Jo Nesbø reveals his 5 must-visit locations for fans of Detective Harry Hole
Fans of the fictional detective are keen to explore his Oslo stomping ground, says author Jo Nesbø.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “It’s unreal. I just pretend it’s not happening,” says Jo Nesbø, creator of Netflix’s Detective Hole series and the 60-million-selling books that came before it. But is he talking about his hero’s troubled personal life? The occult mystery at the heart of the show’s plot? No, he means the significant number of tourists pottering around Oslo looking for spots featured in the book or series. The city’s tourist board has a whole microsite devoted to helping holidaymakers find Harry’s haunts (visitoslo.com/en/articles/harry-hole) – but here are a few of Nesbø’s own highlights. Harry’s house Sofies gate 5 When looking for a locale for his hero, Nesbø admits: “I made things easy for myself by writing about places close to where I lived.” The author still has a place in Bislett, one of Oslo’s oldest neighbourhoods, though he’d rather you focused on Hole’s address than his own. “I’ve been in James Joyce’s house in Dublin, and it didn’t give me any insight into his writing, and it didn’t clear up [Joyce’s notoriously difficult epic] Finnegans Wake.” Instead, locate Harry’s place at Sofies gate 5 – you’ll find some genius has assigned a buzzer to HARRY HOLE on the flats’ entry phone system. Watering Hole Restaurant Schrøder To say Schrøder’s (Waldemar Thranes gate 8; restaurant-schrøder.no) is Harry’s regular hang-out is a decorous understatement. The joint features in every single book and takes a starring role in the TV series, too. You may or may not understand Hole’s devotion once you’ve been here – it’s a no-frills bar/restaurant where neither the decor nor menu seems to have changed much since it opened in 1956 – but you’ll see why it suits the dissolute detective: drinks are cheap and breakfast is served between noon and 3pm. Its sole concession to its newfound fame is a small plaque above one random table that says plainly, “This is the table Harry Hole prefers to sit at.” Where does Nesbø go? “There are bars near there that I like, but I’d risk ruining them for the clientele if I told an international audience about them.” View Green Video on the source website Eerie outdoor arthouse Vigeland Sculpture Park Nesbø’s not worried about letting the cat out of the bag with this one: “Vigeland Park isn’t exactly a secret – plenty of people go there – but it’s a beautiful place, and you should absolutely see it if you’re in Oslo.” A set of sculptures by local artist Gustav Vigeland, it may sound “meh”, but it’s a thoroughly spooky experience at dusk or after dark (it’s open 24 hours), with around 200 naked figures, including some angry-looking giant granite babies and a bizarre tower comprising writhing nudes (The Monolith). There’s also an indoor museum (vigeland.museum.no/en), and when you need a break from all the art on display, you’re surrounded by the city’s lovely, lush Frogner Park. Making a splash Frognerbadet Public Bath A cheerful dip in an open-air pool isn’t perhaps 100 per cent in character for Harry Hole. (Like all good TV detectives, he has his dark side.) But Frognerbadet features in both the Netflix adaptation and a few of the books, so it’s an obvious place of pilgrimage for fans. Sadly, those who want to swim will have to wait until next year, as the three-pool complex is currently closed for renovations – but there will then be a waterslide. It’s only ever open in summer, but meanwhile, there’s much else to explore in the area: the Oslo Museum is five minutes’ walk away, and you’re not far from Torshovdalen, one of Nesbø’s favourite parts of the city. Drink in the culture National Theatre In the show, we see Harry at Oslo’s glorious National Theatre (nationaltheatret.no). He’s not there to enjoy a performance of My Fair Lady, though; he’s investigating the disappearance of its director’s wife. Likewise, you don’t have to fancy its current offering, “poetic and painful” Gi Meg Hånden (“Give Me Your Hand”) to enjoy a visit: hour-long guided tours, in English, get you backstage at both the institution’s two spectacular performance spaces, and throw in a helping of history too, covering off both Norway’s most celebrated writer, Henrik Ibsen, and the country’s second biggest literary hero, the somewhat-less-internationally-renowned Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. That said, you might just pop into the building’s excellent new cocktail place, the Theatre Bar, instead. That is, after all, what Harry would do. 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.
Michael Portillo reveals two near-death experiences he encountered in Japan – and the most futuristic thing he found
Hot sand baths, risky sushi, robot carers... Japan delivered no end of thrills and surprises for the railway enthusiast.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. So, Michael, you went to Japan and they buried you? Up to my neck in black sand, yes. Hot springs are a big thing out there because of all the volcanic activity, and I went to one on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands, where the subterranean waters heat the sand, and they bury you in it. It’s supposed to be good for all sorts of bits for you – people swear by it for the circulation, digestion and so on. It’s really no odder than going to a sauna. Except in a sauna you’re not buried. What if they forget to exhume you? It’s doubtful you could get yourself out, but there are people on hand to help. They stuck a parasol on my head to protect me from the sun – although it then poured with rain, and it was one of those pretty paper ones so not terribly effective at keeping me dry. I won’t be hurrying to do the whole thing again, though I did love Kyushu. Not far from Ibusuki, where they buried me, is a very beautiful volcano called Sakurajima, which translates as “Cherry Blossom Island”. It’s perfectly volcano-shaped, and it’s one of Japan’s most active, so everyone in the area is drilled on what to do if it erupts. We saw all these tiny tots going to school in their pink hard hats and carrying survival cases. You survived another near-death experience with a dinner, didn’t you? Yes, there was the pufferfish. This is the Japanese delicacy that naturally contains a deadly neurotoxin with no known antidote, so chefs have to have something like 20 years of training before they’re licensed to prepare it. I tried it at Shimonoseki, on the main island, Honshu, and you have this real feeling of playing Russian – or Japanese – Roulette. What does it taste like? I’m guessing... fish? It tasted extremely like fish. It was quite pleasant – neither the best nor the worst fish I’ve ever had, though possibly the most exciting, given that I was dicing with death. It was certainly better than the fried octopus balls I had in Osaka, but nowhere near as good as the sushi. That was gorgeous. Sushi chefs, too, have years and years of training, and to see it carved in front of you, with all this delicacy and artistry, is tremendous. I’d never understood this before, but the chef told me the most delicate thing to do is swallow the entire piece of sushi in one go – and these are quite large pieces. Now mine is not a small mouth, but nonetheless conversation was not possible for some time after each mouthful. You didn’t suspect they were giving you extra big bits just to shut you up? I did not. That’s simply not the way the Japanese think. In fact, I found them incredibly friendly. Thanks to Google Translate, you can sit down with people anywhere and have a chat – if they don’t speak English, they simply pass you their mobile phone, you speak into it, and it’s immediately translated for them. It’s now very easy for foreigners to get about, too. On the Tokyo subway, for instance, there are signs and announcements in English. In fact, each station has its own jingle. So if you’re a routine commuter, you don’t even have to look up from your iPhone – you just hear the jingle, have a Pavlovian reaction and leave the train. Please tell me subway-stop jingles weren’t the most futuristic thing you experienced. No, at Waseda University, also in Tokyo, I met these robots they’re developing to help elderly people, though I think they have some way to go. There was one that’s meant to turn people over in bed – it sort of sticks an arm under your knees, and another one goes on your back, and it’s meant to give you a little flip. It didn’t throw you halfway across the room, did it? No, the opposite. I think it was used to more delicate Japanese forms rather than a heavy Westerner. I’m not a slight creature, so I had to give it a bit of help. Then there was another one that’s meant to take your shirt off and hang it up. It did that all right, but when it was offered one of my jackets, which are heavier, that was too much for it. It just dropped it on the floor. Did it do that on grounds of taste, because the AI objected to my colourful wardrobe? I don’t think so. Great Japanese Railway Journeys, Monday–Friday 6.30pm BBC Two The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Great Japanese Railway Journeys airs Monday–Friday at 6:30pm on BBC Two. 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.
