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(This episode is marked as explicit because of strong language, including racist and derogatory language.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser, published in 1999 by Harper Collins Publishers.
Content Note: There is some racist and some derogatory language in this episode.
Noise warning: There are lots of thumps and bumps throughout this recording so, if you have sensitive ears or if you listen through headphones, please proceed with caution.
Joining Charles Adrian for the 80th Second Hand Book Factory is contrarian and alternative poet and performer Neil Spokes. They talk about playing with form, guitar pedals, a book that Charles Adrian doesn’t remember very well and a book that Christopher Hitchins may or may not have liked.
The episode before this one, Page One 105, which was recorded on the same day, features Neil’s wife Tina Sederholm, who can be heard laughing in the background of this episode about 18 minutes in.
Christy Malry’s Own Double Entry by B. S. Johnson is also discussed in Page One 38 and Page One 166.
Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser is also discussed in Page One 184.
For anyone who is unfamiliar, The Goon Show was a very influential British comedy radio show from the 1950s featuring Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine. Just a Minute and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue are also influential and long-running BBC radio comedy shows.
You can watch the video to James’s Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) on YouTube here.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
This episode features a jingle written for the podcast by the band Friends Of Friends.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 10th November, 2015.
Book listing:
Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry by B. S. Johnson
Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux
Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser
Links:
I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue on Wikipedia
Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) on YouTube
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Hi there. Charles Adrian here just before we get going on this episode. I wanted to let you know that there is some racially offensive language right in the middle of this episode so, yes, be warned about that. There are also quite a lot of thumps and bumps throughout, which I'm quite embarrassed about. So, anyway, if you have sensitive ears or if you normally listen through headphones please proceed with caution. Okay.
Charles Adrian
Okay. So. But that... So. Shall we start? Are we [indistinct]? Are we good?
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] Do it.
Charles Adrian
Good. Hello and welcome to the 106th Page One. This is the 80th Second Hand Book Factory. [laughing] I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today is Neil Spokes. Is that right? Spokes?
Neil Spokes
That's correct. Yes. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes, I suddenly. Go... I suddenly had one of those panics where you think [laughing] this will be super embarrassing… of just...
Neil Spokes
It's not Hungarian or anything so...
Charles Adrian
No. You're just Spokes.
Neil Spokes
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Neil Spokes
Sorry.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the Book Podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello Neil.
Neil Spokes
Hello.
Charles Adrian
This... it feels like one of those... you know, like when they record Just a Minute or I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and they always record at least two shows and they go out on different weeks and they say, ‘And welcome back to...’ and the audience all laughs knowingly because they've just been sat there for...
Neil Spokes
Yes.
Charles Adrian
It feels a little bit like that because this will go out the week after the 105th Page One...
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] I see, yes.
Charles Adrian
... with your wife, Tina Sederholm.
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] Yes. Oh her! Yes.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... who was... [laughs] who was here for that.
Neil Spokes
Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
And... Well, you sat very patiently through her interview. Thank you very much.
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] I read a lot of advertisements in the Richmond Times. And Twicken... including Twickenham.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Richmond and Twickenham Times. Yes.
Neil Spokes
Beg your pardon.
Charles Adrian
I'm not sure there would be enough times just in Richmond alone on the show... It's quite a thin paper, isn't it? Even Richmond and Twickenham together.
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] It's quite... quite thin.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Neil Spokes
Mmm.
Charles Adrian
It is a... But that's not to do it down. It's a wonderful paper.
Neil Spokes
It's... It's an august volume.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] How would you describe [laughing] yourself, Neil?
Neil Spokes
[laughs] Contrary.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] If you were a newspaper... [laughs]
Neil and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Neil Spokes
Yeah. Contrary.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Neil Spokes
Yeah. I was talking to Tina about this in the car last week and...
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Was that when you were on your way up here?
Neil Spokes
[affirmative] Mmm. And, yeah, you know how... Yeah, I don't want to compare myself to anyone who's great or brilliant but I'm going to. You know how Stuart Lee would be compared... how he would see comedy perhaps? I'd like to say that I would see myself as [having] a similar relationship to poetry and performance poetry.
Charles Adrian
So a kind of alternative... Stuart Lee still describes himself as an alternative comic, doesn't he?
Neil Spokes
Broadly, yeah.
