Two slightly plump middle-aged men have entered the room (with William Boyd)

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1:58I know we did. Were you recording that last whispering bit? I didn't include myself, but I wanted to get your answer. There was a little moment on air yesterday where the mics came up slightly sooner. Oh. I thought. So you just heard me saying, yeah, he really gets me the creeps now.

2:23Are you able to say no?

2:28but some of our eagle-eared listeners picked up on that. But it's a bit difficult to tell in the new studio. I'm used to a studio where the microphone light is the biggest thing in the studio because you could build them like that in the days before we were being visualised, but you can't do that now. Everything has to be a little bit more surreptitious. It's too swish. It's like our lifts in this building. They don't have any buttons. Oh, they're too clever by half, aren't they? It's all just a touchscreen. And what was ever wrong with just having a button in a lift to know what floor it's on, where it's coming, where it's going?

3:05Everything's being reduced to nothing. Yes, I completely agree. And the lift thing I don't get at all because what happens if you change your mind? Yeah. You know, sometimes I think that I want to go to floor 14 and maybe I don't. It's so true, you're completely stuck. Maybe, you know, as soon as I get in, I think, no, I'm going to stop off at 10. I wonder how 8 is today. And so it goes on. So no, I don't like that. And I hope that our executive producer, Rosie, doesn't listen to this episode because she's got an absolute collywobbles fear of lifts, hasn't she? Oh, yeah, Rosie does 14 floors every morning.

3:37Yeah, that's very good, isn't it? Hannah has got a phobia about owls and you've got a phobia about staying in the country too long. How was your holiday? It was really nice. Was it nice? Now, don't be embarrassed. Don't be embarrassed. So you've been to Marseille. Tell us about Marseille. Marseille, well, you would feel very at home. It is very much Hackney, Dalston, East London on sea. It's so trendy. I felt at odds at times. It's lots of small plate restaurants and natural wine bars and vintage shopping. And then it's just set along this really beautiful, rocky, jaggedy coastline. so then all the trendy, fashionable people are laid out on rocks in the sun all day.

4:25It seems like a lovely place to be. Well, it was a lovely place to be, but a lovely place to live. Yeah. And what type of person is visiting Marseille? So we bumped into about five people we knew. People from Brighton. We had a big London night out with other people who happened to be there. I think it's really having a moment. It does seem to be, doesn't it? Yeah. we were inundated with recommendations I couldn't do it all because so many people have been now and have lists of their favourite restaurants and the spots you need to go to So this is such an interesting development courtesy of the Reels and the Gram and the TikTok isn't it that you have a kind of almost ubiquitous bucket list in places that you go to visit because everybody has done a top 10 of things so it's quite strange because i don't like it i'll just be honest about it i don't like it because for me part of the joy of going abroad is to wander and discover and i know that i've been to places where i've missed really amazing things because i haven't read enough guidebooks and stuff like that but that's just how i like to travel and there's something there is something a little bit weird about taking to heart other people's recommendations so much we went to some places in Norway that were relatively shite actually because they'd appeared in all of those you must you must you must and yeah I don't know I actually agree with you I went to Bologna with my boyfriend a couple of years ago and I researched to such a degree that I was saying like oh around the corner from here there's this cafe that did and I just knew the place inside and out without ever having stepped foot in it and he just got sick of me saying these things because we just weren't discovering it together and I actually made a bit of a pact with myself and now I just don't bother so much I like to take friends recommendations but I try not to over research a place these days And it's interesting because it's absolutely about then recreating a visual image you've already seen, which is a weird thing to want to do when you're travelling.

6:45Because it was a different connection if you read about something in a rough guide. You still felt that you were seeing it for the first time. But it is the fact that you're not seeing it for the first time. You're going, oh yeah, because this is exactly what X, Y and Z have already shown me. This is where they stood in that video. Yeah, it is strange. And you're watching someone walk through the streets of a place that you're about to go to discover for yourself, so why bother watching it on your phone? Yeah. I do find it a bit depressing. So good for you if you've put the phone down and headed off in an intrepid way yourself.

7:17Now, our listeners will be very keen to know where the next destination is going to be as we travel the world with young Eve Salisbury. Brighton at Christmas. Okay. Well, that's not strictly true because where are we off to on a little office jaunt on Saturday? Fee, my sincerest apologies. How could this have slipped your mind? Jane and Fee will be in Derbyshire on Saturday at the Queen's Reading Room Festival. You'll be in conversation with Harlan Coburn, won't you? In the Chatsworth Theatre. And the way that this will work is if you already have tickets to the festival, then you can come along to your event for free.

8:00you just have to sign up and it will be done on a first come first serve basis so when you arrive to Chatsworth house on Saturday you need to visit the book club tent and sign up to secure your spot excellent and if people haven't got tickets already is it too late for them to get tickets I believe they can still get tickets yes yeah so if you there's lots on there's so much on there's so much on yep uh we are by no means a headline act harlan coburn is a headline act uh but we aren't but also harlan will be talking about uh his kind of memoir and guide to writing so we'll talk about some of his greatest hits but he's talking about plot twist isn't he which is a life in writing which i'm very interested to read because actually laura hackett recommended Stephen King's On Writing a long time ago.