Ben Fogle: "I'm reconciled to the fact I might not be returning to China any time soon"
Whether he was fixing The Great Wall, fulfilling a film-studio dream or going wild, China took Ben Fogle’s breath away.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “I’m reconciled to the fact I might not be returning to China any time soon,” says Ben Fogle. He’s not being flippant: there’s a real possibility he will be banned from the People’s Republic after his new series about the country starts this week. “We had to think very carefully, because there are a number of things we filmed that the authorities there won’t be happy with,” he explains. “We did have a government-assigned observer with us, but they’d often disappear when the temptation of tea and cakes arose. So our documentary is a pretty accurate insight into our ‘lived experience’ out there. “But I would absolutely say to everyone, ‘Go to China’. It’s probably the most interesting travel journey I’ve done.” Here are his highlights. Jiankou The Great Wall “When I was told that I would be ‘fixing’ a part of the Wall, I thought it would be a typical TV moment of me holding a brick with 20 other people wearing white gloves, gently putting it down and then claiming to have been a part of the Wall-making team. I had no idea that, in China, when they say you’re doing something, you really do it. So I physically lifted and made the cement for dozens of bricks that were hundreds and hundreds of years old. That was really moving, but even just seeing the Wall at the main tourist spots near Beijing is incredible. “Nothing can prepare you for the scale, majesty, magnitude and emotions of the Great Wall as it soars over peaks and down gullies. It took my breath away.” Chengdu A Chinese medicine market “Traditional medicine is huge in China, and the markets themselves are vast. It’s like going to a FTSE 100 company: they’ve got massive boards showing the fluctuating prices of different ingredients, changing in real time, like gold and silver prices. They use a lot of animal parts, of which penises seem to be very common for healing human aliments that involve sexual organs. But we also went to a cockroach farm where they harvest billions of cockroaches in one big room. They’re then crunched and mulched down into toothpaste and shampoo and moisturisers. I’m not sure why they’re used for toothpaste. Perhaps, in the same way a deer penis is supposed to enhance your sexual prowess, cockroaches have really shiny teeth… I’ve now got a mental image of a billion cockroaches all with Rylan’s teeth.” Hengdian World Studios Playing a ‘Chinawood’ extra “Hengdian is the world’s largest outdoor film studio: it’s where the micro-drama began – those short, vertical-format films for watching on mobiles that are taking over the world. It’s a multibillion-pound market, with literally 100 different micro-drama sets, every one of them being used and rotated around 24 hours a day. “You can visit lots of the sets – there’s a full-size replica of the Forbidden City, they’ve got Shanghai built along the banks of a river – and I got to be an extra in one of the films, indulging my childhood aspirations to be an actor. My character saves a Chinese damsel in distress from some wicked thieves – or do I? There’s a bit of a twist at the end and I suspect an Oscar is on its way!” Longji Getting down and dirty on the rice terraces “The rice terraces at Longji are stunning. They’re ethereal, otherworldly, timeless – and I was lucky enough to be there for the annual planting festival. That’s the opening of the rice season, when they irrigate all the terraces, so you watch the water flood into tens of thousands of terraces, and you’ve got the reflection of the sun, and all the colour starts to return to what up until that stage of the year is quite a barren winter landscape. “It’s not just a ceremony, though: everyone gets out there and mucks in. They have to catch all the fish that are in the terraces, use animals – and humans – to pull the ploughs, everyone gets muddy to get the terraces all working. It’s an extraordinary spectacle of community, and of practices that have gone unchanged for millennia. Beautiful.” Sichuan Pretending to be a panda “We went to a centre that was preparing giant pandas for reintegration into the wilderness, and in order to ensure that they’re not habituated to humans, you have to dress as a panda – which, honestly, was completely unexpected. “The slightly comedic element is that these are pretty basic panda costumes – this is not Aardman Animations quality – but the result was that we were able to get very close to these semi-wild creatures, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a panda in my life, either wild or in captivity. “Were the pandas fooled by the costumes? I think the jury’s out. It’s quite possible that if you watch the programme, you’ll see one roll its eyes.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. China with Ben Fogle begins on Monday 6 April at 9pm on 5. heck 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.
Emma Chapman: "If intelligent life has evolved and wants to send us a message, they'll develop a radio telescope to do that"
The signals that bring us radio and TV could also let us talk to extraterrestrial life, says Emma Chapman.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. When humans eventually make contact with aliens, we’ll be able talk to them about sitcoms. “There’s something called the I Love Lucy Radius,” explains author and astrophysicist Emma Chapman, referencing the long-running US comedy series of the 1950s. Thanks to its massive popularity, “its broadcast caused significant emissions of radio waves [used in early TVs as well as radios] into space. We were very loud to the universe at that point. And the I Love Lucy Radius is how far those radio waves have travelled in the 75 years since they were broadcast – which now encapsulates a few planets beyond our solar system. If there is life on those worlds, they’ll have seen I Love Lucy.” Chapman’s new book, Radio Universe, is full of fantastic little fact-blasts like that, but there’s something especially delicious about listening to them on Radio 4, where the work is this week’s Book of the Week, because the technology you’re utilising is the very same as that Chapman uses to listen in to the echoes of the Big Bang in her day job as a Royal Society research fellow at Nottingham University. “When you extend the antenna on your radio – or switch on your mobile phone, which also has miniaturised antennas in it – you’ll be receiving radio waves from big stations like London’s BT Tower,” she explains, “and that’s how The Archers arrives safely to you. Radio astronomy is just using a different size or shape of antenna, and pointing them upwards to receive waves from solar flares or space weather or pulses from a spinning pulsar star or matter actually swirling and falling into a black hole.” She’s not wrong about using a different size of antenna: if you’ve seen GoldenEye or Contact, you’ve seen Puerto Rico’s 1,000-foot Arecibo radio telescope. But just as impressive, apparently – and Chapman has worked at both – is the Square Kilometre Array Telescope currently being built in the Western Australian desert, which will consist of more than a million connected antennas when finished. Even more mind-blowing is the revelation that radio waves are actually a kind of light. “Optical light – that’s the light humans have evolved to be able to see – is only a tiny sliver of the spectrum,” says Chapman. “In fact, most animals on Earth can also see in UV, which we can’t. But radio waves have the longest wavelength and lowest energy of the whole spectrum, so can travel really long distances.” Which is why we can use them to eavesdrop on what Chapman calls “the cosmic dawn”, and why she describes herself as a “stellar archaeologist” (it’s not, she insists, because it makes her sound like a cross between Princess Leia and Lara Croft). But is any of this useful at all? “Absolutely! Just a few weeks ago, scientists on the International Space Station were looking at a Petri dish of bacteriophages. These are viruses that can kill bacteria, and they were found to have much stronger abilities to do that in space. Then there are the asteroids up there worth a trillion dollars each because they have all the rare metals we could need and that countries are fighting over here on Earth. “Nasa has already sent probes, scooped up parts of asteroids and brought them back – with radio astronomy helping to map them, work out where they’re travelling and how they’re spinning, so the probes could land. We could be dragging those asteroids into Mars orbit and mining them, and we’re close to that. The physics is there, and there’s enough money down here to do it; it’s just that governments aren’t paying enough attention.” Then there’s the small matter of black holes. “Every spiral galaxy in our universe, including our own, has what’s called a supermassive black hole at its centre – and we’re comfortable with that because it’s all the way over there. But what’s quite horrifying, when you think about it, is that there are loads of little wandering black holes just roaming around the galaxy.” Fortunately, while conventional optical telescopes can’t see black holes (“because they’re, well, black”), they can show up on radio telescopes (“because there’s so much stuff falling into them, and so much friction between those particles and gas and dust, that it emits radio waves”). Perhaps of greater significance still is radio astronomy’s role in the search for extraterrestrial life. Which brings us back to telly. “The physics that makes radio waves so good for communications on Earth will be the same on planets around Alpha Centauri or wherever,” says Chapman, “so if intelligent life has evolved and wants to send us a message, they’ll develop a radio telescope to do that. But it’s just as likely they’ll do it by accident, through their TV broadcasts or whatever.” Maybe we’ll also be talking to them about I Love Xjgrfnujzjdtk. Radio Universe by Emma Chapman is available now The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Books coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guideto find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
After almost 20 years and 13 novels, author Jo Nesbo is bringing flawed hero Harry Hole to life on TV
