Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Jane Garvey's Chunky Buts (with Anthony Horowitz)

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Jane and Fi are pondering potential future job opportunities and Jane's seemingly ruining any chance of hers... Amongst that, they also discuss rats, celestial events and bin day.Plus, they're joined by author Anthony Horowitz to discuss his latest novel 'Close to Death'.Our next book club pick has been announced - A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zaidi.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I read that really late last night, I was going to send it to you. Avocado. Don't tell me anymore! Nuts! A dollop of yoghurt. You don't say! A handful of nuts and a dollop of yoghurt. Welcome. So, Fee is about to do an interview about one of the big hit TV shows of last year. Or was it the year before? Oh, 20, I think 2022. It was the Responder.

Although they never said it like that. Series 2 is up and done and dusted and stuff, but we don't know when it's going to be released. But I did that very exciting thing this morning where i watched a preview well it does feel good that doesn't it well it does but um so you you had all of those things when you were doing yours well how do we refer to it well very briefly as regular listeners will know i wrote an ill-advised tv column tv critic column why was it ill-advised TV column, TV critic column. Why was it ill-advised? Well, because I never made any bones. I didn't particularly, I don't actually watch a lot of television.

And I'm not, and I used to find it really hard to do. I think my admiration for columnists genuinely has gone through the roof. I mean, I really mean this. Oh, that's good. Because I think to have to churn an opinion out, sometimes three or four times a week, it must be utterly exhausting. Because not only are there lots of things that I don't have a view on,

there were lots of programmes I didn't have a view on either, apart from, Lord, hell, this is tripe. And then again, you'd see something magnificent. But you could say that. But what did your opinion count for nothing anyway um i mean obviously my opinion did count what am i saying but um people who manage to have an opinion when sometimes there's no opinion to be had they do have my admiration could you do that could you write a column where you had to be all fired up and steam coming out of every orifice more than

twice a week well i think it's career limiting for either of us to say in a public domain that we wouldn't be open to that kind of opportunity we're both completely up what do i just sometimes i forget that this is being recorded so i'm gonna say indeed where i love that would you guess later in life i might really love that chain actually okay but no i know i i i hear you and i mean it's just that very funny column isn't it in private eye where they go back through columnists and find that they were fired up with hatred yeah about two months before they were absolutely passionate with positivity about exactly the same person or topic we are all a mass of contradictions but just going back to the original peg of this conversation just about having a preview code so you can watch stuff that you know that nobody else

can watch uh which i don't enjoy doing at all because i really like the the the fact that when you watch something you know that you're going to be able to talk to somebody else about it well that's community viewing it is yeah so I've watched episode one of season two of the responder and it is glorious but I just felt lonely I'm just watching it on my little screen this morning uh it is not the same kind of enjoyment at all it's also a little bit of a conversation stopper at gatherings if somebody says, oh, the responder's back next week and you can just deaden the whole atmosphere by saying, oh yes, I've seen episode one.

Everybody hates you. Well, you're going to regret saying that now because I found it sometimes quite difficult when you were doing the Radio Times column when you'd seen everything. By the way, much missed. Before I or anybody else had because it is really impossible to sustain that conversation.

I know. But also, you can't resist saying that you've seen it. You just can't. We've just had a spirited conversation about when the election might be. Those of you listening outside the UK may or may not know or care that we are on the cusp of some sort of general election event,

aren't we? But it could be any point this year, or even as far away as January next year. Yeah. Which I have to say... But it's a little bit like the TV preview thing. There are quite a lot of people who walk around who are absolutely certain, absolutely certain they know the date.

Well, why don't they tell us? Yeah, nobody does. No, they don't. Anyway, can we move on to celestial matters? Yes, although both of us, we're a little bit worried about our holiday plans being changed. We can't deny that, which is why we were talking about it. Will we have to cancel?

Because obviously no election can go ahead without our presence and involvement. Celestial events. We did note the solar eclipse yesterday. Cher is our correspondent in the States. She just wants to pass on the information that it was clear and absolutely beautiful where she was. It was magical and awe-inspiring, the eclipse.

The power of our sun is something I don't have the vocabulary to express, she says. Can I say, although it is clearly something that is a deeply humbling set of circumstances, it's also not something that really lends itself to radio newspaper images or radio i thought we did very well yesterday i think will pavia who was our correspondent in the states was brilliant on the subject really interesting but it is not the easiest thing to describe. I watched it while I was having my tea last night. And even on telly, it's not that... I really do think you have to be there.

