Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Borrowed Time by Naomi Alderman (featuring Iain Martin)

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Hamster Book Club - Borrowed Time by Naomi Alderman (featuring Iain Martin) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 0:02
  My I forgot what it was called then.
• 0:04
  I could tell I could. Tell there's several arms for
• 0:07
  hamster now. My name is Joe Ford and I have
• 0:11
  been sitting here waiting for the delirious Ian Martin to
• 0:16
  appear on this podcast. I've been here ever since I
• 0:18
  started over a year now. Hello Ian, how are you today?
• 0:23
  Hello Joe, I'm really good. Thank you very much for having
• 0:26
  me on your book podcast. It's it's nice to do something
• 0:30
  different with your with your spare time, isn't it?
• 0:33
  I can. I can't, I can't really forget
• 0:36
  the last time you and I got together where, you know, we
• 0:40
  talked less about the book in question and more about a
• 0:43
  particular passage of that book, if you recall.
• 0:46
  I do remember that passage fondly and intimately.
• 0:49
  Scaly Richtus sax. Sax descending tubular shafts?
• 0:57
  No. That was in my Coldfield record.
• 1:00
  Yeah, no. What?
• 1:02
  I've got to tell you something as well, one of my book clubs
• 1:05
  said glamouring to do God engine because two of three of them
• 1:09
  love it. I mean, I know, right?
• 1:14
  Well, the the what we find with the books is that they speak to
• 1:18
  different kinds of readers and some people are very much there
• 1:22
  for the continuity and the real world aspect of it.
• 1:26
  And of course, in the real world, Ice Warriors would
• 1:29
  definitely shag. Indeed, I've got to really try
• 1:34
  not to just laugh every time you open your everything you say
• 1:36
  makes me laugh. You know, I'm going to try and
• 1:38
  compose myself on this recording.
• 1:40
  OK, Ian, we're here today to talk about oh, no it isn't.
• 1:45
  Oh, no, we're not. We were here to talk about Oh no
• 1:49
  it isn't. Yeah.
• 1:51
  Yeah. And then, and then you, you, you
• 1:54
  said you've given it to someone. Else, yeah, it's that Michael
• 1:57
  Mills, you know. Oh, him.
• 1:59
  Well, I'll, I'll, I'll be having him on on my show at some point.
• 2:02
  So I'll I'll take him to task. I shall listen to that episode.
• 2:08
  I'll take him firmly in hand. Extreme interest.
• 2:13
  Have we got here already? Instead of that, we are doing
• 2:17
  Borrowed time. By Naomi Alderman The renowned
• 2:21
  The renowned. Is it the only doctor?
• 2:24
  Who writer that has got on to become an international
• 2:27
  bestseller? I, I think it probably is.
• 2:33
  I mean she, so I mean, my relationship with Naomi Alderman
• 2:39
  is that I started she, she wrote for an app about 20 years ago
• 2:44
  called Zombies Run. Have you heard of that?
• 2:46
  No, so it's like an audio drama designed for people that that go
• 2:50
  running and at certain points in the IT basically it's the the
• 2:56
  end of the world has happened and there are zombies everywhere
• 2:58
  and you're a lone survivor. So you've got this voice in your
• 3:01
  ear saying you have to go to the storage unit in the woods and
• 3:07
  get some food. As you set off, you hear the
• 3:11
  sound of and then every time you hear the sound of a zombie, you
• 3:15
  have to kind of speed up, which is a really good way of doing
• 3:19
  interval running if you're. But the problem is I used to do
• 3:23
  it indoors on a treadmill and a treadmill does not accelerate
• 3:26
  fast enough. So I was always getting killed
• 3:29
  by this twat of a zombie about 3 minutes into my run.
• 3:34
  It was, it was, it was all awful.
• 3:36
  Does it know how fast you're running then so the zombie
• 3:38
  catches up with you? It does because it's linked to
• 3:40
  the and I forget the word, but the little movie thing in your
• 3:44
  phone that registers your movement it's.
• 3:48
  Such a clever idea to get it was.
• 3:51
  It was great. It's I think I assume it's still
• 3:53
  available. I'd be very disappointed if it
• 3:55
  wasn't and it's very good for making people do you know, speed
• 3:58
  up, speed down interval running and just and breaking it up a
• 4:01
  bit when. Those, those Pokemons were
• 4:04
  everywhere. You know when everyone had the
• 4:05
  maps out on their phone and everyone was it's, oh, was that
• 4:09
  you? No, it wasn't me, no.
• 4:11
  Well, everybody I knew seemed to be out, you know, down the pier,
• 4:14
  down the beach, down, you know, the toilets in the park looking
• 4:19
  for. Is that what they said they were
• 4:20
  doing? Looking for Pokémon?
• 4:22
  But it was the same sort of thing, right?
• 4:23
  So getting people moving. Yeah, getting people moving.
• 4:26
  And it's at this point in our civilization, it's anything you
• 4:30
  can do to get people moving and and get some exercising because
• 4:34
  we're all so busy. We are increasingly an indoors
• 4:38
  kind of species now. It's, it's kind of a familiar
• 4:43
  and probably completely wrong trope, but I get the feeling
• 4:46
  that like my nephews growing up just didn't play outside very
• 4:49
  much. And they're just, they're indoor
• 4:51
  people. They're sort of pallid, like
• 4:53
  Gollum. They look like sort of half
• 4:55
  fish, half. Fish, my nephew, right, sits in
• 4:57
  his bedroom playing computer games with his friends who are
• 5:01
  in their bedrooms. Yeah.
• 5:02
  That's what. Always has.
• 5:04
  They're basically fucking Cybermen, yeah.
• 5:06
  That's it and and and that's why Zombies run was a good thing to
• 5:11
  continue with Naomi all. Yeah, please.
• 5:14
  The next time I was aware of her was in about 2016, when her
• 5:19
  novel The Power got onto Obama's list of his favorite books of
• 5:25
  the year, and it became a sort of global literary novel.
• 5:29
  Now, in the in the kind of median point between zombies Run
• 5:32
  and The Power becoming a global literary sensation, she wrote
• 5:36
  Borrowed Time, which presumably, I'm very much assuming was her
• 5:41
  first book. I'm not quite sure how she
• 5:44
  managed to write it because I don't recall exactly when they
• 5:49
  advertised for, you know, writers to come to this series,
• 5:54
  but, you know, whatever do. You know what this was This was
• 5:57
  do you know when they used to bring out the new series
• 5:59
  Adventures in batches of free and this was a trilogy of Naomi
• 6:04
  Alderman, Jonathan Morris is Touched by an Angel and Euna
• 6:08
  Mccormack's The Way Through the Woods.
• 6:11
  And I think they may have peaked there, you know?
• 6:13
  I was, I was going to say, was that as good as it got?
• 6:16
  Pretty much, yeah. I've read some of the others.
• 6:19
  They held us great. If I want this, well, look,
• 6:22
  before, before we get on to the book itself, can I ask you a
• 6:26
  question, please, that I'd like to ask everybody who comes on
• 6:28
  this for the first time? I'm not.
• 6:30
  Wearing any. Are you not?
• 6:32
  No, never am I. Oh.
• 6:38
  What is your Doctor Who book journey?
• 6:39
  I sort of have pieced together bits and pieces from where all
• 6:44
  stories in the end where you talk about sort of the new
• 6:46
  adventure, things like that. But like, what was your first
• 6:48
  Doctor Who book and then where did you go from there?
• 6:51
  What a lovely question. Well, settle down everyone.
• 6:55
  I'm going to be talking for some time.
• 6:58
  My first Doctor Who book was Eric Pringle's The Awakening,
• 7:04
  which my dad gave me the the paperback target of probably,
• 7:10
  you know, very soon after it was published, 838485, something
• 7:15
  like that. And I think it was the first
• 7:18
  time I'd been aware that Doctor Who stories had been turned into
• 7:23
  books. And I was the sort of kid who
• 7:25
  read quite a lot. So I was delighted to learn that
• 7:28
  there was Doctor Who available in book form, and over the next
• 7:33
  sort of year or three, that one target book turned into about
• 7:38
  100 of them, and I would reread them over and over again.
• 7:42
  Money did you get? Well, not a lot, I mean I but a
• 7:45
  lot of them were from a second hand shop on like on the Hill
• 7:48
  40P ago and they were all, you know, really brown paper, quite
• 7:52
  smelly did. You say on the hill then.
• 7:55
  Yes, I was going to, I was going to specify exactly which Hill,
• 7:58
  it's East Hill in Colchester, but I figured that's slightly
• 8:01
  too much information and it's minutiae that your listeners
• 8:04
  really don't need. You know that a Hovis advert
• 8:07
  where the kid runs up the hill? I could just see you right
• 8:10
  enough to get. Your yeah, I'd, I'd save my
• 8:13
  lunch mate. I didn't have any food.
• 8:15
  So I had enough money to buy a Doctor Who book instead.
• 8:19
  And yeah, I used to, I used to go there and buy all the
• 8:22
  targets. I'd read them.
• 8:24
  I sometimes I'd read them in like I'd read exactly 1
• 8:27
  television episodes worth and I'd sort of hum the music to
• 8:30
  myself while I was, you know, putting the book away.
• 8:33
  Some, you know, I'd read the whole season over the summer.
• 8:36
  I'd read, you know, all of season 1 or all of season 24 or
• 8:39
  whatever. I used to love the Target books
• 8:42
  and then they finished the show finished in 1989 and being, I
• 8:49
  suppose, let's say, fairly immature, I still had this big
• 8:53
  hole in my life that Doctor Who, you know, should be filling So.
• 8:58
  So then the new adventures happened in the summer of 91 and
• 9:02
  I'm. Not sure you should be casting
• 9:04
  stones you know at your younger self.
• 9:06
  You're still reading Doctor Who books right now.
• 9:09
  I'm still intensely mature. In about 30 seconds I'm going to
• 9:13
  use the word shaft and we're both going to giggle.
• 9:16
  That's how immature I am now. So, so I've read the new
• 9:20
  Adventures religiously all the way from kind of secondary
• 9:24
  school through sixth form through uni.
• 9:27
  And then they finished and I was spat out into the grown up world
• 9:31
  of work and suddenly money was slightly more.
• 9:35
  Hideous, isn't it? It's oh, it's terrible, it's
• 9:38
  terrible. And at that point the BBC book
• 9:42
  started. So I hadn't, I had much less
• 9:43
  money and they weren't as good in, in and everyone says this,
• 9:49
  everyone says it on my show, everyone probably says it on
• 9:52
  yours. That first 5 or 6 BBC books, oh,
• 9:55
  they were shite. So I kind of let it go and read
• 9:59
  intermittently those books from the library.
• 10:04
  And when the show came back in 2005, I was quite happy to leave
• 10:08
  the books in the past because they'd done their job.
• 10:11
  They'd got me through. They'd kept the story going.
• 10:13
  But now the show was back on TV. So at that point I kind of
• 10:16
  stopped reading any of the the new fiction at all.
• 10:24
  Yeah. A lot of people on this podcast
• 10:29
  would say that that was a good move as well.
• 10:30
  Really, you know, sort of ducking out at that point
• 10:33
  because I don't even know. They're not really for ours.
• 10:35
  Are they like those books? They're not.
• 10:37
  They are tie in books for younger children.
• 10:41
  Yeah, which is exactly what they should be.
• 10:44
  Yeah, it's exactly what they should be.
• 10:45
  And that's exactly the job they do.
• 10:48
  And you would question if you were, if you were.
• 10:52
  Let me think. They were BBC books, weren't
• 10:54
  they? So it's technically part of PRH,
• 10:57
  Penguin Random House and any publisher worth their salt who
• 11:02
  wasn't publishing books aimed at children at that point would be,
• 11:06
  you know, quietly taken to the corner office and shot.
• 11:11
  Which is how in publishing we we change editors it.
• 11:14
  Was so interesting, right? I was, I was working for
• 11:17
  gardeners books at the time, OK, so I could see the sales figures
• 11:20
  of and that's like the that was the second biggest wholesaler of
• 11:24
  books. Now it's the first in Europe I
• 11:25
  think since they bought out Bertrams and the 8th Doctor book
• 11:32
  sort of past Octopus may be sold, you know, a couple of 1000
• 11:37
  if they were lucky, then the clockwise man and all that.
• 11:40
  The new series ones came out alongside the TV series,
• 11:44
  hundreds of that that, I mean, the sales went through the roof.
• 11:48
  So. So they were a success in that
• 11:50
  terms, you know? Yeah.
• 11:51
  Absolutely. And it's it's the same thing
• 11:53
  with Doctor Who magazine. At exactly the same time that
• 11:57
  magazine kind of jumped down to a younger readership and it was
• 12:01
  all about the TV show and it was much more kind of kid friendly.
• 12:05
  And again, it wasn't for me anymore.
• 12:08
  And I ducked out and I, I felt no bitterness about that.
• 12:11
  I didn't feel the need to complain about it on social
• 12:13
  media, Not that there were any social media at that point.
• 12:18
  But you know, I was just happy to let it go because it, it had
• 12:20
  got me through the, the 90s like the like the novels.
• 12:24
  And I was very grateful for that.
• 12:26
  But you know, believe it in the past.