Add Jo Nesbo's Detective Hole to your watchlist Two counts of bank robbery and one of indecent exposure – it’s fair to say that Jo Nesbo has come closer to his subject than most crime authors. “I was arrested in Oslo,” says the writer behind 13 Harry Hole novels and now a blockbuster adaptation on Netflix. “The police car drove up on the pavement in front of me, the cops jumped out and it was, ‘Turn your back! Hands on the wall!’ There had been a bank robbery just a few blocks away, and I was wearing the same clothes as the suspect. Weirdly, the same thing happened to me in Brazil, too.” There was no mistaken identity in the indecent exposure case: “I was 18, I was drunk, I mooned a police car… I spent a few hours in jail.” But the remarkable thing about Nesbo’s criminal past is that it’s not even the most interesting thing in his backstory. As well as selling more than 60 million books, the 65-year-old Norwegian has been a professional footballer (striker for Molde FK), the lead singer in a successful band (Di Derre) and an elite-level rock climber (completing his first officially pro-grade ascent at the age of 59), and is now, with Jo Nesbo’s Detective Hole debuting this week, a show-runner. “That opportunity came quite late in life,” he shrugs, almost apologetically, “and I just wanted to be part of something big like that. If it had been a movie, I wouldn’t have got involved, but because it was a TV series I said yes.” When I ask him why the different responses, he says something about the source novel feeling “more like a 10-hour story than a two-hour one”, but I wonder if actually it might have something to do with his previous experience at the hands of Hollywood. The Snowman (also a Harry Hole mystery), starring Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson, hit cinemas in 2017 and received a frosty response from both critics and audiences. “I saw an early cut, so I knew approximately where it was headed,” sighs Nesbo, “and I knew that it probably wasn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea.” Smart cookie that he is (did I mention that he has also been a journalist and an economist?), he worked out “that I’m going to be asked, for the next year, ‘What did you think about the movie?’ So I decided, OK, maybe I shouldn’t see the movie so that I don’t have to tell anybody whether I liked it or not. I went climbing instead of going to the premiere.” As show-runner on the Netflix series, however, he’s in charge – and taking no prisoners. “If you ask my bandmates,” he admits, “I’m probably a control freak and used to getting my way. So I’m open to the fact that almost every person on the crew of this show is better at their job than I would be, and eight out of 10 times are bringing something to the table that is better than what I had written or thought of myself. “But there are those last two times out of 10 when an actor or director or costume designer brings something to the table that doesn’t belong there…” And then he puts his arm around their shoulder and tells them so? “Yes. Except for the arm around the shoulder.” Even when it’s, say, Nick Cave, who provides the show’s music? “Actually he was very nice and very accommodating.” And his own band, Di Derre, didn’t demand the gig? “They asked me several times. I said ‘That’s not going to happen.’” He may be revelling in the control this time round, but the power hasn’t turned his head. He insists he has no plans to muscle in on upcoming screen adaptations of his stories, which include Blood on Snow, with Benedict Cumberbatch, and London, starring Oscar Isaac and directed by Ben Stiller. “Ben Stiller can absolutely sleep easy in his bed,” says Nesbo. However, Stiller might still have the odd wakeful night once he sees how high the bar has been set with Detective Hole. On a case that pits the hero up against a corrupt police officer within his own department, the twists keep coming and the tension never lets up. “Harry is a really intense guy,” explains his creator. “He’s the kind of guy who, after you’ve spent a weekend with him, you don’t call him back on Monday. You wait a month.” Troublingly, Nesbo also describes the alcoholic Harry as his soul mate: “When you’re writing about a character for that many years [the first novel appeared in 1997], it’s unavoidable that you put yourself into that character, that you’ll like to spend time with someone you understand and share things with, like basic values, taste in music and film, sense of humour. So you’ve created a person that you don’t necessarily think is the greatest guy in the world, but they’re interesting to spend time with. And if you have any insight into your own personality, you will know that you are not the greatest guy in the world either. So maybe that makes you soul mates.” “I don’t have demons the way Harry has. Harry’s drawn to the abyss much more than I am. Also I don’t know addiction the way he does. But we all have some kind of addiction.” I ask Nesbo what his is, but he uses his right to remain silent. “I don’t have to answer that,” he says – and doesn’t.
Legendary author Jo Nesbø talks running Detective Hole show, his own brushes with the law, and why Harry Hole is his soulmate
After almost 20 years and 13 novels, author Jo Nesbø is bringing flawed hero Harry Hole to life on TV.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Two counts of bank robbery and one of indecent exposure – it’s fair to say that Jo Nesbø has come closer to his subject than most crime authors. “I was arrested in Oslo,” says the writer behind 13 Harry Hole novels and now a blockbuster adaptation on Netflix. “The police car drove up on the pavement in front of me, the cops jumped out and it was, ‘Turn your back! Hands on the wall!’ There had been a bank robbery just a few blocks away, and I was wearing the same clothes as the suspect. Weirdly, the same thing happened to me in Brazil, too.” There was no mistaken identity in the indecent exposure case: “I was 18, I was drunk, I mooned a police car… I spent a few hours in jail.” But the remarkable thing about Nesbø’s criminal past is that it’s not even the most interesting thing in his backstory. As well as selling more than 60 million books, the 65-year-old Norwegian has been a professional footballer (striker for Molde FK), the lead singer in a successful band (Di Derre) and an elite-level rock climber (completing his first officially pro-grade ascent at the age of 59), and is now, with Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole debuting this week, a show-runner. “That opportunity came quite late in life,” he shrugs, almost apologetically, “and I just wanted to be part of something big like that. If it had been a movie, I wouldn’t have got involved, but because it was a TV series I said yes.” When I ask him why the different responses, he says something about the source novel feeling “more like a 10-hour story than a two-hour one”, but I wonder if actually it might have something to do with his previous experience at the hands of Hollywood. The Snowman (also a Harry Hole mystery), starring Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson, hit cinemas in 2017 and received a frosty response from both critics and audiences. “I saw an early cut, so I knew approximately where it was headed,” sighs Nesbø, “and I knew that it probably wasn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea.” Smart cookie that he is (did I mention that he has also been a journalist and an economist?), he worked out “that I’m going to be asked, for the next year, ‘What did you think about the movie?’ So I decided, OK, maybe I shouldn’t see the movie so that I don’t have to tell anybody whether I liked it or not. I went climbing instead of going to the premiere.” View Green Video on the source website As show-runner on the Netflix series, however, he’s in charge – and taking no prisoners. “If you ask my bandmates,” he admits, “I’m probably a control freak and used to getting my way. So I’m open to the fact that almost every person on the crew of this show is better at their job than I would be, and eight out of 10 times are bringing something to the table that is better than what I had written or thought of myself. “But there are those last two times out of 10 when an actor or director or costume designer brings something to the table that doesn’t belong there…” And then he puts his arm around their shoulder and tells them so? “Yes. Except for the arm around the shoulder.” Even when it’s, say, Nick Cave, who provides the show’s music? “Actually he was very nice and very accommodating.” And his own band, Di Derre, didn’t demand the gig? “They asked me several times. I said ‘That’s not going to happen.’” He may be revelling in the control this time round, but the power hasn’t turned his head. He insists he has no plans to muscle in on upcoming screen adaptations of his stories, which include Blood on Snow, with Benedict Cumberbatch, and London, starring Oscar Isaac and directed by Ben Stiller. “Ben Stiller can absolutely sleep easy in his bed,” says Nesbø. However, Stiller might still have the odd wakeful night once he sees how high the bar has been set with Detective Hole. On a case that pits the hero up against a corrupt police officer within his own department, the twists keep coming and the tension never lets up. “Harry is a really intense guy,” explains his creator. “He’s the kind of guy who, after you’ve spent a weekend with him, you don’t call him back on Monday. You wait a month.” Troublingly, Nesbø also describes the alcoholic Harry as his soul mate: “When you’re writing about a character for that many years [the first novel appeared in 1997], it’s unavoidable that you put yourself into that character, that you’ll like to spend time with someone you understand and share things with, like basic values, taste in music and film, sense of humour. So you’ve created a person that you don’t necessarily think is the greatest guy in the world, but they’re interesting to spend time with. And if you have any insight into your own personality, you will know that you are not the greatest guy in the world either. So maybe that makes you soul mates.” “I don’t have demons the way Harry has. Harry’s drawn to the abyss much more than I am. Also I don’t know addiction the way he does. But we all have some kind of addiction.” I ask Nesbø what his is, but he uses his right to remain silent. “I don’t have to answer that,” he says – and doesn’t. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Detective Hole is coming to Netflix on Thursday 26 March 2026. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream. Add Detective Hole to your watchlist on the <a id="OWA8b702c45-bee9-94e4-f018-57518e78041b" title="https://www.radiotimes.com/download-the-app/?af_xp=custom&pid=website&c=editorial_content&is_retargeting=true&af_reengagement_window=30d" href="https://www.radiotimes.com/download-the-app/?af_xp=custom&pid=website&c=editorial_content&is_retargeting=true&af_reengagement_window=30d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-outlook-id="449c28d9-909e-4aab-b6b8-153454f55d5e" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="0">Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. 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Alexander Armstrong reveals his most memorable moments from his trip to India – including a "must-do" cremation
