To others, he plays choice songs on Radio 2.
To me: he was also chairman of Melchester Rovers.
And to a growing number of people, hes the author of some really fine works of fiction.
His latest,Blame, sees him heading into the world of Young Adult.
Tell me a little bit aboutBlame…
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You cant go wrong with that!
Why did you mess up?
You told me to start with something soft and gentle to open things up.
Mine was too wordy!
[Laughs]Blameis set a few years in the future.
Its mostly set in prison.
Its an adventure involving a sister and a brother.
She is called Ant, and he is called Matty.
Shes 16, hes 11.
Its the major idea behind the book.
The name comes from the Victorian name for workhouse.
It sounds grounded in reality already.
But did you find deeper, modern resonance to heritage crime?
What was the spark for you?
The actual spark was, very bizarrely and your readers will have to take it as true!
it came from a dream!
I was writing it for Michael, so wanted it to be as good as it possibly could be.
I found a photograph, sent the article off, and forgot all about it.
It wasnt true, but that was the dream.
And everyone else in the queue was going to prison for things that their family had gone.
My wife said that it sounded like the beginning of something, and I should write it down.
The phrase heritage crime came to me quite quickly, and it sounded believable.
I spoke to a couple of politicians.
I spoke to Douglas Alexander and Charlie Falconer.
All of a sudden, it turned it on his head.
A politician goes onQuestion Time, thats where they start.
That was the key construct to make it work.
How did you go about turning this into a book though?
I wasnt originally sure what shape the story would be.
It was originally going to be an adult novel, with the foster parents taking the lead.
Ant and Matty then became the two central characters.
My favourite books of recent times have been theHis Dark MaterialsPhilip Pullman books.
A work of extraordinary imagination.
Which you cant be separated from.
Ant and Matty work together as a pair.
When theyre separated, she gets into trouble.
When theyre together, hes her conscience.
So that was the idea, really.
You started this story three years ago, but its landed at a point whereBlameseems strangely prescient.
Blame is everywhere right now, and nobody believes anything.
Weve just had the Chilcot report too.
Its timely, but hopefully not too timely!
It took three years.
Partly to get it right, but I also co-wroteThe Movie Doctorsin the middle.
We go through spasms of blame.
It happens all the time.
So I wanted to touch partly on that.
All of that was in the background.
The main point was to write an exciting story.
Because I think Ant is all of those.
I wanted it to be a page turner, but feel like it has some heft.
On page 351, one of your characters sits down and says A little boring would be fine!
Its there, but not for very long.
There isnt really much let-up.
Once [plot spoiler redacted] happens, thats the rocket fuel for the rest of the book.
It isnt under control, they are acting stupidly, they do mad things.
And I wanted it to feel unpredictable and dangerous.
Where did the character of Ant come from then?
Then I completely turned it around and she was the main character.
And some things about the story changed, and some have stayed the same, right from the beginning.
She was always going to be biracial.
She was always going to be a foster kid.
And she was always going to be in prison.
And she was always going to have a shaved head, goose tattoos.
But she has every reason to be messed up.
Where she came from, I dont know.
Go to the originalAlienfilm, and theyre all realistically moaning about work.
Go toIndependence Day: Resurgence, and theyre all talking in plot narrative points.
The prison system is corrupt.
To make the riot in the book feel real, I had to read a lot about prison riots.
Its almost like an equation.
Or the perception of one.
Therefore, the prison officers had to be disillusioned.
Denholm and McTavish are the face of a prison officer system that is completely messed up.
I read a fantastic book calledNewjackby Ted Conover.
So he jacked in his job and became a prison officer.
Its an amazing book.
Well-run prisons, properly staffed?
It had to be a crap prison, run badly.
It had to be scary, too.
I wanted it to feel like a zombie attack.
Susie Dent says you have a clear love of language.
She told me that strutter-filth was her favourite insult of the year!
I was extremely gratified, as you could imagine!
She described your writing to me as Rowling-esque in your use of language.
Theres no higher praise!
Could you talk a little about how you crafted the language of the book?
I was trying to get away with not swearing too much!
One of the genius words that J K Rowling came up with was mudblood.
With prison slang, and prison officer slang, everyone has words and phrases.
And I found it a way of giving character to the prison.
What happens in a prison?
Sex, drugs, violence.
Theres no sex, there are no drugs, but theres a lot of violence.
But also, you know that if the dialogue had been realistic….!
There is some bad language, but not very much!
My degree was history and politics, and my thesis was Nazi persecution of the Jews, 1933-1945.
The whole scapegoat thing Im very familiar with, as many people are.
And I thought, I love that.
Which is, of course, the whole point.
Basically, the world is exactly the same.
The only change really to the one your readers is in are heritage crime, and drones.
The drone technology is moving very fast, so that seemed to be a logical evolution.
Not only for the plot, but also so I could buy a drone, which I did.
And I experimented with it.
If you put it down as research, you’re free to get away with anything!
Anthony Horowitz said to me that Id built this extraordinary world, which coming from him was praise.
But I never thought of it like that.
Its really a tweak.
The prison system, the language that goes with it, the strap that everyone has to wear.
I dont think I could write a book where you have to have a map at the beginning.
For me, it was just a legal rig, and then following the logic of that through.
Can we talk about the strap?
The idea of young prisoners who have a painful-sounding physical gear basically welded into their skin?
Its a very 12A moment in the book.
And I know youve been asked about the target age forBlamea lot.
12A is useful, because cinema folk get it, and 12A can be pretty tough.
I was amazed that the Tom CruiseWar Of The Worldswas a 12A.
There are scenes in that where theyre harvesting the blood, thats a 15 for me.
