs the other. We’re on the Inishowen Peninsula, the northernmost sliver of Donegal, where a quirk of cartography means Northern Ireland shares an east-west border with the South. Request a holiday brochure from one of our partners I’m following in the footsteps and tyre-tracks of Fred Sirieix, whose Tour de Fred: Northern Ireland reaches its finale here (and can be viewed on ITVX). The five-part series sees the broadcaster and former maître d’ cycle round from Dublin to Londonderry before crossing back into the Irish Republic for a taste of Inishowen. It’s a trip that’s really easy to replicate, even if you’ve no intention of straddling a saddle. Sirieix arrives in Dublin by ferry (irishferries.com), which has a certain romance, but there are cheap flights in and out of Dublin, Derry and Belfast. Hiring a car will open up some of the most dangerously scenic drives in Europe, but for safety’s sake bring a co-driver to share with, because it’s impossible to keep your eyes on the gorgeous road around, say, the Causeway Coast or rolling uppy-downy country roads of Antrim. Accommodation takes in everything from wee ma-&-da B&Bs to grand country-house estates; mealtimes will leave you satisfyingly stuffed whether it’s local livestock (I’ve never eaten better steak than at Belfast’s MeatLocker; michaeldeane.co.uk/meatlocker) or seafood. Grab fish and chips from either of the excellent chippies in Bushmills and eat them among the seaside ruins of Dunluce Castle. View oEmbed on the source website The produce in these parts is so good, in fact, that even a kitchen clown like me can’t mess it up. At Wild & Fired BBQ School (lo-slo.co.uk), I’m taught to “cook dirty” by laying my meat directly on the coals – and though I don’t pull it off with quite the Gallic élan Sirieix manages, the results are a revelation. Wild & Fired sits prettily beside Lough Foyle among the elegantly rambling gardens of Brook Hall (brookhall.co.uk), and Sirieix visits each in the final episode. Like him, I get both a botany and a history lesson on the guided tour, but the various walking tours available in Derry itself are a reminder that here, historic events aren’t confined to previous centuries. The murals, the walls, the flags, the bullet holes, the Peace Bridge – even the tongue-in-cheek ten-feet-high tribute to Channel 4’s Derry Girls painted on a gable-end in the city centre – they’re all powerfully visible evidence of just how recently the Troubles racked this city, and how far it’s come since. Beyond the bustle (and great live music scenes) of Derry and Belfast, though, the peace and quiet is palpable. Sirieix cycles the Mourne Mountains and Strangford Lough, out on the eastern edge of Northern Ireland, but you don’t need his steely thighs to enjoy them. The Mournes are walkable by even the normally footpath-phobic – true, their heights are dramatically imposing, but their lower slopes are gorse-jewelled, sheep-speckled, gently inclining curves, criss-crossed by easy tracks (walkthemournes.com). Up the road at Strangford, meanwhile, I find tranquillity where I least expect it: stand-up paddleboards turn out to be easier than they look (Strangfordloughactivitycentre.com), and I’m soon alone on the still, clear waters with only seals for company, the big-eyed beauties lounging on some Lough-edge rocks. Eventually, however, I succumb to the bike – albeit a cheat’s version. Borrowing an eBike (grassroutes.ie) and the vast brain of my guide Peter (discoverireland.ie/donegal/the-great-inishowen-derry-tour-experience), I spend my last day rolling through a landscape from a location manager’s fantasies. Tumbledown family farms, tinkling streams, contented-looking cattle, ancient Celtic crosses, stern Catholic churches, high wild peat bogs – and, most memorable of all, the call-me-home smoke-smell of peat turves burned for fuel in those farmhouses’ fireplaces. There’s only one way for this day, and this trip, to end. Earlier, I’d seen the future of booze at the chic, boutique, celebrity-endorsed Muff Liquor Company (the distillery takes its name from its home village of Muff; themuffliquorcompany.com). But at McGowan’s Bar, in the tiny Culineen village of Redcastle, it’s like I’ve stepped into the 19th century, and I’m warmly enveloped in the locals’ chat the minute I walk in the door. My pint of Guinness comes with a whiskey chaser, a shamrock drawn in the creamy head on top, and a good dollop of gossip. It may be a craic-worn cliché, but clichés never tasted so good. Sign up for our offers email and get entered in our monthly prize draw at radiotimes.com/prizedraw Tour de Fred: Northern Ireland is available to stream on ITVX. Check out more of our Travel coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Chris Chibnall calls new novel "Broadchurch-adjacent" after "full-on" Doctor Who writing experience
From BAFTAs to books — Chris Chibnall is forging a new career in crime fiction, and his debut novel is set a few miles from Broadchurch...
