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Another intense round recording four podcasts in four hours at the Podcast Room in London. For the first time I actually messed up my timings a bit so I actually did four and a quarter hours and thanks to the Podcast Room for letting me run over a bit so that I could get a decent length interview with Lorna Rose Treen.
Unusually I only did one Book Club (with Andrew Hunter Murray) and three RHLSTPs (with Andrew, Ronni Ancona and Lorna). It's lovely to do the Book Clubs face to face rather than remotely, and studio RHLSTPs have a very different vibe to theatre ones. Sometimes they are more reserved because no one is playing up to the crowd, but they can also be more revelatory as it feels like you're just having a chat.
Today, with Andrew, it was I that opened up, talking about my shoplifting days in the 1990s (though I had nicked a paper bag from M and S last night so I am not totally over my thievery and also occasionally sit in first class with a standard ticket - I think I am probably just a really bad person).
I was really (I thought at least) a good boy who was brought up properly by my very honest and decent mum and dad, so it was a strange period of my life and quite out of character when I turned to crime.
Although I was pretty poor at the time I don't think I really ever stole anything I really needed. This wasn't a case of taking a loaf of bread to feed my family and often just a case of taking something to see if I could. I stole a hair dryer from Boots, some printer ribbons from Ryman (though I did need those) and all of the Tintin books, in two visits to Waterstones. Plus quite a few Kinder eggs.
I was, I realise, pretty unhappy and insecure in my twenties and I think that these actions were those of a depressive and someone who maybe wanted to be caught. It was in some ways a cry for help, but also I got a bit addicted to the thrill of it. I would have been devastated if I had been caught. I never was, though once a customer saw me take a magazine in Edinburgh (I was hoping my show had been reviewed) and caught me up and said "I hope you enjoy your magazine" (I probably didn't, especially if it did have a review of me in it) and I later went back and gave the newsagent the money, claiming unconvincingly that I'd forgotten to pay.
It was desperate and grubby stuff, but I was a sad and grubby young man. I was lost and lonely and had no idea if things would go my way. Plus I had failed to rebel as a teenager and so I did all this stuff embarrassingly late. I suppose my whole life has been me growing up embarrassingly late. But these transgressions now haunt me at 3am (though not the stealing a paper bag from M and S which will presumably become a big deal at 3am when I am in my eighties).
Am I a baddie?
I think that baddies don't ever feel guilty about the stuff they've done and also probably do worse things than purloining the work of Herge. I think I might be an arsehole. I am really trying hard not to be. But you can't escape from what you are.
Maybe I should go back to all the shops I remember stealing from and pay up now. It would be good to see the confused faces of the staff. It'd probably be quite annoying for them. Like when my mum and dad claimed for some cufflinks they thought they'd lost in a burglary and then months later found them, and then rang the insurance company to say they had to give the money back.
Speaking to some people in insurance at a corporate they said how annoying this would have been for the staff who would have had to reopen a closed case for the sake of £20.
Maybe I should just give the money to the staff of the shop and tell them to have a few drinks on me. Ian Boots and Ian Waterstones can survive this loss (and will have charged all of you lot for it anyway -sorry). I don't think I ever stole from Ian WH Smiths or Ian Woolworths so I can't be held responsible for the collapse of any company.
It was lovely to see Ronni again, who was justly put out by the fact that I'd never asked her on the show before (and I really don't know why not). We worked together a lot in the 90s and she is fantastic. She's having fun on Eastenders at the moment and has done a whole load of incredible stuff. She was in the live version of Lionel Nimrod back in 92 and remembered it, almost certainly correctly, as being enjoyably slapdash.
And I'd very much enjoyed catching up on Lorna's stuff this week and she's a very exciting new(er) talent.
Her BBC radio show Time of the Week had a little bit of the flavour of On The Hour, but it's wonderfully its own thing too. It's rather lovely to have that show given a little nod, a generation or two on.
She was also one of the writers on Saturday Night Live and has won a shedload of awards already and I highly recommend checking out her tour show this autumn.
