Backlisted - Season 3 Prequel

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

The waiting is nearly over! Ahead of Backlisted Season 3 - and our tenth anniversary year - John, Andy and Nicky get together to chat about books, vintage vinyl, what they did on their holidays, but mostly books: Sarah Perry's novel Enlightenment, recently longlisted for the Booker Prize; The Haunted Wood, Sam Leith's fascinating new history of childhood reading; I Will Die in a Foreign Land, Kalani Pickhart's timely exploration of the roots of the war in Ukraine; and The Cooler (1974), a newly-republished thriller by George Markstein, co-creator of the classic 1960s television series The Prisoner (and available direct from plumeriapics.co.uk). Plus this episode contains details of the subjects of our next half dozen shows, so get in there quick before the library reservation queue snakes round the block and prices on the secondhand market go through the ceiling. As Nicky says, this Locklisted-like episode of Backlisted is the recap before the new season begins in earnest next week. Be seeing you. *Tickets are now on sale for our LIVE show in London on Wednesday Sep 25th where we will be discussing The Parable of The Sower by Octavia Butler, with guests Salena Golden and Una McCormack * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a patron at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm going back to university for zero dollar delivery fee. Up to five percent off orders and five percent uber cash back on rides. Not whatever you think university is for. Get uber one for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings May 3. Eligibility and member terms apply.

What does possible sound like for your business? It's more cash on hand to grow with up to 55 interest-free days. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit mx.ca slash business platinum. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, a podcast that gives new life to old books. I'm John Mitchinson, publisher of Unbound. And I'm Andy Miller, the author of the year of reading dangerously and hi I'm the producer Nikki Birch back for my occasional um dipping my

toes in the uh backlisted presenting duties and the last time we were together uh was for our summer reading episode thank you very much everybody for all your feedback on that we hope you enjoyed all the books you read all of them you finished all of them and you agreed with us that they were all magnificent. And now summer's over, you're ready for the real life. Misty mellow kind of reading list for autumnal purposes. And why are we here, John? What are we doing? What are we marking with this particular episode of Backlisted? The beginning of our new season. That's right. This is season three of Backlisted, but Nikki, what specifically is in

relation to season three? What is this episode? Well, this is kind of a prequel of season three, because season three, well, you've had, we had a summer break. Thanks for your patience, guys. Hope you enjoyed the reruns. And season three really kicks off next week, but we thought we'd just dip in and do a prequel and give you a bit of behind the scenes kind of what we've been reading, what we've been enjoying before season three kicks off proper next week. So in a sense, this is a recap as well. You know, you're going to hear a little clip now of Verna Herzog saying, kill him or something. Fornication.

saying, kill him or something. The jungle is fornication and death. Yes. So this is like a recap before we launch into the season three proper, but also John, what season three of Batlisted coincides with what for in the history of Batlisted? What else does this represent? On the, on the, on the horizon of season three is unbelievably folks at 10th anniversary, 10 years of giving new life to old books. Someone give new life to us.

In fact, just as a spoiler, I die in episode three of this season and I'll be replaced with a new Andy Miller. If you actually die, that's going to be really prophetic. I know isn't it going to always going to hang heavy on our consciences. They'll be looking for all sorts of clues to the future, but yeah, we're very excited and we don't know what we're going to do yet for our 10th anniversary show, but we've got plans are, I think we could say a foot. We are planning something special tomorrow. We can't believe it. We're so grateful, aren't

we as well to everybody for listening to it. It's astonishing. It's nearly 10 years. It's sort of amazing really. Yeah. So what have we got coming up in this show though? Well, okay. So in this show, we're going to be talking about some books that we've enjoyed or some books that are coming out in the autumn or the fall, if you're not listening in the UK, that are coming up in the next few months that we recommend. We're going to be talking about a few other cultural

things we've been doing or seeing or watching or thinking about, which is what we do on our Patreon only podcast, Locklisted, which runs alongside Backlisted. So if you enjoy this, you can sign up for more episodes like this at patreon.com forward slash backlisted. We do one of these every two weeks, don't we? We do. We do. A sort of sister show to Backlisted. If you are, if you are the kind of person who likes to get a podcast every week, then that's the way to do it. Is you get backlisted obviously with ad free and you get it early and you get a lot listed every second week. But also when we rebooted backlisted for season two, you controversially to some, we dropped

a regular feature. Also, we should say for those of you who haven't been listening to backlisted forever, season one ran for about seven years. But anyway, in season one, we used to talk about what we've been reading this week at the beginning of each episode. But by the time we both recommended about 150 books each, John and I were running out of a bit of road for that. So now we do that on lock list and it's a bit freer and we talk about all manner of strange

things that we've been reading. We can talk about films and tv shows and all sorts. But it's also, I'm encouraged to say that looking at the very lively chat this week on our Patreon, the decision to move what I've been reading has been vindicated. Lots and lots of comments of people saying, oh my God, it's so much better going straight into the subject. So I think that's a... Sorry folks, we're now going to do what I've been reading this week, the whole of this episode. Whereas this episode is the whole episode. That's all you're getting.

That's all you're getting. You know what we should do? We should do our long promised Ulysses episode. We should put this out as Ulysses and then discuss it for two minutes at the end of the show and make this all what I've been reading this week. The other thing that we are going to do at the end of the show, this is what we call a tease, professional tease. We have an idea of the next few backlisted shows, quite a good run of them, and we're going to tell you what they are. So we can tell you the books if you stay listening to the end

for probably the next four weeks, four backlisted shows. Or like, just use your fast forward button and come back. I don't care. Do whatever works for you. But yes, so we are in a position, quite unusually, to be able to tell you maybe what the next four or five shows are going to be. So we're going to do that nearer the end of the show. But first of all, let me ask in the, I've had nine years now of asking this question, it never gets old for me. John Mitchinson, what have you been reading this week?

Well, I've been reading, I have to say, I read it not just this week, I've been rereading it this week, the latest novel by Sarah Perry, which is called Enlightenment. Sarah Perry. Let's say our former guest, Sarah Perry, who has appeared on Backlisted Twice, author of The Essex Serpent. Oh yes. Wonderful book. And also Melmoth, which astonishingly this week got an amazing puff from no lesser critic of

artistic output than Martin Scorsese himself. No way. Absolutely. Son, it was completely terrific. I really liked the Essex Serpent, but Melmoth is really the real thing. It's the real deal. So it's like Marty's here. Oh, yes. thanks. Rather sweetly, Sarah put up an Instagram post up saying I don't normally do this but I mean it is Martin Scorsese and I think isn't that fantastic? Wait a minute, what was the show that Sarah was on last time for? It was a Japanese? It was, it it was the Japanese Graham Green himself, Shusaku Endo. And it was silenced, but of course,

it was brilliantly done, Andy, brilliantly done. See, I am good at this after nine years. It was made into a film by Martin Scorsese. Thank you, my friends, thank you. So who knows if that's how it all fitted together, why Martin Scorsese. What Marty heard backlisted- I'm sure he did.

