https://www.channel4.com/programmes/kathy-burke-growing-up Kathy Burke and me are around the same age. We belong to the UB40 generation of Red, Red Wine and I am the 1 in 10 . Now we are the 1 in 5 growing like a cancerous cell. We belong to a vanguard army that plays a leading role in dementia and death, and most other things you’d rather not think about. Over 9 in 10 Covid deaths belonged to our age group. I didn’t vote for being old. I didn’t...

Betsy Lerner (2017) The Bridge Ladies. A writer’s job is to remember. I’d a dream that I was staying in Betty Lerner’s house in New York, but it was Clydebank outside. I don’t know what she looks like. Nor does it matter. Most meetings I have are on the page. I write a blog with a handful of followers. I read one of her blogs and she asked a question about favourite books (that’s a hook so you’ll come back again). I typed in the classic, Growing...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001jw7l/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0f50h4m/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0f50jqx/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-series-1-episode-3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0f50n4g/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-series-1-episode-4 We Need to Talk About Cosby is a play on the title of Lionel Shriver’s...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001jnfb/the-mormons-are-coming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormons Yesterday, I said to Sean, Robin’s dad, I couldn’t get swimming because there were two ducks in the swimming pool. ‘Really!’ he replied. ‘No,’ spluttered five-year-old Robin and Tilly at the same time. Shaking their heads and running away with that bemused expression that means that means they know what they’re about. ‘He’s a liar,’ said...

When the story first broke about the changes to Roald Dahl’s books for children, I was as outraged as everyone else. So Augustus Gloop in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was no longer to be “enormously fat” but simply “enormous”. Mrs Twit in “The Twits” was changed from being “ugly and beastly” to just “beastly”. Lots of people have weighed in on the debate including Salman Rushdie, Brian Cox, Ricky Jervais and even Rishi Sunak has expressed...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeToo_movement I know a girl, a little girl, I think of her in that way because of her size. She’s tiny. She got raped. I know the rapist too. I also know his mum. She contacted me and asked me to stop calling him a rapist. ‘It was just one of those things,’ she said. ‘She panicked.’ The irony here is her daughter must have panicked too. Because she’d gone to the police alleging an acquaintance had raped her a few...

https://www.channel5.com/show/the-great-stink-of-1858/#main-content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink John Major: “Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less.” We all know where deregulation and a lack of cooperation take us. It allows us to put carbon into the air and gives our planet multiple sclerosis. That’s a deadly miasma which will be terminal for most of us. Coming to you soon. Britain 1858 is the...

Nobody tells you how much you’ll come to hate your book. Fight or flight. You freeze. You’re being held down and forced to read it again. Try a different font. Try reading it aloud. Give it time to settle. While I was waiting, I wrote a rough draft of the follow-up novel, Angel . Try primal screaming. It doesn’t work but it does annoy the neighbours. At least they know how you feel. The problem isn’t someone else’s. While you’re lining sentences...

Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry , has as its protagonist Elizabeth Zott, who shoots from the hip, and never fails to tell the reader why. The past is never past and all that. And in physics, as in life, nothing is ever lost. But Elizabeth Zott is a chemist. A first-class chemist. Physics may have created the atomic and hydrogen bombs. But it was chemistry and chemists that created our modern world. Elizabeth Zott is a genius, in the same way...

Channel 4, The Billionaires Who Made Our World. Bill Gates. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-billionaires-who-made-our-world/on-demand/72330-002 ‘The Global Fund is one of the best and kindest thing people have ever done for one another. Our Foundation announces a $500 million grant to The Global Fund.’ Bill Gates. Dear Bill, I’m sure you don’t remember me, but your algorithm does. You ‘friended’ me on Twitter. That was before the other...