Comics’ Books - S01, E03 - Transcript
GUEST: JONATHAN SAYER
HOST: LUCY DANSER
LUCY DANSER: Just a quick note to say that if any of this sounds a bit technically dodgy, for example like it’s perhaps been recorded remotely during lockdown, well, it has been. On with the show.
[MUSIC]
LD: Hello and welcome to Comics’ Books. I’m Lucy Danser and for many years I’ve worked as a producer alongside a number of excellent comedians. I’m also a book obsessive who’s always asking friends and strangers alike what they’re reading. So, I thought I’d bring my two passions together and find out, what do funny people read? My guest today is Jonathan Sayer. Jonathan is the company director of Mischief Theatre for whom he writes and performs hilarious comedy shows including The Play That Goes Wrong and The Comedy About a Bank Robbery. Starting out at a little pub theatre his company has now had five shows running in the West End, three of them at the same time and they’re currently writing their second TV series of The goes Wrong Show for BBC1. Hello Jonathan.
JONATHAN SAYER: Hello Lucy.
LD: How are you?
JS: I’m good. I’m good. Quite a cool USP for this podcast is it’s probably one of the few that being recorded at the moment where the participants don’t need to be socially distancing from each other. That’s not because we’re breaking the rules, that’s because we are married to each other and live in the same house or the same flat.
LD: So, yes. This, excitingly, is how we’re spending our quarantine together.
JS: Yeah.
LD: Just talking about books on a podcast for other people. So, tell me, how are you, how’s your isolation going? I mean I do know but not everyone knows.
JS: It’s going OK. I’ve been a bit sick.
LD: Yeah you have.
JS: I’m now a bit better.
LD: Do you think you’ve had the virus? We’re not sure if he’s had the virus.
JS: Yeah I think it’s likely. ‘Cos I’ve really, I mean you’ve had to put up with me. I’ve never felt like, like I have done for the past two and a half weeks in my life. I’ve just felt so incredibly unwell. And even now I’m really kind of tired and fatigued and, no, it’s not been good really. But equally, you know, I’m very lucky ‘cause there’s a lot of people who are feeling much much worse.
LD: Much worse.
JS:And hopefully through that fairly rough experience I’ll have some kind of antibodies and some level of immunity or something like that.
LD: Have you done much reading yet? I don’t think you have.
JS: Well, I’ve not been able to. I’ve had such a bad headache and my whole body’s been shaking. This isn’t really what you want in the podcast is it? Just me complaining about how sick I am.
[LAUGHTER]
LD: I think it’s important. We have to keep it real right now. We wanna know the truth.
JS: It’s been hard to read a book as you will have seen from my-
LD: I have seen, yes.
JS: You can’t read and really get into a novel if you’re in the foetal position hacking and shaking.
LD: Thank you, that was not too much information. Before we talk about sort of the main thing which is obviously books and reading, let’s talk a little bit about comedy and you. So, did you always want to, I know you went to drama school, but did you always want to be a comedy actor?
JS: I don’t think I ever wanted to be a comedian. Like I don’t think I ever thought, “I want to be a stand up”. So I kind of got into performing via watching things like Morecambe and Wise, Two Ronnies, Monty Python and then, silent comedies. So Chaplin, Keaton, I mean you’ve seen how much Chaplin and Keaton we have.
LD: Yeah but a lot of the stuff in your shows sort of, I mean I won’t ruin them for people who haven’t seen them, but a lot of the stuff particularly in The Play That Goes Wrong, the big scenes with things falling over and people falling over, you’ve told me that they hark a lot to Keaton movies.
JS: So most silent movies, they began on stage either through music hall or vaudeville and it’s been fun to be part of a group that has brought that work from theatre to screen and then back into a live performance space. That’s been really rewarding. ‘Cos it is just amazing to make people laugh but it’s amazing to make people gasp and for there to feel like there’s a genuine sense of tension in the air. I think that’s where a lot of comedy is created and I think that’s why we fell into writing stuff about deconstructing theatre and about you know, things going wrong. And also because of Michael Green who wrote The Art of Coarse Acting which is all kind of about how to be a dreadful actor and the different kinds of actors you might encounter in the world of amateur dramatics. And he wrote these kind of miniature plays where you know there’s lots of different things that go awry.