Approach Sarah and blank to us. Yes, that sounds right. I think at the core, effortlessly segueing into his blurb for the book, at the core of this book, and I think at the core of all of Sarah's books is the- This is the new one. This is the new one. Enlightenment is the knotty complex challenge of religious faith. So this book is different from Melmoth, which was much more, I think, self-consciously in the

Gothic tradition. I love that book. It's like the Essex Serpent set in Essex, in the small, invented town of Alderley in Essex. And there are two characters around which the plot is strong. One is a kind of middle-aged journalist called Thomas Hart, who writes a sort of amusing column for the local newspaper, and who becomes unexpectedly to him fascinated with astronomy. He wasn't expecting to like astronomy, but he becomes interested. And then there's a young, his young goddaughter who is Grace Macaulay, who has been brought up in a strictly religious household who is in a relationship with a young man. And they are a kind of unlikely pair of friends. They worship at the Plymouth Brethren Temple. Now, we know that this is the backstory of Sarah's own life. And she talked in her first episode that she did for us on

Black List, Father and Son, Edmund Goss classic Edmund Goss book. She talked really movingly about her relationship with her parents. And indeed I've seen her, I've interviewed her for this book where she's talked again about that formative period of her life kind of rebelling against it, but also still, I think, having a complex relationship with it. And this book, I mean, is as close to, I would say, and I'm using this as a very high praise, if you like A.S. Byatt in her possession mold, then you're going to really love Enlightenment. What does that mean? What do you mean by that? Well, it's kind of, it's contemporary fiction, but there is a historical subplot that there is a house

that has kind of a supernatural kind of stories around it, particularly about a woman who was seen in the windows, who's lived there, who turns out to have been in fact, the windows who's lived there, who turns out to have been in fact a missing female astronomer from the late 19th century. So she weaves in the way that she did in the Essex Serpent a really clever kind of plot. There is a discovery of the papers and the diaries of this astronomer who is called Maria of Vadua. And the way that, yeah, the choreography of the book, I think is just, you know, you're in a small town in Essex, but you're also dealing with bigger issues of faith, of the wonders of science, how you reconcile the wonders of science with religious faith. And also, it's a novel about love, unrequited love, love that is requited but not in quite

the way it ought to be. It's beautifully handled. So is it a sort of small to big novel, where it's small things, big themes? I was going to say, Nikki, I was about to say, if the season three of Battlested, one of the changes we're making, is we're asking more basic questions of one another. John, how long is this book? This book is about 380 pages long, so it's not short. How gripping is it on a scale of one to five, where one is not gripping at all and five

is unput downable? It's a solid four and a half for me. I loved it. Yeah, okay. I actually, she's a really, she's a she's developing, I think, in, I mean, I really enjoyed the set Essex Serpent. But I think she's turning into a seriously. That's why I, you know, the is by kind of comparison for me, it's it's exactly what you want from a novel that is a... I don't even really mean it.

What you're saying is she's accomplished without being inaccessible. Yeah, you know what? It's a very bloody difficult thing to get right, isn't it? Indeed it is. And I'm going to... Well, if Marty likes it... If Marty likes it... Can I read a little bit? I will feel like that helps. Please do.

So this is a little bit, it's called Perihelion and it's obviously this, that Maria Vadova, it turns out, has discovered a comet, a comet that nobody realised was there and how that is worked into the plot and the idea of, you know, we look up to the stars to see the truths about ourselves. We always have done, probably always will. Here's just a little bit. It gives you a real feel for the book. Now, Perihelion, Comet 330P forward slash 1889, Vardyva Dulac has crossed the ecliptic plane.

It will rise in the east in the region of Pisces, tumbling over head over heels in its haste. In the observatories of Paris and Kielder and Polkovo, its apparent magnitude is judged to be minus one, given a clear night and a day or two, and it will outdo the great comet of 1997 and all the attending marvels and disasters. Uldly is waiting with the patience of the saints.

It has no choice. Tinsel in the pound shop, blousy in the narrow aisles, white likes strung on yews and privet hedges winking out when the battery goes. Choirs rehearsing in town halls and sitting rooms and small cathedral naves. Glory to God in the highest on unearth, no great expectation of peace.

Ronald McCauley is sleeping in slippers embroidered RM to remind him of his own name. To assert that yes, here he is, here he has been, a man for whom no natural love could match his love for heaven. Children are coming home to Alderley on the London train, watching their own vast lamp-knit faces scud over Stratford, Sheffield, Chelmsford. We are giants in the land, they think. We could occupy the towns. And meanwhile, their parents, nursing

lifelong headaches, tot up the costs of the day. Frost is pailing the banks of the Older, where smashed plates and dented wedding rings wash up in shopping trolleys full of silt. And in the basement of the old town hall, Boudicca's dismantled breasts are picked saw by holly wreaths. The tills are ringing in the Jackdaw and Crow, where schoolgirls and women and men are by turns angry or peaceable and never conscious of the cause.

They make one body heaving over to the bar, drawing breath and singing they wish it could be Christmas every day. Prayers, holy and idle and sometimes profane rise like sparrows from bungalows and offices where the tinsel is already coming loose. My God, look at that! Christ, you frighten me! Lord, make me good, but not yet. Snowdrops are coming up on the grave, containing all that could die of Anne Margaret McCauley, and she communicates in the litter blowing back and forth between the

headstones. Oh, I did live, Thomas Hart, and I do, but I rather think the harmonium never really was in tune. Lovers are lying down in Potter's Field and can't believe they've found each other, can't believe their luck. It's quick and hard on account of the cold, but never mind that, never mind the admonishing jays in the bare trees on the margin. It's done and dusted and the night can get on with its business. Be swift, my soul, to answer him. Be jubilant, my feet. Southend United is two nil down and the hero born of women crushed the serpent with his heel.