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. The smile vanishes. A chill descends. Words crackle through the ether: "I will hunt… you… down." Chris Chibnall is telling me what will happen to me if I give away any spoilers about his debut crime novel – and though he’s joking (I think), the Broadchurch and Doctor Who writer/showrunner is absolutely serious about his first foray into the printed word. "I wanted to write a book precisely because I knew it would be really hard work,” he explains. “I’d been wanting to do one for a decade or two, and after the first season of Broadchurch, a few publishers got in touch. But then I was doing seasons two and three, then the Doctor Who offer came along [Chibnall was showrunner 2018–21]. I came out of all that and thought, ‘What’s on the bucket list?’ A novel was number one on that list, and it was such a joy to go from the most full-on television show you can do, and switch to just me and a laptop and some words." Oh, so it was a relief not to have to worry about furiously proprietorial fans or meddling BBC producers any more? "No, I didn’t think that on Doctor Who! You don’t worry about that stuff when you’re writing a story, you’re just looking for something fresh and original. And I love the collaboration of TV, and being part of a group endeavour. It’s just that I wanted to take away all the stabilisers and mitigations and see if I could make something on my own when there’s nowhere to hide." He certainly has. Death at the White Hart is a gripping thriller, which sings off the page thanks to brilliantly drawn characters and fizzing dialogue. Although the strange, unsettling murder at its centre occurs in a pretty west Dorset village with thatched cottages and two pubs, it’s anything but "cosy crime": the setting is absolutely recognisable as real, 2025 Britain – complete with overworked Amazon drivers and villagers having to turn their homes into Airbnb rentals to make ends meet. Then, of course, there’s the newly merged (and already overstretched) Three Counties police force in charge of the investigating. Read more: Doctor Who's modern reboot could have been disastrous – here's how it defied the odds "This is a Broadchurch adjacent novel," Chibnall confirms. "It feels like it takes place ten miles down the road from Broadchurch. I think any great crime novel has a dramatic dissonance at its heart, and here the murder is shocking because that sort of thing is so rare in a bucolic west Dorset community. It shakes people up, and puts all the characters under pressure, in a way that’s more visible than with a murder in an urban landscape. Also a lot of people live in our small towns and villages, and it feels important to write about how life is changing around us at this incredibly disruptive rate." Going around murdering his west Dorset neighbours (on paper) wasn’t an act of revenge for Chibnall, then, who moved to the area a few years ago? "Oh no! I love it here. The Americans are really good at making parts of their landscape iconic, but I think this place deserves that, too. It’s the same with Liverpool [where Chibnall was raised]: I always want it to be in things I’ve written because it’s the greatest city in the world. Can you mythologise the A35 in the same way the Americans do with Route 66? Probably not, but you can give it a go." His biggest literary influence, he says, was the quintessentially English Agatha Christie: "I’m a big, big fan. I read all her books in my teens – taking each one out from Formby Library – and I took them apart to see how they work, like a Swiss watch, every little cog. At the same time as writing the novel, I was working on an adaptation of her Seven Dials Mystery for Netflix, which was incredibly useful." There are “conversations” going on about a potential screen version of Death at the White Hart, says Chibnall – but he’s “always having conversations about everything” (he was once even tapped up about doing Broadchurch: the Musical, he claims). Meanwhile, there will be another book next year, and he remains – that steely glint returns to his eye – “super-serious about being a novelist”. And if a crazed criminal type put a gun to his head and made him choose between books and TV? “I’d be grabbing their gun, throwing them to the ground and standing with my boot to their throat.” This time, I’m not even sure he’s joking. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Chef Jeremy Pang knows all the best places to find the authentic flavours of Hong Kong.