From scary critters to spicy street food, Alexander Armstrong shares his unmissable highlights from his trip to India for Channel 5.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. There are, Alexander Armstrong reminds us in his Channel 5 travelogue, 1.4 billion people in India. And, he tells Radio Times, “I gave it a good shot at meeting them all.” Clearly, he’s a man who’s covered the ground. Here are his most memorable moments. Must-see: Tigers We saw all sorts of amazing creatures on this trip: elephants blocking our way on the roads, macaques who’ve learnt to steal mobile phones and only return them in exchange for a bag of crisps – and not any old packet, either; they want a proper grab bag. But the truly astonishing thing to glimpse is a tiger, which we saw at Bandipur reserve (bandipurtr.in). Their power, their muscles, their teeth, the way they pad… they’re beautiful but they’re also exciting. Even their “camouflage” is like flame: it’s like watching red-hot lava against the ice of Reykjavik. And these tigers aren’t cosseted. They’re finding their own food – and it’s not grab bags. Must-do: Cremation One of the experiences that will live with me for ever, scarred onto my retina, is going to the ghats [stepped embankments] in Delhi. I’m 55, and I’d never seen a dead body before – but then, on these steps beside the river, you can’t move for dead bodies, and they’re beautiful. They’re laid out in resplendent robes, with endless prayers and rituals enacted around them, then the pyre is built up, and liquids are poured on – some sacred, some that I think are actually an aid to burning, squeezed out of a tube like you’d get from the garage for your barbecue – and people stand around to watch. We were very sweetly invited to film one by the second or third cousin of the deceased, but then one of the dead person’s sons turned round and said, “What the hell are you doing? Go away!” so we had to quickly reverse out of that. Must-buy: Emeralds There’s a place called the Gem Palace in Jaipur that’s a must-visit even if jewels aren’t a must-buy for you (gempalace.com). It was a total joy being there: there’s a great big pink room modelled on a jewellery box, and they bring parades of things that even at one-hundredth of the price would be beyond your dreams. I felt like Barbara Cartland. They’ve served the Queen, Princess Diana, the Clintons… and now Armstrong, as I bought a pair of emerald earrings for Mrs Armstrong. One place I didn’t buy anything was this little village just outside Jaipur, where the leather workers are based. As well as all the traditional stuff, we found a man who makes stuff for the “kink” market: bondage gear, studded leather pants. Nearly every craftsman I met on the trip said, “Would you like to take some home for your children?” but in this case I said, “No, no, I think they’ll be fine, thanks.” Must-avoid: Trapdoor spiders I’ve learnt the hard way to tolerate spiders because, being a father, you can’t squeal and run away when a child says there’s one in their room. So the trapdoor spiders we saw in Mumbai were fascinating – but also scary. We went out with a professor, in this millennia-old jungle that’s somehow only about 500 yards from a Bollywood movie sound stage, so you could hear people singing and dancing. This expert could read the landscape of the forest to find exactly where the spiders would be. They construct this thing out of bits of leaf mould, and if you tamp with the end of a pencil, the trapdoor goes whoosh and out comes this spider’s finger. Or – oh! – maybe it wasn’t a finger but just a sliver of its fingernail, and much bigger than I thought. It would be typical of spiders to try to deceive me like that. Must-eat: Vada pav Vada pav is the most beloved street food of Mumbai, and there’s one place above all others to try it: Aram Vada Pav, across from the city’s Victoria Terminus railway station. You queue up, pay a few rupees, and this fantastically grumpy man passes you a deep-fried hollow potato dumpling that gets filled with a fiery green sauce with chopped vegetables and spices in it. It’s like a sea urchin made of pastry, or a savoury brandy snap, and you chuck the whole thing entirely into your mouth to avoid spilling it down yourself. As long as you’re still standing there looking slightly hungry, the grumpy man will just keep passing them to you. Eventually, you’ll mess up and have this green mixture dribbling down your chin, but you won’t care because it’s so delicious. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Alexander Armstrong in India airs Thursdays at 8pm on 5. 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.
I quit my job of 25 years to write a book – I felt frozen with fear
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Jennie Godfrey is the author other authors hate. “I think, being really honest, that some of them absolutely do,” she confirms. It’s not that she’s unpleasant or a bad writer (she’s very much neither); what’s put literary backs up is her success, and the apparent ease by which she came by it. Her first novel, 2024’s The List of Suspicious Things topped The Sunday Times charts, was one of the UK’s all-time bestselling debuts, sold 10,000 copies in its first week – and (can you hear those teeth grinding?) was the first thing she’d ever written. “I’ve had lots of people cast aspersions on my route to the bestsellers charts,” she sighs. “I wrote a SubStack post [about it], and I got accused of lying, of having connections in publishing, of secretly working for publishers, of being rich, of having a rich family…” It would all be quite depressing if it weren’t for the fact that, on the other hand, “there are a lot of people who’ve taken great hope from my story. Because when you do start writing, all you hear is how difficult it is, how you’ll never get an agent, you’ll never get a book deal… And particularly women of a certain age [Godfrey is 55], you’re told you’ve missed your chance. And I’m the opposite of all that.” Hers is certainly an inspiring backstory: after a 25-year career in corporate HR, she chucked in the job to pen a book – “before I’d started writing it or even had the idea for it. Which was like jumping off a cliff without a parachute.” The day job that Godfrey says she was “insane” to quit was a good grounding, though, it seems: “As an HR person, people tell you stuff. You get to know their secrets and what lies behind everyone’s façades.” Handy, because that’s very much the subject of her new novel, published earlier this month: “The Barbecue at No 9 is set in July 1985, and takes place over the 12 hours of the Live Aid concert. It’s the story of the residents of a new-build cul-de-sac, and how they all get together to celebrate the historic concert, and all their secrets come tumbling out.” Why Live Aid? “It felt like this seismic event, and everyone who was around at the time remembers it. Even people who weren’t born then know about it, and they’ve seen clips of it on YouTube. My own memories of that day are vivid: I remember crying on the phone to my friend Sam about how amazing Freddie Mercury was…” Given that – and given the eye-widening nature of some of the characters’ secrets revealed in the book – it’s impossible not to wonder if there’s a touch of autobiography to it. Godfrey’s first novel, The List of Suspicious Things, was partly inspired, alarmingly, by her dad’s real-life realisation that he had known Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. “When I was 11 or 12 we did move to a new-build estate ourselves [like The Barbecue at No 9’s central characters], transplanted from our Yorkshire mill town to Milton Keynes, which felt like a fate worse than death for us northerners. But it’s not such a direct personal experience as the Sutcliffe link was for the first book.” In fact, adds Godfrey, the idea for this one came out of the blue: “After the success of List, I felt frozen with fear, and I was just working out how to tell my editor that I was never going to write another book, when I got on a train and the idea for Barbecue landed in my brain, almost the whole book in one go.” The author now lives in Somerset, where she works occasional shifts at her local Waterstones, because “all novelists should have to work in a bookshop. It’s an absolutely invaluable experience as a writer to understand who your readers are.” Her own, she’s found, are much more disparate than she expected: “I’ve been really surprised by how many men are massive fans of my work, and also how many young people. They think, because its set in the 1970s or 80s, it’s historical fiction, though! That makes you feel pretty old.” At least Godfrey has a few A-list fans for comfort. Among others, broadcaster-turned-author Graham Norton and author-turned-broadcaster Marian Keyes are devotees. “I’ve met them both and was completely star-struck,” she giggles, “and a little bit intense. They were lovely.” But aren’t authors supposed to hate her? “Well, maybe they were just nice to my face. Maybe they were the ones on SubStack being mean…” 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. Looking for more reading recommendations? Join the Radio Times Book Club here - we offer 3-month or 6-month memberships as well as monthly or quarterly subscriptions where you'll receive a new hardback chosen by the RT team delivered directly to your door! The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.