LD: So I was gonna say, when I met you and I met you when we were much younger actually, before we were a couple, you were always very outward facing. You liked to perform and you liked to see theatre and you liked music and you liked things that were active and proactive and talking to people. So I was pleased when I found out that you enjoyed reading. But has that always been a thing for you as well? Because obviously that’s quite a different activity to really being so in the moment and having people react.
JS: Yeah I think reading has always been really really important. I think at school I was quite quiet so I wasn’t always outward facing. Is that what you said?
LD: Yeah well you were trying to impress me probably.
JS: I suppose I can be extrovert.
LD: That’s the word I wanted. Extrovert!
JS: But I’m also quite introverted. Particularly when I was younger and I used to find books a great comfort. Just because I was quite shy and quite awkward. Like most kind of young people are, and I found words and books a really useful escape. I also had like brilliant teachers I think. Particularly when I went to Sixth Form. I had an amazing English Lit teacher and I think that really made me incredibly passionate about reading and I used to work at the Palace Theatre in Manchester Front of House and there used to be a lot of time where you just had, you’d do the bar and you’d stock up and you’d get all the drinks ready but then you’d often have quite a bit of time where you could just kind of sit and read. So I think that was really helpful as well.
LD: Do you think you’d do that now or would you just be fiddling on your phone?
JS: It’s interesting isn’t it? Because I would say that there was a period in time where I read far less and that was probably about a year ago for around two years. I did read, but I read far far less and I think part of that is just because of work and stress and having this kind of compulsion to feel like if I’m awake enough then I should be working and doing something rather than just sitting reading a book. So only really relaxing when just like I was totally spaced out and exhausted. But I’ve tried to put the screen away, or the phone away, like when we were on honeymoon we took a mountain of books and we read.
LD: Yeah, when we went on honeymoon and when we go on holidays you’ve really suddenly become like a voracious reader where I might not see you pick up a book in weeks.
JS: Well, I tell you what I think has been a bit of a game charger actually is the fact that I’ve got glasses. Which I think is, in fact yeah all this stuff about you know just thinking about screen time, I thought I had lost my attention span and I was a bit, on the quiet, I was a bit depressed ‘cos I was like “I can’t read anymore”. And I did think, “Oh maybe that’s because I’m checking my phone too much and I can only look at shiny things now”. But then I went to the opticians and they just said, “Yeah you’ve got an astigmatism and you should wear these”. And as soon as I got them I was like, “Oh yeah I can concentrate now for more than twenty mins. When I read a book I can just get lost in it again”. So that’s been really good.
LD: Your Mum’s quite a big reader. So is it her that got, I don’t think I’ve ever seen your Dad pick up a book that wasn’t The Secret Footballer’s Diaries.
JS: No, my Dad kind of proudly declares that he hasn’t ever read a book which I think isn’t true. I have seen him read but no my Dad’s not a reader. Yeah, no my Mum’s always been a big reader so I think, yeah I suppose you see your parents do stuff and you imitate them when you’re young. So yeah I would definitely, she definitely introduced me to reading and then I’ve always enjoyed subjects at school that are the arts. So, you know, Drama and English Lit, they were the things that kind of sustained me when I was at school. That I used to absolutely love, just always found, particularly when you find a book that is just, that you really connect with. I think there, I don’t think there’s a feeling like that because you’re entertained but it is so bespoke and personal to you and your imagination. And it’s probably the only art form that does that. It’s different for every single person and it’s being shaped by your mind and your experiences. So yeah, so it’s deeply deeply personal but then equally it feels like you’re being given this whole new world by someone else. It’s very intimate isn’t it, it’s a very intimate-
LD: Yes it is.
JS: -thing, to read a book.
LD: Do you remember the first time you felt that, that you’d found a book that really spoke to you?
JS: Probably as I got older like I’d find books that really kind of, we’ll get on to it, but particularly when I was kind of seventeen/eighteen. There’s a book that I’ve not put in actually but I would say, the Adrian Mole series-
LD: Oh of course! Yeah!
JS: -is actually, that, there you go, that’s probably the first time that I felt that thing that they talk about in History Boys about a hand reaching out and touching yours. That’s the first time I felt that. I don’t know why I didn’t put that on my list. All of the Adrian Mole stories. And I think in the way that, like now a lot of kids have grown up with Harry Potter so they find those books really really special, I feel like I grew up with Adrian Mole. So I remember, you know reading the age 13 and ¾ Diary.
LD: The first one.
