Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Mark Kermode

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

This week Emily takes a stroll in the New Forest with legendary film critic Mark Kermode and his Labrador Martha. Mark talks to Emily about the band he started at school with David Baddiel, his love of Richard Curtis movies, why his faith is important to him and his podcast Kermode on film.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We all discovered that all you do is you would go to the cinema and you would hang around outside until some adult that you didn't know. Came up and you'd say, excuse me, Mr, would you take me into the pictures? And they'd go, all right. This week on Walking the Dog, I went out for a stroll with film critic, double bass player and owner of the UK's most impressive quiff, Mark Kermode. Mark took me out for a stroll in his manner, which is the staggeringly beautiful new forest,

which has ponies roaming around. It's basically Narnia, and I felt absolutely in love with his adorable black Labrador who's called Martha. Mark and I talked about his early love of cinema, the band he formed at school with David Badele, I know, his long-running, very successful relationship

with Simon Mayo, and his fabulous new podcast, which is on ACAST, and it's called Kermode on Film, and I really recommend you give it a listen because it's so good. One thing I hope will stay with you forever, after this podcast is a certainty about how to pronounce Mark Kermode's surname because let me tell you, it's certainly something I'm not going to forget in a hurry.

I really hope you enjoy this podcast. If you do, please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Here's Mark. So Mark, am I not going to take this Trennisball thing? Well, we usually use that for out front. If we take that, it means we're not walking. I mean, you're welcome to chuck the ball out front for a little bit. and then, but once you start, you've got a whole, she won't stop easily.

A whole world of pain. Yeah. I would leave it. Okay. Because if you take it on the walk, she won't bring the ball back. If you do it outside the front, she'll bring the ball back until you go on a walk. That's given me an insight. The way you gave me that advice has given me a great deal of insight to you as a person.

Okay. Which is good, which is that I think you're, I think it was measured advice, which was basically saying, don't do that, you is. It's going to be a nightmare. Because if we look out, right, if you stand here and throw the ball, then she'll bring it back and that's fine. But that's what you do if you're not about to go for a walk. If you're about to go for a walk, you'll leave it there.

I know. I'll accept to you, and I think you're right. And I should say that when we're saying she will get the ball, we are talking not about your wife or your children. This is Martha. I'm with Mark Commode, I should say, which I'm very excited about. Now, let me do this at the beginning because Kermode. Oh, Kermot?

So, no, but this goes on so much. Okay, so very, very simply, and everybody says commode. And so Kermode is a Manx name, okay? It is derived from a shortening of McDiarmut. And actually, in the Isle of Man, which is when my mom and my grandparents are from, they say Kermot. They don't say Kermot, so they say Kermot. Yeah.

And it's always been this sort of source of great, you know, Kermode, if you're on the Isle of Man, and commode everywhere else, which drives my... family nuts. However, there is another, well, it's Frank Kermode, who I think got so used to being Kermode that he just sort of gave up, but it is Kermode. And the easiest way of remembering it is like Kermit. And, you know, believe me, nobody gets it right. But that's it. And the actual proper pronunciation is Kermot. Well, do you know why? I'm never going to forget that. Now, I'm going to get it right.

Forever, it's Kermode. Yeah. That's very easy to remember. And I hope anyone listening to this gets that right. Oh, Martha's already gone for a comfort break. Yes. The thing is that because we're in the forest, so there's an awful lot of horse poo, and she loves horse poo. I'm going to start that again in a more respectful way.

And with Mark Kerr Mode. Thank you. And we're in the new forest. In the new forest. Which is where you live. It is. I mean, I sound like you're some, it's not sort of stick of the dump

dwelling in some strange. You've got a lovely house here. Lovely house in the new forest. Oh, there's a rider. Because they're all these ponies Pondies and horses and sometimes you're pigs and they put them out for the acorns What's the deal with the horses then? Why is that?

Well because it's a the new forest has got a huge A large number of all the horses are owned but you have for foresting rights and rights to put them out And so as you can see they're they're all pretty but although the weird On here a little white one. Yeah. What does Martha? Martha doesn't well she's she's grown up here so she doesn't think twice where Sometimes it's a bit odd if you bring other dogs down that have never seen horses, you know, which of course there'd be a lot of thick up.

They will tend to sort of run through their legs, which is very bad because, you know, because horses, they look very lovely until the moment that they kick, at which point they're quite, you know. You wouldn't like them when they were angry. No, I mean, they don't even get angry. They just, as a matter of course, they'll just, you know, they'll buck if you get behind them. So you just need to be, you just need to be a bit sensible. Yeah. But no, she's always gone off around, so she doesn't, you know.

There's another one. I'm loving this. There's another little pony. And then we used to have chickens. Long time ago. We haven't had to chickens for a while now, but Derek outback's got chickens. So I'll have to get used to this. Otherwise, I'll be interrupting the podcast every five seconds. Okay. Mark, there's a horse. There's another horse. No, but the thing is, it's nice because the weird thing is, if you live here, you can kind of get used to it. And then it takes other people coming down to go, wow, look, there's all that. And then you go, oh, yeah.

And then you forget that because if you, you know what it's like if you live around stuff, it sort of becomes normalised. It's like people saying, oh, the Tower of London and you're like to have never been. What's that? Yeah, exactly. So we taught me through Martha, the, she's Black Labrador. Black Lab, yes. And how long, how old is Martha? So Martha, I think must be about 11. I mean, she's very sprightly for her age.

She looks great. Yeah, but she gets a lot of exercise. So, yeah. So we've always had dogs. Before Martha there was Betty, very brief. Billy, who was my colleague, who was just absolutely lovely. And so we do, we've had, because the thing is, if you're in the forest, it would seem like a crime not to have a dog because it's so great for walking.

Plus, it means you get out and you walk even if it's raining or cold or whatever, because the dog doesn't care. The dog just goes, yeah, it's fine. It's walk time. Yeah, yeah. So what have you got? So I've got a, well, he's meant to be a shih Tzu. He's not.