8:54People love that book, don't they? And it's amazing, even if you aren't thinking of writing a book and you're never going to write a book, it's a really brilliant insight into what makes great writers tick. And Harlan Coben is one of the world's best-selling authors, so whatever it is that makes him tick is probably worth reading about. He's also, I think if you were going to phone Central Casting, he is absolutely what they would send if you asked for wildly successful and sophisticated american writer he's very sophisticated he is isn't he and he's got a very kind of calm presence so we'll see if we can shift him about a bit jane will be back for that as well yes yes yes you'll be reuniting on on stage on stage darling i mean that's where we're happiest obviously obviously one o 'clock on saturday afternoon so see you there uh if we are going to see you there and can people then hear it are we recording it tbc okay do you want me to just record it on my phone could you just do it as one long voice note yeah that'll be fine that'll be fine uh right uh jane is back on monday as well so we will be reunited in a podcast and an afternoon show kind of way as well.

10:10And thank you for being so good hearted about all the bumps in the road that we've had over the last six months or so. But I think everybody will agree that actually you, Eve and Hannah and Rosie have stepped in and stepped up and nobody notices the cracks at all anymore. So good for you. Incoming emails then the macerator song. This comes from Nicola in Norwich. long-time listener, first-time emailer, mention of toilets and macerators. That's the sound it makes, isn't it? When a big poo's going through a macerator.

10:49Last week it prompted me to finally get in touch. Our next-door neighbours have a macerator on their toilet and whenever we hear it going off, we sing poo macerator to the tune of Smooth Operator. It's actually a cover of Boob Separator to the same tune which I've always sung whenever putting a seatbelt on. Nicola, you're gorgeous. Claire says, I'm with you, Fee. I don't care for an audio guide for two reasons. One, I read more quickly than the audio guide talks. Exactly, Claire, exactly. Whilst not visiting these houses for speed, I would prefer to read a board and then look around myself. I struggle when there's too much going on.

11:28I think youngsters call it being overstimulated. so being talked to whilst trying to absorb with my eyes feels distracting. Also makes it difficult to point something out or pass comment to a friend. One input at a time, please. In at number two, the thought of somebody else's dirty neck and ears. Rubbing up against the lanyard and headphones then transferring onto my skin makes me feel gippy. Give me a guidebook any day. And Claire's favourite sign-off is please hesitate to reach out. which is fantastic isn't it i'm with you on both of those counts and um do you know what by accident i was watching a bit of dragon's den last night eve and i put it onto audio description instead of the normal play so you get somebody who's uh you know telling you everything that's available on screen it's a fantastic service it's available everything on the iplayer and but the description I mean, it's just absolutely perfect and it was spot on.

12:28These two guys who were trying to flog alcohol-liberated wine and they walked into the den and the audio description of them was, I think it was two slightly plump white middle-aged men have entered the room. Do they? Do they? Is it a bit honest? It's great. Who's deciding that? I was having a bad day. I don't know. They may not have said slightly plump. There was another, I think there was another word they used for that, but it was just the kind of like, yeah, they have, haven't they? That's absolutely who they are. Also, the audio description is actually something that sometimes makes me feel a bit overstimulated.

13:10Yes, it is too much. It's too much information all at once. Yeah, so for people who need it because the sense has kind of gone down, completely get it, but you're right, it is just too much. But the audio things that you're listening to as you go around an art gallery, I'm absolutely with our correspondent. If you're trying to look at it, and it's a bit like what we were just talking about, I can't cope with somebody telling me what I'm looking at because then I actually just stop looking at it. So for me... You're just listening. It doesn't work at all. And then you find yourself just holding a sort of thinking, looking pose, but you're just holding the pose.

13:44You're not really doing it. Yes, yep. And given all of that, it's almost as if visualisation of the audio world would be a problem but obviously it's not and we're really hating it so you've got some other emails there quickly we've got a very helpful one from Julia who suggests how you can turn off your belly fat posts and adverts on Instagram you can reset your algorithm which is actually just helpful with all things So you need to go to your profile, go to menu, and then you can navigate what you see in content preferences, click to reset suggested content. But it feels like, why shouldn't we just be opting in in the first place instead of having to take these six steps to turn it off?

14:37Yeah, I absolutely agree. That's the thing that I find infuriating. And because I had done that before, but because I was off Instagram for a very long time, as in six months or so, when I click back on, they'll all come back. So I had cleared my settings and it's a very good suggestion, Julia, and thank you for talking us through it. But then, you know, the people who are making the money, and that's what it is, isn't it? They go, oh, yeah, she's been dormant for a while. So, yes, let's get the people who make the belly fat ads to pay a bit more extra and then we'll get all her stuff in to...

15:12Inundate you with it. When the default should just be that you don't get suggested belly fat problems anyway. But you can also just flood the zone. So I've flooded the zone, and I flooded the zone before with alpacas. I just have not seen an alpaca. Now I'm back on Instagram, and that's weird, because I know that I've followed loads and loads of alpaca places. But I've flooded the zone with autumn wear. I know, Eve, and I'm loving it. I had a friend's mum, actually, who would use it in the best way where we were talking about scar patches and then she took my phone and she just said around my phone, scar patches, scar patches, scar patches, so that I would start getting adverts for it so that I could just conveniently click a link and purchase one.

15:56Scar patches. I had a mole removed and so then you kind of put these little patches on that I think helps the healing. So she'll literally speak around her phone to make it give her the stuff that she needs to buy and wants to access. so maybe that's taking back a bit of power maybe it's still just really creepy well I mean it is creepy isn't it but it's a very sensible thing to do and we should all do that what else would you like to say out loud around your phone I need some new towels new towels a bit scratchy new towels new towels

16:35excellent well let's see whether we can just all learn the art of getting our own way online because opting out of it we just shouldn't feel that we have to do that why should we miss out on the fun just because we are being targeted as if we're stupid people we're not stupid people so let's just be clever about it and stay in the game i do think that with ai as well i don't want to hold my head in my hands and actually katie prescott who's the business technology correspondent at the Times. She has done an interview with Bill Gates, highly recommend. And she goes there on every subject, Batis Epstein links as well.