The barrels are empty, the jackdaw on crow, and Thomas almost thinks that his redeemer lives. The Bible is open in Bethsaida's pulpit and the broken pane of gas is coming loose. So the wind gets in and turns through Genesis and Exodus and the Song of Songs. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

And meanwhile, half a mile away, the Essex Chronicle is going to press. You know what, John, not only is that very good, what backs up your statement that she's becoming a voice, an ever stronger voice, is if you read that to me and I didn't know who it was, I would say, is that Sarah Perry? She's sort of carved out a real niche for herself in that kind of storytelling.

And it's a bit of a high wire act that it doesn't work for everybody, the small town elegy. What's it called? It is called Enlightenment. It is published by Jonathan Cape. It is out now. And it comes with very, very high recommendation indeed. Does it cost fivep or 500 pounds? It is 20 of your English pounds. Oh, on the lower end of things. Yeah.

Oh, good. And it's, I have to say, a very handsome, very handsome package. That's in hardback. That's beautiful. Thank you, Nicky. It's in hardback. Is that hardback? I told you, should you need it to know,

it comes with marvelous quotes from Sarah Hall, who we love, and Frances Bufford, who we also love. Season three, in which we keep it basic. That's what I'm here for. Andy, I'm going to ask you the question, what have you been reading? Okay, so John, thank you for asking me that. First of all, before I tell you what I've been reading, I want to tell listeners that, of course, when we do lot list is, because we believe that books when we do lot listed, because we believe that books are not only defined in terms of other books, but all cultures feed into one another, we do also allow ourselves to talk about film and music and TV and whatever else crosses our theatre, whatever the arts, whatever else crosses our paths and influences.

Cathedrals. How we read and what we think about and the choices we make. And cathedrals. Cathedrals. Yeah, there's going to be a second spin-off podcast called Naive Listed, which will run through all the cathedrals we've been to. But I'm now going to talk about a couple of things that bring all, in my mind at least, bring all those elements together. Now the first is, I was, as I often am am in a record shop the other day, and I found

this sitting in the remainder bin and I'm going to show this record to my colleagues on Backlisted. Get out of here. John, can you see what that says on the colour and readout? It says whaling and something songs on... Sailing. Sailing songs. Whaling and sailing. Whaling and sailing songs. Yeah. On the something on the days of Moby Dick from the days of Moby Dick, sung by Paul Clayton, sung by Paul Clayton. This is an LP. Okay. And there are several things to say about this LP, Nikki, I'm going to show you

the cover there. And can you just describe what you can see there? I can see a blue man with a beard and a cravat holding a harpoon. And there looks like a spar of a ship, a sailing ship behind him. Okay, so this LP is called Wailing and Sailing Songs from the Days of Moby Dick, sung by Paul Clayton and I found it in a remainder bin in a record shop. And I thought, Oh, I'm having that. And there are several reasons why I wanted to get hold of it. And the first is listeners, if you like Bob Dylan, Herman Melville, Gregory Peck, Nick Jones, and for that matter, Paul Clayton, this is the LP for you. Because I'll tell you why. Obviously, the reason why there's a bearded man on the front cover who looks like Gregory Peck is the record was made to cash in on John Houston's

film of Moby Dick, which was made in the 1950s. And indeed this record was released in 1956. Incredible. 1956. So this record is 68 years old. That's the first thing to say about it. That actual copy. This actual copy is 68 years old, right? Now the second thing to say about it is it's about Moby Dick by Herman Melville and no spoilers, but that might be a little clue to something that might be coming up later in the year. And so you might be hearing tracks from this LP. We can't say, we can't say because, you know, for copyright reasons and there's another reason we can't say. But, so it has a

link to backlisted. The third reason is Nick Jones, a folk singer who made a wonderful LP called Penguin Eggs, which has many songs about whaling and fishing on it is that Nick Jones's songs were written by Nick Jones. This is an authentic selection of songs from the 1800s that they would have perhaps sung on ships such as the Pequod, including the Maid of Amsterdam, Old Storm Along, The Dying Sailor to his Shipmates, Saturday night at sea, Admiral Benbow and on and on we go, okay? And the fourth thing to say about it is, I'm gonna guess that neither Nicky nor John know who Paul Clayton is. Do you know who Paul Clayton is? I have a vague memory that he is one of those folk revival guys, kind of, from that kind of Greenwich Village scene in the sort of 50s.

Yeah. So he is, so Paul Clayton is one of the guys like Rambling Jack Elliott, who is a, in Greenwich Village when Dylan arrives in Greenwich Village. And he is a mentor to Bob Dylan. And Dylan lifts, it's widely acknowledged, lifts the melody for Don't Think Twice It's Alright from Paul Clayton. And their lawyers agreed on this. So it's like, but here's the really amazing thing, both of you, about this LP. So here's an LP that is 68 years old, 68 years old that it was made to tie in as a film tie in of a novel by a man who died over 50 years ago, who is an influence on Bob Dylan, who is in himself in his eighties. So it's like more and more niche as I can hear. This is incredible.

Nicky, Nicky, Nicky. Yeah. It's still sealed. Oh, Nicky. Yeah. It's still sealed. Oh my Lord. No one has ever played this record. It is new. It is 68 years old with that heritage going back to the 1800s and it is new. And so if you ask, you can ask me, have I played it yet?

No, I'm not going to unseal it. I'm never going to play it. Have you listened to it on YouTube or Spotify? Yes, it's on YouTube. So if you want to listen to whaling and sailing songs from the days of Moby Dick sung by Paul Clayton, fortunately it's all on YouTube. How did this sealed American LP?

What's it been doing all this year? Yes, where's it been? It crossed the world to Liverpool, a different port. It's astonishing, isn't it? It's just, I love that. In 2024. So, um. Do you think there are other vinyl, other records like that, you know, that are sort

of designed from reading something. I'm so inspired by reading this book that I've done a whole kind of, you know, a tribute to it. I think what's so fascinating, Nicky, is on the last few episodes of Lock Listed, we've talked about the novelizations of John Borman's film Zardoz and Peter Cook Dudley Moore's wonderful film Bedazzled. You know, in a sense, these things, books and records can be, you know, look, here's this thing, it's folk music, right? Authentic. And it's about Moby Dick, the great American novel, but at the same time,

it's a shameless cash-in. That's why it's got a blue man on the cover who looks like Gregory Peck. I love it. It's like maybe we can shift a few whaling albums because there's a film out. I'm guessing it's, I don't know, was he on sort of Smithsonian folkways or something like that? Yes, it's very much that. He's probably done a few whaling songs before, right, as part of his repertoire, and some bright spark at the record company says, you know what, we've got this big movie coming out,

happens to have a large whale as a sort of plot device. We'll put you in the studio for the whole thing. You just bash through these. But also John, I'm a huge fan of the Coen Brothers film inside Louis and Davids. That's what I was trying to remember. bash through these. But also John, I'm a huge fan of the Coen Brothers film Inside Lewin Davies. That's exactly what I was trying to remember. That's the film. Which came out about 10 years ago. I love that film.