First Dates favourite Fred Sirieix reveals which country he thinks makes the best butter in the world
On a cycling trip for his show Tour de Fred: Ireland – Part Deux, Fred Sirieix threw himself into activities – some more successfully than others.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Let’s start with the toughest challenge of your trip. You had to spend a whole afternoon at a museum devoted to butter production? Ha, it was actually very interesting. I’m a Frenchman, you know, so I love butter. The French think they make the best butter in the world, but the Irish stuff is incredible. In fact I did some blind taste-testing, and the winner was Kerrygold! It has this creaminess that comes from the cows and what they eat: everything is green in Ireland, so they eat a lot of grass, which makes Irish butter so rounded. The museum? Well, yes, it does have quite a lot wooden things, but it’s also about history and the people and how important butter was for the local economy [The Butter Museum, Cork; thebuttermuseum.com]. Plus I got to make butter for the first time in my life, churning the cream by hand by turning this thing that looks like a propeller. It’s great, because you can just eat it straight away after you’ve done that, but it takes a good bit of elbow grease – it’s hard work. Planning your next trip? Request a free travel brochure with Radio Times Travel Perhaps you’re not cut out to be a churner. Did you get on any better when you tried your hand at growing oysters? That’s pretty hard work, too! I went to an amazing oyster farm in Wexford, but the real story is that the farmer there, when he was a young man, worked for three years for no pay just to learn his trade. It’s a story of resilience and vision and values, and I told his kids: “Your dad is a superhero.” He sells his oysters to Gillardeau, which is one of the very top French companies – in fact Gillardeau is one of my favourite oysters: nice and meaty, with a beautiful taste. The farm isn’t much to look at – just a lot of mud at the seashore – but that’s the reality of farming. I probably couldn’t do it myself, but I love eating them. Did you show potential at anything you had a go at? I really tried! Even when I was doing a traditional singing session in Irish – which I don’t speak – I applied myself, and tried to sing as best I can. We were in Mooney’s Pub, in Dungarvan in Waterford [facebook.com/Mooneyspub], in an Irish-speaking area where people are very proud of their language. So they gather there, they sing these songs, younger people come, learn the songs and about their meanings and story – and it’s great fun, because you always have a pint of Guinness, too. So how was your singing? Oh, I was brilliant – you’ll see me on Britain’s Got Talent or something very soon! But no, seriously, it was just about the craic, as they say there. They know I can’t speak Irish, they know I can’t sing; but we had a good time. Make a quick comparison to see if your travel insurance still meets your needs Did you get out into nature at all? Oh yes. In Waterford, I did forest yoga and swam behind a waterfall. I met a yoga teacher called Claire, who lives in Crough Woods, which are supposed to be enchanted. She teaches people about the legends, stories and folklore of Ireland, and she’s into that unique relationship the Irish people have with nature [croughwoodwellness.ie]. Fascinating, but do I really have to jump in a waterfall to connect with all that? No, you don’t have to. But it’s so old and beautiful there: the river goes right through the middle of the woods, where you’ll find the Mahon Falls, and you just want to jump in. It is a bit cold, but it’s a lovely feeling to be in the middle of the forest in this cold water: it takes you back to what things would have been like a thousand years ago, and gets you very close to nature. And you don’t have to go naked or anything; I definitely kept my Speedos on. Sounds intense. Anything more holidayish? I went to Inchydoney Beach in West Cork, and it’s one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever been to. It’s got these lovely, regular waves, too, which is great for beginner surfers, so I surfed there with my daughter. Some of the cycling challenges I did for the show were pretty holidayish, too. The ride along the Greenway at Suir Valley Railway, on the way to Mount Congreve [mountcongreve.com] in Waterford, was along this disused rail track, so it was really nice and flat. While we were filming it, these two spectacular rainbows appeared. I really hope you can see them in the programme – because I had to go back and cycle it all again in the rain so they could try and film it with the rainbows. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Tour de Fred: Ireland airs Sundays at 11:30am on ITV1 and is available now on ITVX. 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.
Lorraine Kelly reveals why you won't see her naked in a sauna for Norwegian Odyssey: "Nobody wanted to see that from me"
The TV star is making the most of what Norway has to offer in her new Channel 4 series.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “There are a lot of similarities with Scotland,” says Lorraine Kelly after visiting Norway for her new travelogue. The Glasgow-born presenter should know thanks to her background, and also because her Norwegian Odyssey for Channel 4 involved multiple trips, in both winter and summer, and her advice is unequivocal: “It’s expensive – I’d say that to anybody who’s thinking of going there – but my goodness me, it’s well worth it.” So what was the highlight of your trip, Lorraine? The Northern Lights were unbelievable. I’ve tried to see them before, in Sweden, Finland and Orkney, and never had any luck. In fact, when I was in Sweden, staying at the Ice Hotel, people were able to see them in Dundee but we saw nothing! So I was desperate to see them in Norway, but we only had a three-day window. Then suddenly we saw this wall of green with a sort of pink tinge. The whole sky was green, with this light going right back over our heads, like a kind of green rainbow. So famous people get a special performance, huh? Well, obviously, of course! But no, we were just incredibly lucky. Even Tom, our “aurora hunter” – that’s his actual job – said, “Wow, this is spectacular!”, so we knew we were seeing something special. Where were you? We were just out beyond Nordkapp, which is a cape at the very top of Norway. And we were on a Hurtigruten ship – one of those that you can cruise on for a holiday, but they’re also working vessels, which connect all the little towns along the fjords. They’re the best way to get around, because the coastline is so rugged and looks like animals have chewed bits off the edges. You’re right in the middle of things, too, and you see so much: we saw orcas, sea eagles, everything. You sailed into Hjørundfjord, too – which locals say is the most beautiful fjord in the world. Are they right? Oh, that was really something. The ship goes right in up this narrow fjord, and the captain then has to turn it around very skillfully because there’s not much room. You get so very close to the cliffs that you feel you could stretch your hand out and touch them. There’s something about the landscape there that makes you feel very small – which is no bad thing, actually, because it helps you really appreciate the glory of the planet. That blue sea, the white snow, and the crags – oh, it’s glorious! That area, the Sunnmøre Alps, is famous for mountain hiking. Did you strap your boots on, or get a body double for the cliff-edge bits? No, it’s not dangerous at all. The trails are pretty easy, and they’ve got lots of these lovely little huts along the way so if the weather gets really bad, there’s somewhere to shelter. But it’s the smell that I remember: that lovely, fresh, sharp pine scent. It really reminded me of when I used to go hiking in the hills of Perthshire. We see you foraging on the shores of the Lofoten Islands. You wouldn’t try that in Britain, though, right? But it’s so clear and clean up there. So yes, I went out with these wonderful girls – they’re like mermaids – harvesting seaweed off the beach. They make food and skincare products out of it. Did you put it on your face or in your mouth? Both! There are specific types of seaweed they make into seasonings, and others for beauty products. It felt very soothing and healing. But almost everything in Norway feels pure and wholesome. I did a cold water plunge, and you feel so glowing afterwards: energised, enthusiastic, like you can do anything because your brain’s fizzing and your body’s tingling. You start off in the sauna, where all the Norwegians are sitting around having a laugh and a singsong and a few wee drams, then you come out and jump in. But isn’t the traditional sauna culture in Norway… naked? There was no nakedness involved; nobody wanted to see that from me! I think me in a swimming costume is enough for everyone – we wouldn’t want to inflict any more than that on the world. Is there anything there for those of us who are less rugged than you? I was really surprised by the cities. Tromsø is so far north, but it was a real eye-opener to see how gorgeous and sophisticated it is, and I loved its Polar Museum because I’m a real geek about those heroic explorers – Sir Ernest Shackleton is my big hero. Then in Trondheim I went kayaking on the river Nid, which was a brilliant way to see the town because historically the river is the heart of any city, and you get such a different view. You see so much more than if you were just driving around. The water was pristine too, so if you did fall in, it wouldn’t be disgusting like the Thames – just a bit… chilly! The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Lorraine Kelly's Norwegian Odyssey begins on Channel 4 at 8pm on Thursday 15 January. 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.