17:17It's really good. It's available on their podcast. And she was saying yesterday that we need to be talking more when we imagine the Armageddon created by AI of what it's actually going to be. So obviously, I said, well, what is it? You know, can you give us an example? And she said, well, just imagine if we were all completely and utterly avalanched and overwhelmed by paperclips were you expecting that i wasn't expecting that eve and she said just imagine if if you know if one ai bot or whatever it is has got the instruction that the world needs more paperclips and then the competitive ai gets hold of that jumps out of its sandbox look at my technological term there and says okay well I'm going to make even more paperclips and then actually all of the factories in the world only make paperclips and we're overwhelmed by paperclips and when you hear someone Casey Pashcott really really knows her stuff putting it in those terms I find it both humorous and bubble bursting and helpful and I fully understand that if you were to replace the word paper clips with drones it would be a really chilling image but we've just got to stay in the game yeah endlessly having these conversations in order to then be able to hopefully influence a bit of change but also on the self-regulation thing just self-regulate so you know ai is asking people in ai whistleblowers are you know asking for more and more and more regulation they want regulation we're told we're just you you could choose to self-regulate you could all go i'm not going to compete with the other one for a while until we all calm down too many egos massive massive thank god there aren't any like that in our business not in this building no don't be ridiculous uh lynn in wellington in new zealand says enjoy your beautiful autumn i hope the temperatures remain barmy it's very nice today isn't it it is actually yeah if the scary predictions discussed last week are right and humanity is wiped out by 2030 it will be a sorry end for us all but more so for a select few biohackers such a pity that we'll miss the schadenfreude of brian johnson's failed experiment they got you too brian meanwhile i'm enjoying spring of the return of the tui to sing and perform their acrobatics in our cow wide tree Kofi tree.

19:50Sorry. I know. So we're in New Zealand and we're with birds that we don't know in trees that we don't know. Sounds lovely. A tui and a kofi or a kofi tree. Anyway, I've given you lots of options there, Lynn. Lynn's sign-off is this. As Winston Churchill might have said, never in the field of podcasts have so many holidays been taken by so few. I'm really looking forward to the return of the full team next week for the promised six weeks. Plumbing and pipe work. Oh, yeah. We need to sort this out. We love this. Helen Cook is an architect. Listening to last Wednesday's podcast, 9th of September in brackets, I couldn't help but laugh out loud when you've been talking about plumbing and pipe work, only for the ad break to go to an advert for tenner ladies.

20:34We're so on it. To confirm, I know a lot about drainage and plumbing. I'm an architect and have to think about routes for supply of water and how to drain it and work on very complex buildings. Quite often, we work with the mechanical engineer to design the above-ground drainage and the civil engineer to do the below-ground. But as the architect, we set out where it goes from and ensure that things are placed to ensure that they can be drained. It's all about gravity. So you have to ensure that drains and pipework have falls, i.e. sloping pipes, to get wastewater away. They then go into vertical pipework, for example, a soil vent pipe for WCs to take waste into larger drains underground.

21:16I've got more. Do you want it? Please. Waste from new builds is split between foul drainage, that's waste from WC's bathrooms and kitchens, and surface water drainage, roofs, hard landscaping. But the principles of using gravity and a sloping pipe are the same. Surface water can be collected as wastewater and stored for reuse for toilet flushing in some developments, and pipework for foul drainage is also vented to avoid buildup of gases. Size of... Why are you laughing at the back? I've just got to imagine this with noise of a fecal water slide park. No, that's not a nice image. Lots of people are listening to this in order to get to sleep and you've just invented a water slide of feces.

22:03What are you? You're in a high rocks game. You read that high rocks story. I saw that poor woman. But then everyone else who had to compete. There was a high rocks competition. Was it in Beijing? Beijing, I think. In China. And one of the women competing, she lost control of her bowels. But she carried on on the equipment. She carried on, yeah.

22:27Ellen says, The size of pipework is determined by the volume of waste you expect the pipe to take. I hope that explains the exciting world of plumbing. it's an incredibly important thing to get right you're plenty right well it sounds it yeah it is apologies for ever underestimating the signs behind it and i'm really sorry helen but but um but but it doesn't all of that is fantastic but it doesn't answer the question of whether in an old house you can put a bathroom wherever you like that was the original question whether you have to stick to the side of the house that the plumbing is on and i presume that's more about the foul waste pipe than it is about the other waste pipe get back in touch helen we know you've got more we know you've got more uh this is a delightful one from uh margie and it is it's margie with a hard g and uh margie says you mentioned bernie eccleston taking a gun to the airport that had been spied by our eagle lied colleague Jane Garvey in the newspaper.

23:29This reminded me of an incident that occurred with my ageing aunt a few years ago. Auntie M was 94 and lived in a care home and I was with her. She asked me to speak on the phone on her behalf to a bank and instruct them to move some stuff around financially. Auntie was incredibly sharp of mind, although physically failing. I was speaking on the phone to a very pleasant but seemingly inexperienced young man at the banking institution and he advised that they would need us to present Auntie's ID to a local branch or fax it over. He said, did Aunty have a current driving licence? No, I replied, she's 94 and hasn't driven for some years.