When I realized in the record shop what this was, and was trying to give it a backstory, I thought, oh, I know where it's been. It's been sitting in a box under the desk of Lewin Davies' manager for the last 60 years. So great. And when I needed it, when Backlisted needed it, it, it, it, it, um, it manifested for me. Could almost be that character, couldn't he? Absolutely.

That's absolutely the slightly, the slightly frustrated kind of not, not famous Bob Dylan one. Um, yeah. Yeah. So imagine, right, I've got, there's every possibility. I'm not gonna go check him out now. I love it. I love it. That record has been handled by Paul Clayton, because they didn't press many of them. How did it get? How did it get to me? Anyway, it's found its home. It's come home. It's

come home to Liverpool. They're leaving Liverpool. They're returning to Liverpool anyway. So that's my first thing. My second thing is I would very quickly like to talk about this book very quickly. It's called The Cooler and it's a thriller by a man called George Markstein. Do you know who George Markstein is? I didn't, but I do because I read the exchange that you had on Twitter about it is Markstein was one of the, he was one of the creators of The Prisoner. Really?

Mark Steen is the co-creator of the 1960s TV series The Prisoner alongside the actor Patrick McGuinn. Patrick McGuinn, yeah. And they fell out during the making of The Prisoner. I feel, you know, Nicky, this is one of those things. I always feel Nikki is going to ask me to explicate things that to me are the bleeding obvious to listeners who might not know them. And this time, Nikki, I'm going to do it right, the prisoner, right? The prisoner, right?

I was going to say to you, you know, American Pie by Don McLean. I'm aware of that song. When I was a child, I used to listen to American Pie by Don McLean. And I used to listen to the words, I drove the Chevy to the levy and the levy was dry. And even though I didn't know what either a Chevy or a levy was, that didn't put me off it. I still liked it. Because it was a great song that you could learn the lyrics to very easily. If you want to know what the prisoner is and you don't know what the prisoner is, that's

on you and you've got Google to help you. So I'm going to cut straight to talking about this. Can I do a little praise to you for what it was? It was a 1960s TV show, a bit trippy, set in North Wales. There we go. Well, no, it's not set in North Wales. It's filmed in North Wales. It's filmed in Port Merian. It Port Marion, the amazing Port Marion. Okay. Filmed in Port Marion. It's filmed in the village of Port Marion. Okay. A secret agent wishes to resign from the secret service. He cannot be allowed to resign because he knows too much.

He is drugged and transported to a place called the village, and when he wakes up, he doesn't know where he is. And the whole of the television, the series, The Prisoner, is based around his trying to escape. And he is number six. So George Moxdean was the co-creator of that series. Well, he based it on, let me just read you from the introduction here. He said, I've been doing some research into the special operations executive, and I'd come across a

curious establishment that existed in Scotland during the Second World War into which they put recalcitrant secret agents. And who was more recalcitrant than Patrick McGuinn? I thought it was very true. I thought it was an excellent idea to play around with. And such a place as the village, it did indeed exist in Scotland. It was called Inverlair Lodge, also known as ISRB workshop, get this John, or number six special workshop school. Wow. Right. So the six is located in Glenspin in Inverness.

The thinking behind the Second World War is they had to train up agents in order to do their jobs, who then knew too much and could not be allowed to potentially go out into society and reveal what they knew. And so the prisoner, at least at the beginning of the prisoner, is based on a real series of events. Now what happens is as the television series goes on, Mark Steen and Magooin fall out because Magooin sees it more as an allegorical depiction of what we mean by freedom. And Mark Steen didn't see it like that. He saw it as a very much

as a kind of Cold War thriller. So he wrote after he left the prisoner, he wrote this series of novels, the first of which is The Cooler and it was published in 1974. It's been out of print for years. It's very collectible and it's just been republished. And after I just read you this bit, I will tell you where you can get it. But here's the beginning of chapter one of Mark Steen's novel and see if this sounds familiar. Loach was awake for several moments before he opened his eyes. He had slept well, but the bed was unfamiliar. His eyes still closed. He listened to the distant noise of traffic. Gradually he relaxed. It was all right. He was still in London. No need to be tense yet. No pistol under the pillow.

Not till tomorrow. He lit a cigarette. This was a moment to savour. The next few hours were his own before he reported to them after that. Fifteen hundred hours, they had said. Seven hours to go. Loach got out of bed and shuffled over to the window in his bare feet. He peered out. The muse was empty, except for a man fiddling with a car in front of the small garage. Loach enjoyed not having to study the man. This time tomorrow, a stranger across the way meant danger. A man casually fixing a car engine might be the first hint of the end, but not today. I'm not going to read anymore because you know perfectly well what happened shortly after that because you've seen The Prisoner. So I absolutely loved this. I am a Prisoner fan. I know many people who are Prisoner fans, but do you know what? As a thriller, George Markstein

knew exactly what to do. I haven't read a thriller. I've enjoyed as much as this for a long time. That's great. So it's called The Cooler, it's by George Markstein. And who has re-released this book, this marvel? Well, you can get it and you can get a limited run of print copies from a company called Plumeria Publishing. Are they UK based? They are UK based. I think they ship internationally and I think there is also an ebook available and there you can find them at PlumeriaPix.co.uk. Plumeria? Plumeria.co.uk or just Google the Cool cooler by George Markstein. Um, it was, uh, issued

a few days ago on the 29th of August, 2024, which would have been George Markstein's 95th birthday. I think if you are heavily invested in sixties TV or thrillers in general, or does it stand up as a thriller today? Oh, yes, absolutely. Sounds great. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds amazing. But also what's ironic is, forgive me, it stands up as a thriller today because of the

reasons that The Prisoner stands up today, which is more down Magooen's end of things than Markstein's end of things. So the idea of what we mean by individual freedom dealt with however stylishly or wackily in the original show is still kind of at the heart of the cooler. It's just Mark Steen preferred to keep it more IPCrest-file than, I don't know, billion dollar brain. The other And so I love what I was, and the other thing I want to say is I love how these books, John, in the last 10 years, in the time we've been doing backlisted, because of the way technology has advanced and the market has gone, more and more of these sorts of books are being rediscovered and put into the market again. And you know,