I really do. Because ultimately, it's just everything going dark. It is. You could recreate it in your own home. Just have a power cut. Draw the curtains. Yeah, exactly. Now, I don't mind seeing it on the TV.

I think what I would love, actually, is to just hear it on the radio because the point that lots of people made was about the wildlife going bonkers. So I'd quite like to hear a little recording of that because I don't really know what people mean when they say that the wildlife go bonkers. So that would be fun.

I've just watched a video of some very old rats that may or may not have the bubonic plague. And that's something that we're going to be talking about on our radio show a bit later. I'm looking forward to that. There was a dead rat in our street last night, which, considering where I live, not far from central London, really. It's not far from the palace. It's not far from his madge. Well, if you're a very brisk walker, it's probably four hours.

Anyway, you don't often see rats, do you? In London? We know they're there, but actually seeing them is a very different thing. You're kidding me. Well, I have not seen one in ages. Have you not? No. Okay.

Well, I don't want to... Where did you see one? ...diss my hood, but we do see quite a lot of rats in and about the Hackney environment. Oh, do you? Okay. We've got a real problem with overflowing bins at the moment, Jane. Yes, we do. Is it the council?

Yes, it is, because routines have changed. What? A decrease in the number of public bin emptying rotors and also in residential bins. Our black bins are only going off somewhere every two weeks now. What about yours? When you say black bins, that's the household bin? Yes.

No, ours are still once, in fact, it's tomorrow. Is it? Yeah. Okay. And then there are a couple of open public bins just on the street where I live, and they have been continuously overflowing in a really horrendous way, actually. And the foxes and the rats just go, they just have a field day. They're having a dinner party every night, inviting all of their mates.

And the very nice young man who's on that particular stretch of bin emptying, we had a chat the other morning and he said you know we're just not getting around as many bins and all of the rotors have changed and it is the public parks and the public bins that are really suffering and of course it makes no sense because you know even if you told people that they wouldn't they wouldn't think oh i'll take my rubbish home with me instead of putting it in this bin because the rotors have changed. And I really understand that councils have got to trim their finances and we're in a much healthier state than some cities in the country.

But our attitude to litter has just changed phenomenally and just the amount of bloody packaging. I mean, it is a recipe for rat disaster. So we see rats. I think if I looked out of my window, if I was awake at 2.30 in the morning, then I would see rats every night. Bold as brass and huge as well.

But foxes control the rat population? They all seem to be living quite happily together. I would also have thought that having three cats and a dog might challenge the fox population, but that's not the case. They come over the garden wall, just sit and say hello in the sunshine. I should say that we are all in the office enjoying the brooding presence of Barbara, your cat,

in portrait form because that was the lovely gift given to us by Caroline. Caroline Priestley. Which you can see on the Instagram. Which we can see on the Instagram. Thank you, Eve. Eve is the one who keeps us in touch with modern developments. She does. Such as?

She's very on brand. Instagram. Yeah. Oh, and we should mention the book club then, shouldn't we? Because we've promised to do that too. So lots of people have been very much enjoying the book club book. We've got one here, actually, that I was going to put to the top of the pile and I rather foolishly hadn't.

But I'm really glad about that because I was a little bit worried actually after we'd chosen it because we're in a dark place in the wider world aren't we and sometimes you just really you want a book that's going to take you somewhere quite sunshiny and full of rainbows and this is a very honest and real story that has I think quite a lot of heartbreak in it. But people are very willing to embrace it. And I can't find the right word. I found it. Oh, thank God. I go straight to the top of the class.

Deborah says, thank you for choosing the book A Dutiful Boy. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Beautifully written. I found myself emotional at times. And about halfway through, I had to make sure I was feeling strong enough to carry on. But the emotions that were very sad early in the book eventually turned to joy, and I'm so pleased that Mohsin and his family

have found their way through together. Amazing. It could all have been so different, she says. So that gives you an indication that Dutiful Boy is about the life of a young gay Muslim man in late 20th and early 21st century Britain. That's right, isn't it? Yeah, I always find it weird when you say that, but yes.

Yeah. Anyway, it's a pleasure to read it, but it's also really illuminating. So I'm glad people are enjoying it. We'll talk about it in a couple of weeks, is that right? I think probably three weeks. Three weeks, three weeks. We might extend it to four weeks because I know that we've had Easter holidays. So it is A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zayda.