JS: I think that was the first one. Yeah and kind of-
LD: See I didn’t read those when I was young because I thought it was like a boy’s book.
JS: No! No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. But I mean there’s all kinds of stuff like-
LD: Now that wouldn’t matter to me but i think when i was a teenager, you know.
JS: But they were just really important books you know because like they did just make you feel a little less lonely about kind of the teenage experience and having your first crush that just felt like the love of your life. So I think everyone’s had their Pandora and just the funny stuff about [LAUGHTER] measuring his dick and having a wet dream and trying to sneak his bedsheets past his Mum and wash them and all that kind of stuff. And him being really kind of really tortured and thinking of himself as a serious tortured artist at a young age who should be out there communicating with people. And I think, you know all thirteen year olds, even if they’re really shy and time have that weird also kind of strange ego of being untouchable because you know you’ve not really lived or experienced anything yet. So yeah those books were so, I think they were the first books that really did that, where you felt like, “oh wow, this is just for me, this has been written for me”.
LD: Was that the first time you read about the warts and all teenage experience?
JS: Yeah I suppose so. I mean I can’t think of another book that does that. I’m sure there is.
LD: I mean again yeah I mean I grew up with sort of the Judy Blume and Jacqueline Wilson, I think Judy Blume was, she wrote Forever which was about, I don’t know if you read that, but I think a lot of girls loved that for the first exploration of sex, of losing your virginity, and that first big all consuming love was just different to anything we’d ever read before.
JS: I think as well, it’s original. Adrian Mole. You know, he’s from Leicester and I think that, I’m from Manchester, I don’t really sound like it anymore, but I think that really helps and he’s got a working class family and I think at the time that was again, that was really really, it just made the book feel more bespoke to me and my situations. Obviously it wasn’t, it was written for a mass audience, it’s one of the most widely read adolescent books ever but yeah I think, I can’t believe when I’ve been sat here wringing my hands being like what book what book I didn’t think about the Adrian Mole books.
LD: How do you read? I don’t think you read on Kindle or anything do you?
JS: How do I read?
LD: Yeah, you just read-
JS: Oh I see.
LD: -paperback and hardbacks
JS: I tend to read books, I do audiobooks now as well.
LD: OK.
JS: I particularly got into them just before I got my glasses.
LD: OK.
JS: But sometimes I’ll have an audiobook. What I quite like to do now is have a book that I’m reading on the go with an audiobook. And I’ll have the audiobook for when I’m running.
LD: The same book?
JS: No, no I tend. I quite, I’ve tried to do that but no because then the voices in my head are different,
LD: Yeah.
JS: They don’t compute and when you listen to the audiobook it feels a bit alien.
LD: And when you read, do you read what you find enjoyable or do you read to learn or do you read to challenge yourself?
JS: Again it really depends. I think non-fiction I’ll read, obviously read non-fiction to learn, but I’ll tend to read either something that I’m really interested in and I want to know more about. So like I read a lot of Medieval history books. I think he’s called Dan Jones, he wrote a book called The Plantagenets. Which is a really good book which is about the Plantagenet dynasty and all the different kings. It starts with Henry I and then it goes into the whole civil war between Matilda and Stephen and then it goes all the way through all the different kings. And then he wrote another one called The Hollow Crown which is all about kind of Henry V and Henry VI so that’s when, Henry VI was the only King, I hope this is right, Henry VI was the only King who was crowned at birth as the king of England and France.
LD: Right.
JS: And then he lost everything and that’s kind of where Joan of Arc is and all of that stuff.
LD: Another spoiler.
JS: Not really a spoiler.
[LAUGHTER]
[MUSIC]
LD: So Jon Ronson was one of your books that you picked to talk about specifically. Why?
JS: I don’t know. I just find all of his books fascinating and you’ll know this, I’ve kind of gone through a, I fell into a bit of a Jon Ronson wormhole about eight months ago.
LD: Good place to be.
JS: And I’ve only just come out of it.
LD: I think you start with, was it The Psychopath Test?
JS: No you know what it was, I started with the podcast, The Butterfly Effect.
LD: Oh yes that was very good.
JS: I didn’t know anything about Jon Ronson before that and was just like, “That was such an amazing podcast”. I love how non judgemental he is. In everything he writes, in every project he does, it’s so balanced and there’s so much sympathy but then you do sometimes, sometimes, just a little indication as to how he feels in the situation. But it’s never imposed and you’re always allowed to arrive at your own conclusions. And when he does give his opinion it’s almost with a sense of guilt. I just think he’s excellent. I just think he’s excellent and it’s so varied and he writes about stuff that is so, so important. So yeah the first book I read was The Psychopath Test and then Men Who Stare at Goats.