But nothing in my mind has been as shocking as children killing children inThe Hunger Games.
Do you like your book, and is it what you envisaged?
I would love to write a follow-up, but that depends on how many people buy the first one!
I get people saying that Matty is their favourite character.
I do think that hes easier to like, because shes so spikey!
And is it what you envisaged?
I think it is.
I always knew where it would end up.
Things emerged: the relationships, the Haitian stuff, the German stuff, the character of Max.
Mattys diaries, the idea of Mattys writing being important to the story.
The major twists I hadnt worked out.
Yes and no, really.
The major architecture of the book is how I envisaged it, but everything else is a surprise.
Itchhad characters based on the likes of Jason Isaacs and Michael Sheen in there.
But your main villain inBlameis Mark Kermode, isnt it?
[Laughs] Yeah.
Interestingly, yes and no.
Theres one other Wittertainment reference that some people have been Tweeting me.
And Dan says you cant take pizza into the movies.
There is an element of Mark.
But mainly its Michael Gove.
The physical appearance is similar, although Assessor Grey [the villain] is shorter.
The reason why Gove works better, is that hes clearly a zealot.
Assessor Grey comes from Edinburgh, Michael Gove is from Aberdeen.
He has a Scottish accent.
The main point was to have a reformation purity zeal, a Cromwellian passion for morality.
Although there is the slicked-back hair and the glasses, hes actually more Gove-ian than Kermode-ian!
I bet Assessor Grey likesPirates Of The Caribbeanmovies.
[Laughs]
Hes an evil bastard!
Whats been the impact of writing on you, then?
I spoke to you just after youd writtenItch, your first novel.
And you werent sure which way this would go.
Then I read a subsequent piece where you talked about how you never saw all of this coming.
Can you encapsulate for us what becoming a successful author has done for you?
I certainly didnt see it coming, and Ive interviewed hundreds of authors.
They all say, all of them, they had either always written, or always wanted to write.
It never occurred to me to write, ever.
I struggled with English at school.
I remember writing it and thinking this is quite good.
And I remember Mr Knox reading it out.
Everything else was terrible after that, but then I wondered if there was something there.
But radio was always such a passion, so I went in that direction.
WhenItchhappened I was the most surprised person in the world, apart from my mother.
She was like, really, youve written a book?!
The radio, I can do it.
Whether its the movie show or Radio 2, I know what Im doing.
Some are great, some are less great.
I dont have to work as hard.
I work hard at everything, but its what I do.
The writing has become a painful obsession, Id say.
It doesnt come naturally, I have to work very, very hard at it.
To write 1000 words can take a whole day.
But this is the best stage.
The book is there, its finished, people are saying nice things about it.
Youve talked in the past that when youre broadcasting, you imagine its to one person.
With writing, youve said you do it just for you.
Is that still the case?
Its certainly a very vulnerable place to be.
If its terrible, theres nobody else to blame.
If people like it, thats great, and you get all the credit!
Its the complete opposite of radio work, in that radio is disposable.
I will go and do a show tonight, and Ill forget about it.
Tomorrow Ill do another one.
Its a lonely place to be, in that you cant share it with anyone.
You do have an editor.
You cant farm that out, and it sits with you.
But my instinctive reaction was to bristle.
These are my characters!
But they know what theyre doing.
But I also recall that you turned around to him and said that you could do that with radio.
Why, then, are radio and the written word two fairly analogue disciplines so important to you personally?
Theres great joy in the well-honed question.
Its down to words again, choosing the right words in the right place.
And I ask ramble-y questions, everybody does.
And I wish that I didnt.
Larry King, when he was on CNN, asked the shortest questions.
If you ask a great long question, they know where theyre going to go with it.
With the book, its word selection, sentence construction.
I write ramble-y prose, which is where the editing has to come in!
I was writing Mattys diary in the book, and was listening to Paul Gambaccini on the radio.
And he playedThese Are A Few Of My Favourite ThingsfromThe Sound Of Music.
And it is a lightbulb moment.
It perculates through: thats what he might do, this is how he can stay positive.
Those moments: theyre joyful, you go okay, that actually works.
There are lots of moments where it doesnt, but its a nice feeling to have!
Whats next for you, then?
Are the radio programmes set for the future?
Do you know what you want to write?
Are you still cruising around the world?
The film show carries on.
Radio 2 carries on.
That really should be enough, shouldnt it?
But my next story is already underway… its notBlame 2, but Id love to write that.
The new book is very different, its historical fiction.
Yes, I think so.
But thats a matter of dispute at the moment!
Literally on the four pages.
Ive come across a story that is so extraordinary that it was bought straight away.
Its going to happen, and I havent written the book!
I came across the story when I was researchingBlame.
Its going to involve some extraordinary characters.
Joe Eszterhas used to do it in the 1990s, but he was selling seedy erotic thrillers.
At least its not at the moment!
What happened to me is obviously not typical.
Having a profile only meant that I could get to first base.
I wouldnt still be writing if that was all you needed.
IfItchhad been rubbish, nothing would have happened.
It was the biggest inspiration to me.
Its not a how-to book.
Its not a self-help manual.
My son writes stories on Tumblr.
He wont tell me what his name is though!
But hes writing it and putting it out there.
The facility is there.
If you have an idea, write something and put it out.
But theres so much of that.
How do you get your stuff noticed?
But Jason Isaacs says this.
Whether you’re able to get noticed is entirely different.
The technology, though, is working for you.
I found what he suggested was enormously do-able, it was a pattern I could follow.
I read his books now in a different way.
Im looking for adverbs!
Blame is available as a book and ebook, from Corgi.