And I might be saying that wrong, in which case I apologise. But we hope we can get hold of it. It was on the bestseller list, so it really should be available in libraries, out in paperback, bookshops and all those kind of places too. Can I just read this one from Sue, who uh usually in derbyshire but she's currently lolling around in alicante i know that verb i've chosen for you sue you're probably doing something incredibly exciting and not lolling at all dear jane and fio i'm partial to a kitchen gadget i'm on holiday in spain and so far has purchased a microplane nutmeg grater a four bag four bag closure clips and a small green funnel

i'm currently considering a jar opener with silicon gripper pads which looks superior to my metal toothed version i'm here for another 10 days so there's a strong likelihood of further acquisitions bloody hell so you are living the dream it's a bit like my week of semi-retirement last week you really are but i'm so with you actually and because all of those things they're quite tiny aren't they so they're going to fit nicely even if you don't check your luggage in and i think sometimes finding a little kitchen gadget shop is akin to i mean presumably some people would like to find a weed shop or something like that but kitchen gadgets they're dirt for me on holiday.

Oh, I mean, Nirvana for me now is Robert Dias. Robert Dias. I mean, it's simply a wonderful store. I find him a little bit confusing. Is there a Robert? I don't know whether, I've never met Mr Dias. I imagine somewhere back in time there was a Robert Dias. Because they've got an awful lot of high street shops, haven't they? Yes.

Don't diss the Dias. No, I'm not dissing the Dias at all. But you can buy just huge things in there. So there's one just on the corner down Fenchurch Street where you could pop in on your way back from work and get a pretty substantial

kind of outdoor barbecue. For real? I wouldn't pretty substantial kind of outdoor barbecue. For real? Taking it home on the number 43. I wouldn't get that. But I would. I sometimes just like to gaze, just almost in a kind of worshipping fashion, at the number of cleaning agents of all descriptions

that could do every single job in any household. And I know that I'm just being sold the pop of capitalism here, aren't I? Because there's probably just a big vat of gloop and they just stick it into different bottles. Yeah, or you could probably just be using bicarbonate of soda and a lemon. Well, and, or cider vinegar, which is the cure-all. Yes.

Have you seen the article in the Times today about foods you should eat? Yes. Yes, I know. I'm going to have a great bloody time. I read that really late last night. I was going to send it to you. Avocado. Don't tell me anymore.

Nuts. A dollop of yoghurt. You don't say. A handful of nuts and a dollop of yoghurt. Honestly, I think there's probably no ailment on earth that can't be cured by a dollop of yoghurt and a handful of nuts. And then an avocado served with a flourish

smeared on afterwards you didn't see Mary Beard last night did you no she was on the television talking about Roman emperors it was very illuminating and it was actually a genuinely fascinating programme she's such an expert obviously I mean she's a professor

and everything I think she knows she's an expert she doesn't need the ringing endorsement of me, a disc jockey with a lower second class degree in English. But crack on. She was talking about Marcus Aurelius. Yes. And he is one of the emperors that is often quite famous now because of his writing and lots of very powerful people. Yes, they do. They swear by Marcus Aurelius. Oh, they keep him by the bed. But what Mary Beard told us was just what a galloping hypochondriac he was. He just wrote to his friend all the time about his ailments.

I was up all night with neck pain. Oh, God. I mean, honestly, he sounds like an absolute bore. He really does. I don't... He had a stomach issue. I mean, honestly, there's nothing new under the sun. There is absolutely nothing new.

Well, we do know some quite powerful men. We definitely knew one quite powerful man whose hypochondria was absurd, really, wasn't it? Well, I think it's not just men, is it? There are some women who are as obsessed with their most minute bodily ailment. I mean, my late grandmother was an absolute hypochondriac. I don't think I am one.

I don't think you're one. No. I think sometimes I should go to the doctor more often. There's no laughing matter, actually, because that's how you kind of end up in a bit of trouble. I mean, we're all at the age where, well, I'm certainly at the age where you do need to be absolutely watchful. That's certainly true.

But I do think you can become too, too preoccupied with your guts and garters. Oh, and I think it's a massive, I mean, it's a proper serious anxiety. Yes, yeah, yeah. It can just be a bit too much. But I don't know in the moment. So with the gentleman who we knew who did have proper hypochondria and a proper anxiety, he believed himself to have... Which of the many men who would fit into that category are you referring to?