24:03Does she have a valid passport? No, she's 94 and hasn't travelled abroad for some years. This clearly flummoxed the young man, who obviously then consulted his list and asked hopefully, does she have a gun licence?

24:18Smothering my giggles, I relate this request to Aunty, who retorted that no, but if she did have a gun, he might well be on her list. Oh dear. Margie also tells us about toast, the shop and the food item. When a young child, my nephew used to refer to bread as raw toast. I found it very pleasing. A few years ago, I worked at a school breakfast club with particular responsibility for play work. On a side note, my best friend couldn't believe it when I started this job. She said, A, you hate getting up early. B, play work involves crafts and you're rubbish at crafts. And C, you once told me you don't like other people's children.

24:53Perfect job. Anyway, I did work there and once whilst trying to persuade a reluctant child to eat their breakfast, I invented jigsaw toast, which involved cutting said bread offering into complicated shapes. The child loved it and devoured it. Unfortunately, it didn't have a positive effect on my popularity amongst the other breakfast club workers as going forward, many children insisted on it and it took absolutely ages to do. A final thought from Margie is about Australian supermarkets. They are definitely inferior. I've recently had a friend from Brisbane come to visit, although I suspect that her primary driver for crossing the world was Marks and Spencer's, as we spent a lot of time cruising the food aisles there with sounds of adulation emitting from her, along with exclamations of, look, look, you don't know how lucky you are.

25:43Have binge-watched Colin from Accounts. Found it an easy way to wind up my adult children by calling it Colin in Accounts. It's very true, isn't it? So in our household, the thing that makes my kids both cringe and laugh openly at me was we were walking down a very fashionable part of Dalston back in the summer and my partner, who works in the music business so really knows people and stuff, saw Tyler, the... Tyler, the creator. Yeah, thank you. I was relaying this. Oh, wow. I know, back to my children, but I called him Tyler, the creative. and it's stuck. Could just be any Tyler in East London.

26:26It's just stuck. Never lived it down. And now I've told all of you. Margie says, I'm also watching Vigil. No idea what's going on, but thankful that the music turned so obviously ominous when I need to pay particular attention. Yes, I was grateful for that as well. As I'm half trying to make my little quilt and it was good to know that I could just look up when the plinky-plonky sounds came in. That was a brilliant email. So you're sticking with Vigil then? No, I've done it all. Oh, you've done it all? I've done it all, yep. You haven't sold it to me. I mean, when it came, I didn't actually. On episode six, I spooled forward and just did the last ten minutes at the end.

27:08Did it have a satisfying ending? No, because it was just really, really obvious right from the beginning who was going to be the kind of hand of God behind it all. and I mean the acting was fantastic, the scenery was fantastic I think the first two series I loved them, absolutely loved them but in this one you just weren't really invested I just couldn't really care for any of the characters we didn't meet any of the ones who got killed for long enough to care about their deaths it was quite, it was a bit Midsummer Murders in places oh look, you know, she'd just been stepped in the cafeteria it was just very strange and this is a spoiler alert so just hum loudly to yourselves for the next 30 seconds if you haven't watched it yet but the idea that somebody could have discovered in the seabed in the Arctic a biomass fuel that didn't have anything to do with fossil fuels and wouldn't harm the world and was actually the answer to everything it was just a bit bloody unicorn, rainbow and Narnia what?

28:17Magic surrealism and kept it in a little file in a polystyrene box I mean guess what, that got smashed so you're back with us now so no it I'm sorry it didn't work but I just I hope they just they lay it to rest now I think that's that God I would hope so I mean where else would you go because you've done the kind of hemmed in you've done the underwater you've done, I suppose you could go somewhere very hot The desert. Yeah. Let's not give them any ideas. No, but actually cold really works in TV shows, doesn't it? But heat, I don't think it does. One of the best series I've ever watched was Trapped.

28:59Did you watch Trapped? No. So I think that was set in Iceland and it was just that incredible sense and actually it's behind some great, great novels including the fantastic Peter Hoag's, Miss Miller's Feeling for Snow. The idea that when the ice melts, something will be revealed incoming with an email called Love Lane Barn I've often nearly emailed you apropos of Horny Old Road I live in Love Lane Barn not in Malvern but in Devon I have certain thoughts or try not to about how it got its name but I feel I need to mention it Love Lane Barn, Horny Old Road I hope it makes you chuckle it certainly does we've had quite a lot of reports as well of cockshoot avenues.

29:44There are quite a lot of those around. And quite a lot of cockburns as well. It feels very British as well. It is very British. It stays funny. I hope it doesn't if you've got cream for that. You mean that. Now, the Art Deco M &S. So Rosie and I have ended up having to swap a lot of pictures of the doors in the Bury St Edmunds M &S. This is what it's come to, and I'm very, very much here for it. It's very on brand. And we thought when we visited Bury St Edmunds that there was an Art Deco feel to the M &S there, but I've been thoroughly corrected. There's some almost mosaic work above the M &S, but I absolutely agree to stand down my notion that there is an Art Deco M &S.