I mean, he is quite a London dog. Do you know what I mean? So Shih Tzu's a little? He's quite small, yeah. I think Martha would look at him and think, oh, what are you? Come on, you're like a rabbit that I chase. But he's very good-natured and sweet.

And I think there's all sorts of other weird stuff in him as well. I don't think he's just a shih Tzu. You know, when dog walkers, and I don't know if you get that so much around here, because you don't, you know, I suppose, a slightly less footfall and you probably know people, but I do get a lot of angry, very well-preserved pensioners,

saying to me, I don't think that is a Shih Tzu, you know. I think that's, I don't know, okay, okay. There's a wolf hand that a friend of Oz has down here now. She always has wolf hands. After the last one passed, she got her young one, so it's now sort of fairly small. When full grown, bigger than the, there's a couple of Shetland ponies around here, and the wolf hand is bigger than the Shetland ponies. And then there's a large poodle, and then there's a couple of corgis just in there. And then there's another Labrador up here. I like corkeys because I've got short legs and so and so have they. And I really, I'd really bond with them over that.

But they're meant to be quite snappy. Yeah, they were right. So when you say, so you, Martha says it's you and your wife and my kids. You've got two kids, haven't you? Yeah. They're still at home, aren't they? Well, yes, although they're kind of on the point of leaving because they're sort of late teenagers. Yeah, yeah.

You know, so, but yeah, we're all here. I met Linda when I was in Manchester, and Linda was briefly in Manchester in the 1980s. And then. And you're at university, won't you? I was at university there and she was at Sussex, and she came to do some postgraduate thing there. Oh, me too, yeah.

And then I was down in, when we got married, I was down in London, she was living in Liverpool, but I was also working in Manchester. And then she got the job in Southampton. So we thought we... She's a professor of film, isn't you? So we thought we'd come down and look, and she used to come to the forest on holidays, which,

she grew up, she grew up in Bristol. Oh, wow. He used to come here at the campsites. And so we came... And I had always lived in town. I mean, I'd lived in, you know, Barnett in London and then in Manchester. And I'd always say, well, I'm not going to live in the country. And but then, of course, you know, sort of fell in love with it.

And I don't, and people say, well, you know, it's a long way to commute in, isn't it? You go, not really. Get work done on the train. Yeah. You know, it's, and I do, I love it here. I absolutely love being here. It's good for the soul. And also, it's funny because there's just a few doors down for me.

There's Mike who's involved with the New Forest film. development thing. They're trying to develop the forest as a sort of film location thing. And they asked this is why it's funny that you said Narnia because I had always said, I'd always described this as Narnia. People say where do you live? I said, well, I live in Narnia. Yeah. How interesting. And so when they were doing the film new forest launch thing, Mike said, you know, can we use that phrase? Can we use the the Narni thing? So they ended up saying, they ended up calling it through the wardrobe and they had this interview with me saying it is like living in Narnia, which started as a joke.

But it is because the thing is. It really has that sense, Mark. When you step in here, you feel like, yeah, it's slightly, it is slightly out of this world. Yeah, and imagine if at the end of a working day you get on the train and you watch Waterloo moving away from you and an hour later, you're in this. I mean, as I said, I used to live in Barnett. He used to take about an hour to get in from Barnett. I figure if you're going to travel an hour, you might as well travel an extra 25 minutes and end up somewhere that isn't Barnett, you know.

Well, do you know, I want to answer you. I mean, any weather that isn't Barnett. I knew that I grew up in North London, so I'm familiar with the Barnet Odeon. Oh, fine, fun, fine. We used to have a joke, and my sister would always say, oh, no, the boys at the Barnet Odeon. So I grew up in Highgate. Okay. So not far, but it's interesting because...

So you're near the Phoenix in East Finchley, which used to be the Rex, obviously. Which I know was your sort of Cinema Paradiso. Yeah, it still is. I still love that place. Well, I was interested, Mark, when I heard this about you, because for some reason, And I've been a huge fan of yours for a long time. But I'm really embarrassed to admit this. I just assumed you were like Mancunian or something. No, no, no.

I'm in North London, born and bread. No, no, I was in Manchester for eight years, six years, seven years, something like that. In the 80s, most of the 80s, I was in Manchester. But no, no, I grew up in Barnet. I went to Haberdasher School in Elstree. Which is where David Bedeer went. Yeah, so David and I were in a band. I just write this book, this house.

Love to. Yes, I've read your book. So there's this whole thing about, actually, the best thing is, if we go up onto this, then it gets less damp underfoot. She's fine. She'll just... Please tell me more about the David Bidil band, because I'm obsessed by this. It was, well, David was a year below me.

So he was in the same year as a guy called Rick, who was also, who played guitar, whose father was a composer. And I think composed for films. Yeah. And, you know, everybody was in a band, and I desperately wanted to be in a band, and I couldn't do very much. And I ended up building electric guitar. but Dave Badele had this Columbus copy strat and he was a really good guitarist. Really? Yeah, he really good.

Do you know what? He'll be so happy hearing this. Oh no, he knows because I sent him copies of the book when I was writing in, which I said all this to make sure that it was all. Because one of the things I did when I was doing the book was to get in touch with everybody who I'd named to make sure that it was right because I think, you know, you owe it to them. And so I sent him this thing and said, is this a fair account of how you remember it? And then I found that photograph of me and him and Rick.

I mean, he must have been about 12 or 13, I must have been 14 or something. So we were in a bit, we never played any gigs. We rehearsed a lot. And then he says, I don't remember this, but he says that we threw him out the band. And the way that we threw him out was that one day he came to school. And we said, oh, we're not doing the band anymore.

And then the next day, we reformed without him under a different name. And I don't remember that as being the case, but it has the ring of truth about it. That sounds so fabulously passive-aggressive. And he's carried it with him for years. So then, David was then in a band called Room 101. And somewhere up in my attic, I've got some tapes that we did with the spotbox. Which I think I've found, but the thing is what I don't have at the moment is a tape called a Reevox real-to-reels play them on. So David has said, if you find any of them, they actually are us, can I have?

copies of them. So yeah, I mean, you know. Yeah. So that was, so that was and who else was, Jason Isaacs, of course, Jason, I was in my class. So that's how I, that's how I sort of know Jason. Although I didn't know him when I was in class with him. Right. Okay. I mean, I knew him, but I knew we didn't speak because he was much too cool.