• 12:28
  Here's something I'll have gleaned from We're All Stories
• 12:32
  in the End, and that is you quite enjoyed sort of diving
• 12:35
  into the mucky world of the new Adventures as they were coming
• 12:38
  out. You know, Poland, arts, semen in
• 12:42
  mouths and TARDIS is turning into cities and the Doctor
• 12:46
  turning human and all of this stuff.
• 12:48
  And now now the other thing I've sort of gleaned is coming back
• 12:53
  to that books for We're Stories in the End.
• 12:56
  You're going, oh, they are a peculiar sort of 90s phenomena
• 13:00
  now and that you know, and I know you Dicks ducked out sort
• 13:05
  of with the BBC ones, but you've quite enjoyed some of the BBC
• 13:08
  ones on Rediscovery. Yeah, I'm finding 2 very
• 13:13
  different things, which is the the new adventures were very
• 13:18
  much, obviously they were very much of their time.
• 13:22
  So all the kind of references are extremely dated now, because
• 13:26
  I don't that's a lie. I do remember exactly which
• 13:30
  songs they're using as chapter titles and who, who they're
• 13:33
  talking about and what they're riffing on.
• 13:35
  But it's all very gun. It's all very science fiction
• 13:41
  serious. There's a lot of a lot of angst,
• 13:44
  There's a lot of torture. There's it was.
• 13:46
  Not that as a kid though, right? It was, well it was, it was in
• 13:49
  the kind of era of The X-Files and everything was very gritty
• 13:52
  and very real and it was like Doctor Who, but it was Doctor
• 13:55
  Who but 15 certificate, which is what I wanted when I was 15.
• 13:59
  And occasionally you'd get, you know, the odd bit of sex
• 14:03
  creeping in as well. And it was, it was perfect for
• 14:05
  me. Then turns out as a grown up,
• 14:08
  that's not so much what I want to read all the time and it's
• 14:11
  certainly not what I want from my Doctor Who.
• 14:13
  Whereas the 8th Doctor novels, which I didn't get on with so
• 14:16
  much at the time, it turns out a lot of them have got quite a lot
• 14:22
  more going on than I appreciated originally.
• 14:25
  And there's a lot more experimentation and frankly
• 14:28
  there's a lot more frock. And the older I get, I find
• 14:31
  myself drifting ever more frockwards from a sort of gun
• 14:35
  based youth. My favorite quote ever from you
• 14:38
  for I've just howled and I was at work.
• 14:40
  Unfortunately, some people wondered why I was laughing out
• 14:42
  loud in the middle of the shot. But was when you said, yeah, you
• 14:46
  know, I've become to like frock a bit more.
• 14:48
  And you're talking about I think it was deaf and diplomacy, which
• 14:51
  is like a ROM com, right? You just went yes.
• 14:54
  As I get older, I find myself more.
• 14:56
  I find myself more and more attracted to romantic comedy.
• 15:00
  That's like, yeah, so do we all. At 15, we'd be like, I'd never
• 15:05
  watch those things. Yeah, exactly.
• 15:07
  But but because you kind of when you're 15, you think, oh, I
• 15:12
  don't, I don't care about romance.
• 15:13
  I don't care about comedy. I want a snog.
• 15:16
  And I use the word snog to cover a lot of activities.
• 15:19
  But but, but again, the older you get and the the less actual
• 15:24
  meat you have, sorry, the less actual skin you have in that
• 15:27
  game Then you. You love watching a bit of
• 15:29
  romance because it's just something that happens to other
• 15:31
  people. Is that what you told them?
• 15:33
  All that we did, Ian, just snog. Yeah, I, I, I did.
• 15:38
  I did, just euphemistically. Well done for rounding it out
• 15:42
  Good. Well, well OK, so I'm I'm
• 15:45
  getting a good idea of where your head is when we dive into
• 15:48
  Borrowed time. This is, I think, an atypical
• 15:55
  new series adventure in that I think it's a really good book
• 16:01
  like and I'm curious to see where you fall with this.
• 16:05
  I would. I would see that comment and
• 16:07
  raise it. I think this is a really good
• 16:09
  Doctor Who novel because it's really good.
• 16:14
  And yeah, I was completely expecting it to be like many of
• 16:21
  them, you know, six or seven out of 10.
• 16:23
  Perfectly serviceable. Yeah.
• 16:25
  Great. Does the job, tells you a story.
• 16:28
  Yeah, but my God. I did a Goodreads review after
• 16:33
  this, right? And I'll put I think this might
• 16:35
  be my favorite 11th Doctor story of all time.
• 16:39
  I was like that. That may sound like hyperbole,
• 16:41
  but I had a bit of an allergic reaction to this particular
• 16:45
  period of Doctor Who, which I think you're a bit kinder
• 16:47
  towards me. Massively so, massively so, and.
• 16:51
  Tell me. Tell me your love of Matt Smith
• 16:54
  and Karen Gillan. Well, and it's not so much Karen
• 16:58
  Gillan, but Matt Smith for me is the best doctor since Sylvester
• 17:02
  McCoy in terms of embodying the alien in a sort of
• 17:07
  inappropriately, really kind of human, dull, ordinary kind of
• 17:11
  body. He's he's got that that young
• 17:14
  old cliche that everybody says when they're trying to work out
• 17:19
  what it is about his doctor they like, but he's just awkward and
• 17:21
  knuckly and eccentric and weird and clearly an alien and.
• 17:26
  No wonder all the geeks fell for him.
• 17:28
  But that's just that is him. That is and that's and that's
• 17:32
  what's missing from a lot of other Doctors in certainly in
• 17:35
  terms of knew who he's. He's often or she portrayed more
• 17:42
  like a really cool bloke from down the pub than they are like
• 17:45
  an awkward, eccentric alien genius.
• 17:48
  But Matt Smith had that and the comedy was great in that era and
• 17:52
  I was there for it because I'd grown up as a Moffat fan loving
• 17:57
  coupling. So I knew what I was in for and
• 18:00
  that whole era just really worked for me.
• 18:03
  But I wasn't expecting it to necessarily translate to the
• 18:06
  page. I I hated coupling with a
• 18:10
  passion, but I just hate I hate American comedy, right?
• 18:14
  And that was that to me felt like auk sitcom doing American
• 18:18
  comedy. It was, it was very much sort of
• 18:21
  like, yeah, a British version of Friends, but again, a a kind of
• 18:25
  15 rated version. I didn't.
• 18:27
  David went Renwick sort of brilliantly structured episodes.
• 18:31
  It was very foot in the grave, wasn't it, How the episodes were
• 18:34
  all structured? It was, it was really, really
• 18:37
  clever. And that made it very because,
• 18:41
  you know, it started, I want to say one year after or maybe two
• 18:46
  years after the very last Men Behaving Badly went out, which
• 18:50
  was a very different kind of sitcom.
• 18:53
  And, you know, stripping out the kind of unspeakable lavish
• 18:57
  cancellable aspects of it. It was a, it kind of, it had
• 19:02
  followed the same kind of sitcom template going back to like
• 19:06
  Hancock's half hour. You know, it was largely real
• 19:10
  time. It was relationship based.
• 19:12
  It was it was just chatting and nonsense with the occasional
• 19:16
  silly situation. And Kaplan came along and kind
• 19:19
  of blew all of that out of the water.
• 19:21
  And it played with time and it played with, you know, there's
• 19:26
  that episode where Jeff's trying to chat up the, is she Israeli?
• 19:31
  And you get half the episode of him in English and her sitting
• 19:34
  there clearly not understanding a word he's saying.
• 19:36
  And then at the halfway point it flips and you hear the whole
• 19:38
  thing from her point of view. And there are so many examples
• 19:43
  of, of tricks like that throughout all four series that
• 19:47
  I thought it was the, the certainly the, the cleverest and
• 19:50
  most exciting thing to happen to the, the moribund world of
• 19:53
  British sitcom. So yeah, I was totally on board
• 19:57
  when my foot took over and I I totally loved it.
• 20:00
  And I appreciate that you and I will at some point in the future
• 20:03
  come to blows over this. But not today, because I think
• 20:09
  you're right. I think this not only it gets
• 20:13
  all three of the regulars absolutely perfect, they're so
• 20:16
  authentic on the page. I could see those actors saying
• 20:19
  every line in this book, but it added layers to their characters
• 20:22
  as well. I learnt something about each of
• 20:24
  them in this book. Yeah, it did.
• 20:27
  There was. There's a lovely sequence with
• 20:30
  not to sort of leap in and stop explaining the plot, but at some
• 20:36
  point Amy gets the opportunity to kind of steal a bit of time
• 20:40
  and do her own thing. So what does she do?
• 20:44
  She goes shopping and then she goes off to Leadworth to see mum
• 20:47
  and dad for a night and have and cook dinner for them.
• 20:51
  And that's so lovely. And that is a side of her that
• 20:53
  you didn't get on the TV. She was.
• 20:55
  She was always. Quite.
• 20:58
  A bit of a cow if I can, you know.
• 21:01
  But this phrase it to a come but yeah, I.
• 21:03
  Know well I you know she she was front adjacent on occasion, but
• 21:09
  some. Men love that though, you know.
• 21:10
  I know the people that love that in her.
• 21:12
  Yeah, no, I we've all, we've all known ladies like that, using
• 21:18
  these words carefully. But you know this, this fleshed
• 21:22
  out that family loving side of Amy.
• 21:29
  The Doctor got exactly the same kind of, you know, loaded
• 21:35
  dialogue that he would have got on the on the telly and Rory
• 21:39
  just radiated this kind of well meaning hopelessness, which
• 21:45
  which which is which is now kind of my my shtick.
• 21:49
  But you know, it was and it was so visual reading, you know,
• 21:56
  experiencing this book. It was so much like being back
• 21:59
  in front of like a a movie. But they would have made between
• 22:03
  series 10 and 11. I mean 5 and 6.
• 22:06
  I don't know why I said 10:00 and 11:00.
• 22:08
  It would have been a budget Buster, but I think they could
• 22:10
  have made this. I think it's all the bank, isn't
• 22:12
  it? And then the second-half,
• 22:14
  they're doing it, they're sort of out on the streets and
• 22:16
  there's a million times the same person.
• 22:19
  And it would have cost a bit of money, but they would have been.
• 22:22
  There, I think now they could absolutely do this as like a
• 22:25
  sort of two hour TV movie and they they absolutely that he
• 22:28
  should. I mean, one of the notes I came
• 22:30
  away from this book with is why hasn't Naomi Alderman been asked
• 22:35
  to write ATV episode? Because she has such a a visual
• 22:39
  imagination that not just in terms of the descriptions are
• 22:43
  very adroitly expressed, but the kind of set pieces you you can
• 22:49
  see them playing out. You can imagine what everything
• 22:51
  looks like. And yeah, there's a scene where
• 22:54
  they go to find someone who they think might be fiddling time and
• 22:59
  lo and behold, they go to his flat and he is there, about 10
• 23:02
  of him doing various jobs around the house.
• 23:06
  That's. The most muffy thing I could
• 23:07
  possibly imagine. Isn't it?
• 23:09
  And, you know, you can imagine that they're all kind of
• 23:12
  translucent. It's not beyond the realms of
• 23:14
  television, but one of one of, you know, strikingly visual
• 23:19
  idea. So clearly she can she, she can
• 23:23
  write the characters, she can write televisual or, or
• 23:27
  certainly visual sequences and set pieces.
• 23:31
  And you know, without, without coming to the end of the show
• 23:35
  too soon. But this is one of the most
• 23:37
  enjoyable Doctor Who books I've experienced.
• 23:40
  So surely she should be a showrunner by now.
• 23:45
  What is happening? Well, she's a best selling
• 23:47
  author. Well, she's too.
• 23:48
  She's too busy writing, you know, great friends with.
• 23:51
  Baraka Ballmer, you. Know, but I I I would imagine
• 23:54
  she'd she'd have got more money by producing Doctor Who than
• 23:58
  than by writing one you. Remember when Gareth Roberts
• 24:00
  wrote Only Human? I'm not sure if I will.
• 24:03
  I'd say his name anymore, but I'm covering one of his books
• 24:05
  soon so I better get used to it. And then Rusty Davis read Only
• 24:10
  Human and went Jesus Christ. He should be writing for the
• 24:12
  series. And then the Shakespeare Code
• 24:14
  came two seasons later. Oh, is that how it happened?
• 24:17
  They should be exactly the same, right?
• 24:18
  Moffitt should have read this and I don't even know if he had
• 24:21
  the time. He was juggling 22 fucking TV
• 24:23
  shows at the time, wasn't he? Well, you know what, there's
• 24:26
  this, there's this kind of sense that that the merchandise was
• 24:31
  like really strictly kind of controlled by Cardiff.
• 24:36
  So RTD would have, you know, he got sent a copy of all the
• 24:40
  action figures to check the faces were adequate or whatever.
• 24:44
  If, if they if, if RTD and Moffatt didn't read the books,
• 24:49
  there would probably have been someone whose job it was to read
• 24:52
  them and just let them know this happens and this happens.
• 24:56
  Is this going to impact anything you're planning to do in the
• 24:58
  show? Must have been somebody.
• 25:00
  So someone at some point could have said to Moffat, yeah, read
• 25:03
  this one. Stage please read this.
• 25:05
  It's fucking great. She's really good.
• 25:09
  You remember that slot in Series 6 you wanted to give to that
• 25:12
  prick Gareth Roberts? Well, Naomi Alderman's written a
• 25:15
  book here that would translate perfectly on the screen.