30:29My apologies to everybody in Bury St Edmunds. So there isn't? No. It's a very nice M &S, and it's got a kind of definitely a more old-fashioned tiled fassier, but I think we've done that thing. You know if you saw a bunny rabbit going across the A4 somewhere just outside Berkhamsted in this country, you'd go, oh, that's a bunny rabbit going across the A4. Does the A4 go through Berkhamsted? Anyway, it might be the A41, it might be the A40, you choose your A roads. But then if you go to the hills of Umbria and you see a rabbit crossing the road, stop the car, it's a rabbit. Yes. It's a rabbit. And I think that that's what happens sometimes when we leave London.

31:12We go to other places and we go, Barry, Barry St Edmunds, the Marks and Spencers, it's our deco. Wonderful, everything's wonderful. Everything, the Greggs, look at the Greggs. It probably is a bit nicer than the ones. It is, yeah, it is nicer than the one on the Kingsland Road, yeah. But I thought you'd been discussing, I thought M &S had done a bit of the Wetherspoons about it. All the Wetherspoons are in these beautiful grade-listed buildings that they've bought and done up. And I was thinking about that, and say what you like about the owner of Weatherspoons. Well, yeah. And I would say some things.

31:43But is that as strictly positive as it sounds? What would be the downside? Well, I don't know. That's kind of what I was watching. I was like, can there be a silver lining here? Can I have a bit of faith? Well, I suppose if they weren't going to be owned by anybody, then it's good that they're being used, of course. And I don't know. Somebody would have done a PhD on this, wouldn't they? Because you can sit in some unbelievable buildings and be like, I'm just in a spoons. Yeah. It's quite peculiar. There's a really sticky carpet about it, but then these huge columns and high, high ceilings. Yeah, no, that is quite strange, isn't it?

32:20You're onto something there, young people. So I wondered if M &S was now moving into that space. Well, McDonald's used to be in that space in Chichester. This is in Coming from Patrick. The talk of the Art Deco M &S in Bury St Edmunds reminded me of the McDonald's in Chichester from my youth in the 1990s. I didn't really think it was odd as a child, but looking back, it now looks like some Greek revival palace. Please see a touch photo. And it does. I mean, it looks like the end of the Parthenon. And you've got these incredible Doric pillars in front. You've got one, two, three, four, five, six, beautifully asymmetrical portico pillars.

32:53And then you've got exactly, I mean, look at that. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that is something straight out of the Athenian 5th century architectural playbook. with the golden arches on top, where usually the wonderful frieze of all of the gods would be. Considering Chichester is quite well to do, I'm amazed it ever got planning permission to open there. Thankfully, the council came to their senses. It's no longer a McDonald's. It's now a branch of New Look. Ah. That's a new record. No. No. Always wild. And Carol, who listens to the Afternoon Show, and I think listens to this podcast as well, She emailed the afternoon show yesterday because we did this story, Eve, about Pippa Middleton and her husband, Mr Spencer, who have managed to get public access to an old bridal path banned, rescinded because it goes across a bit of their land.

33:55And we had a local councillor on who was really annoyed about it. He was representing the part of the village that wanted to be able to have the right to roam across the land as their ancestors had done. There were people on both sides of that particular farm gate. But as Carol says, thanks to their own actions, I'm now aware of the precise location of the home of Pippa and her husband. And it's a very good point, Carol. Yes. Everybody now knows where they live. Their argument was about privacy and security. And the very angry people can very much go and find them and target them and stand outside and cause much more bother.

34:31Yep, it does seem bizarre. Also, you know, do you need to segregate yourself so much? Don't you want to be a part of the community in which you live? Well, I would want to, yes. Yeah, and I wouldn't want to be up the gated drive, you know, with everybody knowing that I was there, but nobody actually knowing me. I think that's such a weird thing to do. Yeah, then you pop to the local farm shop and you're getting frosty looks left, right and centre. Yes, yep, so it is a strange one. I just wonder why they couldn't have done something on their own land that provided security from that bridal path if that's what they wanted.

35:09Because it does seem terribly high-handed, doesn't it? Lord of the manor, get off my land. Yeah. Shoot, go away. I'm sure they're not short of space. Yes, yep. Claire just wants to say, I remember BSE. I remember the crisis being equated to Bury St Edmunds. I also live here in Lovett. I was helping my nan with her care later in life and when writing some notes from a phone call, I wrote shorthand for Barry BSE and she said to me in a worried voice, have I got BSE? BSE was one of those things that did terrify the bejesus out of us and I remember thinking, gosh, millions of people are going to die because of this strange infection and we were reminded of it by one of our correspondents who just wanted to put into context our fears about Armageddon and AI at the moment that actually, you know, the world has always felt that there's an existential threat somewhere.

36:05So maybe AI is the latest thing that we've put into the fear and worry vacuum. I thought it was quite a good introduction into our conversation. It's a nicer thought in a weird way. As a society, we've overcome all of these threats and moved past and forward and we found a way to push on. so hopefully it doesn't always need to be a doomsday yep yeah i obviously very much hope so very much hope so and we can't all go and live in a bunker in tasmania if you're listening to us in tasmania how do you feel about being the tech bros island destination of choice for when the world does absolutely implode because of what they've made because i think it is new zealand and tasmania that these bros are heading towards.

36:59And they are bros, there just aren't any sisters in that mob. Yeah. Oh, God, imagine. I mean, good luck to them. And I mean, if that's what's left, I don't think I want to be around. No, but I mean, you know, the good burgers of Tasmania, they can't possibly... Well, do you embrace it? I don't know. Maybe there's a whole kind of sub-economy that's planning for exactly that.