Was he? Well, I thought so. I think of you as being cool, though, Mark. Okay, so this is the thing, so what happened is when I wrote, it's only a movie, I wrote this thing about being in awe of Jason Isaacs, because Jason, there's three things I remember about Jason, right? First of he to wear trainers to school, which nobody else did. That was very cool.

Secondly, he was the first person to have a skateboard. He didn't just have a skateboard. He had a fibre flex with green cryptonic wheels, which was a big deal. And then he was the first person I ever heard swear in an English lesson. And I remember this really clearly because... You can say all it is, by the way, relax. No, it's fine. There was an advert. Come up what it was an advert for, maybe spread or something. Yeah. And it ends up with the wife of the family has made sandwiches. for all these sports fans that come over and somebody says, you know, hooray for the team and somebody else says,

never mind the team, who made the sandwiches, right? So it was a sandwich bread thing. Anyway, who made the sandwiches became a thing that people said. And Jason wrote an essay, which he then read out in class, which included the phrase of, I remember this really clearly.

Cries went up of absolutely hooray and who made the bloody sandwiches. And I had never heard somebody swear in class before. And I laughed. so much that I thought I was going to get thrown out of class. And I reminded Jason of this. Does he remember it? No, no, because what he says is that my memory of this completely turns the truth upside down.

He says he was, I mean, not he admits that I, he may have written that essay. It's your, it's your perception of it. He says he wasn't cool. He was really scared. He'd come down from Liverpool. He was, he felt like a fish out of water. The reason he didn't speak to anybody wasn't because he was too aloof. It's because he didn't have friends.

He was friends with the guy called Kevin, who I knew as well, who was in a kind of punk band later on. But he says that, yeah, he was basically saying he wasn't cool. What he was, was terrified. And he said, you were cool, you're in a band. And I said, Jason, this is ridiculous. Yeah. This was never the kid. You were the cool kid.

And so we both thought that the other one was. I think he's slightly embellishing it now because obviously now he's the most handsome man on earth. So I think he's been going to. here? Yeah, I'm doing a... I love that story because it just tells me that actually, when you realise it's only when you get to sort of, you know, our vintage, that you speak

to people and you realise, no one thought they were cool. Everyone was cripplingly shy and just had, you know, kind of trying to find their own identity and... Everyone was putting it on. I mean, this is what he says. I still, I can still picture

him in my mind being the coolest kid in school. But, you know, I take... And he looked at it. you and thought, look at that guy. Did you have your quiff then, Mark? Well, at some points, yeah, I mean, there were pictures of me in school when I've got sort of floppy fringe. Because you were getting into the sort of rockabilly thing. Yeah, that was sort of when I was about sort of 16 onwards. But up until then, I was just a kind of a morass of hair and acne, really. So, yeah, the sort of, the quiffy thing didn't happen until I was about sort of 16, I think.

And what was your, was your mama GP, Mark? Yes, Mama's GP. And what was your childhood like, like, like where you lived? very happy. We grew up in... My mum was GP, my dad worked the London Hospital in Whitechap. This is another thing. People imagine that I'm related to Frank Kermode and I'm not. I'm not in any... I mean, the only way in which I'm related to Frank Kermode is that he's called Kermode. So he's from the Arlemagne. Actually, he is from the Islevan.

Yeah. So if anyone doesn't know who that is. So Frank Kermott is a great literary professor. And historian is he? Yes, sentiment. You know, anyway, see, he's very, very respected literary figure, who I have never met. So I grew up in North London and my mum's GP, my dad worked at the... the London Hospital and Whitechapel. Yeah.

I went to a little C of E primary, up the Finchy Central Way, and then to Habs, and then I was when I started playing in bands. Yeah. So that was, there's a lot of, how does it feel is about being in bands in North London? Because there was a lot of bands in North London. I was friends to the guy called Saul Rosenberg, who was the bassist in our band, and he used to be affiliated to Warm Lane Synagogue. So we would rehearse at Warm Lane Synagogue on Sundays.

And actually most of the places that we rehearsed were synagogues, because they would let's have them on Sundays, which was really nice. You know, it was a lot of mapping, mapping your gigs out by synagogues or, you know, by Bonaise Institute, that sort of thing. I imagine, because you seem, this way? There's a sort of loop that's avoiding the puddles. Yeah, I like that. So you seem quite a, you're a very articulate and very curious person. And would you say, I get the sense of you probably growing up in an environment, you know, where there was discussion around the kitchen table.

or ideas were discussed and movies and culture. And was that your background? I don't remember that as being the case. Partly because my mum and dad were both working all the time. So other than weekends, there was very little time that everyone ate together. You know, mum would go out in the morning and she had, you know, like a slow cooker? Yeah. So in the morning, she'd go out first thing and she'd put a bunch of stuff in the slow cooker.

And then we'd go off to school because it took an hour and a half to get to school, bear in mind. you know it was a walk and then a train and then a coach right so you'd get back home at 530 and there'd be food so so that so during the week there was quite often weeks in which you know your paths cross very tangentially yeah we would always go to the bull and bush or somewhere like that on a Sunday I mean the main thing actually was the music my dad my dad was really interested in jazz and it still is really interested in jazz yeah I had this huge collection of jelly roll molten records and I think it's probably more that the school itself

because, you know, was very competitive. You know, it was a lot of... Yes, I get that impression, that school. It was a lot of kind of quite... Well, Matt Lucas was there, wasn't he as well? Yes, I think... Such as Baron Cohen, yeah. Yes, again, not so near as I was.

Yeah, I think he's... One of his younger brothers was there when I was there. But that's what I mean, it seems to be a school that produces a lot of these cultural outliers in a way. Well, yeah, it's a funny one. I mean, as a teenager, I always felt really awkward and like a fish out of water. But then Jason did as well. And then actually, I imagine that's probably what everybody thinks.