LD: Publicly Shamed.
JS: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed yeah, which I found really, really useful. And I think as well I found, ‘cos he’s quite an anxious bloke and I’m fairly anxious I find his books quite calming to read so I think that’s been, I just think he’s great and the book that I’ve picked which is Them, I just think it’s, one, it’s a brilliant book, it’s so interesting-
LD: Which one is Them?
JS: So he goes and spends time with different people who are for whatever reason regarded as extremists and he’s kind of looking at the divide between the mainstream and them. Those who are other, who are on the outside. And I just think that that book is not only brilliant and funny and fantastically written and just a page turner. It is also really important because it was written in 2001 and in a weird way I feel like if people were given that, if everyone had read that I feel like a lot of the word would be in a different position. Because I think that, arguably, people like Alex Jones are the reason why Trump’s President. ‘Cos all those people who are ‘them’, all these people who are separate and feel that they’ve been mocked and laughed at, they’ve all kind of banded together and that’s what’s happened. I can’t quite articulate it because I think Jon Ronson is smarter than I am by a long long way but I just think it’s such an important book.
LD: I think what’s good about Jon Ronson in particular, maybe one reason why you got so into him when you were not really reading much other stuff at the time, is that he does so much research, crazy research, like you say, travelling across the world really. He’s a self confessed extremely anxious man and yet seems to do things that makes absolutely no sense to a sane person, the situations he puts himself in, but then he makes the book so accessible, they’re absolute page turners.
JS: Well he’s kind of like a social archeologist. He goes on these amazing, kind of picaresque odyssey like journeys with all these people who are really on the fringes of life but he just paints them in with a lot of detail and no matter how maybe odious what that person does and often what that person represents is, he just paints them just with compassion and I think that’s, I just think he’s such a good writer .
LD: We’ll move to something a bit lighter. When I asked you for some books that meant a lot to you you gave me The Vicar of Nibbleswicke.
JS: [LAUGHS] Yes!
LD: Which I’ve never heard of.
[LAUGHTER]
JS: It’s a short story by Roald Dahl. tHat he wrote in the nineties I think and it’s about a vicar, I think the Reverend Tucker, but I might be wrong.
LD: I think it’s the Reverend Lee if my-
JS: The Rev Lee. Oh you’ve done your research.
LD: I did my research, I did. I might not have read it but I did wikipedia it.
JS: The Reverend Robert Lee. Hmm.
LD: Yeah, Robert Lee.
JS: Roald Dahl wrote this book and Quentin Blake illustrated this book and they gave their rights to the Dyslexia Institute in London. And the book is all about a vicar who has a fictional version of dyslexia called back to front dyslexia or something like that. And basically it means that he says, the most important word in the sentence, he will say backwards.
LD: Right.
JS: So he’s a vicar and there’s lots of stuff about “You must not crap in the field, you must not crap in the field. You must crap in the gravel by the church. That’s why we put the travel there for crapping”. And obviously that’s parking.
[LAUGHTER]
JS: And there’s loads of stuff about like this old lady drinks a lot of the church wine and he’s like, “No no no. Piss! You must piss! And I read it when I was about twelve or thirteen or maybe younger, maybe younger actually, probably like ten or eleven and I remember I did a book report about it and I said all the naughty words when I was in like Year four or Year five.
LD: And it was okay cos it was literary.
JS: Yeah.
LD: Yeah.
JS: But I remember that being a really important book cos I remember that was the first time I ever read a book and genuinely just laughed out loud to myself. Just read it and was just in uncontrollable hysterics ‘cos it is just a funny book.
LD: This sounds excellent. I can see you reading this book out loud.
JS: It’s great, it’s just a little short story and it was just before Esio Trot. So it’s weird ‘cos it kind of, ‘cos then Esio Trot is backwards as well
LD: [Unconvincingly] I knew that.
JS: There you go.
LD: But do you remember how the Vicar of Nibbleswicke came into your possession? Was it something that you chose for yourself?
JS: I just bought everything by Roald Dahl and I think by that point I had read all the longer stories and proper novels. I’d read the fairy tales where they’re all sort of slightly macabre and they rhyme and stuff.