• 25:19
  See, the thing with Gareth Roberts is I've been, I'm not
• 25:25
  going to say I've been reading his book since the 90s.
• 25:27
  That makes me sound like I read them all constantly in a loop.
• 25:30
  I have been aware of the man for that long.
• 25:32
  I've read most of his Doctor Who fiction.
• 25:35
  I don't know what he's done wrong.
• 25:38
  I know he's a Tory, but I'm not aware of what it is that he's
• 25:42
  really done to make him so cancellable.
• 25:45
  I think I think the worst thing he's probably done in the eyes
• 25:49
  of a lot of people is very JK Rowling esque.
• 25:56
  Right. OK, well that seems.
• 25:59
  A book that sort of basically said that if gay people exist
• 26:04
  then trans people can't exist and so sort of cancelled out and
• 26:10
  cancelled out the the the T from the LGBTQ.
• 26:14
  Right now, did you do that in a Doctor Who novel or was it no?
• 26:18
  Alas, he did it outside of Doctor Who.
• 26:20
  He wasn't being used by Doctor Who publishers at.
• 26:23
  That as I was, I was going to say that's a hell of a a topic,
• 26:27
  a doctor book to to wander into. I mean, I'm pleased you said it,
• 26:31
  frankly, because now I've just got that out of the way and next
• 26:33
  time I talk about Gareth Roberts, I can just talk about
• 26:36
  the bloody book. Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:38
  But as you can imagine, there ain't a lot of people queuing up
• 26:40
  to do those books because that no one's willing to touch it
• 26:43
  with a barge pole going back to the regulars for a second.
• 26:47
  And I only want to do this because I've really come down
• 26:50
  hard on 11. I love Rory.
• 26:53
  I love her, but he's the underdog, right?
• 26:55
  And I always loved you. And he's treated appallingly in
• 26:58
  Series 5, where he's sort of tailing around after Amy and
• 27:01
  she's giving the Doctor moon eyes and shoving him on the bed
• 27:04
  and trying to suck his cock or whatever she's trying to do at
• 27:07
  the end of that episode. But there was a there was a
• 27:09
  description of Rory and this as somehow he wasn't the shortest
• 27:13
  of the three of them, but somehow he was always tailing
• 27:16
  behind, which I wish. I Yeah, that is.
• 27:18
  Do you remember the pit at the end where he finds out that
• 27:23
  she's borrowed all that time and she owes 10 years?
• 27:26
  And he goes, well, you're my wife, Your debts are my debts,
• 27:30
  so of course I will take them off you.
• 27:31
  And I was like, oh, that's just pure Rory.
• 27:34
  That's so Rory and that's so noble and kind of that's the
• 27:41
  kind of man or or person in a relationship that we should all
• 27:44
  aspire to be. I'd love to sit here now and say
• 27:47
  that if my wife came home and said, oh, I've lost 10 years to
• 27:50
  a dodgy time thing, I'd be like, don't worry darling.
• 27:53
  I have 10 of mine but I'm not sure I would.
• 27:56
  No, you go, you've lost 10 years.
• 27:58
  We still haven't been able to watch that bloody box set, what
• 28:01
  you've been doing. Yeah.
• 28:03
  But also as well, you know, you said about Amy going home, I, I
• 28:06
  think Naomi Alderman looks at Pandora Robes and The Big Bang
• 28:11
  and went that was absolutely amazing.
• 28:13
  But really we've had 0 explanation as to the two AMI
• 28:18
  timelines that are in existence because of that story.
• 28:21
  And so she just writes one paragraph in this, which if it
• 28:24
  had been on the TV I would have stopped whingeing completely.
• 28:27
  Where she goes, she sees her mum and dad there and she remembers
• 28:30
  them being there her whole life and having a really happy
• 28:34
  childhood. And she remembers them not being
• 28:37
  there and being a lonely little girl who was desperate for the
• 28:41
  raggedy doctors to come back. And I was like, that's all I
• 28:43
  needed. Well, this is what's so kind of
• 28:48
  impressive and graceful about about this book is that clearly
• 28:54
  one of two things happened. Either Naomi Alderman was a
• 28:57
  lifelong Doctor Who fan when she wrote this book, or, and I'm not
• 29:01
  saying this didn't happen because it might have done, or
• 29:04
  she watched all of Doctor Who and just dropped in enough
• 29:08
  continuity to say I know what I'm talking about.
• 29:12
  I know this show. I know inside out.
• 29:14
  I'm going to refer to this. I'm going to refer to that.
• 29:16
  I'm going to refer to an obscure reference to the 7th Doctor era,
• 29:21
  an obscure reference to the Tom Baker era.
• 29:24
  She just really lightly and delicately established her
• 29:27
  credentials and justified, you know, come on, boys, I'm allowed
• 29:31
  to write a Doctor Who book. I know what I'm talking about.
• 29:34
  I've seen the show without turning it into this kind of
• 29:38
  massive clunking. I'm going to reference every
• 29:41
  single. Story ever the new adventures
• 29:44
  under EDA. Which exactly, Exactly they'd
• 29:47
  have hammered it home. And Naomi just sort of lightly,
• 29:50
  lightly battered it and put it on a little plate and said
• 29:53
  voila. I mean, you haven't covered War
• 29:56
  of the Daleks yet, so that's why you you're keeping that shred of
• 29:58
  sanity still. But when you do, you'll learn
• 30:02
  that John Peel rewrites 4 entire TV stories just because he
• 30:06
  doesn't like the way that they go.
• 30:07
  You know, that's what the Edos were doing at the time.
• 30:09
  I can, I can remember I was, I think War of the Daleks.
• 30:15
  And I very unfairly say it was Castle's fault.
• 30:20
  I don't think it was, you know, how like, yeah, but that was,
• 30:26
  that was just one duffer too many.
• 30:28
  I feel like that's the dart board that everyone goes.
• 30:30
  For yeah, it's like, it's like in in Britain there was a very
• 30:33
  recent active kind of political referenda where a certain
• 30:38
  government were quietly got rid of.
• 30:41
  And it wasn't necessarily that people were sick of Rishi, but
• 30:45
  things have been building up for quite a while.
• 30:48
  And actually you can trace the moment that the Tories lost the
• 30:52
  election and it was, it was Johnson.
• 30:54
  In much the same way, I think War of the Daleks, although I
• 30:57
  carried on for a couple of books, War of the Daleks was the
• 31:01
  one that shat the bed. Understandably as well, yeah.
• 31:07
  Can I ask you a question? In your life, have you ever
• 31:11
  borrowed large sums of money? Borrowed large sums, Yes, I
• 31:17
  have. Well, I'm too sure then.
• 31:21
  I mean, I mean. Student.
• 31:24
  Student loans, that kind of thing.
• 31:26
  Did you have to pay back interest on that money?
• 31:29
  I I did. Yeah, I did.
• 31:31
  Were you educated about it in a Doctor Who book?
• 31:35
  Well. Not at the time.
• 31:38
  Could you have done with borrowed time in your teens?
• 31:41
  Would it, would it not have been absolutely amazing to get this
• 31:45
  lesson in how compound interest works?
• 31:48
  That's a point where, you know, I spent so, so coming out of
• 31:53
  university at the end of the 90s, we were the first
• 31:56
  generation that had to go and buy a mobile phone.
• 31:59
  And thank God they were expensive.
• 32:02
  And I was always kind of at the bottom.
• 32:05
  Yeah. Basic huge Motorola Mother
• 32:08
  Mother fucker 103. I think it was cool.
• 32:12
  And you know, I would always be overdrawn at the end of the
• 32:14
  month. I'd have credit cards.
• 32:16
  And at the time it felt like I was, you know, I was maybe I
• 32:22
  think as much as one or maybe 2000s in debt at any point now,
• 32:27
  as soon as I earned enough money, that stopped happening.
• 32:30
  And and you know, I'm, I'm, I'm quite sensible with money.
• 32:33
  I do know of people who are my age who are, you know, 10s of
• 32:38
  thousands in, in that kind of credit debt.
• 32:40
  If they'd had this book, the the way it explains how interest
• 32:45
  works. Oh God.
• 32:48
  So simply right. So it's a basically a cake.
• 32:52
  The Doctor starts cutting off layers of the cake to explain to
• 32:56
  Amy, because I suppose actually, sorry, we should really say it's
• 33:00
  not money that they're borrowing in this book.
• 33:01
  But the title sort of gives away what people are borrowing from
• 33:06
  the bank, and that is time. So they're borrowing time
• 33:09
  because they're busy high flying bankers and they want to zoom
• 33:12
  around in all the meetings and get the promotions and be the
• 33:14
  best people they could possibly be.
• 33:16
  Amy Pons, you know, in a moment of spectacular drama, realizes
• 33:20
  she's got a call from the Doctor and a call from Rory, and she
• 33:24
  needs to be in two places at once.
• 33:26
  Fuck, how am I going to do that? And then these two chaps come
• 33:28
  along and go, hello, I just so happened to have this watch,
• 33:31
  which means you can borrow some time.
• 33:33
  Don't read the terms and conditions.
• 33:34
  You don't need to read those. Just just sign there and you can
• 33:37
  borrow back as much as you like. 5 minutes you have to pay back
• 33:41
  for every hour. So she goes, that's not much, is
• 33:44
  it? You know, that's fine.
• 33:45
  And then she starts borrowing and borrowing and borrowing more
• 33:50
  things she thinks she needs doing.
• 33:52
  She's sort of doing her sums as she goes, thinking, well, you
• 33:55
  know, I borrowed 4 days, so that's only a couple of hours I
• 33:58
  owe back. Great.
• 33:59
  And then, yeah, comes the horrific moment where the doctor
• 34:02
  has to explain to her, no, this is how compound interest works,
• 34:07
  and this is how much you owe. Do you remember how much that
• 34:09
  was? I, I, I borrowed 1020 years, 10
• 34:13
  years, 10 years, 5 minutes per hour per hour.
• 34:19
  And because it was the two guys and one of them says, oh, it's 5
• 34:22
  minutes per hour and the other one goes per hour.
• 34:26
  And it's so cleverly done as well.
• 34:28
  It's so cleverly done though. That's why they were such good
• 34:30
  villains. Did you like how they explained
• 34:33
  as well that every time you use the the watch and you get given
• 34:38
  that time back again, it's, it's, it's a pleasurable
• 34:41
  feeling, like you've had all the sleep of that time put into you.
• 34:46
  And that's exactly the same feeling you get when you whip
• 34:49
  out your credit card and you buy something expensive.
• 34:52
  And I thought, she's so clever. That is exactly what it feels
• 34:56
  like when you spend money you haven't earned.
• 34:58
  It was a really sophisticated analogy, wasn't it?
• 35:01
  For again. Again, for a, for a, for a, a
• 35:04
  new series adventure book. My God, you know, we're getting
• 35:09
  great villains. We're getting a great premise.
• 35:11
  We're, you know, it's kind of like an episode of Red Dwarf,
• 35:13
  but we'll let that go. We're getting brilliant comedy
• 35:17
  and we're getting really entertaining books.
• 35:21
  So yeah, it's just yet another area in which this thing really
• 35:24
  excels. You know, when I was 20, Yeah, I
• 35:27
  I bought myself my first computer and I just saw it and
• 35:31
  it went by. Now pay two years later, I was
• 35:34
  like, oh, perfect, I'll just have it.
• 35:36
  Well, look, two years passed and that computer had broken by
• 35:39
  then. Yeah.
• 35:40
  And I no longer had it. I was on to my next one and it
• 35:43
  came to pay it back. I'll pay back that computer
• 35:45
  twice and I I wish I'd had this book back then, you know?
• 35:50
  Oh, you seem to be flicking right.
• 35:51
  Now I'm I'm just getting, I'm just finding my notes.
• 35:54
  Oh, what was? What was the computer?
• 35:56
  And it was really shitty. I mean the porn would only come
• 35:59
  up the screen one line at a time.
• 36:03
  So yeah, it was, yeah. I love that I.
• 36:06
  Remember that. You know, those sort of times.
• 36:09
  That's what she said. But like, as well as, as well as
• 36:15
  that very, very sophisticated metaphor for spending money,
• 36:22
  which, you know, like in terms of educating kids, I think
• 36:24
  that's probably the most the, the, the best use of education
• 36:28
  any Doctor Who has ever employed.
• 36:31
  There was like a wealth of like, just throw away great ideas.
• 36:35
  For example. Oh, excuse me, I'm just getting
• 36:37
  a call. Hang on.
• 36:38
  Yes. Hello.
• 36:40
  Galactic enquiries. Hello.
• 36:42
  Yes, I'd like to. What's that?
• 36:45
  Yes, I'm looking to podcast for someone called Ian Martin.
• 36:48
  Yes, Ian Martin. That's right.
• 36:51
  Oh, 565. Ian Martins on the Earth, you
• 36:55
  say? Well, what about in this
• 36:56
  particular area? Oh, OK. 30, How many are human?
• 37:00
  Oh, only three. OK, how many are hot?
• 37:03
  02? OK, how can we some this that is
• 37:07
  anyone got a load of new adventures behind him?
• 37:09
  Yes, that's the one. Put him on the call.
• 37:12
  I mean, that was a great idea, right?