I do know, because Linda grew up in Bristol, went to comp and Linda will sometimes say, yeah, you are such a, you know, you are such a product of that. Really? Yeah, because, you know, I think about, you know, feeling like you have the right to say what you think at the moment you think it, which I think is, unfair but probably true. It's that sense of, yeah, I've got a right to have a seat at the table. Yeah, isn't that terrible? Yeah, but then I don't think it's terrible. I think everyone should have that.

Everyone should be given that sense of... Oh, listen, don't get me. I mean, look, I am really appreciative. I mean, I, you know, I went to a nice school. I had a lovely education, and then I went to Manchester in the years of grants, in which I not only got... The university education. I not only got three years of grant to do undergraduate,

I got three years of grant to do a PhD. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, nowadays... Which was on horror? It was on horror fiction, yeah. Not films, horror fiction. Okay. But nowadays, people go to university and they come out with, you know, 30,000, 40,000 pounds worth of debt.

Yeah. I did six years at university, and I didn't come out of it with debt. In fact, by the time I finished the postgraduate, I was working at City Life magazine. And that's how you sort of got into your career. Yeah, not sort of. That is how it began, yeah. There was a direct route, wasn't it, yeah. Yeah, because City.

life was a workers co-op and so they they basically would take on hang let me just check mother that's just fine she's just done oh I love her what a sweet girl she is couldn't hear a footstance um yes so they were a workers co-op so they would allow anybody to do anything if they were balsh enough so I just turned up one morning on their doorstep and said I want to write and they said well we don't you know we don't need writers can you drive and I said yes I can because I had a driver's license because I, the first, when I finished school, I applied to five universities and got five flat rejections from all of them. So I took a year working somewhere else. I was working watch up for a year. And I got into Manchester through clearing.

And in that year, I'd learn to drive, which was like a Hillman Imp. So I could drive. So then I'd drive a Helmin' Imp. Why did you have a Hillman Imp? No. But I used to look at them and I remember saying to my parents, I said, I'm really sorry, Mark, I hope you're not offended by this, but I said, that is the most disgusting car I've ever seen. And also the most, the most pointless car, because the engine. in the back. And so the front of the car hasn't got any weight in it.

So if you drive along at any... Which you couldn't, anyway, because it's a tiny engine. If you drive along at any speed, the front bounces up and down and it's got no grip. So it's actually... Yeah. I can remember just looking at it,

thinking, it really distressed me just aesthetically, I found it quite offensive. But now... aesthetically, I kind of liked it, but it's just... It was a very kind of difficult car to keep an... I think it just reminded me

of a sort of like... Coronation Street old man car like sort of Albert Taplock which I love now exactly that's quite a cool thing of course I love that I mean I remember my sister once she was this bloke and he was trying to sort of

you know impress her and was your sister older or younger my sister's older than Macana yeah and she said I said oh this guy and I said what about him and she didn't sound you didn't sound very cool I mean she said but the thing about him is he's got a Chevy I said, what do you mean he's got a Chevy?

She said, he's got a Chevy. I said, he lives in North London and he's got a Chevy. And she went, yeah, he's got a Chevy. And I went, God, really? And then about three or four days later, she didn't have anything more to do with him because I think he was a bit. Four days later, he drove past it. It wasn't a Chevy.

It was a chevette, a voxel chevette. Right? So this guy told my sister that a chevette was a Chevy. And of course, God bless me, nothing about cars but she went well he's a bit of an idiot but he has got a Chevy. I've heard it in all these Americans pop songs. Yeah, can imagine Dolmuclid driving to the levee in a Vauxhall Chavette? He doesn't have quite the same.

Because mum of Nissan Micro was in the garage. Anyway, that's a brilliant story. So that was, yeah. Then I went to Manchester and then once you got into, I mean, you must have had a passion. You mentioned going to the Phoenix cinema in East Finchie, which was the right to me. when I first went to it. It was the wrecks and then it became the phoenix. I mean, I'm sure you've been asked this so many times, Mark,

what was your first film? What was your first experience? The first thing I remember, although I don't know whether it's the... We're going over a bridge now, it's very exciting. It's a railway, a sleeper. Linda was walking across that once, our previous dog, ramped, and knocked her off. I'm glad you told me that after, but I'd safely made it across. The first film I remember said,

was Cracketoe East of Java. Now, it's possible that I had seen something else beforehand, but I don't remember it. That's what I remember. At the cinema, is this? Yeah, the cinema. I remember my mum taking me to see Cracket Oeuvre. And I remember thinking,

this is brilliant, this is why I want to spend the rest of my life. And then very quickly, because you said you remember the Barnet Odeon. So very quickly, I got to the point that I would go to the Barnet Odeon on my own because I could cycle there from where we lived. Right.

You had a choice. If you cycled, you had money for sweets. If you got the bus, only had money for the ticket, so you'd cycle. And then you remember they used to, well, again, I'm older than you. They used to have little boxes of chocolate raisins. I do remember. Yeah.

7p, you could get two of them. Yes, the equivalent of poppits now, I believe. Poppets, poppits, yeah. Poppets, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I used to go to the Barnet Island, and I would see anything that had a U or an A certificate. It used to be that A, you had to go with a parent, but then, of course, we all discovered that all you do is,

this is crazy, you would go to the cinema, and you would hang around outside until some adult that you didn't know came up and you'd say excuse me mister would you take me into the pictures and they'd go all right yeah and that was considered to be a safer alternative to letting the kids just going in on their own well that was a thing i used to go to it was the hamster's classic it was called yeah yeah yeah so in now it's obviously a sort of waitrose was it the ionic maybe it was the one in south end green i'm thinking of sorry this is boy if you don't know north london well gold is green there's an ionic then in hamster I love about Mark. He knows his cinemas.