Feeding chicken’s feet and so-called thousand-year-old eggs to famous people might sound more like a bushtucker trial on I’m a Celebrity... than a travelogue-cum-cookery show, but they’re all on the menu in Jeremy Pang’s Hong Kong Kitchen, new on ITVX this week. The six-part series features Pang taking his guests – from TV presenter Mel Giedroyc to chef Simon Rimmer – on a foodie adventure amid the flavour-saturated streets of Hong Kong. Pang – familiar to viewers from appearances on Ready Steady Cook, Saturday Kitchen and his own show, Jeremy Pang’s Asian Kitchen – hails from three generations of Chinese chefs, so he certainly knows his way round a wok. So, where does he eat in Hong Kong himself, and how can visitors ensure that their trip is truly delicious? Sign up to our mailing list to receive more content like this from Radio Times Travel, Shop and Money - click here Touch down and tuck in “Flights into Hong Kong usually land quite early in the morning, so I drop my luggage off with the hotel concierge then go straight to a roast meats place until my room is ready. You can just Google 'roast meats central Hong Kong' and they’ll all be pretty good, because it’s a real HK thing and there’s a great deal of competition. “The way to order is to pick two meats, which will come on a massive bed of rice with a little sliver of vegetables. I usually add half a salted duck egg, then take the little bits of that to put into my rice to season it. “When I arrived for our recent filming trip, I went straight to a place on Queen Victoria Street called Lung Kee, which is brilliant.” ... Or try some fast food “If you want to ease yourself in to Hong Kong food, the fast-food joints you find in the shopping centres are really good – chains like Maxim’s or Fairwood. They have big picture menus up on the wall, so you can see what you’re getting, and you just give the number of what you want to order. “You’ll be well fed for a fiver, and it’s good, freshly made food: roast duck, barbecued roast pork, crispy pork, poached soy-sauce chicken with a bit of ginger and spring onion oil… “That’s a little less intimidating for the first-timer than going straight for dim sum. I took Mel Giedroyc to a really old-school dim sum place for the show, and while I had my back turned to pick some more dishes, she took the chicken’s feet I’d given her and calmly passed them over to our driver friend. It was a funny moment, so I hope it made the edit!” Pavement kitchens “There are only a few dai pai dongs left. The term literally means 'big licensed street stand', and they’re outdoor wok kitchens – the stalls aren’t on wheels any more, but you can imagine how they once looked. It will be just one or two chefs cooking, out on the street, with these massive burners and the kind of heat that will singe your eyebrows. What’s amazing is the speed they cook: a stir fry that we might do at home in five or six minutes, they’ll cook in 45 seconds. The skill is incredible. “Hong Kong kitchens are very vertical, as there’s not much space, so everything is stacked. There will be basketfuls of veg stacked by the prep chefs, to which, when you order, the wok chef will add the protein – dishing up black pepper beef and potatoes, or flash-fried chilli and garlic clams, or ginger and spring onion crab or salted egg prawns. There’s a great open-air stall called Oi Man Sang in the Sham Shui Po neighbourhood, where maybe 500 or 600 people each day are fed by two wok chefs and two prep chefs!” Request a holiday brochure from one of our partners Spam with that? “You should try a cha chaan teng, or tea house lounge. They started in the 1950s, and were what Hong Kong people saw as Western cuisine, so they serve really random things like instant noodles with spam and a fried egg on top. It might not be what you think of as Hong Kong food, but it absolutely is. There’s one called Tsui Wah that has recently reopened, over four or five storeys, and it’s open 24 hours. “Want something even odder? At Yung Kee restaurant we fed [food critic and MasterChef judge] Grace Dent a 'thousand-year-old egg', also known as a 'century egg'. They’re actually only about 30 days old, but preserved in ash until the white turns translucent and