Batlisted has been responsible for some of them. Um, we don't need to rehash that now, but, but what I mean is it's so lovely that either I as a niche Nicky, as a personal prisoner nut, or as someone who just wants to read a good thriller, this book is out there again and can be found again and is easy to find. You don't have to pay eBay prices. Does the 60s slant in it give it something which is of interest? Is it very much like, if I read that as a thriller now, because I love thrillers today, but does the fact that it's set and written in the 60s give it a certain edge that I think people would find interesting and enjoy? Well, you raise a fascinating point because had we read it in 1974, we would have read

it as a contemporary thriller. And now we read it in 2024. We read it as a historical novel. Sorry, 70s. Yeah. Right. So the answer is I think it works as both. It has a layer that it didn't have if you'd read it then, but if you're reading it to be thrilled and gripped and those other things, yes, absolutely. It's a bit like Agatha Christie's Endless Night. Exactly. It is like that thing, the golden age, the golden age, the golden age was not a golden age when they were being first being published. It was, it was, that was only in

retrospect they were, they were trying to be contemporary, trying to be contemporary novels. What I will say is if you like, if you do like A.S. Byatt in her possession mold, this probably isn't the novel for you. I'd stick with Sarah Perry. Yeah, but nonetheless, it's really good. OK, so does it have a kind of rogue, rogue male Jeffrey household kind of feel to it? You know what, John, that's such a good comparison.

household kind of feel to it. You know what, John, that's such a good comparison. Yes, in as much as it's certainly a post as so many of those things were, I would say if you wanted to draw a comparison, you'd probably say Len Dayton more than anybody else. A kind of post Jeffrey household mode of storytelling, etc. So yes, Nick Nikki, to answer your question, if you wish to be gripped, thrilled, chilled, and various other entertainment options, I thoroughly recommend The Cooler by George Markstein. But also, if you just want a bit of background on the greatest television series ever made, if you're a prisoner nut, you have to read this. So there you go. We'll put the

link up on the website. Time for a little break? Yeah. Yeah. When we come back, Nicky Burch will be recommending one of the season's top titles. So stay tuned for that. I just got my license. Can I borrow the car, please? Well kids go from 0 to 18 in no time You'll be relieved. They have 24 7 roadside assistance with intact insurance I want to go to Jack's place today. I'll just take the car. Don't wait up Okay, kids go from 0 to 18 in no time. Don't they at intact insurance?

We insure your car so you can enjoy the ride visit intact dot see or talk to your broker conditions apply So cups of tea at the ready, we're back in the room. Nikki, Nikki, what have you been reading this week? Well, I have been reading, I have been reading a book by a woman called Kalani Pickhart and it's called I Will Die in a Foreign Land. Have you guys come across that? I haven't read it, if that's what you're asking. But I've... You know of it?

Did you hear listeners in pages? Did you hear in pages, Benz? Have you? Nikki, I haven't read it and I don't know anything about it. What I should say is the old column to have been... I have seen the book and I have thought that looks interesting and I haven't read it and I don't know anything about it. What I should say is the old column to have been, I have seen the book and I have thought that looks interesting and I haven't read it. So there you go. Right.

But this is the thing, I've got you to do that for me, Nikki. It's from 2021. So it's a relatively new book. It is a book about Ukraine. So that's kind of the headline why people might have been reading it more in the last couple of years after it came out three years ago. And I Will Die in a Foreign Land, the title is an English translation of a song lyric from a Ukrainian lament, which was sung at the funeral, the mass funeral in Kiev in February 2014, after the military police shot and killed a load of protest,

100 protesters, in fact, famously in Maidan Square. If you remember that time, it was in 2014. And it's a song about a son going off to war and his mother's fears of him dying in a foreign land. Anyway, so that time in 2014 is when the books set. So it's around those protests. They form the backdrop to what's happening now in Ukraine because, and this is stuff that I have to say, you know, it's kind of not very long ago in our history, but it's very easy to forget exactly what happened in the details. So, as a kind of reminder, the president at that time, Yanukovych, he basically stopped signing an act, which was going to bring the Ukraine closer to Europe and instead went

sort of more towards Putin and people started protesting and gathering at this square, right? So there's this sort of huge moment where lots and lots of people, and they do what's a bit like Occupy, you know, they kind of, you know, that whole Occupy movement, they go and they kind of live in this square and lots of people start protesting and the protests get bigger and bigger. And eventually the military police come in and they kill over a hundred civilians. Right. So it's huge kind of massacre of these protesters and some police die as well. And eventually Yanukovych flees to Russia. Putin then decides he's going to annex Crimea and Donetsk. So that's the kickstart to that war that then goes on and on and on until the war that we are aware of that's happening now.

So this book is set in this time around the protests, the Euromaidan protests they were called, and it weaves together the lives of people who are affected by this revolution and are effectively protesting. Mostly they are the protesters, largely they're the activists there and they've all got back stories connected to Ukraine's kind of history like in its Soviet past, like one's a KGB agent, one's a Chernobyl survivor. It has it all from different four perspectives, but it also shows like it also has news articles and songs and you know so it's kind of like it's quite hard at the beginning to understand

I found it quite difficult to kind of understand what's going on because all these different perspectives there's these articles there's these songs there's these things and you kind of you know you know you read a book at first, you're like, where am I here? Do I understand where this is going? And eventually it kind of unveils itself as the narrative and how everything interweaves and eventually it kind of all makes sense. Is it in translation, Nikki? Is it translated?

No, it's written by an American woman who's not Ukrainian at all. Okay. Oh, really? Yeah. Really? Okay. Fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. And she talks about that quite a lot in interviews and in the beginning of the book and like, you know, you're sort of told and why she just sort of says I was interested and I went and did my research here and you know. So that's very interesting. Sorry, forgive me, Nick, but that raises an issue which is very current, which is the, you know, how do you earn the right to tell a story which

isn't yours? And I would be fascinated to know, well, I'd have to say, John, do you remember when we went about five years ago and did a show on Guernsey that the residents of Guernsey were very hostile to a particular novel about potato peeled pies because they felt that the author not even visiting Guernsey before writing that particular very successful novel. Like Taylor Swift's song set in the Lake District. You know, I don't know what you're doing. You're don't bring the Swifties down on us. What are you doing? The wreck, the recklessness of it. The mountains of Windermere, those Windermere mountains.