• 37:14
  Galactic Enquiries. That was for me, that was kind
• 37:17
  of basically Douglas Adams level of throw away genius because
• 37:23
  that in itself, there's a there's a Doctor Who novel in
• 37:25
  that idea, but she's not worried about doing that.
• 37:28
  She doesn't, she doesn't need it.
• 37:30
  She's just throwing away brilliant ideas like that.
• 37:33
  It was so. Funny to get from A to B, isn't
• 37:35
  it as well? Yeah, yeah.
• 37:37
  I've got another question for you though, Ian.
• 37:39
  How much sort of Doctor Who merchandise do you own?
• 37:45
  Well. Now that was an almost psychotic
• 37:48
  giggle. Then it was.
• 37:49
  Not as much as as you might think.
• 37:51
  I've I've still got all the Nas and all the EDA, almost all the
• 37:55
  EDA's. I've got about 30 targets left
• 38:02
  and two Blu rays and assorted DVDs.
• 38:08
  When I say 2 Blu rays I mean two of the season box sets and a
• 38:12
  bunch of individual DVDs. Not a lot.
• 38:16
  I used to own a hell of a lot more.
• 38:18
  Do you imagine, though, that your missus, you know, if you
• 38:19
  sort of packed it away in a storage area, that she might be
• 38:23
  quite happy to use that space for other things?
• 38:25
  Absolutely yes I do, but she would use it poorly.
• 38:32
  Oh, OK. I mean, I was just using it as a
• 38:34
  way really to get a sort of Millennium Dome storage centre.
• 38:39
  Which which is another of those brilliant ideas that she's had.
• 38:44
  So you have the Millennium Dome and then beneath it.
• 38:49
  I'm going to do that. So.
• 38:50
  So it works visually. You have a much larger inverted
• 38:54
  hollow dip, which is yeah, for for off world travellers and
• 39:00
  people out of time. It's a special storage facility
• 39:04
  for for aliens. How amazing is this?
• 39:07
  It's like. You walk in, don't you?
• 39:09
  And you get shrunk down into a tiny size.
• 39:11
  That's how they can fit so much in there, because you're.
• 39:14
  Shrunk. And then there's these.
• 39:15
  Is it cockroaches? Yes.
• 39:18
  But they're normal cockroaches because you've been shrunk.
• 39:20
  They're now sort of guard cockroaches.
• 39:22
  So if you have bad things, they're going to come after you.
• 39:25
  And the whole place is governed by someone called Omelette
• 39:30
  something the omelette ram. Yeah, the space names, yeah.
• 39:36
  Yeah, there was, there was, there was a bit of a space name,
• 39:38
  but it even. Then right, they were just
• 39:40
  throwing open doors and she was throwing away ideas.
• 39:42
  Amy walks into one room and there's a load of mirrors and
• 39:45
  it's all these alternative versions of Amy in every mirror.
• 39:48
  And I was like, there's a book. And Rory opens a door and finds
• 39:53
  a room made of mucus. Well, of course, of course.
• 39:58
  And I laughed out loud and several people in the office
• 40:02
  looked at me like I was having a mental infarction.
• 40:04
  What's he reading? It must be so.
• 40:06
  Oh Doctor Who. Oh dear.
• 40:08
  Well, they couldn't. So, and and I'll come to this
• 40:12
  now because why not? But I didn't read it.
• 40:14
  I did the audio which was read by Mira Sayal.
• 40:18
  Now I've done her a great disservice over the years
• 40:21
  because I've I've been not the biggest fan of her or Sanjeev
• 40:27
  Bhaskar, both from Goodness Gracious Me I believe in the 90s
• 40:31
  and I've found them both to be fairly limited performers, which
• 40:35
  is, on hearing this audio book, really not the case.
• 40:38
  She is absolutely brilliant. Her Amy impression is fantastic.
• 40:43
  Her ability to cope with all the space names and silly words is
• 40:48
  brilliant. The only mistake she makes is
• 40:51
  the same mistake John Pertwee once made where she says
• 40:54
  chittiness. Oh no.
• 40:56
  Are you aware of the anecdote about the, the fan letter that
• 41:00
  John Pertwee got where someone said the reason I'm writing is
• 41:04
  how to say chitin and, and the same thing happened and I
• 41:08
  thought, well, do you know what the.
• 41:09
  Worst part of that is he asked Barry Letts, how do you say
• 41:12
  this? Is it chitonus or chitonus?
• 41:14
  And Barry Letts goes, I think it's chitonus.
• 41:17
  OK, well, we'll do that. I mean, I mean, it's fair
• 41:20
  enough. It's probably not a word in
• 41:22
  common usage at BBC Towers in the early 70s.
• 41:25
  I never do the readings, you know, I always read the books,
• 41:28
  especially the NSA's, because they're sort of brisk reads.
• 41:32
  Does it work as an audio? It absolutely works as an audio.
• 41:38
  And I think because it's so condensed, it was, it's six
• 41:40
  hours and you can measure that out in terms of, you know,
• 41:44
  that's, that's six commutes or it's, you know, 12 lunch breaks
• 41:50
  or or whatever. And it's each chapter's about 20
• 41:53
  minutes. And it really does work.
• 41:54
  Some books, let's for example, something like a Game of
• 41:58
  Thrones, there's no way you can actually listen to that without
• 42:01
  falling asleep at some point. And then you've lost your place
• 42:04
  in it and the whole thing's a disaster and you just go home
• 42:07
  crying because. But no, as a as a very it, it
• 42:12
  was like listening to some podcasts.
• 42:13
  It was that level of easiness of controlling the flow.
• 42:18
  Well, talking of the flow, perfect segue because.
• 42:21
  Do you need the toilet? I'm all right.
• 42:25
  I shall wait just for. OK.
• 42:26
  I'll borrow some time if I need to go.
• 42:27
  All right. I'll leave you here with another
• 42:29
  Joe. OK.
• 42:30
  OK. Yeah.
• 42:31
  Oh, the things I've done with my borrowed time.
• 42:33
  I'll tell you what, There was 10 of me in one place and there was
• 42:36
  no one else there. I'm telling you, what was I
• 42:41
  going to say? Again, I don't know.
• 42:42
  Is it? Is it something like a sort of
• 42:44
  Joe Ford based Human Centipede but with love?
• 42:49
  We have lots of love yes, and lots of mouthful What I was
• 42:54
  going to say was on the page. The prose flowed abusive.
• 42:59
  I'll read this in a day in a day and that is really fast for me.
• 43:03
  And just I just slipped across the pages like it was so fluid.
• 43:08
  But the way she paces a scene as well, because she has some very
• 43:12
  dialogue heavy scenes in this as she's explaining, you know, the
• 43:16
  people that are borrowed time and how you have to pay it back
• 43:18
  and all of that. And there's a ton of but it just
• 43:21
  sort of builds momentum and builds momentum.
• 43:23
  And then at the end of the chapter, it's like, how much do
• 43:25
  I owe 10 years? Boom, end of chapter.
• 43:28
  Like, it's like if this was her first book and then no wonder
• 43:33
  she went on to be an international bestseller.
• 43:35
  Well, that's or, or I would say the other way around.
• 43:38
  It's this good because she's that good of a writer.
• 43:41
  And there are there are other Doctor Who books I have read
• 43:45
  where the author is less. What's a nice way of saying it?
• 43:50
  The prose is is less kind of effortless and less subtly
• 43:55
  crafted, and you really have to work your way down the page
• 43:58
  because a lot of these paragraphs are quite hard work.
• 44:01
  And those are writers did not go on to be global literary authors
• 44:07
  in quite the same way. Barack Obama knows who Barry
• 44:10
  Letts is, you know. I That's probably true.
• 44:14
  I'm currently reading the Ghost event space, which is a typical
• 44:17
  example of what you're talking about there.
• 44:19
  Well, so I I do work in DC. So if I bump into Obama, do you
• 44:24
  want me to ask him if he's aware of who Barry let's.
• 44:27
  As he read the ghost event. That's that's your question.
• 44:29
  It's the list. If that's your question, you'd
• 44:32
  ask to Barack Obama if you had one question, it's Have you read
• 44:35
  The Ghost? Excuse me, do you know, like
• 44:38
  you're talking about politicians and Doctor Who spin off media?
• 44:40
  But I did in fact see a copy of Seal and the Devil Seat of
• 44:43
  Arador in Jeremy Corbyn's hands. Absolutely.
• 44:47
  So it's not without the realms of possibility.
• 44:51
  Which now that means and that that explains the problem with
• 44:55
  Corbyn. So he's clearly a a classic who
• 44:58
  fan so and classic Who fans. We were just weirdos.
• 45:02
  You know, it wasn't until the new series came along and
• 45:04
  everything got a bit cool and sexy and and kind of geekery
• 45:08
  became acceptable. Anyone from before times is just
• 45:14
  a weirdo. And that, I think, is probably
• 45:16
  what beset Corbyn. He should have borrowed some
• 45:18
  time and had another, you know, another go at.
• 45:21
  It the trouble is though, right? If this concept was real,
• 45:24
  everyone would be able to it, wouldn't they?
• 45:26
  Like, I think we all like to think we're a bit above this
• 45:28
  sort of thing, but oh, Jesus Christ, I would be borrowing and
• 45:32
  borrowing and borrowing. But you know what?
• 45:33
  I'll just be reading Doctor Who books is the trouble.
• 45:36
  Well I mean serious point, but everyone, everyone kind of has a
• 45:42
  a vice in their life and it might be a perfectly innocent
• 45:45
  voice. Like I need to spend 3 hours in
• 45:47
  the gym every day. Orgasms.
• 45:49
  Is that a voice? Orgasms.
• 45:51
  People who spend all day fiddling with themselves if they
• 45:53
  could. Well, I didn't say that excuse.
• 45:55
  Me people who or, or, or other people, people who who just
• 46:00
  would spend the time smoking or drinking or whatever.
• 46:05
  And if if, if this thing was actually offered to everyone on
• 46:09
  the planet, everyone on the planet would take it up.
• 46:12
  And if they'd indulge their kind of weak human voices at the same
• 46:19
  time as sending the other version now into the office to
• 46:21
  do the job all day. So.
• 46:23
  If there was an adult version of this book, it would be that,
• 46:25
  wouldn't it? Absolutely.
• 46:26
  It would be the sort of get it wouldn't be able to be going
• 46:29
  home and taking Rory out for lunch and things like that.
• 46:32
  It would be, yeah. And people doing.
• 46:37
  Terrible or, and you know what, I'm going to slip in a we're all
• 46:40
  stories in the end gag here just to prove how much I'll listen
• 46:44
  that if Fitz could borrow some time, maybe you can finally have
• 46:47
  a fucking fag, right yes, finally get me another one.
• 46:55
  Well, I. Remember, you know, reading,
• 46:58
  reading, reading some books with fits in in the, you know, late
• 47:02
  90s, early 2000s. Well, I did smoke and I'd be I'd
• 47:06
  be sort of quite merrily puffing away and Fitz needs a cigarette.
• 47:11
  I've I've got 11 in this packet and I was king.
• 47:16
  Of the world. You were offering them to the
• 47:18
  book, weren't you? Take it out.
• 47:21
  Mate, I felt bad for him because every time he really needed one
• 47:26
  it was like, oh I know what that's like.
• 47:27
  It's in the middle of a lesson. Where were we?
• 47:31
  I have no idea. I was actually going to ask you
• 47:34
  about the climax of the book, if I may.
• 47:36
  Oh. Get to the climax.
• 47:37
  Well, no, just sort of like, because I read a couple of
• 47:40
  reviews on Love Everyone Went. The first half of the book is
• 47:42
  just astonishingly good, you know, And you get that sort of
• 47:46
  sinking feeling in your gut as Amy is borrowing time, knowing
• 47:50
  even if she's doing nice things, horrible things are coming.
• 47:54
  And the way she shows how easy it is to spend time slash money.
• 48:04
  And we've all been there, right? Ah, yeah, absolutely.
• 48:06
  Just a bit more. Maybe just a bit more.
• 48:09
  Oh fuck. It's, it's the kind of human
• 48:13
  thought process of, oh God, I'm in trouble.
• 48:16
  I owe so much. So that being said, another
• 48:20
  another 1020 doesn't make a difference and that's the
• 48:23
  slippery slope everyone gets on. In the second-half of the book
• 48:27
  we joined forces with Andrew Brown and Samira Jenkins, who
• 48:31
  work at the bank, who basically started all this off borrowing
• 48:35
  time because they were rivals and they both were going for the
• 48:37
  same promotion. And the four of them are being
• 48:41
  pursued by relentless copies of I Can't Go Try and Say It.
• 48:47
  So it's Mr. Symington and Mr. Blankensop.
• 48:50
  Is that where you're going? Usefully done, yes, and I have
• 48:53
  seen loan sharks in inverted commas done on Buffy the.
• 48:57
  Van Buffy Yeah, in season 6, right, Just.
• 49:00
  Dreadful. Like the mask was awful.
• 49:02
  Whereas Naomi Alderman doesn't really describe big rubbery
• 49:05
  heads. She just goes for the teeth,
• 49:07
  didn't she? But did you think was it, did
• 49:10
  you bump on that moment? Did you think she's nicked that
• 49:12
  idea from Buffy or did it I? Wrote it in my nose.
• 49:15
  Yeah, me too. But I thought she made it
• 49:18
  scarier because all shit, there was one bit where someone got
• 49:20
  eaten and it was described as they could just hear the
• 49:24
  crunching of bones or something. I was like, yes, yeah, lovely.