the yolk gets bluey-green. I like them, but the colour puts people off, and Grace’s face said it all…” Don't forget the chow mein “A lot of the Chinese comfort food that we know in the UK originated from Hong Kong. Sweet and sour, black bean beef, chow mein… they would all have come from Hong Kong and that region around it. So don’t feel bad about going to Hong Kong and ordering a nice, familiar sweet and sour. In fact, you should – because that will probably be the best sweet and sour you’ve ever eaten…” Jeremy Pang's Hong Kong Kitchen arrives on ITVX on Saturday 22nd March. His accompanying book Hong Kong Kitchen: Classic Recipes for Baos, Noodles, Street Food and More... is available now. Check out more of our Travel coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Mark Steel found strength in laughter while he was undergoing treatment for throat cancer — and friends in unexpected places
To order The Leopard in My House by Mark Steel for £20 (RRP £22), click here So, just how funny is cancer? Comedian – and cancer patient – Mark Steel thinks about this for a second, then replies decisively. “It’s very funny! There’s nothing more amusing than puncturing the pomposity of a situation, which is why I don’t think I’ve ever been to a funeral where there’s not been a really good joke because someone has said something outrageous. My copy of the book [The Leopard In My House, Steel’s memoir of his “Adventures in Cancerland”] just arrived this morning, and I’ve been dipping in and remembering all the funny things that happened – like the Polish man next to me in the critical care unit of the cancer ward the morning of my operation, who just calmly lit up a cigarette.” In fact, the book is packed with laugh-out-embarrassingly loud moments (such as when Steel is trying to get through to his doctor on the phone, and posits a canned hold message saying “Remember, your tumour is important to us”. Or when he’s told his primary cancer is “occult” – medical jargon for “hidden” – and he asks if he needs to see a doctor or an exorcist). Steel is absolutely serious, though, when he talks about how humour got him through the uncertainty, terror and physical brutality of treatment after his throat cancer was first discovered in 2023. One comedian friend tossed him a pack of Strepsils, saying “That should sort it”. On another occasion – after the radiotherapy took Steel’s voice – the comic Seann Walsh “hoped it would come back as a comedy Chinese voice from the 1970s, so that I’d be cured of cancer but cancelled”. Even more close to the darkly-funny bone was the reaction of Steel’s son Elliot, also a stand-up, who accompanied his dad when he initially received his diagnosis – and filled the pregnant silence afterward by observing that he might be getting on the property ladder sooner than expected. (“I was really proud of him for saying that,” recalls Steel senior.) Even the unlikeliest comedians called to offer kind words. Steel may now be a fixture on Radio 4 (where his show Mark Steel’s In Town has chalked up 13 series) and a borderline national treasure (“maybe a Third Division one, the Crewe Alexandra of national treasures”) – but his earlier days as a firebrand left-wing “alternative comedian” meant that he never expected to get a phone call from the old-school, Thatcher-supporting “enemy” Jimmy Tarbuck to wish him luck with his treatment. It’s one of hundreds of poignant but unmawkish moments in the book, and laced with the candour that makes it such a powerful read (as well as a funny one). “If I’d read that he [Tarbuck] was ill, would I have found his number and called him?”, Steel asks himself. “Of course not.” Then there are his personal relationships. Steel had been in an on-off relationship with comedian Shaparak Khorsandi for years, but at the time of his diagnosis it was all very much “off”. The story of his subsequent fling with (yet) another comic makes for more awkward laughs: having to bring up vast quantities of phlegm into a salad bowl, a side effect of his treatment, is not conducive to dating. But by the end of the book, Steel and Khorsandi are together – and this time permanently, he thinks. “It would be a bit glib to say ‘Oh, when you nearly die of cancer