LD: Oh yeah the, is it the revolting animals?
JS: Revolting rhymes.
LD: Rhymes.
JS: I’d read all of them. And then I found this. I found this book. I might have even ordered it in at a time when it was quite rare to do that ‘cos I was like, “Oh wow this is a new Roald Dahl thing that I haven’t read.”
[MUSIC]
LD: I know you talked about your English Literature teacher at school. Is that where you read To Kill a Mockingbird?
JS: No. I read that later I think. I really love that book because I, it was a book where you realised you don’t have to be kind of strong and alpha to be brave. You know, there’s another way of being courageous and that is actually to have integrity and to do what feels right. And to be sensitive and to be inquisitive and um, there’s that brilliant line about, you don’t know someone until you get in their skin and crawl around a bit and I’ve always thought that particular line has always stuck in my head as like something you should do as a person.
LD: Was it the first book you read where race was a big part of it?
JS: Yeah probably was yeah.
LD: I think I remember I read it at school and for us, we’d sort of read a few books by that point I think where we’d talked a little bit about race but I thought To Kill a Mockingbird was the first one where, maybe ‘cos it was from a child’s point of view, we were about fourteen/fifteen by then but I remember it was the first time we were forced to look at skin colour as something that could really direct how your life could pan out through no fault of your own.
JS: I read it when I was a little bit older so it wasn’t like a kind of awakening to injustice, I just remember reading it and kind of wanting to be, I think I want to live the rest of my life trying to be as much like Atticus Finch as possible. And just, you know, doing what is right and not just going with the crowd ‘cos it’s easy and yeah, just be kind, just be kind whenever you can and just see everyone as, I think there’s another line about, there’s just one kind of folks and that’s folks. Or something like that. And I think just, yeah just trying to live like that is a good book, it’s a parable for that. And it’s probably one reason again yeah, I tend to like stuff where I feel that the characters are compassionate.
LD: So a book that you, I have never read this book, but a book that you have talked about consistently as your favourite book for as long as I’ve known you is Jon MacGregor’s If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. What is it about that book?
JS: The beginning of it is brilliant. So this goes to my Sixth Form English Lit teacher, Mike Prowl, who’s-
LD: Hi Mike.
JS: Hi Mike, thank you. He was just a brilliant teacher. Sometimes we’d just take a break from reading our designated text and he’d just bring a bit of something in. And he brought in the first five pages I think of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and it’s kind of like a poem or a ballad. It starts with ‘If you listen at night, the city it sings’. Or something. I can’t quite remember now but it’s, the first bit of the book is just so lyrical and magic. I then bought the book and just read it, I think I read it a little bit later actually, read it kind of a year later so I must have been about twenty I think when I read it. And it’s just a really beautiful book. It’s not the kind of thing that I would probably naturally gravitate to. It’s really, all of it is kind of written almost like a poem.
LD: OK.
JS: And it flips between two different voices, a young woman who keeps kind of talking about a bad thing in the past that had happened, and other people on this street. And I won’t do a spoiler for this because, one, because it has been a while since I read it but also because it will ruin it but the voices all kind of collide and you find out some of them are linked and there’s this kind of tragic event that happens later in the book.
LD: See I think I’m a bit scared of reading that cos I know you like it so much and I’m a bit scared I, maybe I won’t.
JS: I just think the way he writes is just really beautiful. He’s written some other books as well. Even the Dogs. So Many Ways to Begin. Reservoir 13 that we might start reading together this week cos we’ve got two copies of that. But yeah it’s just really beautiful. THe way it’s laid out on the page is like a poem almost as well. ‘Cos there are almost little stanzas and the kind of female voice in the story that’s written in the first person and the rest of it is a kind of narrator that just can see the man in number 18 or the man in number 27 and the woman in number 36 with the funny shaped head and the glasses. And it’s just really good. I don’t think there is a character with a funny shaped head who lives in number 36.
LD: You’re writing your own novel now.
JS: But it’s great. It’s just really really excellent and beautiful.
LD: And then you chose another book that I haven’t read. The Siege of Krishnapur.
JS: So I read that at Sixth Form. Siege of Krishnapur is part of a trilogy of books. I think called The Empire Trilogy.
LD: By JG-
JS: JG Farrell. I think all these books and JG Farrell would have been much more in the public consciousness but he died fairly young I think on a fishing boat or something like that. But he has this trilogy and they’re all about the fall of the British Empire and they’re all just political satires on just terrible, how terrible we are really.