That's right. She did say that. I don't know what people in Ukraine think about this book. Maybe people listening could tell us. I would be surprised if they are particularly negative towards it, given it's very supportive of the current position in Ukraine and sort of yeah. So I think politically, you know, people wouldn't be happy, but there may be inaccuracies and there may be things obviously that I wouldn't know.

And did you, did you, were you drawn to it because you felt you wanted to read a novel, which would fill in your understanding of how things have got to where they are in Ukraine, or was it something that had crossed your radar for another reason? KS Yeah, I think that, and also it talks, I like the fact that it very closely mirrors the political things that happened. So it's very much in the book, it says, right, this is when the Malaysian airline went down. Right. This is when, you know, and so the narrative is woven around political events that happened. And I think it then makes you want to go and find out about the political events. So, so the reason I want to talk, the other thing I did last night is I then started watching the BBC's Zelensky series, which tells of his story. This is on BBC iPlayer in the UK and I'm sure you can find it elsewhere. I only watched the first

episode. Have either of you seen that? No, I haven't. I mean, I've only watched the first, it's three episodes and it's the Zelensky story. And like, this is more recent past, like we think, oh, we've got to know the Zelensky story. He was a comedian. He was an actor. Now he's a president. Now he's a war leader is what he says. But, but actually watching that, it's a bit like the Trump story, you know, he played, you know, the backstory, his first episode, the backstory is phenomenal. You know, it's like, okay, you know, the backstory, his first episode, the backstory is phenomenal. You know, it's like, okay, you know, you really did play the character that you then became, which was, you know, he plays this comedy all about being a president because people really wanted

to hear that at that time that he, they wrote this, they wrote that series because there was a feeling there was so much corruption and so much kind of turmoil in the country. So they wanted this character who basically waded through corruption and just said, you know what, we're just going to be honest and reflect the people and do it. So he basically played the character and he had the script writers writing all these amazing speeches who then went on to write his scripts when he became president. It's incredible. What you're describing has an analogy in the career of David Bowie, which of course, David Bowie becomes a superstar by pretending to be a superstar. He pretends to be an alien from another planet who's a superstar, and then he becomes an alien

from another planet who's a superstar, and he becomes an alien from another planet who's a superstar and he loses his mind. He simultaneously makes a series of the best records ever made certainly in the 70s. So yes, that one of those interesting examples of you pretend to be something and then you become the thing. Yeah, there's this amazing scene in the documentary where his wife, Olena Zelenska, she's sort of being interviewed and they talk about the moment where he decides, because he's been playing the president and everyone's saying to me, you're going to run for president, you're going to run for president. And she's like, of course he's not going to do that yet. And then the last episode of the series, right, he hasn't said anything to her. The last episode of the series, he just puts out a public statement

on the back of it saying, yes, I'm going to run for president without even telling her, you know, and you just sort of thinking like the hugeness of that. Can you imagine? And that he was like, Oh, I just forgot. I was like, wow. And her face says quite a lot at that point of like, okay, how, you know. And yet you would have to say, wouldn't you, that that degree of self belief is probably useful in a leader under difficult circumstances. Yeah. You know, that kind of character. Yes. Yes, exactly. Of just knowing exactly, making decisions. And that's the sense you

get. So it's really, I really worth watching the, um, the Zelensky story. Um, I just want to read a very small bit from the book and I do that. These two. Cause the other thing, apart from just, um, third person's perspective and transcripts of audio cassettes, they have these lyrics from the Kobzary and I hope I pronounced that right, which is a traditional Ukrainian bard apparently used to accompany kind of Cossacks during war campaigns. Anyway, there's a sort of passages of either lyrics from songs that are clearly to do with what's going on.

And throughout the book, Kalani says that these form like the thread in the book. So I'll just read you a quick one. Russian soldiers without insignia invade Crimea on February the 27th, 2014, sung by Kubsari. So Russia takes Crimea. There's a referendum, a declaration of independence for the Republic of Crimea. The UN condemns it, but Putin flips the bird and builds a bridge. In the spring of 2014, the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic

are formed. Overnight, Kiev had fallen asleep in peace and woken up at war. But, ah my friend, it's not as simple as taking sides. Think of Berlin. In one night in August 1961, a war was built separating brother from brother, mother from son, father from daughter. And so it is in Ukraine overnight our neighbor is our enemy. But there is no wall here there are only terminals, Donetsk airport, Kirch, no man's land. When we shoot we kill a neighbor, when we shoot, we kill a neighbor. When we shoot, we kill ourselves. In Ukraine, the umbilical cord becomes the noose. Wow. Okay.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. So it's quite wonderful. Yeah. It's pretty impressive. I will die in a foreign land. Kalani Pickhart. Published by? Penguin. Okay. And approximately how many pages is it, Nikki?

It's a good question because I only read short books, Andy, as you know, and it just about scrapes the short book number 313 but there's lots of wide prints so you get through it quite quickly. Okay so it's 313 pages but it's been printed large okay so that's good. £10.99 on paperback. £10.99. Okay. Very good. It's actually slightly inspired me to see, I sort of feel there hasn't been much published by Ukrainian writers.

There's Andrei Kirkov, who was already published by Harville back in the day. But it's interesting. It's interesting, isn't it, when you've got a major conflict like this. It obviously takes a while for it to emerge as literature so I think it's really interesting. John, I could ask you what you've been reading but I'm going to break from tradition, it's season three, we do new things. John, what have you been doing this summer? What did you do for your holidays? Okay, I suspect that what you're alluding to is my, it's the wilderness vigil that I went on which involved me

going to Dartmoor. It's amazing old growth deciduous rainforest called Holmchase where I spent four days and four nights on my own, extremely long as it turned out. Were you in the wild or were you camping? I was under a tarpaulin, so I didn't have a tent. I did have a, had a ground sheet and a sleeping mat and a sleeping mat. No fire, no fire. Any food? No food, entirely without food.

Water, enough water for the whole trip. And you are entirely on your own. No Deliveroo. Could you not get into Butler? Like, what's, why did you do this? As you know, I've talked about the work of Martin Shaw many times on the show before. Oh, our guest. And he was a guest on the Gawain show, but he has run this program for about 20 years.

So hold on. Some people pay him to go somewhere with no food and no central heating. Indeed, indeed, Nikki, they do. You'd be surprised how... Martin's onto a winner there. Well, I have to say it is extremely well... I mean, not everybody made it. You know, I think there were 10 of us who started and... And only four came back. Well, no, there were a couple of people I think couldn't handle it.