I tell you, there's a site, there's a website that I found, and it's pictures of cinemas that people took when they, you know, that they've just all uploaded, and then people say, oh yeah, I remember that. That was the ABC. Do you go to that website a lot? Yeah, I love it. Does Linda say, I've seen your history. You've been going on that cinema website again.

But it's the most brilliant thing because quite often you forget, you know, like that my, So what you have to do here is this. You have to go this way. I'm following you. Yeah, sorry, it's just you have to go. But you know what? You have to understand, for me, all this sort of muddy marsh walk is so exciting. Really?

Yeah, I'm loving it. This morning, it was frozen. Oh, I love it. So, yeah, so you get you, because you forget what the cinemas look like. So the Go-Mont, which used to be the one that I went to in North Finchley, was the most fantastic, really beautiful thing. Yeah. And there's loads of photographs from inside of it. Anyway, so that's what, so I went to the cinema a lot when I'm.

was a kid and I went on my own a lot. Do you think that's quite unusual, Mark? Because I do. I think that shows you as slightly other in a, not in a negative way. No, but I think slightly other in that I think outliers often are like that. I think people who make, go on to make some sort of... What do you mean? So you've said that word before, what does an outlier mean? To me, that's someone who thinks...

That sounds like a, like a, like a, it sounds like a vanguardist. I think it means that you view the world. in a slightly different face and you sort of stand out a little bit, architects, cultural architects, social architects, which I would say you are a cultural architect, and I would say the fact that you would get, you laugh at that, why? It's like, you know, because I just think it's funny. Because all it is, it's another way,

so I don't mean to demean your analysis, but it is another way of saying you're a bit odd and you didn't fit and you went to the pictures a lot, you know. I mean, I love the fact that there's, it's another way, a name for it. Oh look so what we've got here is Martha will you explain what's happened? Martha has met another much more well-behaved Labrador. Hello.

She won't do that for me. Beautiful Labrador. You know I had a treat in my pocket. Yeah, yeah. And now she will follow you home. Well, she came in the other day to see Viv. So this is Viv's dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Beautiful. Yeah, much better behaved than Martha. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Can be a bit of his, Henry. Hello, Henry. Henry's got a lot of energy. Yeah, Henry's younger.

Yeah, he's only about five or six. Yes. And also the mud shows up on you, Henry, which it doesn't on Martha. Nice to see you. Martha. Hello. He's my dog doesn't show the dirt. No, that's Vib's dogs.

So Viv lives in the house that we used to live in, and we live in the house of Vib appropriately, we're in a sort of like romantic poets thing where we're standing over the bridge. Oh, no, it's not romantic. It's poo sticks. Do you think that's what it is? It's like Winnie the poo. No, I just remember what's sort of contemplating nature. But it's not the thing that you think when you think, look at this bridge in that stream.

Pooh sticks. There is running water. There is a bridge which you can do exactly what you're doing, which is stand up on one rail to look over. And then there's a thing that you can't see and it comes out the other end. I love it. It's a poo stick bridge. Which Winnie the Pooh character are you, Mark?

Oh, God. E. E.O. I imagine. Are you? I don't know. I mean, there's a, I mean, there's a joke that Simon Mayo is E.O. Because Simon, you know, Simon is always, you know, that kind of glass, but, you know, I don't know.

I'm probably, I'm probably Tigger, actually. Are you? Yeah, I think I'm quite, I mean, like, you know. I think maybe you're Eeyore with a rising tigger. Eeyore with a rising tigger. See, you've got all these, you've got these phrases. What was the thing you used before? What was that thing you said?

I called you an outlier. An outlier. Yeah. An outlier just sounds like somebody who loves. lies but does it a lot, you know, like an outlier, you know. I think if you read, I've got that. You're a brazen outlier. No, that's from the Malcolm Gladwell book.

Okay. And whatever you think is him. So you're making the fundamental error of imagining that I'm well read. But no, it's from the Malcolm Gladwell book. And it's about the idea that people who sort of go on to achieve stuff, which I feel when I say that to you, you're kind of slightly in denial about that. No, I'm not. Look, believe me, I will take compliments wherever they are offered.

But not outlier. Just because it's not a thing I know, but I mean, I think you mean it as a good thing. I really do. Okay, then I'll take it as a, yes. It's a really good thing. Okay. Oh, Martha's in the stream. Yeah.

She's having the time of her life. She is. And the thing that she's particularly delighted about is that I had to walk her this morning anyway. So she's kind of done the long one already. And she's not entirely sure why she's getting the long one again. She's getting the bonus walk. She's like, I didn't expect this. So, after Eustace cycle and you'd go and see movies

and you sort of decided, did you have that thing when you were younger of thinking, right, this is it for me? I sort of want to do what I love and this is what I love. In some way I want to be involved in this world. I knew that the two things that I wanted to do was to watch films and be a pop star and I thought that they were probably both equally either attainable or unattainable. So while I was at school, I was doing the building guitar, being in bands, all that stuff. And in fact, I never stopped doing that.

I've always carried on being in bands. But when I got to Manchester, it became evident that actually watching films for a living wasn't completely out of grasp. And you've got to remember, I mean, it's the 1980s. You know, it was a very weird time. you know there was a lot of political turmoil there was a lot of political activity in Manchester which I really you know which I love being involved in but there was also a sense that

you would you'd make your own career path so city life was a workers co-op which was a big deal and people were freelance and I've always been a freelancer I've been you know I'm 56 now and I've freelanced my whole life I've never had a you know I've never been employed I've never been self-employed and I think there is a sort of

it was more that I decided that I could get by doing the things that I like doing. So by the time I finished Manchester, I was writing film reviews for City Life and I was playing in this band, The Rale Town Bottle's who actually had a very good career busking. Yeah. And we earned money busking. Yeah. And so you could earn enough from writing freelance reviews and busking to get by. And that was really, that was it.

And all that happened was that just carried on. So there wasn't a kind of poor line moment of thinking, I'll do this. It was just that it became evident that it was possible. And it was at least as possible to do that as it was to do anything else. Right. Because, you know, the employment situation was a bit weird anyway. And I didn't, you know, I wasn't going to go into teaching. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't that sharp.