All of these strange things. And we didn't know him that well, but whenever we saw him, he'd always tell us about his ailments. And in the moment, and I chuck this out to our lovely audience, I don't know whether or not it's wise to be sympathetic and very inquiring. Is that what people want? Because, I mean, what reassurance can a civilian like you or me offer when somebody says I'm suffering from something, you know, quite severe?

Or is it better to kind of go, don't worry about it you look fine to me what's the better way to deal i would actually love to hear from doctors on this actually i know we have people in the medical profession who listen so please tell us if if an absolute cast iron hypochondriac enters your surgery what do you think of them and what do you say to them and and i know that that there's that term the worried well isn't there people who perhaps unlike you and I, are always trying to get a doctor's appointment and actually seem to have a lot of success in that department. But does it do them any good? Would they not just be better off, you know,

getting on with it? Because, I mean, Marcus Aurelius is much celebrated now by certain people, but he was just a pain in the backside to live with from the sound of things. I mean, he really, really was. He had his male pen pal he could confide in about his neck pain. But maybe it's the over-examination of the self that allows your brain to over-examine the world outside. I'm trying to be fair and kind here. You're just too good for this world. Anyway, if you haven't seen that programme.

Fascinating. Lovely. And also, if you want to hear more about the bubo rats, then you could listen back to this afternoon's programme by using the Times app. It is free.

You just download it and then you just get all of these amazing music stations, talk sport. You're going to want talk sport, sport actually this summer, aren't you? Because you've got your Olympics. Yes. You've got your Euros.

Men's Euros. Men's Euros. Well done, sister. Thank you. So you might want to be downloading that and just familiarise yourself with the process. Yes, do get it actually because, if he's right, I think the Paris Olympics are going to be a thing of beauty. Oh, I love it.

Yeah. And it's in our time. It's in our time. We don't have to stay up late. There's no denying it. The French can put on a show. They will put on le show, won't they? Le grand show.

But it'll be interesting where, you know, all those stereotypes, and I'm saying this in a slightly provocative manner, if you're living in France. So they could have some quite serious protests going on around the Olympics. I don't know whether all the tractors are going to move out the way. And what do

you do with your 35-hour working week when something like the Olympics hoves into view? Do you just crack on? Does everyone just go, right, it's five o'clock. Au revoir. They'll just have to, we don't want to abandon, we don't want them to abandon their Gaelic.

No, there is so much that I like about France at the moment, Jane. I know that you sometimes like to have a bit of a laugh, but do you know what? I think their four-day week for shared parenting is a really innovative and really good thing for the state to flag up. So this is the idea that if you share kids, then each parent is entitled to only work a four day week. It doesn't mean you get paid for a five day week, it's kind of skimming it on a Friday. But it means you can ask your employer if you can have one day off a week so you can take care of the kids and share the responsibility.

so you can take care of the kids and share the responsibility. I think it's a powerful thing. I don't think very many states would want to interfere in family life because that's the criticism that would be labelled at that kind of legislation. It would be an interference. Yeah. There must be an economic argument against that. I can't bring it to mind right now but there has

to be one otherwise i'm sure we'd have decided on something like that here um caroline really enjoyed ray mears as a nature lover and involved in local wildlife conservation listening to him gave me hope for the future i've been pretty despondent about our planet but if ray can see the light at the end of the tunnel i don't feel feel so pessimistic. And I'd agree with you, Caroline. So Ray Mears is a bloke who does know a lot about the natural world. And I found his positivity really helpful, actually, because it's very, very difficult to have a conversation about the future of the environment

and feel optimistic at the end of it. So I'm glad that we spent 15 or 16 minutes in the company of Ray Mears, really. Today's guest is Anthony Horowitz, the screenwriter. He's the man who I think he came up with one of the best TV shows of my lifetime, Foil's War. I used to love that show.

And he's also a very, very successful crime writer. He's written over 70 books. Apparently he spends 16 hours a day writing. No. Yes. Well, we'll ask him. We'll hear what he says. That's almost,

it could be an explanation as to how he's got so good at it. It could be, couldn't it? That's mad. Most writers say they can only do an hour or so. I only write, well, Sarah Cox, who I spoke to the other week, said, yeah, she did a thousand words

between six and eight in the morning. That does involve getting up relatively early, doesn't it? I just need to mention Helen, who's put me right. You should know that my adopted home of Derby also claims a park that, quotes, everyone knows inspired the creation of Central Park in New York. It is the Arboretum Park on the outskirts of Derby

and it's the one fact about the park that all Derby schoolchildren learn in year three. They even have day trips there. It isn't a very big park. Doing a bit of fact-checking this evening, I think we can definitely claim it was the first public park in the UK, created in 1840, and therefore predating Birkenhead Park by three to five years.