• 49:28
  Nice bit of nice bit of grim. Bone crunching.
• 49:31
  Yeah, that's what you want. So, yeah.
• 49:34
  So you were saying how the first half was really exciting and
• 49:38
  then and then a lot of critics online.
• 49:41
  Well, not not saying that, not saying it was terrible, just
• 49:44
  that it couldn't quite keep up that momentum of absolute
• 49:47
  brilliance. But I found the second-half
• 49:49
  really satisfying. Yeah, I would disagree with
• 49:51
  that. I think if and and what I did
• 49:53
  because I listened to this once and I wrote down a little prey
• 49:57
  see of each chapter. So it's amazing and a so that
• 50:02
  I'd remember because I, I remember very little these days.
• 50:06
  In fact someone's weed in my trousers.
• 50:08
  It wasn't me, but I, you know, I have all the stuff written down
• 50:13
  so I'm able to go back and look at it and see how.
• 50:16
  She. Fills the time and tells the
• 50:19
  story and each chapter, certainly in the first half, but
• 50:23
  to a degree throughout the book is kind of, it works as a short
• 50:27
  story in that it's kind of 1 discreet event or or scene or or
• 50:34
  story being told and then it moves on and it's quite
• 50:37
  effortless. And I think because of the way
• 50:40
  she structures it, it does kind of maintain the rhythm and the
• 50:45
  pace and a lot of a lot of other books where it just jumps back
• 50:49
  and forth, back and forth, back and forth, spinning out certain
• 50:53
  kind of subplots in a really wearisome kind of way there.
• 51:00
  There's so many books that are a lot worse than this and a lot
• 51:03
  harder. And obviously with any story, as
• 51:06
  it gets towards the ending, you're the the kind of focus
• 51:10
  crunches right down to the the kind of point that's being made
• 51:14
  and the characters who are making it.
• 51:17
  And that was really good in this book.
• 51:21
  And I've seen it done really badly in other books, but here
• 51:23
  it was really effortless. I just, I just thought the way
• 51:27
  she was so focused on the bank in the first half meant that
• 51:31
  this was like a filmable book. But then in the second-half we
• 51:34
  go off to the, what is it, the galactic traders or something
• 51:37
  like that. Basically the doctor goes, look,
• 51:40
  everything they've borrowed, I will pay it back because I have
• 51:43
  a very long life. And she goes, well, if you're
• 51:45
  going to pay it all back, then you have to come with me and I'm
• 51:48
  going to sell you on the galactic trade market.
• 51:51
  Yeah. How much was he worth again?
• 51:53
  Hang on a minute. I did write it down.
• 51:55
  It was. It was made me laugh so much.
• 51:57
  He was worth. Hang on.
• 52:04
  Here we go. 5 inhabited Galaxy and 15 sextillion lives to have
• 52:09
  the for the last of the time laws.
• 52:11
  Because we're still the last of the time laws at this point,
• 52:13
  aren't we? So he's very valuable.
• 52:16
  Oh, and imagine, imagine if it was a post season 9 doctor who'd
• 52:22
  been alive for those extra 2 billion years, thumping his way
• 52:26
  through a diamond. I've got no time left, I've used
• 52:30
  it all. It's like I own everything.
• 52:32
  I've got all the money. I've there aren't enough
• 52:34
  galaxies to buy me. That is, I don't canny that
• 52:38
  impression. It's not one of my better
• 52:40
  doctors, but. Can you do Matt Smith?
• 52:43
  I'd love to. No, I can't.
• 52:47
  I saw his cock in the film Clone.
• 52:49
  You know, I wouldn't mind too much as well.
• 52:51
  And I'm not speaking as an 11th Doctor fan, but.
• 52:54
  I mean, I mean, I'm aware of the image because I have the
• 52:57
  Internet and I suspected he helped himself along just before
• 53:03
  that scene just to. Chapolis, when I'll do a quote
• 53:06
  of Matt Smith, I'll just use to say, oh, wibbly wobbly, totally
• 53:09
  why that you know, that's all. It's not bad.
• 53:11
  Thank you. That was good as your Capaldi
• 53:13
  Jesus. You should see my Jodie.
• 53:18
  I don't please do it. Please.
• 53:22
  I I've never even tried and I'm I'm certainly not going to start
• 53:25
  now. You'll be cancelled when this
• 53:28
  goes out. I know, well I will anyway.
• 53:30
  Things I've said, but he's he. I find him one of the less
• 53:35
  easily imitable doctors. But in print as well, because I
• 53:41
  read quite a few 11th Doctor books and they just overdo it.
• 53:45
  They make him like insane, like Willy Wonka, you know.
• 53:49
  And I know the TV series could go there, Doctor, The Widow and
• 53:51
  the Wardrobe every now and again.
• 53:54
  But for the most part that sort of humour was quite contained.
• 53:57
  It was all over the place. But he it wasn't madly over the
• 54:02
  top. And I think she got it perfect.
• 54:04
  Absolutely spot on. She, you know, this, for me,
• 54:08
  this is up there with the kind of the, the best Matt Smith
• 54:12
  episodes. I'm, I'm going to point to a
• 54:15
  couple from season 5, Christmas Carol.
• 54:18
  There was a kind of very finite but very, very distinct period
• 54:22
  where it was absolutely amazing and and she's writing at that
• 54:26
  level. She's not point, isn't it?
• 54:28
  This is exactly after Christmas Carol, before the impossible
• 54:31
  astronaut. Then then it's probably
• 54:33
  conscious and it probably just means she's an even better
• 54:35
  writer than I thought she was. But yeah, she's, she's not just
• 54:40
  doing a good job imitating the characters, she's she's doing
• 54:45
  them at their absolute best and doing them better than any other
• 54:49
  writer I've I've come across. I feel like how she makes him
• 54:52
  quirky, but then the in the way that Matt Smith did at his best,
• 54:56
  he just drops all the comedy and he's deadly serious at the end
• 55:00
  of that chapter when he just looks at Amy when she comes up
• 55:02
  to him with a watch and he goes, oh, Pond, what have you done?
• 55:04
  Have you done great? But I suppose, and then at the
• 55:10
  end, at the end, so they're selling the Doctor and we
• 55:15
  realise that oh, there's a great twist as well, wasn't there,
• 55:19
  about who was? I won't give away the twist,
• 55:21
  because maybe someone might want to learn something in the book,
• 55:23
  but who's actually behind all of this?
• 55:26
  Is A twist. It was a nice twist.
• 55:28
  Did you see it coming? Not at all.
• 55:30
  I was in I was in Starbucks with my over off He's working and I
• 55:34
  went what the fuck? He went what I went Oh my God,
• 55:38
  you wouldn't bullet because you are reading an NSA right.
• 55:41
  I was like, yeah, it's really good.
• 55:45
  But anyway, she we realized that she's obviously had to, This is
• 55:48
  how money works, right? You have, if you're going to
• 55:51
  lend money out, you have to borrow it from somewhere.
• 55:54
  And she's borrowed a shit ton of money.
• 55:57
  So you can then she can lend it out via the watches to all these
• 56:00
  other people. But because she's got the
• 56:02
  doctor's leverage now that she can actually borrow a whole lot
• 56:06
  more until the doctor throws a spanner in the works.
• 56:09
  And I think I don't know too much about the stock markets,
• 56:12
  Ian. You surprise me.
• 56:16
  Shut up. But once your sort of reputation
• 56:20
  is blown like hers is here, Yeah, I'm assuming that
• 56:23
  everything just sinks. Yeah.
• 56:25
  Like a stone. All your shades, all your worth.
• 56:29
  The the way it the way it's done here is, I don't know if you're
• 56:33
  old enough to remember that rather marvellous period in
• 56:35
  EastEnders where Ian Beale went bankrupt and he's running around
• 56:41
  the square and he's on his knees and frying and begging him and
• 56:44
  the snoss. That was lovely little runt.
• 56:48
  Yeah, it was like that. It just happens very quickly and
• 56:50
  it doesn't even take a concrete event or a specific loss.
• 56:55
  Once the momentum of failure is about you and the, and the, the
• 57:00
  smell of failure, then people call in their credit and you
• 57:04
  can't borrow anymore and you're finished.
• 57:07
  And it was described in about what, 2 paragraphs at the start
• 57:12
  of a chapter where the villains kind of reign of terror was over
• 57:16
  because just like that, the market decided bad investment,
• 57:20
  I'm off. And it was.
• 57:22
  So again, it was another another sequence where you actually
• 57:30
  learn stuff, you know, like the interest.
• 57:33
  This was this was aimed at kids to learn about money, but really
• 57:36
  it was me. Well, at the start she was told
• 57:39
  you knew all about banking and how that works.
• 57:41
  And she does like A2 page thing all about banking, but in a
• 57:44
  really fun way. Then you learn all about sort of
• 57:46
  borrowing, then you learn all about interest, then you learn
• 57:51
  all about liquidity, and then you learn all about your
• 57:55
  business just failing in the market.
• 57:57
  So, you know, this is if if every kid had to read 1 Doctor
• 58:04
  Who book when they were like 9 or 10, make it this one.
• 58:08
  And what a what a country of, you know, fiscally prudent
• 58:12
  people would grow up to be Rachel Reeves wouldn't have to
• 58:15
  raise anything, you know, because we'd all be fine.
• 58:18
  There'd be no there'd be no debt.
• 58:20
  There'd be no they'd. Be like, what's going on?
• 58:23
  No one's borrowing any money anymore.
• 58:26
  It's just so happens to have coincided with the reprint of
• 58:30
  Borrowed Time by Naomi Alder. Yeah.
• 58:32
  So it's like, well, this woman has destroyed banking, but she
• 58:37
  has captured Matt Smith really well, so.
• 58:39
  There's a load of sharks going around eating people.
• 58:42
  Yeah. So what are you going to do?
• 58:44
  What are you going to do? Did you like the idea of
• 58:46
  Torchwood and Unit both sniffing around the crime scene at the
• 58:49
  end? I did and again, how lovely was
• 58:52
  that little throwaway reference to because the the story is set
• 58:56
  in 2007, so that would be during season 3.
• 59:02
  So you had Torchwood and Unit capering round in the shadows of
• 59:07
  Mr. Saxon and it was, it was lovely to see.
• 59:10
  And, and in sort of two lines, she gets a bit of comedy out of
• 59:15
  the relationship of these two sort of quasi government bodies,
• 59:20
  which again shows her knowledge of the show and it's history.
• 59:25
  She knows how she can make jokes about it.
• 59:27
  She says UNIT will spend 18 fruitless months trying to
• 59:31
  reconstruct the pieces of the watch.
• 59:33
  Yeah, yeah. Poor Kate Stewart.
• 59:36
  She's getting very frustrated. Well, I, I imagine it's, it's
• 59:39
  Malcolm down there. I've.
• 59:44
  Really made it work. I'll have it done in a minute,
• 59:47
  Sir, OK? Oh fuck, I've broke it again.
• 59:52
  Bless. Him.
• 59:52
  Oh, it's borrowed my leg. And can I just say as well,
• 59:57
  because I didn't see this coming and I should have seen this
• 1:00:00
  coming. I really loved Samir and Andrew
• 1:00:03
  snogging at the end and going, do you know what?
• 1:00:06
  This bank ain't worth it. Let's go.
• 1:00:08
  I'm going to I'm going to own a bakery.
• 1:00:10
  You go paint. Let's have a happy life
• 1:00:12
  together. So I thought, actually it's
• 1:00:14
  quite a nice little, little romance there.
• 1:00:16
  It's lovely because from page one and, and maybe I'll go back
• 1:00:19
  and talk about chapter one in a in a second, but from, from page
• 1:00:23
  one, these two have been absolutely set up as being
• 1:00:27
  perfect for each other because they are exactly as ruthless,
• 1:00:30
  yet fallible, yet corrupt, yet inadequate as each other.
• 1:00:36
  So of course they belong to each other totally.
• 1:00:39
  And as the book goes on and you realise, maybe that's where
• 1:00:43
  we're heading, I'm sort of sitting there going go, go and
• 1:00:45
  have a snog. Well, you'd be great for each
• 1:00:48
  other. So if you say we're sort of
• 1:00:50
  sneering at each other in those first couple of scenes, I didn't
• 1:00:53
  see it coming a mile off. And then sort of halfway through
• 1:00:56
  the book when they started working together, I was like,
• 1:00:58
  well, of course they're made for each other, right?
• 1:01:00
  Yeah, yeah, everything they've, the reason they're both in so
• 1:01:04
  much debt is that from the from the word go, their story is that
• 1:01:08
  they're both vying for the same promotions.
• 1:01:11
  So they are absolutely at loggerheads and and getting
• 1:01:13
  themselves into more and more trouble to just seem better
• 1:01:18
  prepared and and better at their job than each other.
• 1:01:21
  So they're both, you know, awful people because I've never, you
• 1:01:26
  know, people, people. That take them up.
• 1:01:29
  Yeah, people that take their jobs that seriously, I've never
• 1:01:32
  really understood. And you know, that's that, you
• 1:01:35
  know. I thought there was an extra
• 1:01:37
  layer of education in this as well because the banks described
• 1:01:40
  towards the end as they don't care if you're borrowing time
• 1:01:44
  that you have to give back and that you will end up dead as a
• 1:01:47
  result. All they care about is the sheet
• 1:01:50
  at the end of the month. And I was like, yeah, say that
• 1:01:53
  to the kids. Don't end up in one of these
• 1:01:55
  dead end corporations that does not care.