And so I just want to, I mean, honestly, the, what I wanted to do was just carry on doing what I was doing. and when the state had finished being nice to me and allowing the British Academy, you know, I'd finish my PhD. By that point, I was earning as a freelance journalist and a busker. And that went on for a few years. I mean, it was, you know, and it was really good. It was, I came down to London,

and we were busking down here, and I was writing reviews down here, and it was just one thing just led on to another. So there was never a point of thinking, this is what I'll do. It was just sort of happening. Yes, you didn't have that Nicole Kidman in to die for. I will be a TV presenter.

It's an on-air weather person. I love that. On-air weather person. On-air weather person. I absolutely love that. Yeah, I love it. I say to sometimes, you know, millennials, or I say, do you have not seen it? And of course, I suppose it's not part, they're not as culturally aware of that.

No, we didn't do well. It didn't do well. No, we did it. Funnily enough, when I was at Radio 1, when I was the film critic at Radio 1, we did it as a, I tell you. Which would have been around us that time, mid-90s. Here is a telling story, right? We used to do this thing, which would choose a movie of the month, and we would organise screening for it.

Yes, yeah. And I loved to die for. I thought it was really great. And I said, we've got to do this film. And the Powers that be at the BBC went, really? And I went, yeah, it's great. People will love it.

So they went, okay, but we're going to sell it as a Matt Dillon film. And they said, you know, get tickets to the new Matt Dillon film. Not the new Nicole Kidman film. Well, Matt Dillon is in it, but it's a Nicole Kidman film. He plays somebody. who falls in love with her and she then, she then, you know, takes variety. It's a kind of film one.

It's, you know, it has certain bits of truth in the back of it. Exactly, yeah. But the point is, is it's not a Matt Dillon film. It's a Nicole Kidman film. So, but they also thought that Matt Dillon was famous and Nicole Kidman wasn't, which is really bizarre. I know, that's so strange, isn't it? Anyway, I thought it was a great film.

Oh, I love that movie. But that was, so that was Radio One was when you first started working with Simon Mayo. Yeah, so I was at, I've done Radio 5 with Danny Baker and Matthew Bannister said to Simon, if you're looking for a film critic, there's this guy on Radio 5, why don't you try working with him? So I came in and I did, I think, I don't think we did a test, I think we just started because Matthew, because Simon had huge faith in Matthew, which I eternally grateful. Yeah. And that was it. And that was the beginning of that and that's just rumbled on ever since. With, with the only interruption in that has been when in 1919.

or 99, I left Radio 1 because I felt that I was too old. Because by that point, I was twice the age of the average listener. And then the next year, Simon left and went to Radio 5. And then he gave me a job at Radio 5. And so we picked up again. So there was a brief hiatus when we didn't work together, which he refers to as my wilderness years. As I keep pointing out to him,

in the time that he refers to as my wilderness years, I was actually fully employed making documentaries for Channel 4. Because you weren't with him. You're doing the culture show then as well. No, no, that was years later. So he refers to that as my wilderness years because it was the 18 months that I wasn't with him since that period that we started working together.

And people often ask about your relationship with him in terms of the sort of, you know, the chemistry you have. We get on very well, but we get on very well by... But it's sort of beyond that in a way. In that I think you can get on well with people, but you wouldn't want to... You know, I've got friends. I wouldn't want to listen to them for two hours.

talking together. There's something... There's an authenticity, I think, where I feel, you know, there's sometimes, and people often say things like, oh, they sound like they're pissed off with each other. I know. I know, some people say,

God, do they really hate each other? And sometimes I read to, God, Simon, God, you could, you could hear the... And it's, I think the thing is, right, it is completely organic because for the first, however many years that we were working together,

We never saw each other outside of a studio. I would come in and do the film review. He was doing the program already. I'd come in, do the bit and then leave, so I wouldn't see him outside of it. And then years, I mean, now we know each other because it's been going on forever. But, you know, so all that stuff about the ground rules

of your relationship was all laid down on air. And for a long time, you have to be careful about Martha knocking you off. For a long time, the only things we ever said to each other were on air because we didn't see. each other. We don't live in London and I live down here. I mean I still think that the magic of it is him because I think that he's the best radio broadcaster in the country. I think there's a reason why when he announced he's doing this this new thing, why there's you know hats in the air and all that hoopplot because the fact is people really like him and

they really like listening to him and they from my point of view it was brilliant because it meant that I could say whatever I wanted and he would then make it palatable for a mainstream listener because he would do that thing about what what do you mean who's that what do you mean benwell-esque you know he always said that his role was coric you know that he he was the person who went i'm sorry i have got no idea what that is even if he did although i once said to him you know i love the fact that you i did say it was you know it's like bunwell and he said what does that mean and i said you know it's like benuel and he said really so then i had to explain what i meant and then i said afterwards you know that was really clever because i realized that what you were doing

was, of course you know who Benwell is, you were doing that on behalf of listeners. He said, no, I literally didn't know who Benwell was. So even the bit that I had thought was brilliantly contrived, wasn't it was completely... I find Mark, I work on a show with Frank Skinner, and I find... Oh, okay, fine. Yeah, well, we do a breakfast show, but what's interesting with Frank, I'd never anticipated this, just that sort of... People always come up with that cliche, oh, it's intimate, it's intimate, it feels different,

people feel like they know you. But to me, that really is the case, because I think you're talking, but you don't have sense of being observed, which makes you self-conscious. What, you mean when we're doing that show? Yeah, when you're doing the show, and I know you're, I've watched some of your things, so I know when you're on YouTube now and there's a webcam. But I would say that that is down to Simon, because the thing you have to remember that radio show is, I talk to Simon and Simon talks to the listeners.

Yeah. And that's how I see it. I don't know what that relationship was like with you and Frank, but I always feel that I'm talking to him and he's talking to them. Right. And he is perfect at doing that thing about, or every listener feels that you're talking to them individually. And therefore he's got this enormous audience of individuals.