The evidence for Inspired Central Park is less clear, however, at least based on the unreferenced articles i can find quickly on the internet it doesn't stop a good story though says helen um thank you for that you might very well have a good point it was my claim that i'd learned on the liver buildings tour in liverpool that birkenhead park had actually inspired central park i don't think we appreciate in this country that our parks are one of the great unsung civic amenities that, well, I just completely take them for granted. And in other parts of the world, they barely exist.

We've got a lot to be grateful for. I would agree with you, sister. And we've got quite a lot to thank Queen Victoria for on that front because she was a great enthusiast of parks and creating outdoor spaces and particularly around London. Well that would make sense because 1840 was when she was around. So they attached huge value to trying to put exercise and fresh air back into the lives of people who had come to work in the city in particular and ended up living in those terrible slums.

So lots of the parks of London were created by Victorian slum clearance. And one of the ones... So they were built where slums had been? In East London, Victoria Park, the name would give it away. It's a very, very flat park. And somebody told me, and if I'm wrong on this, I'm really sorry, but it's such a lovely detail of history. Perhaps if I am wrong, don't point it out because then we can just carry on believing it to be true.

It's a very, very flat park. It's not landscaped. So you can see kind of for miles, which is wonderful now because you see this incredible urban landscape in front of you as well as all of the green trees but the reason for it being flat is that so many of the people who had lived in those slum dwellings had tuberculosis they really couldn't manage hills and walking was a strain because their lungs were so affected so it was deliberately made as a very flat park as i think was hyde park so if that is true how thoughtful and fantastic and if it's not true, don't tell me. If we do get emails contradicting that, we just won't read them out. I think that's a really, really good story. And I want that to be true as well. But it also makes you realise that there are worse times to be alive than right now. That's true. And sometimes it can feel this is

desperate. This is just you look around the world and it's just so terrible. It isn't really. It is for some. But not if you live here, not if you're fortunate enough to live here. Jane Mulkerin said something about wanting to go and live in Sweden on the programme last week, on the podcast last week, because she really admires the way the country is run.

But Anonymous would like to inform us of this. I love the country, speak the language, and lived and worked like to inform us of this i love the country speak the language and lived and worked there for large chunks of time during the past 20 years cinnamon cardamom buns excellent coffee clean lakes clean sea nature successful socialism advanced feminism stunning and practical architecture etc etc all good but there's a massive but it's by no means perfect the downside downside, Swedes are rightly proud of the above, but that can easily tip over into annoying smugness, passive aggression and xenophobia

that quite frankly can become plain racism. It's a tiny population, so it is far easier to run than the UK. Today, Sweden is sadly becoming increasingly right-wing and very right-wing in some cases. They're grappling with similar problems that we have here in the UK, underfunding of education, healthy arts, etc. And it can be a very boring place to live. Right. That's quite a that's quite a chunky butt. So thank you for that.

And I'm no longer, not that I ever was, because I'm not Jane Mulkerrin. If you ever do write that column you should call it Jane Garvey's Chunky Butts where you just say hang on, hang on We must cut out that bit where I said I'd struggle to write an opinion column

Please God Our guest is Anthony Horowitz one of the country's most successful writers, screenwriter, novelist as well. And due to a typo in a previous interview he gave, a lot of people are asking him how he manages to spend 16 days, 16 hours a day at his desk. That's because he doesn't. He spends only 10 hours a day at your desk. Is that correct? That is right. So not every single day. OK, so you do treat yourself occasionally.

Well, you know, when you're on your own, it's amazing how many hours there are in a day. I mean, take away six for sleep and such, you've still got an awful lot of time to work, as well as to enjoy yourself. Yeah, OK. You are the author of the Alex Ryder Teen Spy series, I'm just telling the listeners, I know you know, Anthony,

and the man responsible for creating Foil's War, which I just looked back on with such affection. It's such a good show. And you did script episodes of Midsommar Murders as well. I actually helped create Midsommar Murders. The very name of it came from me. I'm excited about it. It's a show that's still running, still popular.