[LAUGHTER]
JS: And how dreadful we are and how we wrapped up doing all these dreadful things as kind of being in some way noble and heroic and then just how the whole enterprise was quite rightly always doomed to fail. And The Siege of Krishnapur is about a garrison, a British garrison in India, in Krishnapur that comes under attack and they weirdly see themselves as being very lofty high members of society who are kind of Victorians all about progress and educating people who aren’t from our lands and all this kind of stuff. And they go over there and they all catch cholera and they starve and they end up in these siege and they have to like lock themselves in the grand banquet hall and they all just kind of-
LD: So they’re on lockdown?
JS: They’re all on lockdown but in a different way! And they all start going mad basically and it’s just about kind of how so much stuff is artifice and how we’re all just the same. But it’s a really funny book, I remember there’s a section where, the collector is kind of the man who’s in charge of everything, and he’s a celebrated man ‘cos he has all this art that he collects and he’s a benefactor to all these different groups who all do pointless things. And he loves phrenology which is the study of the shape of your head.
LD: Oh!
JS: It’s nonsense, it’s nonsense.
LD: OK.
JS: But just the idea that like, it’s a thing that was particularly popular in Victorian times, if you had a slightly large lumpy bit on the side of your head that might mean that you’re-
LD: I don’t know why you’re pointing at my head like that.
JS: It’s very lumpy on the side! But that might mean that you’re creative or that might mean that you're prone to lying . Just all kinds of nonsense. But they end up firing his phrenology bust which he was obsessed with, out of a cannon. And it’s about after that, and actually I was leafing through this book earlier because it has been a while since I read it, but the one reason why in the end I put it in there is because it’s about a society that think they have it all sussed and they’ve got it all covered and then they totally, out of the blue, end up having to lock themselves away and are totally under siege from something that they don’t understand, that they can’t fathom and all the things that they’ve built and made, it doesn’t help them at all. And they all totally degrade themselves and totally debase themselves. There’s a bit where they’re trying to bury their dead and they’re arguing about who gets to bury the, they’re not saying it cos they’re too British, but they all want to bury the smaller corpses because that will require less work and they’re all knackered and they haven’t eaten. But it’s a very very funny book and I don’t know, I kind of chose that book because of what’s happening right now and it just kind of stuck out in my head that it is about this society that is tested.
LD: Your final book that you chose was one you’ve only read recently. Which was, and I think you found quite an emotional read, was Unfollowed by Megan Phelps-Roper.
JS: I did yeah. So she is one of the Granddaughters of Fred Phelps who is the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church. So, the Louis Theroux documentary about um, the most hated family in America.
LD: He did three didn’t he?
JS: He did do three, yeah. So they’re the people who went and picketed the funerals of soldiers. Just picketed everything with horrible signs.
LD: Horrible signs.
JS: And she was born into that.
LD: Right.
JS: So from birth she grew up in this crazy bubble, very cult like, where all of the bible had been warped to support this very strange ideology of this strange homophobic man who really only started the church because he was homophobic and there were people in the park having sex and that was kind of how it started and it grew into this-
LD: Monster.
JS: -absolutely crazy abhorrence. Yeah. And she was born into that and she’s very very bright and she did lots of, kind of the PR for the church and all the twitter. She was outward facing!
[LAUGHTER]
LD: OK!
JS: And she basically, she leaves the church and now what she does is she goes around doing Ted Talks and talking to different groups about the importance of compassion and it’s a really really uplifting book. It’s just about, it kind of goes back to the To Kill a Mockingbird thing about crawling around in peoples’ skin and trying to get to know where they're coming from.
LD: Because they’re so unlikeable you know when you watch the documentary series.
JS: Yeah but then when you read the book it’s like you know of course you’re doing that because of the way you’ve been brought up and your personal experience is just crazy. But that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You’re trying to be a good person but unfortunately the rules and the social construct that you’ve been given is just not going to allow that. Not only have you been brought up with a lot of bigoted views but you’ve been told that everyone lse in the world is evil and you are saving them by doing what you’re doing.
LD: Do you feel that the book really helped you understand why they do what they do? Or?