But I just talk to him. So when I'm doing the reviews, I'm saying them to him. And then he's kind of doing the thing. And believe me, I am so grateful for it because there is no way that somebody as nerdy and as, you know, as I am, would have got anywhere like the career that I've managed it, if it hadn't been for Simon being the portal through which it passes. When you say you're nerdy?

Yeah, I'm obsessive about detail. You know, I mean, I was, I'm, you know, I worry about detail and I'm angst about. Do you? Oh, God, yeah. What sort of thing? Everything. So in a daily life, what would you worry about today? What were you worried about today, for example?

Okay, so this morning I woke up and the first thing, I worried about was whether or not I had spelt the name of the cinematographer in what's called Destroyer correctly. And then I worried about whether what I had written about the Oscar thing was correct. And then I worried about getting the car in time to go and see my mum to come back to do this. But it's fine. It's just detail. You know, it's a... Are you a happy person, would you say? I think so. I mean, I, you know, I mean, I tell you what, I mean, I'm incredibly lucky. I mean, look, look, I live here, right? I love my wife, I love my kids, I love my dog,

and I do a job that involves watching films and then talking about it. And then in between that, I play double bass in a rockabilly band. I mean, seriously. And you're really good, Mark? Well, that's very kind. You are. But the thing is, because I think the stray cats were my favourite. See, when I was growing up, so I was like, the double bass, slim gym.

Yeah, but the thing with the stray cats is the stray cats are a poor impression of the pole cats. I was very good friends with Tim Polkatt. The Polkats were a brilliant rockabilly band. They were really young. With that first album, that Live and Rocking album, which only came out late, right, I think Tim must have been 1415. What happened with the Straycast was they were originally Brian Setzer and the eight balls. They are brilliant musicians.

They came over to, they looked at the Polkats and they thought, that's a good look, we'll take that one. They were a little bit more, the Atomic Kitten version of it. Yes, but also, as Tim said, they could play better. I mean, Brian Setzer is a brilliant guitarist. And so although the stray cats were technically the better band, the pole cats were the proper band. Well, you know, me and my sister did a thing. I don't know if this, but we were of the generation where we would, I guess it was an early 80s or whatever,

but we would, we would, or late 70s, we would do prank calls on people, I'm afraid. That was the most fun thing. And we'd ring round from numbers. It's so depressing to hear. But listen to what we would do. Our prank calls were so innocent. In retrospect, they were providing a service. We'd say, hello, this is a new service from British Telecom.

We would like to play a song down the phone. We said we'd like to play a song down the phone to you. And we played stray cat struck because that was our favourite song. And they'd just listen to it and they'd go, thank you. And then it was only, well, I have to say, okay, as prank calls go, that's fairly benign. That's, you know. It's wasting our bill. Well, I never did that.

I was always, well, within reason, I was a fairly sort of well-behaved kid. Yeah, I can imagine that. I love the fact that you've said you like love, love actually. Oh, I love, actually. I love love actually. And I know it's because your wife, there's a sweet thing I read about how she watched it when she was away from the kids and she really missed you guys. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. That's true. That story is absolutely true. Yeah. But do you think that's why you thought, I'm going to give this a chance because if Linda likes it, there must be something in it? No, I always liked it. I mean, I love Richard Curtis. I do.

I know that people, you know, can be sniffy about him, but they can get lost. Why do you think they are sniffy about him? Well, you know, because Richard Curtis films are really interesting because they do something, which is they demonstrate perfectly the desire between seeing a film and watching a film, right? It is possible to see a Richard Curtis film and go, that's wrong with it, that's wrong with it, that's manipulative, that's a choice. This bit is, you know, gender positive I don't like this, that and the other, right? Or you can watch it and actually understand what it's about. And I think that the thing is, firstly, I think he's funny, properly funny. Secondly, I think he does sentimentality, which is a massively underrated talent in a way that is really well judged.

And the other thing is, I think he's completely benign in his approach. I don't think he's nasty in any way. And I know that some people have said, oh, if you look at these films, the gender politics of them are very pernicious. There's a lot of revisionism of them now, isn't there? There is. And I, you know, I can understand, but I don't think, my own feeling is, I don't think he comes from anything other than a, this sounds terrible, but other than a very loving, generous place. And I think that when he gets things wrong, you know, there are scenes in his films, I think that's terrible. Yeah.

But I don't care. No, me too. And love actually, I just love. The two best bits of love actually. The bit in love actually when, when Emma Thompson does the crime, right? We should break, yeah, fine. But the other bit in love actually, which everyone, which is, you know, which is, you know, which is. Yeah, fine, fine, come on.

But the other bit in love actually, which everyone forgets, is the bit when Laura Linney comes home with the hunk, yeah? And she goes, would you mind just waiting there a minute? And he waits for the door, and she just goes around the other side of the balcony, and she goes, I love it. And then she goes, okay, that's fine, that's good. That moment is so relieved. It was jumping off and down, by the way, in case it was.

Yeah, it's just, you know, she sort of runs on the spot and does this. And then she, and it's so perfect, because it's right. It was so human and it was so. character and it was I've really been enjoying your um you've got on a cast which is my home as well yes um i do this hello acast people it's called mark commode on film called curmo's on film you're right and you see you slip back into the old ways i can't believe that's fine it's what happens i told you at the beginning of this podcast i wasn't going to do that so kermode kermit you're right kermit you're right kermit like a frog and they're really and they're really

brilliant actually because some of them are, I didn't realise this, but some of them are your BFI. Some of the BFI shows, yeah, once a month. And some of them it's just brilliant. It's just the Camoad Rant. Yeah, some of them are just me talking about films. Some of them are interviews. The worst films you might do, the worst. And I loved it when you were going through the worst and best films. Yeah, that was fun. That was really good fun. Yeah. And then we did this thing recently when I went back to the Straw Dogs House in Cornwall. Yeah. There's some great interviews on there. Yeah, it's nice.