It was enormous fun to do over time. I must have employed pretty much every single major actress between Foil's War and Midsommar. I employed so many of them and murdered quite a few of them too. You didn't write the episode with the big cheese, did you? No. I can see this is a cheese-related show today

but I've come on. But no, I didn't. That was quite a while after. I did about the first seven episodes of that show. Right, okay. Well, can I say it's entertained millions, so what am I doing? Well, I'm very proud to have been on it. Your new novel is Close to Death, and it's a Hawthorne book, which will make sense to your fans. Now, I've got to be honest, I hadn't read a Hawthorne

book before, so when you broke in this book, is it the literary fourth wall, and entered the book as yourself, Anthony Horowitz, the writer. I was a bit baffled, but this is something you've done before, isn't it? Yes, I think what I've done is, what I'm exploring, I think, is what is called metafiction, which is sort of books that you sort of realise are books. You talk about the book while you're in the book. And I am literally in the book because what I did was, I turn up in the book, not as a major character, but merely as a sort of sidekick and narrator with the detective. The detective is a man called Hawthorne, who is a star of it, not a very pleasant man in many respects. He has some political views with which I disagree strongly,

and he has quite an abrasive style. And the worst thing is he calls me Tony. I really do not like being called Tony, but he insists on doing it. So we have a sort of a slightly spiky relationship. And I am not the most clever person in the book, which would be the author, I have turned myself into really the most stupid person, which is the sidekick. I don't even have a book if he doesn't solve the murder. And we've now had five adventures together. And, and close to death is the new one. And when you first suggested this idea, how did your advisors, your agent, for example, how did they react to it? Well, my agent never knows what I'm doing, really. But my publisher, who are at Penguin Random House, does and discussed it with me.

And she was quite nervous at first about the idea. She said, you know, are you going to use this, you know, as a platform for self-promotion? Or are you going to use it to score points against people you don't like? You know, how are you going to be in the book? And I assured her that, you know, first of all, I wasn't going to be the star it wasn't an ego trip it was just a way of turning the whodunit on its head to look at it in a different way and now she absolutely loves and I think most of the people who've read the books really enjoy the relationship between the two of us and and want more of it no it's magical and and it also shows your well it's more than respect your reverence

for the detective novel for the beauty and the I was going to say simplicity but it's more than respect, your reverence for the detective novel, for the beauty and the, I was going to say simplicity, but it's not that, the intricacy of some of the plots in our great detective novels. Well, I think intricacy and simplicity do go together because if a book is too complicated to read and you have to keep going back on the pages to work out who is who and who was where and what is what in the book, I think the book fails. So I always say it should be a little bit like a Swiss watch, which is complicated on the inside with lots of dials and cogs and wheels,

but very, very quick and easy to tell the time. And you're right, I do have a reverence for particularly the golden age of crime. And I love, you know, Sherlock Holmes and obviously Agatha Christie, but Dorothy O'Sea's, Duna Guy-O-Marsh, so many of these writers who played fair with the author, who put everything out there so you could actually solve it if you were so minded before the detective. And I love just the sort of the, I've always loved puzzling people and ingenuity and logic and such. And that's why I write these sorts of books. Now, Location is Everything, and in Close to Death, it's set in a swanky community,

a gated community, which I think most of us can imagine. It's in Richmond-upon-Thames, which is an extraordinarily swanky part of London London isn't it? It has gone downhill a little bit recently because I moved there I went I moved there about a year and a half ago having lived in Clerkenwell for all the time before that and it's actually you know it's less swanky even you'd think it's a funny place Richard it's actually quite because it's so popular we get hundreds of people gathering on the village green and we have the cricket match on Saturdays and Sundays and you get a sense that sort of it's all of London is there. You don't really get a sense of it being in England.

I think, you know, compared to Hampstead, for example, forgive me, Hampstead listeners, I would have said it was far less sort of elitist in its sort of feeling around there. And I love it for that reason. I have my dog and we walk down the River Thames and the close actually exists. It's about 15 minutes away from my house. Well, you called it for that reason. I have my dog and we walk down the River Thames and the close actually exists. It's about 50 minutes away from my house.