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39:16William Boyd is one of our greatest living novelists. His latest book is the third instalment. In the life of his new spy, Gabriel Dax, a reluctant intelligence officer, his handler, Faith Green, is definitely handling him. The books are set against the backdrop of the Cold War and so far they've taken us through the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, CIA involvement in Guatemala, an attempted assassination of President Kennedy in Berlin. And in this book, we find Gabriel dealing with double agents in MI6, crossing borders in Russia and living an Odysseus-style life on a Greek island for a while.

39:54William, it's always a pleasure to see you. How are you? Very well, thanks. Lovely to be here for you. Thank you. Well, let's get straight into it. And please don't worry, all our listeners who are thinking, can I stay listening to one of my favourite authors of all time or is it going to ruin the book? We are not going to ruin the book at all. You know how this works. Where is Gabriel at the start of Cold Sunset? Well, he's in Los Angeles, in fact, trying to, no spoilers, but he's been sent on what seems like an innocuous mission to meet a poet of all, an ageing poet who has a secret to tell.

40:28And that secret, in a way, sets the whole narrative in motion because he's revealing a mole in the Secret Service in World War II, the Bletchley Park Enigma set up code breaking. and this isn't a spoiler. The person he reveals is very much based on the fifth Cambridge spy, John Cairncross, and everything that happens in my novel is sort of attached to the John Cairncross story, which is very interesting, in fact. And I think all spy novels post-war are haunted by those five guys from Cambridge who betrayed their country so assiduously and this one's no exception. Do you enjoy being able to say goodbye to all the technology of the modern world when you write these books set in this time?

41:24Because what's so telling is the fact that obviously you can't use a Google search. You can't really use some phone mask triangulation. You know, the nature of spying is still very much leave the compromat in a certain place and somebody might find it. I mean, it's old school stuff. Yes, it's analogue spying. And it's actually much more fun than writing a spy novel set today, which is all about electronic surveillance and whistleblowing, it seems to me. Back in the 60s, if you wanted to make a phone call, you had to find a phone box. You might send somebody a postcard and say, let's meet under the station clock on Saturday afternoon.

42:04So I'm old enough to remember the 60s vividly. They kind of coincided with my teenage years. So it's rather nice to time travel back to that period and imagine how on earth did we live without smartphones and the Internet, etc., etc. So we somehow we did manage. And so it's very nice having these spies working under those conditions and reminding people what life was like 60 years ago. For people who haven't met Gabriel Dax before, can you just tell us a bit about him? Yes, he's a young man born in 1930, a troubled young man because of a childhood trauma. But he's become quite a successful travel writer.

42:53The first novel, Gabriel's Moon, he has three books to his credit and they've all done pretty well. So he's making a living as a travel writer. But he's suborned, he's sort of manipulated into doing a little job for MI6. But of course, as the snowball at the top of the mountain, it turns into an avalanche and he becomes more and more deeply involved in this triple bluff defection, a so-called traitor defecting to Russia. and his life is slowly but surely over the next three novels taken over by MI6 or this department of MI6 that I've invented called the Department of Developmental Studies, the Institute of Developmental Studies, run by this mysterious and alluring woman, Faith Green.

43:45So Gabriel is getting more and more involved and he finds he has a kind of talent for spying as well. and by the time of the third novel he's really quite competent and as Faith Green tells him nobody quits in this business and I think he realises that his life as a travel writer will always be overshadowed by his life as a reluctant unwilling spy. So as you've mentioned Gabriel has some books under his belt and through the trilogy he's going off to see his publisher to have these sudden often kind of light bulb moments while he's in his office as to what he's going to write next. And I couldn't help but think, William, that actually some of the book ideas are very good and you should write them yourself.

44:28I think they'd be pinched, actually. I do write the odd travel piece, but I'm not a travel writer. But I got these ideas to have to think, what's Gabriel going to write next? And so I come up with these notions. And a lot of publishers have actually said to me, these are very interesting ideas. So I suspect there may be Gabriel Dax-style travel books emerging. But it's a good job for a spy or a reluctant spy to have because it's perfect cover. In a way, he can go anywhere with the freedom that a proper spy or a foreign office diplomat can't go. And so he, even in this third novel, he goes to Moscow to write a chapter of his next travel book.

45:17And it's, you know, totally plausible and perfect cover. Yeah. Obviously, a great cover for a modern day spy would be to be one of this country's bestselling novelists. Well, I don't think so. That person would have to be intrepid and clever and not cowardly, which is, I don't fit that bill. But it would be a great cover because you could go anywhere in the world and ask lots of people lots of questions and say, I'm just doing a piece of stuff. I mean, I think lots of writers and journalists did that. I mean, I loosely based Gabriel on this writer called Norman Lewis, who I'm convinced was a stringer for MI6.

45:57But, you know, think of Graham Greene as well. Graham Greene did work for MI6 in the war. But I think after the war, he was still reporting back, as was Ian Fleming, who was in naval intelligence in the war. but when he became managing director of the Sunday Times, he was still working closely with the Secret Service. So writers have often got this slightly ambivalent relationship with the security services, and because they can go where orthodox spies can't, they can come back with very useful information. You weave your stories around facts from history, and that's what makes your book so compelling because we can kind of map out a shadow of reality onto which the characters then perform their roles.

46:48But I wonder what that does to your head as a writer. Does it make you want to revisit actual points in time and really question whether or not we were all told the right thing about them? Yes, I mean, I am a realistic novelist and so I want the world of my fiction to seem as real as possible. So that's why I introduced real people and real historical events into the stories I'm writing. And, you know, I have opinions and it's a very nice freedom to be able to explore these opinions. I'm a JFK conspiracy theorist. I think there were two shooters in Dallas that day. Therefore, there must be a conspiracy.