you realise you have to get on with life’. But it definitely makes a difference.” Like most cancer survivors, he lives under the shadow of the disease’s possible return, and one challenge is to try to keep the positivity and perspective and joy in life’s small things that living close to death granted him. When he was given something approaching an all-clear, he says, he felt true euphoria – that he knew would last until he got stuck in traffic on the way home. “I still get annoyed at over-complicated websites or roadworks,” he says, but on some days even the irritation can feel good: “I’m annoyed, so I must be alive. I’m pissed off, therefore I am.” Steel insists that his experience of cancer diagnosis and treatment doesn’t mean that he has found the values we should all live by, but anyone who reads the book will get more from it than mere laughs. And for those who want only the laughs, there’s always the tour of the show of the book. “If people read the book and go ‘Oh I was really moved and touched and it’s changed my perspective on life and the little irritants of the day’, I’d think ‘Oh, that’s nice’. If they say that at the end of the show, I’d think ‘Well, that was bloody useless then. It was supposed to be funny.’” For information on Mark Steel’s comedy tour go to marksteelinfo.com
'Cancer is very funny!' – Mark Steel on finding the laughs in life's darkest moments
"If I'd read that Jimmy Tarbuck was ill, would I have found his number and called him? Of course not."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. So, just how funny is cancer? Comedian – and cancer patient – Mark Steel thinks about this for a second, then replies decisively. “It’s very funny! There’s nothing more amusing than puncturing the pomposity of a situation, which is why I don’t think I’ve ever been to a funeral where there’s not been a really good joke because someone has said something outrageous. My copy of the book [<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leopard-House-mans-adventures-cancerland/dp/1529941024/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.OdCoFEKRogzLwII8ak1MZNbvHOiAwTYL8M2yXeCQdGa2IEU18ZsrovIw_Jgb-tR1PzmvPJFtBxIH66X2dwZq6hhjnuNPZDz0V-qX52sALyeSGPUNVWTHtPH_FA7CoG5DhJQnsqbQ5VWX5F2I3s8lPjrQguKLM0-W6M8O4u61Y5kYDJe4jpysqtbRsO6I_NY9gQf5lU0PExUMfLX2d-SFuImQ7Z-8lSzD3Sv7vq94wmeN0mDpBBKFkzT0qGDcfBCYB8TmvXwUrguPvu9NppjilcqwACUJ-O1adP0GjDgEPuOEUio3EPwUgbRC0YY9wdC4K30GnksvpV70dEAda7pALw.zaGE8pQPSvWWmflnr7bHC4C4o5cGIemNE5llvPqxTZo&qid=1742223561&sr=1-1&tag=radtim0b-21&ascsubtag=radiotimes-2235960" target="_blank" rel="sponsored">The Leopard in My House, Steel’s memoir of his “Adventures in Cancerland”] just arrived this morning, and I’ve been dipping in and remembering all the funny things that happened – like the Polish man next to me in the critical care unit of the cancer ward the morning of my operation, who just calmly lit up a cigarette.” In fact, the book is packed with laugh-out-embarrassingly loud moments (such as when Steel is trying to get through to his doctor on the phone, and posits a canned hold message saying “Remember, your tumour is important to us”, or when he’s told his primary cancer is “occult” – medical jargon for “hidden” – and he asks if he needs to see a doctor or an exorcist). Steel is absolutely serious, though, when he talks about how humour got him through the uncertainty, terror and physical brutality of treatment after his throat cancer was first discovered in 2023. One comedian friend tossed him a pack of Strepsils, saying “That should sort it”. On another occasion – after the radiotherapy took Steel’s voice – the comic Seann Walsh “hoped it would come back as a comedy Chinese voice from the 1970s, so that I’d be cured of cancer but cancelled”. Even more close to the darkly-funny bone was the reaction of Steel’s son Elliot, also a stand-up, who accompanied his dad when he initially received his diagnosis – and filled the pregnant silence afterward by observing that he might be getting on the property ladder sooner than expected. (“I was really proud of him for saying that,” recalls Steel senior.) Even the unlikeliest comedians called to offer kind words. Steel may now be a fixture on Radio 4 (where his show Mark Steel’s