Charles Adrian
He comes out of that school, doesn't he?
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] Yes.
Charles Adrian
So... Okay. So—broadly—a, kind of, alternative poet?
Neil Spokes
Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. I'm not so interested in writing, in form or anything. I'm more interested in the feel of a thing or the magic that can come out of something that's been quite an organic process where I'm not trying to fit things into syllables and shapes and stuff like that.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Neil Spokes
So yeah. And I guess that's where a lot of my contrariness comes from.
Charles Adrian
Very nice. Do you enjoy performance?
Neil Spokes
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Do you also enjoy... I mean, when you talk about poetry are you talking just about performance or...?
Neil Spokes
I get very, very bored with written poetry.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Neil Spokes
It's tedious.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Right.
Neil Spokes
And I think the important thing is the communication, the face-to-face, hearing it, the resonance, and how it's delivered. Because obviously it's... The person who writes it delivers it in their way and that's the way it should be delivered. So I am a great believer in the live form of poetry. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Very nice.
Neil Spokes
Mmm. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Very nice. What is the... What's the book that you've brought that you like?
Neil Spokes
That I like is... It's by B. S. Johnson.
Charles Adrian
Uh huh.
Neil Spokes
And it's Christie Malry's Own Double Entry.
Charles Adrian
[takes breath] Mmm. Interesting.
Neil Spokes
Yeah. It's... It was given to me by a friend who's quite into his literature and classics and stuff and he knows me quite well—he's my bassist in my band. I've known him for ten or twelve...twelve years now. And he, kind of, thought, ‘Yeah, B.S. Johnson, he's quite contrary as well’. And I just love the way he breaks down the idea of what a novel should be in here. And he's... there's just a knowing nod and a wink to the reader all the way through and it... but it doesn't get tiresome, you know, in that, kind of... that, sort of, postmodern, fourth-wall-breaking kind of thing. It could be like a one trick pony but with this it's just all the way through. But he, kind of... he challenges you in way... You know, there are graphic representations of what he's going on about through the book, which are fantastic because... yeah, you're reading... It's a visual thing as much as it is a literary thing. And it includes letters and... yeah, and statements and really disarming chapter titles like ‘Here...’ Chapter two is: ‘Here is Christie's Great Idea!’ So he's turning the reader's expectation into a device.
Charles Adrian
Yes. Yeah.
Neil Spokes
And... You know, and that's something I like to play with as well. I was talking earlier about form and [so on]: I'm more interested in playing with people's expectations of what they're about to see or hear and that's one of the reasons I absolutely love this book.
Charles Adrian
Read... Read us the first page of it.
Neil Spokes
First page.
sound
[pages turning]
Neil Spokes
Right, first page.
Christie Malry was a simple person.
It did not take him long to realise that he had not been born into money ; that he would therefore have to acquire it as best he could ; that there were unpleasant (and to him unacceptable) penalties for acquiring it by those methods considered to be criminal by society ; that there were other methods not (somewhat arbitrarily) considered criminal by society ; and that the course most likely to benefit him would be to place himself next to the money, or at least next to those who were making it. He therefore decided that he should become a bank employee.
I did tell you Christie was a simple person.
At the interview formally granted to all new employees by one of the bank's General Managers at Head Office, Christie's minimal qualifications were laid bare, his appearance scrutinised, and his nervousness remarked on. Then he was asked why he wished to join the bank. Christie was lost, could not think of his answer. One was shortly supplied for him : most young men joined the bank for the security, for the very liberal pension which amounted to two-thirds of whatever salary the employee was receiving at retiring age. And this retiring age itself was [as] an act of generosity sixty, and not sixty-five !
Not only was Christie simple, he was young, too, a few...
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm. Very nice. I'm sure I have read this. And I think... I'm pretty sure somebody... I mean, I know that somebody brought it onto the podcast and I'm.... I think they must have given it to me and I must have read it and I have the haziest memory...
Neil and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
... of it—probably because it is so... it's such a... yeah, a form game, I guess. Or a...
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] Yes.
Charles Adrian
... a playfulness.
Neil Spokes
Very much so. But also the idea within the book as well that life is simply about debits and credits and it's...
sound
[pages turning]
Neil Spokes
Just to remind me here what that was about was... Yeah: double entry bookkeeping. [laughs] The first one here there's a debit for AGGRAVATION: ‘Unpleasantness of Bank General Manager’ and that was a pound against him for... yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Neil Spokes
But then he gained a credit... a RECOMPENSE. ‘Small kindnesses from Joan’ evened that out.