47:31but who conspired in a novel. You can let yourself go and explore all sorts of reasons. Similarly with what the CIA was getting up to in Central America in the 1960s was mind-boggling. So I'm sort of lifting a lid on forgotten historical facts and historical incidents, but at the same time trying to weave as enticing a story as possible. Where would you see controversy at the moment in conspiracy theories? I mean, are there some that you look at and you think, actually, no, I believe that? What do you mean contemporary conspiracy theories? Trump's attempted assassination. There's a lot of billowing smoke around.

48:18Yes, and also his decapitation of the Venezuelan president is very reminiscent of what was going on in the 1960s in Central America. I think that we're all much more sceptical now about what we're told. And we double check or we go to many sources to see if we might give this or that idea any credence. However, you know, almost anything Trump says seems to be hopelessly untrue. So no doubt there are masses of conspiracy theories out there. Let's not talk about reform and the donations. I think the sensible person contemplating the news cycle really does sift through the varying stories and checks and brings their own intelligence to bear on what might be true and what might be a tissue of lies or some sort of attempt to obscure the truth.

49:31Do you watch a lot of news? Well, actually, you know, I used to be a news junkie and I would watch 24 streaming news all the time. But I have to say that since Trump became president of the United States, I cannot see or hear his voice. So I now read the news. I don't watch it. It's a little bit difficult, William. I know exactly. It's complicated. He does tend to hog the limelight. But you get these antipathies to certain politicians and you sort of, what's the point of screaming and shouting at the television set? You know, just read about it. Last time you came in, which was to talk about the second book in your trilogy featuring Gabriel Dax, we did talk about the possibility that it would come to life on the screen.

50:20Is that still happening? Yes, it is. But it's sort of transformed. We were talking about a movie possibility, but even a 250-page novel, when you turn it into a two-hour film, you have to lose, you know, 40 or 50 percent of the novel. And so now we're rethinking it as a six-part TV series of Gabriel's Moon, the first novel. And I'm actually much happier about that because I've written many TV series myself. I've adapted my own books before. and the fact that you have more room to move and the fact that you can do the book more justice in a way than you can with a movie version is much more appealing to me as a writer, even though a movie is potentially more glamorous than a TV series.

51:11But in terms of adaptations, I think it's far more satisfying. Would you be able to give us any clues as to who would play Gabriel and who would play Faith? Well, I have a wish list. We all have wish lists when you're contemplating a film or a TV adaptation. And for me, I feel that the young English actor, Josh O 'Connor, would make an excellent Gabriel. I probably completely stymied that opportunity now by mentioning it. And the director attached to the series suggested Claire Foy as Faith Green, which I thought was a really good idea. Yes, that would work. So, you know, the trouble about film and TV casting dreams is that you usually end up with somebody entirely different from the one you want but is equally good.

52:03But in the kind of wish fulfilment department, Joshua Conner and Claire Foy would be a perfect couple for me. Are you remotely interested in who becomes the next James Bond? Well, only because I have a sort of Bond history. And, you know, I've worked with three of the James Bond actors over my film writing career and got to know Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig really quite well. And I've written a James Bond continuation novel and I've written a lot about Ian Fleming. So I have this kind of Bond side to my life. So I keep an eye on the speculation. And the funny thing is that the current favourite, who is Jack Loudon, I think, of Slow Horses fame, well, actually, Jack Loudon was in a short film I wrote.

52:51So he would be the fourth Bond actor that I'd worked with, which would really be uncanny. The universe is telling us something here. Exactly. There's so much hype about it, isn't there? And I wonder whether, I mean, the Bond franchise has moved, hasn't it? It's moved over to Amazon. and I'm almost wary of ingesting too much Bond stuff myself. Yeah, and you know, I'm not a, to be honest, despite having worked with these three great actors, I'm not a great fan of the movies because they've moved so far away from the original Ian Fleming world. They're now a kind of action movie, quote-unquote glamorous franchise that has to play in Shanghai and Vladivostok and Santiago de Chile.

53:37And so they become sort of generic, it seems to me, And they've lost whatever idiosyncrasies that Fleming had, who was a very idiosyncratic man. And the bond he created, which you can read about in the novels, is a total stranger to the bond that appears in the movies. So the gulf between the two forms is massive. And, you know, you can judge the movie on the basis of its action capacity or whether it's thrilling or not. but don't see it as part of the tradition of the James Bond world that Ian Fleming created. Yeah, and he's no Gabriel Dax. Inherent in your novels is always a really astonishing sense of detail about how people look and how people eat and what people drink, William.

54:29And actually, in this book, I really noticed that Gabriel is drinking a lot. Is he all right? Yes, he is drinking a lot, but one forgets that in the 40s, 50s and 60s, people drank hugely and smoked hugely. I mean, Ian Fleming drank two bottles of vodka a day and smoked 80 cigarettes a day. And so does James Bond. Bond is a functioning alcoholic. If you count the number of drinks he has, it's a wonderful line. I think it's in You Only Live Twice, which goes, I paraphrase, Bond realised that the 13th large whiskey had been a mistake. And you think, hang on, that's a bottle and a half, isn't it? So I'm trying to make it as authentic 1960s as possible.