In Town has chalked up 13 series) and a borderline national treasure (“maybe a Third Division one, the Crewe Alexandra of national treasures”) – but his earlier days as a firebrand left-wing “alternative comedian” meant that he never expected to get a phone call from the old-school, Thatcher-supporting “enemy” Jimmy Tarbuck to wish him luck with his treatment. It’s one of hundreds of poignant but unmawkish moments in the book, and laced with the candour that makes it such a powerful read (as well as a funny one). “If I’d read that he [Tarbuck] was ill, would I have found his number and called him?”, Steel asks himself. “Of course not.” Then there are his personal relationships. Steel had been in an on-off relationship with comedian Shaparak Khorsandi for years, but at the time of his diagnosis it was all very much “off”. The story of his subsequent fling with (yet) another comic makes for more awkward laughs: having to bring up vast quantities of phlegm into a salad bowl, a side effect of his treatment, is not conducive to dating. But by the end of the book, Steel and Khorsandi are together – and this time permanently, he thinks. “It would be a bit glib to say ‘Oh, when you nearly die of cancer you realise you have to get on with life’. But it definitely makes a difference.” Like most cancer survivors, he lives under the shadow of the disease’s possible return, and one challenge is to try to keep the positivity and perspective and joy in life’s small things that living close to death granted him. When he was given something approaching an all-clear, he says, he felt true euphoria – that he knew would last until he got stuck in traffic on the way home. “I still get annoyed at over-complicated websites or roadworks,” he says, but on some days even the irritation can feel good: “I’m annoyed, so I must be alive. I’m pissed off, therefore I am.” Steel insists that his experience of cancer diagnosis and treatment doesn’t mean that he has found the values we should all live by, but anyone who reads the book will get more from it than mere laughs. And for those who want only the laughs, there’s always the tour of the show of the book. “If people read the book and go ‘Oh I was really moved and touched and it’s changed my perspective on life and the little irritants of the day’, I’d think ‘Oh, that’s nice’. If they say that at the end of the show, I’d think ‘Well, that was bloody useless then. It was supposed to be funny.’” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Colum McCann on epic new novel Twist and the famous fan who left him humbled
Colum McCann speaks to Radio Times Magazine about his latest novel, Twist.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. What do Bono, JJ Abrams, Salman Rushdie, Sting and Pope Francis have in common? They’re all fans of Colum McCann. And they’re not the only ones, either: the Dublin-born, New York-based writer has been translated into 40 languages, sold more than a million copies of his 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin in the USA alone, and has picked up literary awards from France to China (not to mention an Oscar nomination). If it sounds like he’s brought some odd bedfellows together, that’s right on brand for him. Connecting the world via stories is his life’s work, he says – and, indeed, the subject of his latest, Twist. "It’s a book about the repair and sabotage of underwater cables," he explains. "Like most of us, I thought that the world’s internet traffic shot up in the air and was passed around by satellites before being beamed back down to us. But, actually, nearly all our intercontinental information is shooting through tubes in the darkness at the bottom of the sea." Speaking over Zoom from his Manhattan apartment, he tells me, “You and I are bouncing through those tubes at this very second. I’m going through a black box at 60 Hudson Street, which is where everything from New York gets channelled through, then I go out to a landing station in either Long Island or New Jersey, then shoot underwater and land in Cornwall, whizzing up fibreoptic cables that in the UK mostly follow the railway lines. It’s miraculous, but these cables are very exposed. "You could go down to the landing