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm. That's lovely.
Neil Spokes
And there's one thing where he disliked the atrium of a company or something and so to... because of that offence to him he ran his key along the side of the building..
Charles Adrian
Right. Yes.
Neil Spokes
... and... just to balance those things out. And I just... And I think, yeah, that's pretty cool to be able to go through life like that and have it as black and white and as simple as that. Of course, he goes then on to do some terrible things.
Charles Adrian
Well, there's a w... Yes, it's such a... Once you start thinking of the world in those terms then you become quite dangerous.
Neil Spokes
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Everything becomes directed at you and then whatever retribution you feel is appropriate is entirely justified in your eyes.
Neil Spokes
Exactly. It's highly subjective and... yeah, and it does become almost arbitrary to everyone around that person.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. Yes. But there's that wonderful... yeah, exactly... that, sort of, self-centeredness which is everywhere. We see it... I mean, I see it in myself and I see it, yeah, all over. Wonderful. Oh, thank you very much, Neil.
Neil Spokes
[acknowledging] Mmm. Welcome.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Now we're going to play the first track that I chose from your list.
Neil Spokes
Ooo.
Charles Adrian
So this was... What was it? Thursday's list.
Neil Spokes
It was Thursday's.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Something like that. So this was Thursday's list.
Neil Spokes
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
So... And it was a very good list and it was full of things that I didn't know, which is always great.
Neil Spokes
Okay.
Charles Adrian
But I've chosen... The first one I've chosen is Touch Me I'm Sick by Mudhoney...
Neil Spokes
[laughs] [speaking over] Excellent. Yes.
Charles Adrian
... from the album Superfuzz Bigmuff?
Neil Spokes
Yes.
Charles Adrian
These guys [laughing] sound... They sound fun.
Neil Spokes
Oh, they are. They're immense fun. The album title—Superfuzz Bigmuff… they are two distortion pedals.
Charles Adrian
Is that right?
Neil Spokes
They're effects pedals. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Very nice. [laughs]
Neil Spokes
I didn't discover that until years later, actually. I just thought it was, like, a... quite a kooky, slightly sexist, sort of, title. And I guess that's what they were playing with.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes, that's what it sounds... It sounds... It sounds childish. Yeah. So this is... this is Touch Me I'm Sick.
Music
[Touch Me I'm Sick by Mudhoney]
Charles Adrian
Right. So that was Mudhoney with Touch Me I'm Sick.
Neil Spokes
Beautiful.
Charles Adrian
It's... It's great! I mean, it's not... That's not something I would listen to normally at all. I realise that, you know, a lot of my music is often, kind of, gentle and slow. There's not a lot of shouting. It's... There's certainly... There aren't many effects. There aren't many pedals [laughing] used in the music I like so it's really... it's really nice to have someone on the podcast who brings stuff that I would never come across.
Neil Spokes
Oh cool.
Charles Adrian
And I really like that.
Neil Spokes
Excellent.
Charles Adrian
Right. Now, my book for you...
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] You can—sorry to in... You can say if you hate it. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
If I hated it I wouldn't choose it. Or... [laughs]
Neil Spokes
That's fair enough.
Charles Adrian
Or I would make it clear that I didn't like it but I was choosing it anyway.
Neil and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
I have done that in the past.
Neil Spokes
I'm used to people saying that that is awful.
Charles Adrian
I... No, I really... I really quite like it.
Neil Spokes
Okay. Good. Good.
Charles Adrian
Okay. This... So. But this book I'm giving to you, this comes with the the same... So last... last week's...
Neil Spokes
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... book... It's the same situation in that it came from... well, it's the top of the pile of books which I've made in my...
Neil and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
... in my sitting room now that the back of my house is being worked on and so I don't have a very strong memory of this book. But I just... I don't know why. I thought, ‘Well...’ Because I looked at all of the books that I could grab to choose something and there were several books that I really liked and thought maybe I would give to you and then I saw this and I thought something about this is speaking to me and I thought I will trust that. So you may hate it but that would be interesting in itself, I think.
