Find Page One on APPLE PODCASTS or STITCHER.
(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry by B.S. Johnson, published in 2001 by Picador; cover photograph: Julia Hember.
Joining Charles Adrian for the 26th Second Hand Book Factory is the improviser, comedian and (steampunk) Marxist James Ross. James shares the story of a standing-up that ended well, the two of them compare contrasting memories of the book Charles Adrian has brought for James, and they listen to one song whose title takes almost as long to say as the song itself takes to play.
Another book by Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard Of Earthsea, is discussed in Page One 108.
Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry by B. S. Johnson is also discussed in Page One 106 and Page One 166.
This episode was recorded at The Bell in Aldgate for London Fields Radio.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
A transcript for this episode is below.
Episode released: 4th June, 2013.
Book listing:
Cautionary Tales by Hilaire Belloc
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry by B. S. Johnson
Links:
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening... you're listening to London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to Page One On The Run. This is the 38th Page One. It's the 26th Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian. I'm recording in The Bell pub in Aldgate, huddling over the microphone in the hope that I will be overheard...
James Ross
Ambient noise ambient noise ambient noise ambient noise...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Let's start with one of my guest's choices. This is... This is Not Superstitious by Leatherface.
Music
[Not Superstitious by Leatherface]
Charles Adrian
That was... That was Not Superstitious by Leatherface. Is that right? Leatherface? Yeah.
James Ross
[speaking over] Yes, that's correct. That's all correct.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] And this is James Ross. My guest today is James Ross.
James Ross
Hello!
Charles Adrian
Hello. How would you describe yourself? I'm going to let you describe yourself first and then I'm going to describe you.
James Ross
How I would describe myself? I'm bored. I'm tired, Adrian, I'm so tired.
Charles Adrian
You always complain of being tired...
James Ross
I do.
Charles Adrian
... actually, every time I see you.
James Ross
Yep. I've got a lot on.
Charles Adrian
With a huge amount of energy, you often bound up to the microphone...
James Ross
[laughing] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... and complain about [laughing] being tired.
James Ross
[laughs] I'm winning the audience over. I think they'll identify with that quality.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Yeah.
James Ross
I... Well, I'm tired and also tiresome. Prepare to migrate from category A to category B. This is... That's... That's going to be my new pitch.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
James Ross
Yeah, so stuff I do: I work a tedious office job to support my exceedingly unremunerated secondary career in comedy, where I do various things. I've been doing improv stuff for nine years, including, sort of, four and a bit years of that with...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
James Ross
... Fat Kitten Improv - it's a group I set up. I went up to Edinburgh a number of years, did sell-out runs - hooray, hooray, hooray - won the only thing on our field for which there is an award. That has now... That's now ended but I'm now doing solo scripted stand-up stuff with an eye on Edinburgh in, I believe, a couple of months from the time of this broadcast.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, that's right.
James Ross
Yup?
Charles Adrian
This is going out in June. This is going out on the 4th of June. Ish.
James Ross
[speaking over] Oh what a lovely day it is outside!
Charles Adrian
[laughing] It's beautiful.
James Ross
Sunny and beautiful and warm and cozy.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I'm not bunged up at all, it's really a nice summer day.
James Ross
[speaking over] Yes, I can breathe so freely through my nose.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes [laughs].
James Ross
What a joyous sensation.
Charles Adrian
It's beautiful.
James Ross
Oh no, what was that, is that... is that pollen on the breeze? It is. It's pollen.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
James Ross
No, no, I don't want another cocktail but thank you for asking, lady in a grass skirt who's just sashayed over here.
Charles Adrian
But James Ross, I'm going to describe you...
James Ross
Okay.
Charles Adrian
... as a steampunk Marxist.
James Ross
[laughs] I don... I object to the term ‘steampunk’. [disgustedly] Argh. Because I do do some, like, Victorian character comedy stuff but...
Charles Adrian
Yeah. You have something... It's the hair, I think, and... and some of the choice of clothes.