• 1:01:58
  You know what the what they put you through and how how they
• 1:02:01
  basically kill you off. Yeah, HSBC would not give a shit
• 1:02:05
  if I were unable to make my repayments one month.
• 1:02:08
  They would not ask questions, they would not try to help.
• 1:02:11
  They would eat me up like a big metal machine.
• 1:02:14
  If they said to you though, OK, look, OK, clearly you can't pay
• 1:02:18
  this back. Like can we have a year of your
• 1:02:20
  life? Would you say yes?
• 1:02:26
  I might have done 30 years ago. Oh yeah, that's a good point.
• 1:02:31
  Yeah, I'm, I'm staring at the end of the tunnel now.
• 1:02:34
  Well, it's it's not so much that, but no one knows how long
• 1:02:37
  their personal tunnel is. Unless you'd like Adrian Mole,
• 1:02:41
  you've measured your personal tunnel.
• 1:02:45
  But yeah, I mean, it's one of those, it's one of those things
• 1:02:48
  you wouldn't necessarily do it in real, real life, but it is
• 1:02:52
  the sort of thing you do in a kind of fantasy world, I think.
• 1:02:59
  Voila. I mean, I think, look, we've had
• 1:03:01
  a good go at the concepts, the characterization, the guest
• 1:03:04
  characters that pays the pros. Have you got anything else on
• 1:03:08
  your nose that you would like to cover before we move on to the
• 1:03:11
  last segment of the episode? I there, there are two things I
• 1:03:14
  wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about
• 1:03:16
  specifically chapter 1, because it's all about Andrew Brown and
• 1:03:20
  it's how you're introduced to the premise and he works at
• 1:03:23
  Lexington Bank. And Full disclosure, I listened
• 1:03:27
  to chapter 1 while I was on my way to work on Monday.
• 1:03:30
  So it was about 6:30. It's still dark outside.
• 1:03:35
  I'm at the bus stop at the end of the road, going to work in an
• 1:03:41
  office. And you've got this chapter
• 1:03:44
  that's telling you about Andrew Brown, who's getting up early
• 1:03:48
  and everything's going wrong. And he treads on his breakfast
• 1:03:51
  and he irons the carpet and the, you know, dog's sick on his
• 1:03:54
  shirt or something just so he can get into the office just
• 1:03:58
  because he's got a 9:00 AM presentation.
• 1:04:01
  And that goes wrong. And all the way through that
• 1:04:04
  chapter, everything is so leak and empty.
• 1:04:09
  And that's what adult life is like.
• 1:04:12
  And again, this would be a good book for for kids to read.
• 1:04:15
  It would also make a lot of them decide not to bother with
• 1:04:18
  growing up. But.
• 1:04:19
  What infant suicide through the roof while by a Time by Naomi
• 1:04:23
  Alderman's just been rewritten. So, so yeah, OK, there's there's
• 1:04:27
  good points and bad with the book, but what a brilliantly
• 1:04:31
  constructed and not, not sensationalist nothing out of
• 1:04:35
  the ordinary happened. Those are, you know, he the, the
• 1:04:39
  the train goes 3 minutes early before he can get on it.
• 1:04:42
  That's happened to all of us. We've all slept through the
• 1:04:45
  alarm. We've all had a unfortunate
• 1:04:47
  stain on our suit. You know, it's just this kind of
• 1:04:50
  succession that. Was a plot point though, wasn't
• 1:04:53
  it? Because that's when they
• 1:04:55
  realized that there were two versions of him because one had
• 1:04:58
  the stain and one didn't. Yeah, but it was.
• 1:05:01
  But I, I just thought Chapter 1 was such a skilful and brilliant
• 1:05:05
  and subtle evocation of the kind of awfulness of, of the life.
• 1:05:11
  You know, I've never worked in a bank.
• 1:05:13
  I don't assume it is actually that awful.
• 1:05:15
  If you're the sort of person who likes numbers, then you're
• 1:05:17
  probably quite happy working in a bank.
• 1:05:19
  I. Don't work in a bank.
• 1:05:20
  Get in touch with us. Let us.
• 1:05:21
  Know. Yeah.
• 1:05:21
  Let us know. Let us know.
• 1:05:22
  Are you living a soulless existence?
• 1:05:25
  Yeah. Are you able to?
• 1:05:26
  Time are you? Able to move a decimal point in
• 1:05:29
  my account so I've got some money that that would be good.
• 1:05:32
  Can you do them three points in my direction please?
• 1:05:35
  But the other thing that I, I did bump on in Chapter 1 is that
• 1:05:40
  Andrew Brown is permanently in competition with Samira Jenkins.
• 1:05:47
  And I bumped on that because obviously she's coded as a, an
• 1:05:51
  Indian lady because she's called Samira.
• 1:05:54
  And until I got to the point in the book where I realised that
• 1:05:58
  she was also borrowing time, I just thought this was about that
• 1:06:02
  kind of kind of truism about brown kids, that they are just
• 1:06:07
  pushed to be exceptional. And this is, and this is
• 1:06:11
  something I talked about with my wife, who is of Indian descent.
• 1:06:15
  And culturally, yes, those kids are pushed to work really hard
• 1:06:19
  throughout their childhood. They don't get to, they don't
• 1:06:22
  get to get AC for an essay. They get, you know, sent to
• 1:06:26
  their room without dinner if they don't get an A.
• 1:06:29
  That's why there are so many of them who become doctors when,
• 1:06:33
  you know, I, I fiddle about with a few spreadsheets for a couple
• 1:06:37
  of hours, you know, and I was, I was sort of momentarily
• 1:06:42
  wondering if we were going to get more detail about her or if
• 1:06:46
  she was just being kind of painted as well.
• 1:06:49
  She's Indian, so of course she's really good at her job.
• 1:06:53
  But no, we did get that fleshed out.
• 1:06:54
  So I was quite, I was very happy about that.
• 1:06:58
  Sort of the push away from that cliche is when she looks around
• 1:07:02
  and she goes, why the hell did I not notice that this bank is
• 1:07:06
  full of copies of people doing various things at the same time?
• 1:07:10
  Everyone in that bank's doing it.
• 1:07:11
  They're all boring time because they're all being pushed beyond
• 1:07:15
  the limits of human capacity. Now I've never been in a bank
• 1:07:19
  that's felt that kind of animated normally that everyone
• 1:07:22
  looks like they're half asleep. And you get some bloke comes out
• 1:07:25
  of his office in a suit and he yawns and he shuffles over to
• 1:07:29
  you and he's like, can I help? Or you want.
• 1:07:30
  A pen. Can I go back to sleep?
• 1:07:32
  Yeah. I've got a Metro Bank.
• 1:07:34
  They. Offer out lollipops.
• 1:07:35
  Metro Bank. Do they?
• 1:07:37
  Yeah, I love going in there. Oh we had a Metro Bank in
• 1:07:40
  Colchester before I before I left the UK.
• 1:07:43
  And a pen. I was sold.
• 1:07:46
  I opened the account that day. That's, yeah, that's, that's,
• 1:07:48
  that's better than what I got when I, when I joined the
• 1:07:51
  Midland Bank when I was at university.
• 1:07:53
  What did you think then of the comedy sequence, though, where
• 1:07:57
  the Doctor and Amy are sitting in on the presentation and the
• 1:08:02
  guys from America are making absurd demands that nobody could
• 1:08:06
  ever? Oh, I would have thought you
• 1:08:08
  would have had a report for this.
• 1:08:09
  And Andrew goes, oh, hang on a minute, walks out of the room
• 1:08:12
  and then walks back with that report that he's just spent the
• 1:08:14
  last, I know, half a day doing. And it goes.
• 1:08:17
  It gets sort of crazier and more faster as it.
• 1:08:21
  Goes yeah, but. You can see it on the screen,
• 1:08:23
  right? Absolutely.
• 1:08:24
  That again is is that's Moffat, that's coupling.
• 1:08:28
  That's exactly where that's coming from.
• 1:08:29
  That's the kind of energy that Alderman's pulling from.
• 1:08:33
  And it would have been so good on TV.
• 1:08:37
  And it still could be. I've only really got one thing I
• 1:08:41
  want to quote, which I think was sort of the moral of the story.
• 1:08:45
  But it it, it didn't come across as like, you know, looking at
• 1:08:48
  the screen and going, right, kids pay attention.
• 1:08:50
  It was just a lovely line where the doctor says that's the
• 1:08:54
  trouble with borrowing. It makes everything look good.
• 1:08:57
  No one wants to see what's going on underneath because the
• 1:09:00
  surface is just so shiny. There's no point making
• 1:09:03
  everything shiny if your whole species is going to die out the
• 1:09:06
  moment they call in those deaths.
• 1:09:09
  And I was like, yeah, that's true.
• 1:09:11
  Yeah, that is, that is very true.
• 1:09:13
  You know the only as a you know, in my in my 20's the only way to
• 1:09:18
  stop worrying about the amount of debt I had was to go and buy
• 1:09:21
  another DVD or another another 5 pints of beer or whatever.
• 1:09:28
  I would totally rationalize it, right?
• 1:09:30
  And then at the end of the month, the bank statement would
• 1:09:32
  come in and I'll be like, how did I rationalize any of these
• 1:09:35
  decisions? What was like?
• 1:09:37
  Do you know what I mean? Seriously, I was in By the time
• 1:09:40
  my marriage fell, I put I was at about 25 grands worth of debt,
• 1:09:44
  which was a lot for me because I'm.
• 1:09:45
  Absolutely a. Lawyer Unfortunately we had a
• 1:09:49
  flat to sell that managed to pay off that debt, otherwise I would
• 1:09:53
  have gone into single life a very unhappy man.
• 1:09:55
  Well, absolutely, this is, you know, the, the kind of unspoken
• 1:10:00
  point, I guess of, of the book is that, you know, a lot of
• 1:10:05
  people are in a very deep hole with, with credit cards.
• 1:10:11
  And it is because, well, I think a large part of it is that we're
• 1:10:16
  never really sat down and educated about this.
• 1:10:19
  It should be in the school curriculum.
• 1:10:20
  You know when you're doing your GCS ES, there should be a
• 1:10:24
  three-week module on how credit cards work and how mobile phone
• 1:10:28
  bills will destroy you. Just give them this book.
• 1:10:30
  Yeah, just do that. Just do that it it does so.
• 1:10:33
  We're going to make you even more famous.
• 1:10:35
  We're going to put you on the the prospectus you know you
• 1:10:37
  have. To read this book, Yeah,
• 1:10:39
  There'll be a GCSE in Aldermania.
• 1:10:42
  Aldermania. Oh.
• 1:10:44
  I love it. I mean, I said to you in a
• 1:10:46
  message and I read it back afterwards and thought, wow,
• 1:10:49
  Joe, you really are capable of hyperbole.
• 1:10:51
  When I said that this was potentially my favorite ever
• 1:10:56
  11th Doctor story because in terms of a story with packed
• 1:11:01
  full of brilliant ideas, great comedy, scary moments, great
• 1:11:07
  twists, great dialogue and just that furious pace, I was like, I
• 1:11:12
  was trying to pick up an 11th Doctor episode.
• 1:11:14
  And there are some I really like.
• 1:11:16
  Don't get me wrong, Doctor's Wife I absolutely adore with the
• 1:11:19
  GOB Complex, finish it and the Doctor, you know, there are some
• 1:11:21
  I absolutely love. This is up there though, in
• 1:11:25
  terms of the pure enjoyment I got.
• 1:11:26
  And forgive me, I'm going to say this don't hit me.
• 1:11:30
  It may have had something to do with the fact that the book was
• 1:11:33
  divorced from the excesses of Stephen Murphy's dialogue and
• 1:11:39
  the performances of Matt Smith and Karen Gillard.
• 1:11:41
  That may have because I was sort of, you know, conjuring this in
• 1:11:44
  my head. But just purely in terms of what
• 1:11:47
  it's doing with those characters, Yeah.
• 1:11:49
  Just just absolutely brilliant. Well, for me, it's exactly the
• 1:11:55
  same response, but from exactly the opposite direction.
• 1:11:57
  So I'm comparing it to a lot of episodes from the first two
• 1:12:04
  years of Matt Smith and his era, which for me was as good as
• 1:12:08
  Doctor, whoever got. And I was visualizing their
• 1:12:12
  performances as I was hearing the audio book, and it matched
• 1:12:16
  perfectly. So for me, this is one of the
• 1:12:20
  better 11th Doctor stories because it feels very much like
• 1:12:24
  all the other best 11th Doctor stories.
• 1:12:28
  And I think it's deliberate and I think it's an amazing work of,
• 1:12:32
  of art to to capture that. The fact that it pleased both of
• 1:12:37
  us and we come to this era from completely different directions,
• 1:12:42
  I mean, that's quite telling, isn't it?
• 1:12:44
  It really is. It's a great book.
• 1:12:46
  Yeah, go and get this one Go. I've been trying to convince
• 1:12:49
  people and they keep giving me a look like they've sort of
• 1:12:52
  swallowed a sour gummy going NSA.
• 1:12:55
  But actually, that's the last question I'm going to ask you
• 1:12:57
  before we go into the last little bit.