The Young Ones' Nigel Planer says Adrian Edmondson "regrets" falling out with late Rik Mayall before death
Nigel Planer discusses his role as Neil the hippy in The Young Ones and much more in his new memoir.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Even Nigel Planer’s own mum used to confuse him with Neil the hippy, the character he created for The Young Ones back in 1982. “She usually got my name right, at least,” he sighs, admitting that his friends sometimes don’t, “but she did think I was vegetarian, simply because he was.” He’s not the first actor, of course, to become indelibly conflated with a part he’s played. But with a career that’s also taken in TV shows from Blackadder to Blackeyes, West End musicals, writing poetry and plays and more than 100 episodes of The Magic Roundabout, it must annoy him, no? “Should I be like a lot of comedians, and go, ‘I don’t want to talk about that’? My colleague Adrian [Edmondson, who played punk Vyvyan in The Young Ones] has an attitude that’s done him a lot of good: saying, ‘That was two months of my life, 45 years ago. Why should I be talking about it now? I want to move forward.’ That works for him, and all power to him – but I can’t seem to get away from it. “When we’re going around together, he avoids people but I always end up chatting to them. Maybe it’s because I’m 6ft 3in, or because I’ve got a stupid face: he can just walk past people and they don’t notice, but I still get 'Neil, Neil, orange peel' [one of the show’s many memorable phrases] three times a day. "But why be mean to them? I just think about my favourite series, Dad’s Army, and the people in it: the actors might think, ‘I’ve been cornered now,’ but I love those characters. And if I can generate in other people just a quarter of what I feel about Ian Lavender – ‘Don’t tell him, Pike!’ – I can die happy.” Certainly Planer’s new memoir gives a satisfyingly significant chunk over to his most famous role (and takes its punning title, Young Once, from the show, too). But the multi-hyphenate has many more stories to tell: married three times, a grandfather at 29, with stints as bellringer, gravedigger and Top of the Pops performer on his CV, he describes the book as “a coming-of-age story” as well as a love letter to his third wife (and first love) Roberta, whom he met when he was 25 and she 38, and finally married in 2013. (“I’m 72, so it’s about time I came of age, really,” he adds.) Meanwhile, the misspent youth is a lot of fun to read about. At the height of their fame, Planer and his castmates were at what he calls the “knicker-throwing” level of celebrity (though the book reveals it got a lot weirder than that: people would write to them, sending polythene bags, asking for them to be filled with certain bodily fluids and posted back). There were famous fans, too. Al Pacino, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, Sting… they all came to watch Planer and his colleagues at Soho’s Comic Strip revue – so zeitgeisty was its new “alternative comedy” scene in the 1980s – though “Robin Williams was our main contact with the stars”. Planer recounts taking the latter to “a sort of junkie party in Brixton, and he wasn’t too happy about it. But we had no idea who he was, because Google hadn’t been invented. It took us a week to work it out, asking around, saying, ‘What was his name, that bloke?’” Planer remembers the lows as vividly he does the highs (another reason, perhaps, why people mix him up with the lugubrious Neil). An anecdote about buying little Christmas presents for the team – which none of them even bothered to take home – makes even Planer concede his “Neil-like” nature. But, playing against character, the overall arc of his book (and life) is a cheerful one, tied up neatly with his marriage to Roberta after decades apart. “My life is cheesy,” he says with no shame. For readers, the wedding means a lovely story about Edmondson and comic partner Rik Mayall: “Double acts do fall out – the only ones who never did were Dawn [French] and Jennifer [Saunders] – and at this point Rik and Ade weren’t speaking to each other. But Roberta and I deliberately sat them together at the wedding, and we saw them laughing their heads off together. “Unfortunately Rik died while they were in one of their falling-out periods, which left Ade with a lot of regret, but we’ve got photographic evidence of them making each other laugh even in that phase.” And for Planer, meanwhile, the wedding means a happy ending – a “romcom”, he calls it. “I interviewed plenty of other candidates for the role of partner. Even apart from my two other marriages, I certainly put it about in the interim period,” he says. “I think I was born with a real deficit of what they call ‘emotional intelligence’, but I finally managed to maybe pass my O-levels in it,” he adds – slightly Neilishly. Young Once by Nigel Planer is available now The latest issue of Radio Times is out now - subscribe here Check out more of our interviews 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. Looking for more reading recommendations? Join the Radio Times Book Club here - we offer 3-month or 6-month memberships as well as monthly or quarterly subscriptions where you'll receive a new hardback chosen by the RT team delivered directly to your door!
The death of Dave Myers called time on the Hairy Bikers. Now Si King is looking to the future – but this time he’s travelling by train
Add Britain's Favourite Railway Stations with Si King to your watchlist It’s done,” says Si King. “That’s it. The Bikers were plural. There’s no Hairy Bikers without my mate.” That emphatic loyalty to his late co-presenter, Dave Myers – and the sharp left-turn King’s career is now taking because of it – makes profound sense when you know their shared history. The pair had been close friends for three decades when Myers died of cancer in 2024 – “He doesn’t stop being your best mate just because he’s passed away. That’s never going to go. We were like brothers: we drove each other mad, because we were two very different people, but we absolutely adored each other.” Their friendship was forged over a shared passion for food and motorbikes, while working behind the camera (King as an assistant director and Myers as a make-up artist) on a TV drama in 1992 – and they went on to make more than 30 series together as the Hairy Bikers. “So nobody’s ever going to take his place,” sighs King. “I don’t want to look in the rear-view mirror of my motorcycle and see anyone else there. It’s Dave, you know? And the same when he was leading: I drove hundreds of miles looking at his ugly ass. That’s my memory, that’s what I want to keep. That’s what it was about.” Right now, King seems to have one eye on the road ahead – and his new show for More4, Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations with Si King – and one still looking back over his shoulder. “You have to move forward, but the only way you can do that is by cherishing the memories. Dave and I did 650,000 miles in the saddle together. That’s more than to the Moon and back. “And the experiences we had? I used to say we were probably the two most overstimulated middle-aged men on the planet. We’d be waiting for the drone camera to go up, say, sat at the top of a mountain on two motorcycles with the most incredible views. We’d have walkie-talkies and somebody would come on and go, ‘Right, lads, on you come.’ And we’d just look at each other, and look skywards and say, ‘I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve this. But thanks!’” The 59-year-old comes over as genuinely grateful, too, to his Hairy Bikers fans. Indeed it’s partly viewers, he says, who have pushed him on into a post- Bikers future and his first major solo project since the death of his beloved friend: “It’s incredibly humbling that people ask, ‘What are you going to do next? We’re really looking forward to it.’ There’s love in that, and there’s an energy.” It turns out that what he did next was abandon bikes and food altogether to make a four-part series about railway stations. Which is funny, because the nation never had this rock-star-maned, six-foot-two, leather-wearing trencherman down as the trainspotter type. So is he really trying to tell us he’ll be snapping up that Senior Railcard as soon as he qualifies, on his next birthday? “I’m constantly on trains!” he insists. “Contrary to popular belief, I do actually have children [three grown-up sons with his ex-wife] and a dog, so anytime I go anywhere I can’t use my bike, I’m on the railway. I still live in the North East, so I’m back and forth to London quite regularly. And I like being on trains because you get to see stuff.” “My Uncle George used to say we’ve forgotten about the ancient art of just sitting, so I loved being able to do that, instead of charging around everywhere.” (What he didn’t love so much was “trying to do a long piece-to-camera in between the platform announcements”.) “If you’re riding a bike, you’re concentrating on people trying to kill you. My brother and sister live in Italy, and I’d rather take the train and have that time and space than be corralled onto an aircraft and then dumped – it’s a more civilised way of travel, and it’s a different pace. I genuinely love trains and stations.” His enthusiasm is as infectious as a sneeze on a crowded commuter train. “The architecture, the atmosphere, the movement of people, that grandeur from the Industrial Revolution, the sense of momentum, the way they’re central to their communities, the way every single social stratum, colour and creed goes through that station… I loved standing there, whether it was York or Glasgow Central or Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast, and seeing the character and personality of wherever I was without even stepping out of the station.” So next season, will he be waxing just as lyrical about other parts of Britain’s transport infrastructure? Motorway service stations maybe, or Premier Inns on roundabouts? “I’d be happy! I stay at one of those when I go down to see my grandkids. It’s great because the staff have got no idea who I am, as they’re seeing me completely out of context. I can just go down to the vending machine and get a Picnic bar.” Back on track, he won’t name his favourite among Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations, but there’s clearly a special place in his heart for the old rack-and-pinion line up Mount Snowdon – for reasons both historical and personal. “First of all, the railway was all about coal, then slate. But then it became about leisure. These wealthy industrialists thought, ‘Hold on, we’ve got a thousand-metre mountain in the middle of nowhere,’ so they decided to branch the line. And the men took 14 months to build that railway, with picks and shovels and dynamite.” Meanwhile, his own history with the Snowdon Mountain Railway goes back to the death of his father, when King was a child: “After my dad died, to give my mam a break, I went to stay at my Uncle Gordon’s in Everton. He was a big rambler, so we walked the path up Snowdon on numerous occasions. I was about 12, so I was always asking, ‘Can we get the train up?’ because I knew you could get cakes on the train. This went on for years and eventually I just thought, ‘I’m never going to get on this bloody train.’ It’s taken me till I’m nearly 60, but thanks to TV, I’ve finally made it.”