station in Cornwall, and more or less tread on the place where the cables come in from the sea. With a crowbar, you could probably lift up the manhole cover, drop some explosive in there, do some immediate damage. And Britain is one of those places that could be isolated quite easily.” Even more potentially catastrophic, he says, is damage to cables at sea. “I’m worried this will become a new and prominent form of warfare. Around 10 trillion dollars worth of transactions go through those cables every day, so if ten or 11 cables get taken out, it’s a doomsday scenario. We could have an informational equivalent to 9/11. We never expected jet liners flying into skyscrapers, but we woke up one morning and it was so.” By an odd quirk of timing – “a number of my friends joked, ‘You’ve got a pretty good marketing campaign for your book there!’” – the last few months have seen this threat become visible to the naked eye. Cables beneath the Baltic Sea appear to have been sabotaged several times, and in January the UK’s defence secretary revealed that a “Russian spy ship… [had been caught] mapping the UK’s critical underwater infrastructure”. Given all that, it’s no surprise that there’s a side of Twist that’s not unlike a thriller (and there is, indeed, the odd twist), as a journalist goes out on a cable repair ship off the west coast of Africa. But there’s still the same relish of language, character and empathy that’s twice seen McCann make the Booker Prize long-list. Several of his books have been adapted, too – American Mother as an audiobook read by Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything in this Country Must as a short film (hence that Oscar nod) – so Twist’s turn as Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime this week holds no terrors for him. He won’t be lending his own lovely Irish brogue to the affair, though: “When they were doing the audiobook for Let the Great World Spin, I wanted to be the reader for the first and last chapter, but they said, ‘We normally have actors, and made me do an audition. I did an hour in the booth and I didn’t get the job!” More adaptations are planned. One of the world’s few indisputably A-list actors is interested in Twist; and JJ Abrams (director of, among others, two Star Wars films) is developing a movie version of Let the Great World Spin. Sting wanted to be involved, too, so he’s writing the music, but both Sting and Abrams have gone from fans to friends. “Sting’s become a pal – he’s just a genuine, down-to-earth person – and JJ’s a great friend: he let me use his cabin up in Maine to write Twist.” But ask McCann whose endorsement means the most to him, from that list of heavyweights at the top of this article, and his answer is instant. "It’s a bit raw, because he’s sick now, but spending an hour with Pope Francis [after the Pontiff had read and loved the author’s 2020 novel Apeirogon, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] was humbling, and the fact he used some of my words in some of his masses is the greatest honour of all. "Not because I’m a Catholic – I’m the world’s worst freaking Catholic – but because I’ve never seen anybody before who physically exudes the importance of listening to others. So getting to know those other [famous] people has been fantastic, too, but the most meaningful? I’m going to take Pope Francis, thanks." The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Buy <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Twist-Colum-McCann/dp/1526656930/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26QPB065JGV1P&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.aacF7o0mMuIww_1-f6LAq0zjbbsJX8xq_w_P46hw6XvhGc8c-DaPdYP7hwZQir3az723YnQ_dGVINHcFLJZw81FuSCk197PhDmTNRrwrl-7j2bp5vBa6p3FxTFzgMrmnJhiWuE94qqAva3BmrXalaFNoFbcgNrPiSKLkAwtSJN8JvvZsw0purbEk0TlErzN7En6giTDSkbuc0IEO8TBOTg.U2Hp7gRGoLttth0_2OFMzVtysa5IHs9R5OFLAabeYk0&dib_tag=se&keywords=colum+mccann+twist&qid=1741599688&s=books&sprefix=colum+mccann+twist%2Cstripbooks%2C66&sr=1-1&tag=radtim0b-21&ascsubtag=radiotimes-2231809" target="_blank" rel="sponsored">Twist by Colum McCann right now. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast. For audio books, take a look at the best Audible offers.