• 1:12:59
  It is, I read a review online and I sent it to you, and I
• 1:13:03
  really took exception with the last line of that review, which
• 1:13:06
  was something along the lines of they don't deserve something
• 1:13:10
  this good. And whether that was talking
• 1:13:13
  about the Nsas or whether that was talking about books for
• 1:13:17
  kids, I don't know. But I think that's a really
• 1:13:21
  shitty statement to make. It is, and I don't know either.
• 1:13:29
  There is a a kind of assumption that the Nsas are just for kids.
• 1:13:34
  There is also an assumption that the Nsas are therefore a bit
• 1:13:38
  shit. If you're not a kid, if you're a
• 1:13:42
  kid and you get a book, then you deserve that book to be as
• 1:13:46
  amazing and transporting and evocative and inspiring as it
• 1:13:51
  possibly can be. Because kids need to read and.
• 1:13:56
  Possibly more so, right? More.
• 1:13:58
  Can be amazing. More than adults, these books
• 1:14:01
  need to be really good. Keep kids reading.
• 1:14:05
  Exactly. There's a, you know, I'm not
• 1:14:08
  going to sit here and say that there's a problem with child
• 1:14:10
  literacy because everybody knows that people read less.
• 1:14:13
  And part of it is because we're just evolving away from the
• 1:14:17
  written word as a, as a, as, as a medium of narrative fiction,
• 1:14:24
  because everything's about TV now, prestige TV.
• 1:14:28
  But imagine if you as a kid had had a Doctor Who book this good.
• 1:14:32
  Now you know, Destiny of the Daleks is a fine novelization,
• 1:14:36
  but it's not this. But does the awakening still
• 1:14:40
  thrill you as much as it did when you were younger?
• 1:14:42
  Well, I mean, can you still feel the frisson?
• 1:14:45
  I can, I can, but that's because the waking happens to be
• 1:14:47
  probably my favorite Davison. So, you know, that's a
• 1:14:51
  coincidence. But yeah, this that review.
• 1:14:55
  I I interpret it as saying that the Nsas didn't deserve a book
• 1:15:00
  this good. Which is which is no all NSA
• 1:15:05
  should aspire to be this good. It's not like saying it's a it's
• 1:15:09
  a range of shit books and that's the way we like it.
• 1:15:11
  And how dare they put a good one in amongst the pile.
• 1:15:16
  It should be criticizing all the other Nsas that aren't this one.
• 1:15:20
  So why aren't they this good? Obviously on We're All Stories
• 1:15:23
  in the end, you cover the New Adventures and the Avve Dr.
• 1:15:26
  books, and you sort of said that you might be branching out into
• 1:15:28
  other areas. If you ever cover a new, just
• 1:15:31
  you wait, wait for the reaction you'll get from people if you
• 1:15:35
  suggest let's do one of these. Oh, you're just grabbing
• 1:15:39
  something off the shelf now. Oh, the Jodie ones.
• 1:15:45
  The good doctors are great read. Oh, we've got also Sophie
• 1:15:48
  Aldridge 10. Dear, I thought you had a
• 1:15:51
  psychotic look about you. Engines of war.
• 1:15:53
  Yes, Fabulous. Any anymore there?
• 1:15:57
  Yeah, but I can't reach them. But yeah, we've I've got quite a
• 1:16:03
  lot and I'm really looking forward to.
• 1:16:07
  Sorry. I should I should turn around
• 1:16:09
  and talk into the microphone. I think I'd be surprised.
• 1:16:12
  When I'd want to be there are. Average books there, I won't say
• 1:16:15
  there aren't, but there are average new adventures and there
• 1:16:19
  are below average adventures as well, you know?
• 1:16:23
  There are and I've I've just started re repurchasing all the
• 1:16:27
  Discworld novels because over here in America they're being
• 1:16:30
  reissued. And I was about to say that
• 1:16:33
  there's probably an average Pratchett novel, but I don't I
• 1:16:36
  don't think that's probably true.
• 1:16:37
  In fact, maybe Jingo. But yeah, every every author
• 1:16:42
  has, you know, off days in the office and not every book in any
• 1:16:47
  series is brilliant. Some of the Bonds novels weren't
• 1:16:50
  very good. All of the bombs weren't very
• 1:16:53
  good. But you know, every, every
• 1:16:57
  series is capable of having kind of unexpected treasures in it.
• 1:17:01
  And this you know, if the Nsas can contain something this good,
• 1:17:06
  then what possible reason is there not to read all of them?
• 1:17:09
  And this is a range that did it managed to bring in Johnny
• 1:17:13
  Morris, a great writer, Lance Parkin, Paul Mars, you know,
• 1:17:18
  brilliant, brilliant writers writing for kids.
• 1:17:21
  All credits are. I mean, I said to you in the
• 1:17:23
  message, didn't I? This shit's all over a bulk of
• 1:17:26
  the new Adventures and EDA's that I've read simply because
• 1:17:30
  it's just so enjoyable. It's quite happy being like a
• 1:17:35
  Doctor Who story. It's not trying to be big or
• 1:17:37
  clever or dramatic or angsty or or adult.
• 1:17:41
  It's just having fun. And at the same time it's doing
• 1:17:45
  what TV, or certainly the BBC used to aspire to do, which was
• 1:17:49
  educate and inform as well as entertain.
• 1:17:53
  So it's, yeah, it's, it's just one of the best Doctor Who books
• 1:17:58
  I've ever read are. You listening to this, Naomi?
• 1:18:02
  All right, OK, we want to we want to mention next time you're
• 1:18:05
  up against there with Barack Obama.
• 1:18:07
  All right. Yeah, when, when when I meet you
• 1:18:10
  at the launch of the Power 2 Electric Boogaloo.
• 1:18:14
  I want I want to share your crew details.
• 1:18:17
  Well, OK, Ian, let's slip on into the last section.
• 1:18:22
  And it's probably the smallest section, but I am really
• 1:18:24
  intrigued to hear what your answer to this is.
• 1:18:27
  For some reason people love her ranking right?
• 1:18:29
  People love to rank. Yeah.
• 1:18:32
  What has been your favorite? And I'm not saying your favorite
• 1:18:35
  episode to record, but what's been your favorite books to
• 1:18:39
  discover on where your story is in the end?
• 1:18:42
  Your top 3IN whatever order you like.
• 1:18:46
  Well, I very much enjoyed talking about Warhead with
• 1:18:55
  Andrew Cartmel a because it's not every day you get to
• 1:19:00
  interview someone who was responsible for for your era of
• 1:19:04
  Doctor Who. But but to get his perspective
• 1:19:08
  on it after all this time. And to finally get to the kind
• 1:19:12
  of peel the onion of how the Cats Cradle trilogy of new
• 1:19:16
  adventures came to be and how they were completely unconnected
• 1:19:19
  books written by authors who weren't in touch with each
• 1:19:22
  other, and how it was kind of crowbar into being a.
• 1:19:24
  Really, I could never have told. I mean, I mean, we could all
• 1:19:27
  tell at the time there was like, really, this is this is supposed
• 1:19:30
  to be a trilogy. I I could do better than this
• 1:19:33
  and I'm an idiot. What?
• 1:19:34
  Did it say when it came out it said cats cradle.
• 1:19:36
  What the fuck? That, well, I think he knew it
• 1:19:39
  was going to happen because he'd had to sort of go back and
• 1:19:41
  rewrite one paragraph to include a silver cat.
• 1:19:44
  But yeah, he was, he was not, not angry about it.
• 1:19:48
  Still, it was 30 years ago. But he was, you know, he was
• 1:19:51
  being paid. I never, I never wrote a book
• 1:19:53
  called Cat's Cradle Warhead. I wrote a book called Warhead.
• 1:19:57
  Thank you very much. So that was a really good book.
• 1:20:01
  Also, I have heard you say you know that, which is why I'm
• 1:20:06
  desperate to get you back on this to cover one of these
• 1:20:08
  Andrew Carmel books, because I think you and me will have
• 1:20:12
  different reactions, but that you said that is your peak.
• 1:20:15
  I think that's not trilogy specifically Warlock, but yeah,
• 1:20:20
  I, I, I that is a hill I will die on.
• 1:20:24
  So if you want to fight me on a hill, you may.
• 1:20:27
  Die on that hill. But well, bring it we.
• 1:20:29
  Get very dirty. Bring it, you tubby bitch.
• 1:20:36
  So wrestling, yeah. I another one would be End Game
• 1:20:42
  by Terence Dicks which. That was Dylan when it.
• 1:20:46
  That was now I thought at the time I read that book, firstly
• 1:20:50
  that it was it was kind of serviceable but underwhelming.
• 1:20:55
  Fast forward 20 years and talking about it with Dylan and
• 1:20:58
  obviously talking about anything with Dylan is one of life's joys
• 1:21:01
  because Dylan's great and. We try and be the best host of
• 1:21:06
  Doctor Who podcast, but we know we're already beat.
• 1:21:09
  He's yeah, damn him to hell, but he just finds these layers of of
• 1:21:15
  kind of unintentional comedy and ineptness.
• 1:21:19
  And he because he knows the the back story.
• 1:21:22
  I didn't know that this was like a sort of barely complete first
• 1:21:26
  draft that Terence Dix handed in and then effed off on holiday,
• 1:21:30
  leaving Justin Richards to kind of write an extra 40,000 words
• 1:21:33
  and turn it into a very short book.
• 1:21:36
  It was revenge for when Robert Holmes did that with the Thai
• 1:21:38
  warriors Terence Dix. Yeah, sure it was.
• 1:21:41
  But it's fascinating to find out things like that.
• 1:21:44
  And, and, and so this is a good example of where you find out
• 1:21:49
  why a book has turned out the way it has.
• 1:21:52
  Like if if we knew what the story was behind Belle Tempest,
• 1:21:56
  I think that would be that would be something a lot of people
• 1:22:00
  would like to know that in. Fact.
• 1:22:03
  Joyner Death cult. I don't know that he did, but
• 1:22:07
  you know, but it's so so. The Belle Tempest episode is the
• 1:22:12
  most popular episode of World Stories.
• 1:22:15
  In the end, it's had about twice as many downloads as any other
• 1:22:19
  episode, and I have no idea why. Maybe it's because my guest on
• 1:22:24
  that one's very popular, But yeah.
• 1:22:27
  And my third choice would be the Trevor Baxendale novel Cold
• 1:22:32
  Heart. That episode was hilarious, now
• 1:22:36
  hearing the two of you try and scramble around to find
• 1:22:38
  something positive to say about. That well, well, no.
• 1:22:41
  So, so I really enjoyed the book and what made it a really good
• 1:22:49
  episode was that Harry, obviously it it didn't work for
• 1:22:54
  him. So we had we had very different
• 1:22:58
  perspectives about the book and that led to a really good
• 1:23:02
  conversation, really good episode, I thought, because I
• 1:23:07
  could listen to Harry talk all day.
• 1:23:08
  Laughed. At it, didn't they?
• 1:23:10
  I was. He was not in the well-being
• 1:23:12
  room at work, howling with laughter.
• 1:23:14
  Someone ducked their head in the door and said, you're right.
• 1:23:16
  I went, Oh yeah, Doctor Who. Books, you know?
• 1:23:19
  Yeah, but, but, you know, as a, as a Doctor Who fan, I would
• 1:23:25
  have assumed that everyone would respond to that book the same
• 1:23:28
  way that I did, which is this feels like a six part John
• 1:23:32
  Pertwee story. We we know this, it's very
• 1:23:36
  familiar. There's a baddie, there's this
• 1:23:38
  sort of duplicitous son or whatever.
• 1:23:41
  There's a crap civilisation of poorly realised aliens.
• 1:23:45
  They're a ridiculous underground.
• 1:23:46
  I thought everyone would love this, so it was fascinating.
• 1:23:50
  Orifice on the cover. As well there there was a huge
• 1:23:52
  gaping orifice on the cover. More He.
• 1:23:56
  Likes a a big hole. Trevor Baxon Dale, isn't he?
• 1:24:00
  I think that's libelous, Joe. No, there's a hole on the front
• 1:24:03
  of Eaters of Wasps as well. That's a mouth.
• 1:24:06
  Oh. You're still a big.
• 1:24:07
  If you're going to, if you're going to say he holds a goal,
• 1:24:09
  I'm, I'm going, I'm not, I'm not being party to filth like that.
• 1:24:14
  He likes, yeah, he likes an unexpected aperture.
• 1:24:18
  If you shut your eyes it could be any sex, OK?
• 1:24:22
  Yes, it could. It could be any, any any lady
• 1:24:25
  with a prickly beard. Those are three great episodes
• 1:24:28
  as well. I've been, I mean, I chose 3 as
• 1:24:31
  well. I loved doing the Remembrance of
• 1:24:35
  the Daleks because another book that made me realize, man, oh
• 1:24:40
  man, sometimes when we're catering for kids, you get the
• 1:24:43
  best Doctor Who fiction you've ever had.
• 1:24:46
  And that sort of, that's the first new adventure, which is
• 1:24:49
  what it feels like. Absolutely.
• 1:24:51
  It's probably the best new adventure of all.
• 1:24:53
  Which kind of leaves the range in the dust after that well.
• 1:24:57
  Fortunately, you know, yes, it's got the Daleks in it.
• 1:24:59
  So of course it's going to be the best.