Inside Tom Read Wilson's Grand Tour as Celebs Go Dating star continues his magnificent journey
From learning how to kiss the hand of a countess, to taking a dip in a chilly Alpine lake.
Byron, Wilde, Casanova and now Tom Read Wilson. The Grand Tour was the “gap year” of the 17th to 19th centuries; a chance for young aristocrats to complete their cultural and social education in the great capitals of Europe. In his travelogue, which airs on 5, Read Wilson (Celebs Go Dating’s witty receptionist and runner-up in this year’s I’m a Celebrity) traces their tracks – and gets into a few of their scrapes. PARIS Kissing lessons from a countess “Picking up some continental etiquette was an important part of the Grand Tour, and I’m hopeless with that stuff, so I got lessons from an actual countess. She was a descendant of one of Marie Antoinette’s courtiers and had this gorgeous cuckoo clock of an apartment in the heart of Paris that smelled of tuberose, like a magical bubble. She taught me how to kiss her hand properly, then how to eat mille-feuille. I was totally inept: I think I must have been a chicken in a former life, because my elbows kept popping up and she didn’t approve. Even harder, she insisted I eat this exquisite pastry without making the sort of joyous, gustatory ‘Mmmm!’ that came naturally.” Request a brochure and get inspiration for your next holiday LAKE ANNECY Alps the easy way “In the 18th century, there were only two ways to navigate the Alps – go round them on a boat or over them by foot. Young aristocratic gentlemen, of course, wanted to make the minimum effort, so they had themselves carried over the mountains in sedan chairs. Naturally, I got four strapping hunkatrons to carry me, too. I was in awe at their triceps and all the vascularity of their arms. They were straining every sinew – even though I’d skipped breakfast to be as light as possible – so I kept saying, ‘Don’t be a hero, put me down!’ But they wouldn’t. “It was an extraordinary feat because it was so precipitous, but my personal achievement was taking a dip in Lake Annecy, because it was only 9°C. I swam out to a buoy – yes, that’s b-u-o-y – and it was quite a long stretch, but the TV director wanted me to do it again for the camera, and then again because they’d just found a beautiful spot on the pier. So I did it three times, then went to the loo and thought, ‘I’m going to inspect myself, because it feels very curious downstairs.’ And it was like a used teabag! There was nothing there, and it didn’t come back for a whole day…” VENICE Costumes and courtesans “My hotel in Venice was where many of those original old Grand Tourists stayed, and it was right next to the city’s main courtesan hotspot. In those days the sex workers were trained to be wonderful companions at the opera or art gallery, hugely knowledgeable about music and painting, so all those tussles under the eiderdown were considered quite educational. I was rather crestfallen I didn’t have time for any of that myself – hard when you’re in the most romantic setting in the world. “I did get to visit a costumier, though, who provides outfits not only for Venice’s famous Carnival, but for the opera houses, too. There was damask, brocade, the most incredible fabrics and colours and silks. And the tailors were amazing: just from clocking me, they knew my exact measurements – right down to the teabag!” Sign up to our mailing list to receive more content like this from Radio Times Travel, Shop and Money - click here ROME High-pressure serenading “One of my favourite experiences of the trip was in Rome. The tradition in the 18th century was for serenades, with people looking down from balconies, bewitched by their paramour who would be brandishing a guitar – and it still goes on. So I met these enchanting serenaders, and an hour later we were up at the Belvedere, singing together – in Italian – and I was as fretful as a porcupine because I hadn’t sung for a very long time. I was acutely aware that it could go wrong and I would make this romantic scene very, very unromantic and end up getting chased away by a disgruntled lover. Honestly, I was terrified.” FLORENCE Re-creating Eddie Redmayne’s bust “Seeing Botticelli’s Birth of Venus in the Uffizi Gallery was wonderful. From looking at prints of the painting, I’d never appreciated the gold in her hair; the magical fog around it; the foam on the waves to represent the myth that [Venus’s Greek counterpart] Aphrodite was born after Uranus was castrated and his bits were thrown into the sea, fizzing and foaming to create the goddess. “Then I met a sculptor whose family have been sculptors in Florence for 200 years. He actually had a commission from Eddie Redmayne, and I have a stonking crush on Eddie Redmayne, so I tried very hard to copy the bust he was making, but mine was appalling. Did I bring my Eddie home with me? No, the best thing for that was for the clay to be recycled – because it was certainly not a work of art.” Tom Read Wilson's Magnificent Journey continues Fridays at 8pm on 5. 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.