But I can relate to, okay, so I'm going to stop joking around. I can relate, John, to why you would want to get away from it all in a very hardline way. John, we're all busy people. John is very busy. Very busy. Well, it was. This year. And also, you know, you don we're all busy people. John is very busy. Very busy. Well, it was... This year. And also, you know, you don't want to, if you're going to go, you don't necessarily

always want to lounge by the pool. Perhaps you want to get a different experience. Yeah. I mean... And... You must have had a lot of thinking time there. That is a lot. You would be amazed, Nicky, how long a day is.

And the last, you. And the last night, you stay up all night. It is pretty astonishing how much time we have in our lives that we're not really aware of how much time we have in our lives, because we fill our lives up with endless things to do and to distract ourselves with. Podcasts for a start. And reading. I mean, interesting, isn't it? No reading matter, obviously. No reading. You were allowed to take no books? I had a journal and the recommendation was that you just did a couple of pages a day,

not... I mean, it's funny, you're continually... You're programmed to always be looking to do things. So it's in a way, I mean, you know, I think that the general consensus is not to over talk about these things because actually I think if you kind of talk them out and put them in neat little boxes, they kind of lose some of their, but I will be thinking about this. I will be thinking about this for the rest of my life. Was it hard? It sounds really hard.

Weirdly, the bit that was least hard was the not eating. Right. But the being in one's own... Can we just contextualise that for new listeners? John does like to eat. So that is a double twist. I did enjoy it. And I did enjoy that first cup of tea when you come back to base camp. It was pretty amazing. But no, I think the appeal, obviously, the idea of going off into

the wilderness and it's a vigil, it's not therapy, it's not really a retreat. People say, well, would you recommend it? And I say, I can't possibly say. I don't know. I mean, ask me in a year's time. Maybe I'll have something more coherent to say. You do sound very calm. The astonishing piece of being in a place like that, very close to nature, there's not much going on really.

It's not like I kept thinking, he wouldn't do this in a hurt, so rainforest, would you? I mean, you know, a deciduous, late August in a deciduous, but there was no, you know, the sound fornication and filth and... He's here again. There wasn't any of that. It was very, very, it's, it's very surprisingly quiet, you know. Did you talk to yourself? Yes.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think, I think Martin's line, which I think is a very, very good one is he said, you know, civilization is three days deep and certainly by day four, you were kind of, yeah, you were, you were thinking, thinking in a slightly different way. Let's just, let's just leave it there.

I love that TV show alone where they do that and they just watch people going slightly mad. Nikki memo to you for future development idea for a podcast. I'm a bibliophile. Get me out of here. Very good. Very good. Andy.

That is brilliant. That sounds amazing. Can I just tell you what by contrast, you went to a wilderness for four days and discovered yourself. I went to see my favorite band, the Lemontwigs, play a concert in Liverpool. John, do you know what their encore was? Go on. They went, we'd like to play a song now by some Liverpool legends. Everybody's going, oh, it's going to be the Beatles. They played How Do You Do It by Jerry and the Pacememaker. And then they played Anytime At All by the Beatles. Oh, that's nice.

And it was so amazing, so kind of magical. The Lemmingswigs also have a thing. They're from New York City, but obviously they have a strong affiliation with the Port of Liverpool and the City of Mersey Beat. And they describe their own music as John Jersey Beat. Oh that's good, that's good. I love them, I love them. That's great.

You've got time for a squeeze one more book in. Yeah please, I would love to talk about this. One of the lovely things about doing Batlisted for the last few years is we often have guests who write books and obviously we're delighted they write books. And as John was saying earlier about Sarah Perry, it becomes that our guests often become like family to us. They come back on the show and we also, we want them to do well, right, John? We're inappropriately proud of them. And our dear friend, the writer Sam Leith, who is also the literary editor at The Spectator,

has been on, battlisted a couple of times. Most recently he was on Bravely to discuss Thomas Pynchon and he was on before then to talk about Ray Bradbury. He has a new book out, which I, you know, I love Sam's work. I think this is a real step forward for him and an important book that it isn't an exaggeration to say that everyone listening to this podcast. If you are interested in books, you will want to read this book by Sam Leith. Wow. It's called The Haunted Wood, a history of childhood reading. And it comes, um, garlanded with praise from amongst others, Philip Pullman, Tom Holland, our former guest, Lucy Mangan, our former guest, Nina Stibbe,

guest Lucy Mangan, our former guest Nina Stibbe, our yet to be guest, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and they are united in their praise for this book, which is on one level about the history of children's literature, but it's also about the history of childhood and what we think of as childhood since the advent of children's literature. There would be no literature for children unless we began to think of children as people with particular needs, desires, and qualities that required entertaining. And of course, it's a comparatively recent phenomenon. And the way Sam tracks this is to write a series of essays about particular authors or combinations of authors, and explore the history of their lives, of authors and explore the history of their lives, talk about the impact they made in their era and then like any good critic should, offer their views on what works in their writing

and perhaps what doesn't work anymore. I found it as gripping as a thriller by George Markstein. There you go. Stick that on the paperback. One world. But let me give you an example. So there's a section here called Down the Rabbit Hole, the dawning of the golden age of children's literature. And there are two essays and the first is called Curiouser and Curiouser. And that discusses the work of Lewis Carroll and Charles Kingsley. And then the following essay, which discusses books by Thomas Hughes, W. H. G. Kingston and Boyzone Comics is called Incuriouser and Incuriouser. So there's a constant dialectic, if you will, sorry Sam would never use that word,

of a tension between types of literature, types of author, types of reader. And for instance, the section on post-war writers, post-second world war writers, covers, Enid Blyton, Alison Upley, Philippa Pierce, Lucy M. Boston, C.S. Lewis, Torvay Jansson, and Yastrid Lindgren. Oh, we've still got more of those to do. That's given us a big list of more to do. I am offering now a spoiler. Sam will be joining us later in the year in season three to discuss a book he absolutely loves and which I remember from my childhood very fondly, which is called Grinney by Nicholas Fisk. And he writes so eloquently about that here. However, I would just like to read a little bit

from this book because it takes as a starting point another subject we covered on Bat Listed with our friends Dr Matthew Sweet and Una McCormack, and that is the Doctor Who novels of Terence Dix. And Sam tackles here the question TV tie-ins or adaptations, what kind of a threat they posed to our children. And John, you know, you said before, there's always something that's a threat to reading. Always. Films. Yeah, films. Then video games.