JS: Exercising your position of trying to understand where people are coming from is really important because even when a person is so obviously in the wrong, sometimes you just need to try and get in their skin and crawl around a little bit. And I think it’s just a story of hope really. Basically the reason why she left is because, I think she was picketing a synagogue and a guy who was Jewish came out and said, “Well why are you doing this? This is [LAUGHTER] this is crazy”. And she continued to kind of shout and be unpleasant and he ended up contacting her back and forth on twitter and reasoning with her. And not only did she end up leaving the church but she ended up married to that guy and I think it’s just that’s the power when you don't just say, “You’re bad, you’re wrong”. But you say, “Well you know what you’re doing is terrible but there must be a redeeming part of you ‘cos we’re all human beings”. And yeah, I just found it incredibly emotional to read.
[MUSIC]
LD: We’ll just finish by talking briefly about what we’re reading at the moment.
JS: I am reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I’ve only read a chapter so it’s-
LD: So you don’t have any real input for me?
JS: No, it’s early days. But it’s good so far, it’s interesting.
LD: I have found that this, initially when we all sort of went into lockdown I thought oh I’ll have loads of time to read and then at first I felt too anxious and too stressed-
JS: Of course.
LD: To really concentrate on anything and I sort of tried to read lighter stuff. I’m now reading Adam Kay’s This is Gonna Hurt.
JS: Yeah.
LD: Which is, I felt, I try to avoid things about doctors and hospitals because I get quite squeamish. But I felt it was an important time right now to understand what doctors do and the pressures on the NHS and he’s written these diaries in such an, they’re very accessible but you’ve also got a lot of footnotes explaining things that I-
JS: Oh, I might read that after you.
LD: It is really good. Everyone says it’s very light and it’s very funny and it is but I also, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who’s feeling particularly anxious right now because it does focus a lot on NHS cuts and the pressure doctors are under and the mistakes that can be made. So I’d make sure that you’re in a good place before you read it. But before we go I just wanted to say, every episode we want to do a shout out to an independent bookstore because, particularly at the moment, independent bookstores need our support.
JS: But don’t go in them at the moment.
LD: Don’t go in them obviously, but a lot of them are doing deliveries.
JS: So Lucy can shout out for the store and I will say, “Don’t go”.
LD: No! No no.
JS: Yeah!
LD: No we’re supporting them regardless.
JS: No not regardless. You’ve got to respect the lockdown.
LD: So normally I’m going to ask-
JS: You’re part of the problem.
LD: Normally I’m going to ask my guest to choose a local bookstore but since we both go to the same local bookstore we’ll both talk about this one and it’s Queens Park Books.
JS: Yes. Do not go.
LD: But you can.
JS: You can.
LD: Order.
JS: Order.
LD: The books. Online. From Queen’s Park Books.
JS: But you’re better using Amazon.
LD: No!
[LAUGHTER]
LD: You’re not better using amazon. It’s very important to support independent bookstores. And it’s absolutely fine to, you can use libraries, you can use amazon but I would recommend if you can also go to your local bookstores because it’s a completely different shopping experience and also you’re supporting local independent businesses who in turn can support local and smaller authors. So we’ll get much more of those-
JS: They have loads of good events there too don’t they?
LD: They do. Local authors come in and talk about their books and they have events but not now obviously.
JS: No.
LD: So that is the end of the podcast.
JS: Oh you should say that this podcast is sponsored by ZipRecruiter.
LD: No it is not.
JS: Blue Apron.
LD: No.
JS: They’re all sponsored by Blue Apron.
LD: We’re not sponsored by anyone yet.
JS: Ah mate.
[LAUGHTER]
LD: You just gave them free shoutouts.
JS: Yeah. Well maybe now they’ll hear that and they’ll sponsor you.
LD: Yep.
JS: What’s the other one?
LD: I don’t think we should say anymore.
JS: The internet, the one that creates a website.
LD: Squarespace.
JS: Squarespace.
LD: That is who I use for my website.
JS: Well there you go. Squarespace.
LD: Thank you. For giving free advertising.
JS: Blue Apron. ZipRecruiter.
LD: They’re all American ones.
JS: Yeah.
LD: So we’ll take this opportunity to say thank you very much Jonathan for coming all the way here to our house to record-
JS: Pleasure
LD: -this podcast with me. And goodbye.
[MUSIC]
LD: Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Comics’ Books. I hope you enjoyed it. In the show notes you’ll be able to find full listings of all the books we mentioned as well as links to our featured independent bookshop. Have a great week reading, laughing and then reading some more.