You called it Riverview Close. It doesn't exist with that name. I have to be honest with you. I cheated a bit there. Now, the victim is an absolutely ghastly man who everybody will hate as soon as they read about this man, Giles Kenworthy. And because it's a gated community,

you then have a list of suspects, all of whom have perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to do away with this man. It is a nightmare neighbour story. I mean, effectively, these people have lived there happily together for many, many years, a new person arrives, and they have noisy children who trample on people's flowers. He parks his camper van in sight and won't let people drive past his all sorts of things, all the arguments that people actually have, which I'm sure you occasionally cover, even on programmes like this. I saw last week a story in the papers where somebody actually lost their house

because they spent so much money arguing about the position of offence, but their legal fees forced them into a sale of their property. And we British people, I think, do get terribly, terribly strung out, particularly in a gated community where you're all sort of locked in together, about the behaviour of our neighbours. And it occurred to me that it was odd that no one had actually written a murder mystery about precisely that. Well, the truth is, we all have to live,

certainly in London, cheek by jowl, with, well, until you get to know them a little bit, complete strangers who may be as mad as March Hare's. I wrote a TV show about this many, many years ago, a film called Menace, which I wrote with my wife, which started when our neighbour broke into our house. Jill Green, who produces so much of my television. Ah, yes. The first show we did together, in fact, I think, was called Menace. And it was about, it was inspired by the fact that our neighbour literally climbed over the

walls, slipped into our kitchen and started stealing from us. And I thought to myself, wow, here we are in this wonderful, vibrant, busy city. but you just do not know what the person sitting next to you is thinking doing or what their past is and certainly not the person living next to you and how all these separate lives what happens when two lives intertwine and that can be with a theft as it was in my in my story uh or with a murder which is what happens in Close to Death. Do you enjoy... Oh, hello. Hello. Hello. Join in, Fi. Thanks, that's very kind. Do you enjoy reading the crime fiction that goes to a more gory place? Because I know as a writer,

you fight shy of that kind of ultimate guts on display, and I think, actually, you fight shy of harming children and harming women in a way that other writers really don't. Well, it's nice of you to notice it. I think there is now a strong feeling that sort of, you know, a woman running through wood with a man with a knife chasing is not a good start for a book. And I do try to avoid our, you know, women victims where possible.

I mean, obviously, it's going to be, at the end of the day, sort of 50-50 choice, but I think I have to be, you know, one has to be careful there, and I do try to avoid that. Children, I don't like, you know, in the Alex Ryder books, I was very careful that, you know, that children shouldn't die necessarily. I mean, I think one might have in the course of the whole books, but again, you know, that's where you cross the line

between entertainment and enjoying a book and having a good time and thinking actually about the course of the whole books. But again, you know, that's where you cross the line between entertainment and enjoying a book and having a good time and thinking actually about the implications of murder. And I think that, you know, murder stories, I'm not interested in the murder itself. So I'm not interested in the knife and the blood spill and the sort of the, you know, the horror of death. I'm interested only in the puzzle that emerges

and also the characters that come out of it. Because, you know, the great thing about a murder mystery story is that emotions are always heightened you don't kill somebody because you are a little bit crossed with them or because you you sort of don't like them very much sort of thing you have to have big powerful feelings and that suggests immediately big powerful stories so a murder is simply a way to open the door into somebody's life that was the joy since you were mentioning it of midsummer murders where all those net curtains got torn down because somebody in the village has just been discovered, you know, with a bullet or a knife in them or whatever.

Yeah. Have things quietened down at all in Midsomer? Or is it still an absolute hotbed of murderous mayhem? I haven't watched it for a while, actually. I mean, I don't, in fact, read an awful lot of crime fiction. Why not? Because I'm so busy writing it, and I'm terrified of somebody having better ideas than me, and I'll come across something in a book,

and I'll say, why didn't I write that? How annoying. And also because, you know, there are so many books out there. I do read, still, a lot of crime novels. I get sent them for cover quotes and other things. And I have an interest, of course. I have lots of friends within the business. One of the nice things about being a crime writer is you'd be surprised how collegiate

crime writers are. I've heard it said that it's the romance writers who are at each other's throats. But the crime writers are a generally decent bunch of people. And so, of course, I support their work. But, you know, I love 19th century literature. I love so much. And there are so many books to read, so little time to do it that, you know, I try to cast the net as wide as I can. Now, I know you have said in the past that you used to get wheeled out quite regularly because you were that rare thing, a writer who was prepared to say they had sort of Tory leanings.

And that is still quite rare. Even now, actually, it's still quite rare. Are you of a mind to vote Conservative at the next general election? Or I have read that you can't face it. Well, you couldn't when you gave this interview about your politics. Well, it's a difficult one, particularly having my son possibly even listening now from his office in Downing Street. Where he is in charge of? Well, communications, I think, and such.