• 1:25:01
  But I, I and I was listening to your episode on Remembrance and
• 1:25:04
  I and I can't remember what it what I wanted to point out a
• 1:25:08
  couple of things that they got wrong.
• 1:25:11
  I think it came out in, I think it was April 1990.
• 1:25:16
  Oh yeah. And there seemed there seemed to
• 1:25:18
  be a lot of people who weren't sure when it came out.
• 1:25:20
  I'm supposed to edit that bit out.
• 1:25:21
  Everyone's just going through books going, oh, I'm not sure
• 1:25:24
  when. It happened.
• 1:25:25
  So I remember going into Ace Comics like every single Friday,
• 1:25:29
  because that was the day that they put that month's new Target
• 1:25:32
  on the shelf after school for a month.
• 1:25:35
  Because it was, it was delayed. Imagine that.
• 1:25:37
  A delayed book by Ben Ronovich. Good Lord.
• 1:25:42
  I remember all right. I remember exactly when it came
• 1:25:46
  out and yeah, it, you know, there were maybe what, 3 or 4
• 1:25:51
  books left after that and it absolutely blew me away.
• 1:25:56
  So it was great to hear your episode.
• 1:25:59
  Yeah, I I couldn't. Sing in its praises.
• 1:26:01
  Of course there are better new adventures, but not many, you
• 1:26:05
  know, I think that did start things high.
• 1:26:08
  My second one is what I've not long recorded, actually, which
• 1:26:10
  was Doctor Who in Wonderland by Paul Mars, because I fucking
• 1:26:14
  hate Alice in Wonderland with a passion.
• 1:26:16
  My other half's obsessed with it and I have to watch all these
• 1:26:19
  different versions. Have you seen the Alan Moore
• 1:26:21
  version of? Perfect.
• 1:26:24
  Novel Alice getting cunnilingus. I mean, it's absolutely
• 1:26:29
  terrifying. I know, right?
• 1:26:30
  I mean, now I will. It's called Lost Girls or
• 1:26:33
  something like that. Yeah, it's a big, big old tone
• 1:26:36
  full of pony images and pictures.
• 1:26:39
  Down lost girls. He's on Amazon as we speak.
• 1:26:45
  You, you keep talking. Don't mind what I'm doing.
• 1:26:47
  Did you say your your missus was away?
• 1:26:49
  Don't worry, they do 24 hour delivery all right.
• 1:26:53
  Anyway, I, so I went in with low expectations, but high
• 1:26:56
  expectations because I love poor Miles so.
• 1:26:59
  And finally I'm in on the party because he manages to fuse the
• 1:27:02
  two together so beautifully, so whistly.
• 1:27:08
  It was just an absolute joy. And everyone else there was a
• 1:27:10
  huge Paul Miles fan and a huge Alice in Wonderland fan.
• 1:27:13
  So it was just a big love in with me just shitting on Alice
• 1:27:15
  in Wonderland a bit. But you know, like you do.
• 1:27:17
  And then my number one is still The Eight Doctors, because I
• 1:27:22
  went into that expecting to really hate that book.
• 1:27:26
  I just found it an absolute tree.
• 1:27:29
  Like it was all the best and all the worst of Terence Dicks all
• 1:27:32
  in one book. All the indulgence, all the
• 1:27:36
  ambition, you know, all the humor.
• 1:27:38
  The pit where the trash in Ate the man.
• 1:27:40
  Maybe Howl for about 3 weeks. Yeah, and just put it apart.
• 1:27:45
  That absurd tone, how it is to be is baffling, right?
• 1:27:51
  It is. And again, speaking, speaking
• 1:27:54
  not just as a man, but as a, a publisher Now, anyone signed off
• 1:27:59
  on that as a commercial enterprise?
• 1:28:02
  It's like we've done a, we've done ATV movie.
• 1:28:05
  We're probably not going to go to series, but there is a, you
• 1:28:09
  know, we got 9 million viewers. There's a lot of interest.
• 1:28:12
  Let's start publishing some books that will sell to these
• 1:28:15
  new viewers who may not be interested delicately familiar
• 1:28:19
  with State of Decay and The Trial of the Time Lord.
• 1:28:24
  And how they ever signed off on on that book being put, I will
• 1:28:28
  never know. And I I won't get to cover that
• 1:28:31
  on my show for a number of years, and I may well be dead
• 1:28:35
  before those before that time. You'll have the best time, I
• 1:28:38
  promise you. No, I, I just, I don't know if I
• 1:28:42
  can. I think that might be the
• 1:28:43
  episode that breaks me. What you've got to do is it's
• 1:28:47
  literally, they should have asked Terence, like Terence, who
• 1:28:50
  is this book for once he'd finished it and handed it in and
• 1:28:52
  he just would have gone everyone.
• 1:28:54
  Because it's literally, it's the people that have never heard of
• 1:28:57
  Doctor Who. It's the people that know Doctor
• 1:28:59
  Who intimately. It's the people that like huge
• 1:29:03
  sprawling narratives. It's the people that like short
• 1:29:05
  stories because they're all kind of short stories.
• 1:29:08
  I mean, it is just eclectic, let's say that.
• 1:29:12
  So the way I look at it is, is I like what you've said, I like
• 1:29:17
  what you've done there, but I would add to it.
• 1:29:18
  So it's for simultaneously. It's a book for everyone and no
• 1:29:23
  one. It should be for no one.
• 1:29:26
  Yes, I'm saying about suicide rates going up.
• 1:29:30
  What? I don't know what the numbers
• 1:29:31
  were like in. They were quite heavy in May 97
• 1:29:35
  through the roof, a lot of sort of 20 something sad virgins were
• 1:29:39
  ending their lives. Oh my God, Ian, why do I always
• 1:29:43
  have the best time when I'll talk with you on a Zoom call?
• 1:29:46
  Jesus. Christ, I, I have no idea.
• 1:29:48
  I think, I imagine it's because you can see my cat and it's very
• 1:29:51
  therapeutic. I mean, it's like a, it's like
• 1:29:53
  the cat's cradle cat. It's a sort of silver cat in.
• 1:29:55
  The back, yeah, he's, he's, he's, he's Grey.
• 1:29:58
  When we when we rescued him, he was called Grey Wolf, but we
• 1:30:03
  changed his name to Harvey Cohen because he looked more like a
• 1:30:06
  lawyer. And he looked.
• 1:30:08
  His tail is just sort of gently caressing what looks like a load
• 1:30:12
  of past doctor adventures. I think he's his tail is on.
• 1:30:17
  What's he choosing out for? Yeah, it's a white one.
• 1:30:19
  He's he's picking out, he's pointing at Father Time, which
• 1:30:22
  is which at the time of recording is my most recent
• 1:30:25
  episode, Boys and girls. A cat of huge distinction.
• 1:30:30
  He's on brand. He's he's on brand.
• 1:30:34
  Although I'm scared now that Cat's here we might be.
• 1:30:36
  This episode may be the 4th instalment of the Cat's Cradle
• 1:30:39
  trilogy. What would we be called?
• 1:30:43
  Well, I would be. So I'd have one of those very
• 1:30:47
  long Gallifrean names like Violvarionsti, Cherarelle and
• 1:30:52
  Suits. You.
• 1:30:53
  You'd be like Joe the fucker and you'd get one line of dialogue
• 1:30:58
  which would be a foul mouthed rant about something and then
• 1:31:02
  you'd be eaten by a horse or a Centaur.
• 1:31:05
  Joe the fucker. I feel like that's a good, good
• 1:31:08
  way to end this episode. Ian, can I ask you please to
• 1:31:11
  tell people? Because I have a feeling they're
• 1:31:13
  going to want to after listening to this madness where people can
• 1:31:18
  find you elsewhere, not here. Not here.
• 1:31:21
  So I exist. You do.
• 1:31:24
  Much much like the man dragger. I've been spending the last two
• 1:31:29
  hours talking to myself otherwise.
• 1:31:32
  I am on numerous podcasts. We started out doing all of time
• 1:31:38
  and Space which you can listen to, which is me and my very dear
• 1:31:42
  friend Mark Cockrum working our way through all of Doctor Who
• 1:31:47
  televisually. Can I?
• 1:31:49
  Say something about all time and space.
• 1:31:50
  Yeah, please do. Please do.
• 1:31:52
  I think there are sort of tears of Doctor Who podcasts.
• 1:31:55
  Not to sort of denigrate anybody, but I would say in
• 1:31:58
  terms of the production and the quality of guests and the
• 1:32:02
  critique, there's two I'll put on the top tier and that is
• 1:32:07
  flight for entirety and all the time and space because you can
• 1:32:11
  see how much love goes into those two.
• 1:32:14
  Well, I mean, I'm, I'm flattered on Mark's behalf.
• 1:32:17
  He he produces that. So all of that quality is down
• 1:32:20
  to him. And to be to be mentioned in the
• 1:32:23
  same breath as flight for entirety is just I the stuff of
• 1:32:27
  a giddy fool's dream. So I thank you humbly.
• 1:32:31
  I'm also so. So that's my upmarket show.
• 1:32:34
  I also do rural Stories in the end, which as we've mentioned is
• 1:32:38
  me talking with a bunch of people about the New Adventures,
• 1:32:42
  the 8 Doctor books and who knows where we're going to go next
• 1:32:46
  year. Then I do a comedy podcast
• 1:32:50
  called The Electric Sod Cast and like a great many people, I am a
• 1:32:54
  stranger in space. So you can listen to me very
• 1:32:57
  infrequently these days because I'm spread ever so thin.
• 1:33:00
  And I'm toasting to strangers in space, you know?
• 1:33:03
  Well, I wouldn't play with anyone else.
• 1:33:05
  I said. I'll do it on my own or nothing.
• 1:33:08
  He went all right. Well, you've kind of
• 1:33:11
  revolutionized things. And I think J Rs desperately
• 1:33:15
  glad that someone's got a bit of drive and a bit of initiative
• 1:33:18
  because the rest of us are like cats and he has to spend all of
• 1:33:21
  his time corralling us to read this.
• 1:33:24
  Watch that. Now I'm on those group chats,
• 1:33:27
  I'll say just how much work he actually does.
• 1:33:29
  It's amazing on those goals. It's amazing, you know, but then
• 1:33:33
  again, it's because he puts out three episodes a week and that's
• 1:33:35
  a lot of content. And, and obviously we, we talk
• 1:33:39
  about films and books and and TV shows and we've, we've kind of
• 1:33:44
  run out of Doctor Who stuff donkeys years ago, but it's a
• 1:33:48
  really good pop culture show. Dip in and out of it.
• 1:33:50
  There's going to be an episode that will appeal to you.
• 1:33:53
  There's going to be 5 on the trot that maybe don't, but it's,
• 1:33:55
  you know, it's, it's like a like a.
• 1:33:58
  Person to your subject. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:00
  So yeah, I'm I'm. I want to say one thing about
• 1:34:03
  your book podcast now as well. Sorry, I'm so sorry about this,
• 1:34:06
  but I'm doing a bit of marketing for you here, OK, Because I
• 1:34:09
  mean, I will say that too hot for TV where that drops in my
• 1:34:12
  podcast catcher. It does make me sort of cream my
• 1:34:15
  knickers more than where were stories in the end, but that's
• 1:34:18
  only because it's more frequent. Otherwise you'd be on a par for
• 1:34:21
  excitement in my pants. But thinking what I'm trying to
• 1:34:26
  say badly is that the the MVP Doctor Who Book podcast is we're
• 1:34:33
  all stories in the end. And do you know why that is?
• 1:34:36
  Not clear. Because you're on it and you are
• 1:34:40
  so fucking funny. I see they're howling.
• 1:34:44
  You know, there's almost like a, yeah, I've committed to this
• 1:34:48
  task of reading all these fucking books.
• 1:34:51
  And now I'm, I'm wading my way through the dirt, you know, And
• 1:34:56
  every now and again there's a glimmer of light.
• 1:34:59
  You know, yeah. And this and this started off as
• 1:35:01
  a labour of love but after about 3 episodes I was like fucking
• 1:35:05
  hell was hundreds of these. What can I ask a favour?
• 1:35:10
  Yes, please. Please don't stop because it's
• 1:35:12
  just delightful. I love it.
• 1:35:15
  You're very kind, you're very generous, and just for you, I
• 1:35:18
  will keep soldiering on. Yeah, just.
• 1:35:21
  Just for you. I've seen the, I've seen the,
• 1:35:23
  I've seen the figures. It literally is just for you.
• 1:35:27
  Before we go, Ian, I've just, I've just acquired this watch
• 1:35:31
  that I would like to hand to you now, OK?
• 1:35:33
  Should you wish to get the last two hours of your life back,
• 1:35:36
  then just turn the don't read the terms and conditions, turn
• 1:35:39
  the dial. All right, Just see where you go
• 1:35:42
  from there. Is is there any interest or?
• 1:35:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. 5 minutes per hour.
• 1:35:49
  Oh, sorry, I'm sorry. I've got a cough.
• 1:35:51
  No, I'm quite happy to take that at face value and not think
• 1:35:54
  about the fact that you said that bit twice.
• 1:35:55
  That's fine, that's fine. Give me the watch.
• 1:35:57
  I'm off. I'm going to go and have a wee
• 1:35:59
  two hours ago. So I'm going to cut it right
• 1:36:02
  there.