James Ross
That is fair. I think... Okay, let's address these points in turn.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yeah.
James Ross
When it comes to clothes, I wear waistcoats because that's the easiest way of making a very small amount of effort for a very large effect. People instantly think...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
James Ross
... that I'm dressed very smartly if I put on a waistcoat and a tie. It doesn't matter if I've fallen out of bed, if my forehead is reflective it is so greasy, if I'm wearing a waistcoat and I've something that's a bit cravatish...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] People are fooled by that.
James Ross
Exactly.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
James Ross
It's the, sort of... It's the equivalent... It's... The waistcoat - and this is... this is a tip for anyone listening: The waistcoat is, kind of, the male equivalent of a little bit of eyeliner for women.
Charles Adrian
Beautiful.
James Ross
It makes you... It makes you... Yeah, it takes couple of... like, a minute max to put on - and that's only if...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
James Ross
... you've got fat thumbs and can't do the buttons. But the... You know, it's the greatest... The effort to reward ratio for this element of personal care is far greater than it is for anything else.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
James Ross
Done.
Charles Adrian
I think we don't need to address any of the other points. That's adequate.
James Ross
I want to address the steampunk thing...
Charles Adrian
All right.
James Ross
... because I... You can edit this out.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I might edit this out, yeah.
James Ross
That's fine. I want to address the steampunk thing just because I... [frustrated sound] ugh... like, I have a lot of friends who do lots of steampunk things...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
James Ross
... and that's fine. But I just... I find it a slightly...
Charles Adrian
The moustache I think also has a, sort of, element of....
James Ross
[frustrated sound] Ugh. I know. It's fine. I was going more for a Freddie Mercury kind of thing but...
Charles Adrian
it does have that.
James Ross
Yep.
Charles Adrian
I think it's just everything in combination and the fact that you hang out with some steampunk people.
James Ross
That is true. I'm tainted by association.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's mostly because... Yeah, I know. It's mostly because of people that you've introduced me to who are very much steampunk.
James Ross
Very probably.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
James Ross
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
That's all. I'm being very unfair.
James Ross
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
And I was very happy with my phrase.
James Ross
That's... No, that's fine. It's a good phrase.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
James Ross
That's fine. Yes.
Charles Adrian
Tell me about the book that you like.
James Ross
The book that I like. The book that I like: I have here Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales. And I, kind of... I first got introduced this book... I think a lot of people, kind of, bump into this when they're read it by a grandparent who hasn't perhaps updated their attitudes since, you know, Enoch Powell was about. But I was introduced to this in one of the most hipsterish ways imaginable - and I use the word hipsterish in a... in an entirely non-pejorative and entirely descriptive sense. This is a few years ago now and I was supposed to be going out clubbing with a young lady. This was when I was working night shifts so I had to take a night off in order to do this. I got so little leave.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Wow.
James Ross
I got so little leave to go out clubbing with this lady. And it was going to be great. I was like, I was on a promise, it was going to be excellent. And she was coming in from out of town and... and she just rang me with about... Well, no, she didn't even ring me. I had to ring her to find out where the fuck she was.
Charles Adrian
Oh no.
James Ross
At about half an hour's notice she cancelled and it was like...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] That's impolite.
James Ross
So I was so screwed. So I went off to a mate's house party that I'd been invited to and just... I was, you know, all in my full clubbing gear and they were in there, sort of, like...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
James Ross
Well, it wasn't quite a, sort of, polo shirts party but it was... you know...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
James Ross
... it was... it was, you know, the casual end of party, and that was fine. So I just ended up, like, scowling and drinking lots, encouraging everybody else to drink more. Drink, drink, drink; night, night, night; blah, blah, blah. And then the morning after - so I crashed at theirs, there was no way I was getting home. [I] ended up - platonically - in bed with a young lady and a young gentleman reading children's poems from the early twentieth century, from Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales to each other.
Charles Adrian
How thoroughly charming.
James Ross
All smoking, darling.
Charles Adrian
That's a beautiful image.