'I wanted to escape aspects of my life': Gordon Buchanan on mental health and hiding in nature
Ahead of new book In The Hide: How The Natural World Saved My Life, Gordon Buchanan opens up about his revered career to Radio Times Magazine.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “I don’t have any supernatural beliefs,” insists Gordon Buchanan. “But…” continues the BBC’s best-known and most-decorated natural history cameraman, “I guarantee that if I sit for four hours waiting for an animal to do something, then decide it’s not going to so I’ll pour myself a cup of coffee… then that will make the animal do something. I’ve actually done that, occasionally: gone to pour a piping-hot coffee, just to drive things along.” So that’s the secret behind a career that’s seen Buchanan wield the camera on programmes such as Planet Earth and Frozen Planet, present the hugely popular Family & Me documentaries and pick up an MBE for services to conservation and wildlife filming along the way. But even with the coffee trick in his toolbox, he’s “had his KitKat moments”, he admits (referencing the 1989 advert in which a wildlife photographer waits ages for a panda to emerge from its hiding place – then misses a pair of them roller-skating as he breaks for a chocolate biscuit). “Any wildlife film-maker who says that’s never happened to them is maybe not being 100 per cent truthful. “Last year I was working on the Big Cats 24/7 series. Lions can be incredibly docile and lazy, so one day it was really hot, the lions were fast asleep, they hadn’t moved for four hours, so I thought, ‘I’m just going to catch up on that podcast.’ I had one earphone in, one out, and my brain left the Okovango Delta and went somewhere completely different – and of course that’s when the lions got up and started moving. I’ve learnt that if you want to get the footage, you’ve got to be engaged and try to predict what might happen next.” By way of a more successful example, the Glaswegian mentions filming urban leopards in Mumbai (which also makes for a surprisingly edge-of-the-seat chapter in his beautifully written new memoir, In the Hide). “For Planet Earth II, we were trying to capture them hunting and we had 30 nights to do it. That sounds a lot, but there’s a reason it had never been filmed before: it’s really difficult.” Only by focusing completely – by “engaging my Spidey senses”, as he puts it – was he able to pick up on “the clues that the leopard was coming: those barking dogs, a hush among the humans, the right type of darkness and the intangible atmospherics”. While 30 nights of waiting, in a small space (with no podcasts!), might sound like hell to some, for Buchanan “the hide is my happy place”. Alone and alert out there, “I’m watching the world and engaging with nature, and it’s an escape. You’re hiding from the animals but also hiding from yourself, from who you are.” And why would he want to hide from himself? “I gravitated towards this way of living because I wanted to escape troubling aspects of my childhood and adult life. There are things I’m hiding from that maybe we should all try and hide from: modern life and this crazy, unnatural world humans have invented for ourselves. But for me personally, in my 40s I realised I was a depressive and I had probably been depressed my entire life. I’ve always been an anxious person and I can get overwhelmed quite easily by things that really shouldn’t be of any consequence, like having a full inbox or a long to-do list. If I’m not in a good place, that can build to an all-out depressive episode.” Nature has always been an escape for him, explains the 52-year-old. His difficult early life – a father who left when he was four, a violent stepfather, a “torturous” time at school – was softened a little by the family’s move to the Isle of Mull. “And I suppose that nature and ‘the hide’ is sort of one and the same to me,” he says. “Nature is a place where you can look around and engage with something that’s far bigger than you and far more important. You can actually transcend your petty issues and switch your own muddled mind off and just exist in the moment. I think that’s really grounding, really levelling. The hide is where you go to hide from the things that concern you in life. And whether that’s an actual hide or a metaphorical one, it’s really important to have a place where you can just… be.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. In The Hide: How The Natural World Saved My Life by Gordon Buchanan is published by Witness Books. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.