And has done. I mean, I think I'm very proud of him. I think he's done a terrific job. I mean, no one had heard of Rishi Sunak until he came along. And, you know, two years ago, or was it two years ago? One year ago, anyway, everything seemed to go right. And there is a sort of a... What has happened now is interesting. You may have read my diary in this week's Spectator,

where I'm talking about the absolute hatred now, which has attached itself to politics, which is thrust against the Tories at full force, and which nobody, I think, could do anything about at the moment. And I'm not saying that some of it isn't deserved, but I do think that we should moderate our language and our attitudes and remember that politicians, in particular the Prime Minister, who is always...

You know, I was reading a story today about shoe wear, for heaven's sake. I mean, you know things are bad if journalists have to stoop so low. He single-handedly destroyed the fashionable Samba, apparently. That's what part of the story is. The other part of the story is, is he got up and had to go to an interview and he wore a pair of shoes, you know, and suddenly... You're right, we all know it's ridiculous. Well, I'm not saying it's ridiculous.

I'm merely saying that it is possibly harmful because Labour will come in, they have intractable problems to face. They have extraordinary problems with the country and attitudes in this country and the establishments in this country. We've come through COVID. We've come, you know, the war in Ukraine has had such a huge effect on us. And, of course, I don't know if I'm allowed to mention the B word on your programme, but Brexit too has had a knock-on effect.

You weren't keen on Brexit, were you? I still remain convinced that it is one of the sort of disasters of my life, sadly, and wish that it hadn't happened. But back to the question I asked. The question you asked was... Could you bear to vote Conservative at the next general election? I will not vote Conservative at the next election, largely because Richmond on Thames is very much, I think,

a Lib Dem stronghold, and so it would be a wasted vote anyway. I'm more inclined, I think, to spoil my ballot paper, which I think a lot of people may do this time around, to say that the entire political system needs readdressing and our attitude to it and the values that we are, you know, searching for in both our politicians and in this country. So I think that is what I will do in my next election is spoil my paper. I think it is sad that we have forgotten that the Conservatives have done one or two good things. If only one looks at things like gay marriage, for example, is a flag one can easily fly. That is only one looks at things like gay marriage, for example,

is a flag one can easily fly. That is the one thing that many people would point to. There are others too, I think. What else? Don't put me on the spot like that when I've come to talk about books. Especially when your son's listening. But I would have said that Ritchie C. and I did do some quite good dismantling of the Windsor Agreement. I thought it was sort of, you know, took an intractable...

Let me put it this way. If you had come... If the Pope had come into office following Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, if he had had that rabble of attention-seeking conservative MPs who seem to be on the air the whole time, banging on about ideas which are both inimical to what it means to be British and which are inimical to common sense, I don't think anybody could have actually done a better job than Rishi Sunak has. I really do think that.

I'm not saying he's been a brilliant prime minister, but I do think he was given the most poisoned of chalices you can imagine. And I've met him a couple of times. He seems to be, not a, seems to be a decent man. And I just think that in our reporting of politicians, particularly as Labour come into office, which it seems almost certain they will,

we should bear that in mind and not allow ourselves to go down that road again. That was Anthony Horowitz and it was lovely spending time with him. Helen Ledger was our guest yesterday and you can always listen to that by digging up or digging out yesterday's edition of Off Air and we've always got cracking guests haven't we Fi? We've got lovely guests we've got adele roberts coming up as well who is remarkable actually she was diagnosed with stage two bowel cancer and she's become a really vociferous and positive spokeswoman for having a stoma and the way that she talks about it and all of the things that she has to say are really worth hearing, actually. I think that's one of those taboo subjects that we're only just starting to really learn enough about. And running the London Marathon with a stoma is no mean feat.

I have no idea how she did that. She was a broadcaster, wasn't she? Well, she still is. A very successful DJ. A DJ, yes. Final thought, if that's okay, you might have one, but this one's from me. It comes from Marie who says, speaking of pickles,

a well-known sandwich chain beginning with G, not Greg's, but the other one. What is it? A bit posher. Gales. Oh. Yeah. Do the most fantastic brioche bun with salami and cornichon,

devoured in two bites, if one of you are famished. I'd just like to draw attention to that because it's a very small brioche bun. Yeah. And I really appreciate a different sizing in the bun department, Jane, because sometimes you don't want a great big enormous fist of bread with its contents squeezed out all over it so i really like the fact that uh that gales have gone down the slightly more petite version although sometimes i do order two they've seen you coming right from um gales buns to cheeky bots and everything in

thank you very much uh We will reconvene tomorrow. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five. You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us again on off air very soon don't be so silly running a bank

i know ladies a lady listener sorry