CD-ROMs were a terrible threat to reading. It was radio before that and then music hall was a threat to reading. So it's a perennial theme. This is what Sam has to say about that subject then and now. And I just want to read this because I read this and I thought, yeah, this is the mission statement slash aesthetic of what we've been trying to do on here for the last nearly 10 years. Terrence Dixie's Doctor Who novels were only one of the more prominent cases in point. Annuals connected to The Wombles, to Cracker Jack, to Blue Peter, to Sooty,

Play School and collectible sticker books proliferated in the 1970s. Popular TV shows and films gave rise to toys and by the 1980s toys were starting to give rise to TV shows. G.I. Joe was a toy, originally launched in 1962 that became a comics and later film franchise. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles jumped from a rather sophisticated underground comic book in 1984 to a range of action figures and thence to the small and big screens. Transformers was a TV cartoon that began life in 1984 as a marketing exercise for a range of toys and spawned a multimedia

franchise incorporating feature films, video games, comic books and novelisations. Now in our own age there are probably more video games that have become TV series than there are video games made of TV series. Lego, which started off appropriating established characters and mise en scene, the own brand space Lego of the 1980s is now Star Wars Lego, has become something like a whole new medium of its own. You don't just have Batman Lego, you have a Lego Batman video game and a big screen Lego Batman movie. From the top down point of view, this is no more than the free market doing what it does, finding ever more abstruse ways to suck profit from intellectual property on every platform in which, as marketing folk might say, brand recognition can be leveraged.

But from the bottom-up, child's eye perspective, it's completely natural. Stories spill over. When you're playing with an action figure, you're writing a story. Children are omnivorous. They see a natural continuity between the books, the comics, the video games, the TV show, the feature film, the action figures, the dressing up costume, as do the hosts and producer of Backlisted. No, he doesn't say that. Television, in other words, like theatre and radio before it and like role playing games and the choose your own adventure books that had a vogue in the 70s and 80s took its place in a storytelling

ecosystem that was and continues to be roomy enough to accommodate potentially endless diversity. That is very, very... Now what that does for me is encourages me to read. It doesn't encourage me to go to video games or TikTok or any, it encourages me to read because I trust the author because the author is able to accommodate those differences as part of how we as people process popular and less popular culture. I really love this book. One of those books that I read and thought, my goodness, I know the person who wrote this. And that's a real privilege.

And so it's called The Haunted Wood, a history of childhood reading by Sam Leith. It's published by One World. It's in the shops now. Yes, it costs £30, but I'm going to guess if you're in the UK, it may well appear on tables in the run up to Christmas. That's just a hunch. And Sam Leith is going to be with us to talk about Grinney, you say? He is. Grinney by Nicholas Fisk. Sam will be joining us later in the series three. And we've got a few other, a few other books we're going to, uh, we're going to announce as well. Do you want to say what we've got coming up?

Yeah. So the next book we're doing and the next episode of Backlisted will be Laurie Seagal's Her First American. Now we should just say, I talked about Her First American, which was sent to me by a wonderful listener slash writer called Tom Nestle during the first lockdown a few years ago. We are thrilled that we are going to be making a full episode on this novel. Laurie Seagal's Her First American. John's been reading it this week. I know, John, that you have been blown away by it. Yeah. Yeah. I remember being impressed by the way you talked

about it and thinking, making a mental note that at one point I should absolutely catch up and read it. Well, here we have the excuse to do so. So what, what have we got coming up? Our next episode will be recorded at Foyles in the one after, yeah, the one after her first American is going to be the Octavia Butler book, the parable of the sour. And there are tickets available now from the foils website. If you wish to join us for that live recording on Wednesday the 25th of September. I mean we can actually say what the guests are for that one because they're on the website. The marvellous return of Selina Godden

who hasn't been on Backlisted since she blew us all away with her last exit to Brooklyn episode which must be getting on for eight years ago. Season one, early in season one. And the brilliant Una McCormack, who I think this might be her seventh backlisted. She's done- Friend of the show. Friend of the show. If you go onto our archive, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts, listen to the episode

recorded at the Port Elliott Festival in Cornwall where Max Porter and Una McCormack joined us to talk about Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban. One of the most extraordinary experiences of our time doing this show. And so we are thrilled that Selena and Una are coming to talk to us about Pablo de Sala. Truly great, still I think, cruelly underrated writer, although Octavia Butler's start is definitely rising and this is a very great novel. Okay, the show after that is going to be on a book that was published about 30 years ago. It's by a man called James Young and it's called Niko, Songs They Never Play on the Radio. And it's a book by a gentleman who was in the singer Nico's band in the 1980s,

and is the most tragic and comic of tragicomic memoirs about what it's like to be in a band with someone who is both a great artist and a colossal pain in the ass. And we are being, I can't say who the guests are who are joining us, but we have two guests so perfect to discuss this very funny, but perhaps rather dated memoir that I personally am tremendously excited that we're recording this episode. If you have never read James Young's Niko songs, they never play on the radio. If you don't know who Niko is, if you've never heard The Velvet Underground and Niko, and there must be people out there who never have done, you don't need to know who Niko is because the character you meet in the pages of that book is so well

defined and so well drawn. You will both love her and hate her as much as James Young does. So we will be talking about it. Nikki, what is the next show? Well, the next show after that is our Halloween show. And I don't think we should reveal what our Halloween show is just yet. Okay, fine. Because I think, you know, it's always good to have, keep people excited and coming back for more, but we've got a Halloween show after that. Then we've got a Christmas episode and we've got all sorts of stuff.

And also we should say our Halloween show is being recorded again at Foyles live in front of an audience. Yeah. Our dear, dear friend, Andrew Mail, as he has done every year, will be joining us for that show. We won't say what it is. Just yet, but soon the, soon the tickets will be available. Soon the tickets will be available and you will find out.

And then I think we do, is it Grinny about Nicholas Fisk with Sam after that? Yeah. Okay. So we've got lots of stuff coming up. Right. We better go cause yeah, Jon's got to go and sit and make some noise. You've probably got, you've got a lot of chatting to catch up with probably. Haven't you?

Well, you know, I'm just trying to keep things on an even keel. Re-entry is... I have to try and escape from the village again, so wish me luck with that. Yeah, good luck. All right, lovely to see you both. Thanks so much everybody. We hope you've enjoyed this prelude to season three. Absolutely. And remember, if you want to sign up to get backlisted ad free and get two extra We hope you've enjoyed this prelude to season three. Absolutely. And remember if you want to sign up to get Backlisted ad free and get two extra podcasts a month, sign up to our Patreon. That's patreon.com forward slash backlisted. See you there. Bye. Bye. The End