Si King reaffirms end of The Hairy Bikers as he grieves late Dave Myers: "There's no Hairy Bikers without my mate"
"Nobody’s ever going to take his place."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "It's done," says Si King. "That’s it. The Bikers were plural. There’s no Hairy Bikers without my mate." That emphatic loyalty to his late co-presenter, Dave Myers – and the sharp left-turn King's career is now taking because of it – makes profound sense when you know their shared history. The pair had been close friends for three decades when Myers died of cancer in 2024 – "He doesn’t stop being your best mate just because he’s passed away. That’s never going to go. We were like brothers: we drove each other mad, because we were two very different people, but we absolutely adored each other." Their friendship was forged over a shared passion for food and motorbikes, while working behind the camera (King as an assistant director and Myers as a make-up artist) on a TV drama in 1992 – and they went on to make more than 30 series together as the Hairy Bikers. "So nobody’s ever going to take his place," sighs King."I don’t want to look in the rear-view mirror of my motorcycle and see anyone else there. It’s Dave, you know? And the same when he was leading: I drove hundreds of miles looking at his ugly ass. That’s my memory, that’s what I want to keep. That’s what it was about." Right now, King seems to have one eye on the road ahead – and his new show for More4, Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations with Si King – and one still looking back over his shoulder. "You have to move forward, but the only way you can do that is by cherishing the memories. Dave and I did 650,000 miles in the saddle together. That's more than to the Moon and back. "And the experiences we had? I used to say we were probably the two most overstimulated middle-aged men on the planet. We’d be waiting for the drone camera to go up, say, sat at the top of a mountain on two motorcycles with the most incredible views. We’d have walkie-talkies and somebody would come on and go, ‘Right, lads, on you come.’ And we’d just look at each other, and look skywards and say, ‘I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve this. But thanks!'" The 59-year-old comes over as genuinely grateful, too, to his Hairy Bikers fans. Indeed it’s partly viewers, he says, who have pushed him on into a post- Bikers future and his first major solo project since the death of his beloved friend: “It’s incredibly humbling that people ask, ‘What are you going to do next? We’re really looking forward to it.’ There’s love in that, and there’s an energy.” It turns out that what he did next was abandon bikes and food altogether to make a four-part series about railway stations. Which is funny, because the nation never had this rock-star-maned, six-foot-two, leather-wearing trencherman down as the trainspotter type. So is he really trying to tell us he’ll be snapping up that Senior Railcard as soon as he qualifies, on his next birthday? “I’m constantly on trains!” he insists. “Contrary to popular belief, I do actually have children [three grown-up sons with his ex-wife] and a dog, so anytime I go anywhere I can’t use my bike, I’m on the railway. I still live in the North East, so I’m back and forth to London quite regularly. And I like being on trains because you get to see stuff. “My Uncle George used to say we’ve forgotten about the ancient art of just sitting, so I loved being able to do that, instead of charging around everywhere.” (What he didn’t love so much was “trying to do a long piece-to-camera in between the platform announcements”.) “If you’re riding a bike, you’re concentrating on people trying to kill you. My brother and sister live in Italy, and I’d rather take the train and have that time and space than be corralled onto an aircraft and then dumped – it’s a more civilised way of travel, and it’s a different pace. I genuinely love trains and stations.” His enthusiasm is as infectious as a sneeze on a crowded commuter train. “The architecture, the atmosphere, the movement of people, that grandeur from the Industrial Revolution, the sense of momentum, the way they’re central to their communities, the way every single social stratum, colour and creed goes through that station… I loved standing there, whether it was York or Glasgow Central or Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast, and seeing the character and personality of wherever I was without even stepping out of the station.” So next season, will he be waxing just as lyrical about other parts of Britain’s transport infrastructure? Motorway service stations maybe, or Premier Inns on roundabouts? “I’d be happy! I stay at one of those when I go down to see my grandkids. It’s great because the staff have got no idea who I am, as they’re seeing me completely out of context. I can just go down to the vending machine and get a Picnic bar.” Back on track, he won’t name his favourite among Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations, but there’s clearly a special place in his heart for the old rack-and-pinion line up Mount Snowdon – for reasons both historical and personal. “First of all, the railway was all about coal, then slate. But then it became about leisure. These wealthy industrialists thought, ‘Hold on, we’ve got a thousand-metre mountain in the middle of nowhere,’ so they decided to branch the line. And the men took 14 months to build that railway, with picks and shovels and dynamite.” Meanwhile, his own history with the Snowdon Mountain Railway goes back to the death of his father, when King was a child: “After my dad died, to give my mam a break, I went to stay at my Uncle Gordon’s in Everton. He was a big rambler, so we walked the path up Snowdon on numerous occasions. I was about 12, so I was always asking, ‘Can we get the train up?’ because I knew you could get cakes on the train. This went on for years and eventually I just thought, ‘I’m never going to get on this bloody train.’ It’s taken me till I’m nearly 60, but thanks to TV, I’ve finally made it.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Britain's Favourite Railway Stations with Si King begins on Thursday 8th January at 9pm on More4. 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.
Michael Rosen: "This may sound extraordinary, but I'm not traumatised by the death of my son"
Writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen has had more than his fair share of difficult times – but in his latest book, he comes up with hints on how to find the positive.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "This may sound extraordinary,” says Michael Rosen, “but I’m not traumatised by the death of my son.” While I try to take that in, the broadcaster and writer continues. “And I’m not traumatised by having been in a coma for 40 days. I’m concerned, I’m worried, I’m saddened, I’m all those things. But that word ‘trauma’ means something else: it comes from German, the idea of a dream you can’t get out of – you’re stuck in it, and at a loss. And I can genuinely say: I think about it, but I’m not stuck. I can love my son who died, and live with it, and not feel traumatised by it.” It’s perhaps the ultimate affidavit for Rosen’s new book, Good Days. There are plenty of self-appointed gurus out there telling us how to live our “best lives”, but Rosen is a man who’s faced some truly dark times – and if he can come out the other side untraumatised, his advice is probably worth listening to. He’s written before about the sudden death of his son, Eddie, aged 18, in 1999, and about his own near-death experience with Covid, and that almost biblical-sounding 40-day coma. (He’s also, of course, written, some of Britain’s best-loved children’s poetry, including the classic We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.) But this is his most practical work yet, an ‘A-Z of Hope and Happiness’ as the publishers have subtitled it – complete with not just the author’s trademark profound-but-amusing observations on life, but also “hints, reminders, tips and suggestions” that readers might want to “imitate, adapt or adopt”. Rosen is a natural pedagogue: his much-memed poetry readings are as popular with kids as his studies of language are on Radio 4’s Word of Mouth, which returns for its 34th year this week. But the tone of Good Days is anything but lecturing. “It’s a little bit like a recipe book,” he agrees. “It’s saying, ‘If you want to try and make a cake this way, then this is how you can do it’. It doesn’t tell you that’s what you have to do. So, for instance, I say in one chapter, ‘You can listen to music any way you want, but one of the ways you can do it is…’” In fact, it’s more in the fine old BBC tradition of public service than self-aggrandisement. “If you’ve had an experience like mine, people want to know what it was like. When I meet people, they ask me how I go on, day by day. I have the same curiosity myself. I listened to [musician] Nick Cave on Desert Island Discs, and he’s lost two of his sons, and it’s utterly compelling hearing him talk. “I met Holocaust survivor Eva Clarke, who was born in a concentration camp, and when she tells her mother’s story you can’t believe how she actually went on living. People ask: if the human spirit is an elastic band, why didn’t it snap? And what did you do to get through it? Quite often the anwer is, ‘Well, I got up every morning and I made myself porridge.’ “It’s hard to explain to people who get fed up doing mundane things, but if you’ve had trauma then there’s something incredibly satisfying or distracting or absorbing about doing mundane things wholeheartedly. That’s obviously a less interesting answer than saying, ‘I drink an enormous amount, or I take these narcotic substances’, but finding those small points of contentment is often what seems to help people. So that’s how this book came about.” If it sounds sententious, or like some cutesy little ‘book of cheer’, it’s certainly not. (Rosen’s daughter calls him an “optimistic nihilist”, he reveals.) He’s well aware that “plenty of people have plenty of things to be unhappy about”, but says “the aim of the book was to find routes out of that unhappiness”. As an example, he returns to Eddie: “On the Holloway Road [in north London], there’s a lovely Turkish restaurant where my teenage sons and I would go for these crazy midnight meals. It was a lovely time, but I can ruin that reminiscence for myself by saying, ‘Oh yes, but Eddie died’. You don’t have to do that, though, and I’ve taught myself not to. So now I remember these funny, great moments without adding the sadness of, ‘That was one of the last times we did that’. I’ve learnt how not to let the bereavement spoil the happy memory.” Most telling of all, perhaps, the book has a whole chapter on death (“which caused a little stir with the publishers, who weren’t sure they wanted that”). It’s there, says Rosen, because accepting death’s inevitability is important for getting the most out of your days. “And because you can’t live for ever. I mean, I’ve tried, but it’s not working.” Good Days by Michael Rosen is available now The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – 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 TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast. Looking for more reading recommendations? Join the Radio Times Book Club here - we offer 3-month or 6-month memberships as well as monthly or quarterly subscriptions where you'll receive a new hardback chosen by the RT team delivered directly to your door!
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. Looking for more reading recommendations? Join the Radio Times Book Club here - we offer 3-month or 6-month memberships as well as monthly or quarterly subscriptions where you'll receive a new hardback chosen by the RT team delivered directly to your door!
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. Looking for more reading recommendations? Join the Radio Times Book Club here - we offer 3-month or 6-month memberships as well as monthly or quarterly subscriptions where you'll receive a new hardback chosen by the RT team delivered directly to your door!
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…”