Neil Spokes
[acknowledging] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
It's about... I mean, it's by Paul Theroux. I think it's probably the only book I've ever read by Paul Theroux. And it's about Hong Kong just before the handover back to China. So it's a very... I think it is a very, kind of, British story probably but set in Hong Kong—if that makes sense. But I can't tell you anything about the story and so I'm giving this to you...
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] Brilliant.
Charles Adrian
... as a, kind of, ‘Let's see!’
Neil Spokes
I'll let you know.
Charles Adrian
Let me know.
Neil Spokes
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Let me know what you think. I think you're the kind of person who I don't mind giving a book to that you won't like—if that makes sense.
Neil Spokes
Okay. I don't know what that implies quite. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] It implies that I don't care what you think.
1
SOME DAYS Hong Kong seemed no different from the London suburb she had lived in before the war. Today, for example, the cold early morning with fragments of fog at the windows, she was back in Balham. The gray sky was falling in big soft wisps of tumbled stuffing, like a cushion torn open — but not one of those stinky straw-filled Chinese cushions. When the wind gusted, the drops of rain, as though flushed from just above her, plopped harder on the roof, which was also the ceiling of the parlour at Albion Cottage. The sky, the roof, the ceiling — on a wet day like this they were one thing.
Betty Mullard sat in what she called the lounge waiting for her son, Bunt, to come in to breakfast.
“Fancy that,” she said softly to the plip-plop of the rain. “Chinky-Chonks.”
And she went on thinking: Chinese relatives? What Chinese relatives?
She had just put the phone down after speaking to Monty, who was Mr. Chuck's solicitor, and also hers — theirs, the firm's, everyone trusted Monty. He was a Londoner too, a lad, sported a bowler hat, and he just laughed and looked at her with dead eyes when she said, “I trust you because you're a jewboy.”
Mr. Chuck had never mentioned Chinese relatives.
The question was, How to tell Bunt?
[laughing] I think I've made an absolute meal of that. And as I read that aloud to you...
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] I loved it.
Charles Adrian
... I'm even less sure that [it's going to be...]
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] No, no, I love... That was brilliant. I'm excited because on the first page words like ‘stinky’ and ‘plop’ [laughing] are...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Neil Spokes
... are cropping up. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Maybe my instinct was not so far off.
Neil Spokes
[laughs] I mean, the names! Mr. Chuck!
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Neil Spokes
Fantastic. I think I'm going to very much [laughing] enjoy that.
Charles Adrian
There we go. That was... Did I say what it was? It was Kowloon Tong, is the name of it. It's by Paul Theroux. And what's the book that you...
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] Brilliant. Brilliant.
Charles Adrian
... you think I should have?
Neil Spokes
[laughs] It's... Not just you but everybody should have this.
Charles Adrian
Oh my word! I've never read any of these.
Neil Spokes
[takes a breath] Well. It's Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser and...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [laughs] This has quite... Who is it who was a huge fan of these? Thingummy Thingummy. The guy who... He was one of the big atheists before he died of cancer.
Neil Spokes
Yeah... um...
Charles Adrian
Who lived in America. Became American, was British. His brother's a very conservative…
Neil Spokes
What did he do?
Charles Adrian
He was a writer and a journalist. He wrote...
Neil Spokes
I think I...
Charles Adrian
Do you know who I mean? [frustrated noise]
Neil Spokes
I think I might do.
Charles Adrian
I've got a book of his on the shelf. I could probably peer round and... No, it's too far round the corner.
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] Tina, do you know who he is? Talking to the past now.
Charles Adrian
He's... He's the guy... He wrote... I think he wrote God Is Not Great. Unless that was Dawkins's book.
Neil Spokes
No. Or it might be.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It was... Yeah, it was his book. That was God... Let me run down and find out who it is.
Neil Spokes
Okay.
Charles Adrian
[fading into distance] I'm sure it's him who's a big fan of Flashman.
Neil Spokes
Can we put Goon-style, like, running footsteps onto the podcast now?
Tina Sederholm and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
[distant] Oh yes. He's actually hiding behind that pile of books there. I think I can [indistinct]. Whoops-a-daisy! Or if [indistinct].
Neil Spokes
It's like that scene in the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Charles Adrian
[distant but louder] Christopher Hitchens!
Neil Spokes
Christopher Hitchens. Right.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [distant] I think he's a big Flashman fan.