The Glenn Close one I loved as well. Oh, thank you. That was weird because she was on a mobile phone in Montana, and I was on mobile phone in my house. And it was being very difficult to get the technicals to work. I went, oh, hey, fine, I forgot the Twitter. She said, where are you? I'm in the new forest.

She went, I'm in Montana. I said, what can you see? She said, I can see mountains. I said, I can see deer. She went, okay, this is fine. I really liked it, though, because it was fascinating for me hearing her talking about fatal attraction, which was obviously,

You know, I would have been, what, when did that come out? Late 80s or something? Yeah, yeah. So I would be 17, 18. Yeah. And it's weird, again. Actually, I have to be honest, when you talk about Richard Curtis and I think because it comes from quite a benign place, I don't see that as dangerous.

Yeah. There's no dangerous ideology that I would be worried about my niece or children or anyone like that watching. I feel with fatal attraction, that was interesting what she said about. Yeah, I mean, the changed version is wrong. It's wrong and it's kind of maliciously wrong. Yeah. Because that's what the audience wanted. Linda did a wrote a book about erotic thrillers in cinema.

She went from being a, you know, somebody who was damaged character. And when you say the changed version, in case people don't know, there was... So, okay, in the original version... Test screenings, weren't there? Yeah, the original version of Fatal Attraction. The whole point about the Alex character is that she's very damaged. And she sort of brushes up against Michael Douglas, and they have this relationship, which doesn't mean anything to him,

but suddenly means everything to her. And she then won't let him go. Yeah. And the narrative as it ends in things that she starts doing things that cause his family to fall apart, famously the bunny boiler. Yeah. And then at the end, she turns up at his house and attempts to kill everyone. And she gets killed.

She gets shot by Anne Archer, everyone thinks. Well, that's not what happened. What happened originally was she goes to see, she buys a ticket for Madam Butterfly, which is her favorite opera. She sends a ticket to him. He doesn't come to it. She goes on her own. Yeah. She watches Madam Butterfly and then she goes home and to the strains of Madam Butterfly you see her cut her own throat.

Then what happens is earlier on in the film there's a bit when she picked up a knife and Michael Douglas has taken the knife off her and the knife has got his fingerprints on it. The police turn up. They find her dead and his fingerprints on the knife. So it's like she got him from the grave. In the version that they actually filmed, they then put this Philip in which was that Anne Archer then finds a tape that she's... sense, which says, I'll kill myself, which kind of then gets him off the hook. Yeah, yeah. But in the original version, he goes to prison. So it's like, it's like she got him from the gate. It's film noir, you know. But do you think also everyone, there is a sense that

people have to feel, I think there's a lot of pressure I would imagine to feel the audiences are leaving thinking, but I'm okay. You know, everything's going to be okay. These people aren't going to disturb my life. And I remember, you said something once about when you saw blue velvet and you felt uncomfortable and you didn't like it. But I love that, Mark, because I thought actually maybe when you return to something, those are the things that leave the people that challenge you a bit. Yeah, and all the films that I love the most, so I mean, my favourite film

of all time is The Exorcist, which is profoundly disturbing. I know. It takes a while to get used to that. And, of course, when everyone saw fatal attraction the first time, they went, no, no, no, no, no, no, she has to get killed. She cannot kill herself. And the famous story is that the test screening audience screamed, kill the bitch.

And that was the kind of the moment. And Glenn Close has always said, that wasn't how she wrote that story. She wasn't, how she played that character. That wasn't her. You're actually meant to sympathise with Alex and feel like the Michael Douglas character is a, you know, he's a creep.

And of course, then the other irony of it is that they did open the Madam Butterfly version in Japan. And it did really well. And the studio explained it away. by saying that the Japanese had a different sensibility. And I wrote a piece about this once, which was basically the equivalent of the studio saying

the Japanese audiences are smart, the rest of you are stupid, you know. We're going back to your home now, and you've got to go to London. You're a busy man. I have a question to ask you, which is quite a thing to bring up at this late juncture. You go to church, and I ask you that because Frank, who I present the radio show with, as he says, he says, I follow the Nazarene. he's a Catholic and do you know what

from spending time with him I've learnt to realise how important it is to him and I respect it and I think it's quite a bold choice now as he says everyone in the media is an atheist

it's cool do you have a sense of I never did it to a... I don't care what anyone else thinks I mean it's you know have you always had that mark what they're not caring what any else thinks well you're both actually

Well, I mean, I was brought up a Methodist, and I went to church when I was younger. And then, I mean, as I've always said, you don't obsess about the exorcist the whole of your life if you're not fundamentally interested in that stuff. I became very good friends with Bill Blattie. I genuinely think that people's beliefs are a personal thing. And I don't ask about it. What I mean is, you know, I think that people's beliefs are people's beliefs. And I think that it's a question of whatever works for you. I don't, I don't, I'm not doctrinal at all.

My father once quoted, the belief in a specific knowledge of God is a very terrible thing. Meaning if you think that you specifically understand, that is not a great thing. I like church, I always have done. I, you know, I'm friends with people who are militant atheists. I mean, I'm friends with people who are Catholics and Jewish and, you know, Muslim. Whatever works, the thing is,

It's always been a part of my life and it's never been a part of my life that I've felt the need to turn my back on and it's seen me through some difficult times. Is it? Yeah. Well, just feel it like depression or? Just, you know, everyone's life has its ups and downs and, you know, it's a sort of, it's a constant there for me. It's, you know, I believe in it. But then, you know, I believe that George Lazenby was the star of the best Bond movie. So what do I know, you know, it's like.

I really enjoyed today. Did you like a walk? That was great. Thank you. It was very nice. And I think everyone should listen to Mark's podcast because it's brilliant. Well, thank you. I mean, you know, this is, it's nice to do it whilst walking the dog.

Because obviously Martha got quite a long walk out of it. And it is, you know. But thank you very much. And thank you for coming all this way down. Oh, it's such a treat. I've learned a whole new word. So have I? Kermode.

Yeah. And I've learned outlier. Well, you giggle it now. I really hope you enjoyed listening to that. And do remember to rate, review and subscribe on iTunes.