55:09My father was a doctor in Africa, but he came home from his clinics for lunch and had two pink gins and then drank probably half a bottle of whiskey in the evening and smoked. It was a different world. And in a way, part of the fun of recreating it and part of the fun of the time travel that's involved in writing about the 1960s is that you can remind people of what the world was like then and how different it was from the world we inhabit today. How could all of those people drink so much and still carry on? Were they just balancing it out with more vegetables, fewer additives? I genuinely don't know.

55:50I think people were thinner. There wasn't much obesity around in the 50s and the 60s, but it was all booze as well. It wasn't beer and wine. It was spirits, you know, it's whiskey, gin, brandy. And I don't know, maybe they just had stronger heads or nobody was ticking them off so they didn't feel guilty. Maybe. You've mentioned there your childhood and you were born in Africa and lived in Nigeria. Born in Ghana, lived there and in Nigeria. So the first sort of 20 odd years of my life were West African. So as our look back at history tells us more things about it, and certainly that pink colouring of the world in the empire, I wonder what that makes you think about your childhood.

56:40Does it change your childhood memories? Well, it does in the sense that I realise that my experience of growing up as a kid and as a youth and a young man was something that's totally vanished. The experiences I had growing up in those two countries, Ghana and Nigeria, are not replicable now. And so I look back on my childhood and my time in Africa, West Africa, with great gratitude because I had total freedom. Those countries were racially integrated. There was no racial tension at all. As a white boy in a black African country, I could go anywhere I wanted at any time fearlessly. And so to have done that and experienced that is an extraordinary privilege.

57:31And those days have gone, alas. But I was lucky enough to live through the 50s and the 60s in African countries and experience them with a freedom that is not possible today. So what do you think when you see greater racism here? Well, I'm shocked by it. And I think because I grew up in an African country, I had Ghanaian friends. I went to their houses. They came to my house. I think it gave me a kind of, if I'm not being vainglorious, a sort of racism-free upbringing. So for me, it's something that I find shocking. And that's, you know, I find it intellectually shocking. But because of my experiences as a youngster and as a young man, I find it hard to comprehend that animus, that antagonism towards people of different ethnicities.

58:32It's something that I never experienced vice versa and was totally comfortable in these African countries. And, you know, again, that was a wonderful gift to me. If you were a young man now, would you set out on the same path of creativity and making your living out of writing? Well, I would, I think, because when I was 17 or 18 and you were thinking, what the hell am I going to do as a grown up? I realised quite quickly that I couldn't hold down a proper job and that I wanted to be vaguely an artist of some kind. And I thought of being a painter and going to art school, but I was kind of I switched to literature.

59:11But I didn't know anybody who wrote books or who published books. I had no connections with that world. So I think that looking at my temperament and my nature, I would still want to be a layabout artist of some kind, trying to write or paint or do something in that world and not have a nine to five, Monday to Friday job. Are you a very competitive man? And if Robert Harris's latest book, and we always ask you about Robert Harris, tops yours in the bestseller list. Will there be a bit of a fight? No, well, Robert's books will always top mine in the bestseller list. He's a friend and I'm not competitive.

59:54I think particularly, you know, entering the end game of my writing career and it's, you know, I've been writing, my first novel was published 45 years ago. Seems astonishing to me. And it's a long haul, a writing life. you need a lot of stamina. And I think as you write on and as you get older and as you publish more books, it's more a feeling of solidarity with the other survivors who are still writing away and still standing, because a lot of them have fallen by the wayside. A lot of writers can't earn a living. Their books are out of print. So when you look around at, when I look around at my contemporaries and my peers, my feeling is, you know, good luck to us all, rather than you swine, how dare you have a bestseller, number one.

1:00:42He says terrible things about you, William. He doesn't at all. Now, I'm delighted because you've already told me this off mic that actually this isn't the last in the Gabriel Dax series. No, I think that having written the three books in three years, which are something I've never done before, but I actually think it looks like a cunning plan because he's sort of established now as a personage and he has a backstory and a complicated life and he's got a literary life as well as an espionage life. And so, like it or not, I think I've created a little franchise here and I intend to continue. I'm going to write another long novel before I write another Gabriel Dax novel, but I'm sure there will be many more Gabriel Daxes down the line.

1:01:30That is such, such pleasing news. William Boyd it's always a pleasure thank you very much indeed for coming into Times Towers today. Thank you Fee. Cold Sunset is out now. Buy it before you buy anything by Robert Harris It is superb there is always a worry isn't there when you are reading the next episode of a book that it won't entertain quite as much as the first did but I really really loved it and the ending which we won't talk about anymore I had to read it about three times so I thought, oh, that's good It has the office quite gripped That is good Because the head of news here, Toby bothers me constantly trying to get his hands on the next video So he's literally been hovering on my shoulder every morning begging for when it finally arrives so I've been able to give him a copy and he's completely enthralled Okay, well that's good I'll keep him quiet for a while next week we've got a bumper week of guests for you Louise Kennedy is in to talk about her latest novel Ben McIntyre is in to talk about his latest book and May Musk is in to talk about her book and also about other members of her family and I can't wait I've got some pre-prepared questions and I hope I'm bold enough to ask them

1:02:57so yes I'm working my way through the musk family actually I'm not I want to stop there if that's all right Eve thank you no more musks no more musks so join us if you can if you're coming to Derbyshire it'll be absolutely lovely to see you come and say hello we remain Jane and at Times.Radio Garver's back on Monday have a lovely weekend when you get to it

1:03:31Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.

1:04:17Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions, requires iPhone 11 or later.