Neil Spokes
Right.
sound
[footsteps running up stairs]
Neil Spokes
Experts are looking into it.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Neil Spokes
Right. Okay.
Charles Adrian
But I'll probably cut all of that out. Introduce your [laughing] book again.
Neil Spokes
It's Royal [laughing] Flash...
Neil and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Neil Spokes
... by George MacDonald Fraser. Apparently, Christopher Hitchens was a fan...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Neil Spokes
... of his work.
Charles Adrian
He may have been if... I have it in the back of my head that he was a fan.
Neil Spokes
Yeah. And it's about Harry Flashman, who was a soldier. And it's his adventures during the Victorian era around the empire. But it's written in a strange... There's a device and it's... Basically, George Macdonald Fraser—the author—says that he was in an auction rooms in Leicestershire in the 1960s and came across these packets of papers. And he suggests that they are biographical writing by this Harry Flashman and he sets them out in the books. And there are about a dozen or so of these.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Ah wonderful.
Neil Spokes
So the first page:
If I had been the hero everyone thought I was, or even a half-decent soldier, Lee would have won the battle of Gettysburg and probably captured Washington. That is another story, which I shall set down in its proper place if brandy and old age don't carry me off first, but I mention the fact here because it shows how great events are decided by trifles.
Scholars, of course, won't have it so. Policies, they say, and the subtly laid schemes of statesmen, are what influence the destinies of nations; the opinions of intellectuals, the writings of philosophers, settle the fate of mankind. Well, they may do their share, but in my experience the course of history is as often settled by someone's having a belly-ache, or not sleeping well, or a sailor getting drunk, or some aristocratic harlot waggling her backside.
So when I say that my being rude to a certain foreigner altered the course of European history, it is a considered judgement. If I had dreamed for a moment how important that man was going to be, I'd have been as civil as the devil to him, yes-me-lording and stroking his back. But in my youth and ignorance I imagined that he was one of those to whom I could be rude with impunity—servants, tarts, bagmen, shopkeepers, and foreigners—and so I gave my unpleasant tongue free rein. In the long run it nearly cost me my neck, quite apart from changing the map of the world.
It was in '42, when I was barely out of my ’teens, but already famous. I had taken a distinguished part in the fiasco known as the First Afghan War, emerged with a hero's laurels, been decorated by the Queen, and lionised all over London. The fact that I had gone through the campaign...
Charles Adrian
I think that sounds wonderful. I think I'm really going to enjoy that. Thank you so much, Neil.
Neil Spokes
You're welcome. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
This... So we're going to finish now with another... so another track that I've chosen. And this I could hardly not choose...
Neil Spokes
Oh. Okay.
Charles Adrian
... after our conversation in Edinburgh about these guys. So I was a little bit rude about them in the sense that...
Neil Spokes
Were you?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Because you were going to see... You two were going to see James in concert...
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] Oh! Yes. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... and I'm sure I said something along the lines of, ‘It can't take them that long to sing their song. Is it going to be [laughing] worth going all that way just to hear them sing Sit Down?’
Neil Spokes
Mmm [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] And [laughing] you told me that in fact you were big fans of their whole oeuvre...
Neil Spokes
Yes.
Charles Adrian
... and that they'd produced quite a lot of stuff. And so this is one that I hadn't heard before.
Neil Spokes
Oh, brilliant. good.
Charles Adrian
And it's very nice. I like it.
Neil Spokes
It's... It's our song.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I also like the video to this. It's a beautiful video. I like what they did.
Neil Spokes
Yeah, yeah.
Charles Adrian
And this is also your song? So Tina chose one that was your song.
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] That was weird, wasn't it? Yes, our first dance. And this is the song that, kind of, like, sums up our lives.
Charles Adrian
Oh!
Neil Spokes
It's our song.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh, well that is... Wow.
Neil Spokes
So...
Charles Adrian
Oh, well that's brilliant.
Neil Spokes
[speaking over] ... it's very intuitive...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Neil Spokes
... of you.
Charles Adrian
Well, I... I am. [laughs]
Neil Spokes
Clearly. Yes.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] This... So this... Oh how lovely just to finish off this duet of episodes—as it were—this is Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) by James. Thank you so much for doing this with me, Neil. [indistinct]
Neil Spokes
It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's awesome.
Music
[Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) by James]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]