James Ross
Isn't it? It was... It felt like I was updating Bloomsbury. It did.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm. Right.
James Ross
So that was good. And I've... Yeah, like, it's not the sort of thing that you would probably read to a modern child for, kind of, various reasons. Some of the attitudes are a little... What's the word I'm looking for? Recherché. Do I mean recherché? Retro. Some of them are evil.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I think ‘recherché’ is perfect.
James Ross
Yeah, we'll go with that. Okay. So I just picked one out from here and this one is...
Charles Adrian
So just a note to listeners: James is cheating here. He's refused to read the first page. He's chosen one with an amazing title.
James Ross
Yeah, I chose one that sounded good. This one is Maria, Who Made Faces And A Deplorable Marriage.
Maria love to pull a face -
And no such commonplace grimace
As you or I or anyone
Might make at Grandmama for fun,
But one where nose and mouth and all
Were screwed into a kind of ball,
The which, as you might well expect,
Produced a horrible effect
On those it was directed at.
One morning she was struck like that.
Her features took their final mould
In shapes that made your blood run cold
And wholly lost their former charm.
Mama, in agonized alarm,
Consulted a renowned masseuse,
An old and valued friend of hers,
Who rubbed the wretched child for days
In five and twenty different ways
And after that began again -
But all in vain! But all in vain!
The years advance, Maria grows
Into a blooming English rose
With every talent, every grace,
Save in this trifle of the face.
She sang, recited, laughed and played
At all that an accomplished maid
Should play with skill to be of note:
Golf, the piano, and the goat,
She talked in French til all was blue
And knew a little German too,
She told the tales that soldiers tell,
She also danced extremely well,
Her wit was pointed, loud and raw,
She shone at laying down the law,
She drank liquors instead of tea,
Her verse was admirably free
And quoted in the latest books -
But people couldn't stand her looks.
Her parents had, with thoughtful care,
Proclaimed her genius everywhere,
Nor quite concealed a wealth which sounds
Enormous - thirty million pounds!
And further whispered it that she
Could deal with it exclusively.
They did not hide her chief defect
But, what with her birth and intellect
And breeding and such ample means -
And still in her delightful teens -
A girl like our Maria (they thought)
Should make the kind of match she ought.
Those who had seen her here at home
Might hesitate, but Paris? Rome?
The foreigners could take the bait.And so they did - at any rate,
The greatest men of every land
Arrived in shoals to seek her hand.
Grand Dukes, Commanders of the Fleece,
Mysterious millionaires from Greece,
And exiled Kings in large amounts,
Ambassadors and Papal Counts
And rastcouillaires [sp?] from Palmares
And famous foreign secretaries.
They came along in turns to call
But all - without exception, all -
Though with determination set,
Yet, when they actually met,
Would start convulsively as though
They had received a sudden blow,
And, mumbling a discrete “Good day”,
Would shuffle, turn, and slink away.
The upshot of it was Maria
Was married to a neighboring squire
Who, being blind, could never guess
His wife's appalling ugliness.
The man was independent, dull,
Offensive, poor, and masterful.
It was a very dreadful thing.
Now let us turn to Sarah Byng.
The last line of that is rubbish but it does refer to the next poem.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
James Ross
There you are. So...
Charles Adrian
That was great. Thank you very much. That was fun.
James Ross
Yeah! The moral of the story, young ladies, is if you're not pretty, then you'll die alone and miserable and beaten in provincial obscurity, which I think is something we can all take home.
Charles Adrian
Indeed. With that in mind.... Now, I'm going to [laughing] play... I'm going to play the first track that I've chosen today. You were quite rude in... in your email about...
James Ross
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... the kind of music that I often have on my show. This, kind of, floaty, singer-songwriter crap...
James Ross
That's... You're... This is...
Charles Adrian
... that gets played.
James Ross
Okay, that's the text reading you. You're interpreting that as being offensive.
Charles Adrian
So I'm going to play...
James Ross
I think that's a perfectly value-neutral description.
Charles Adrian
... just... [laughing] just such a song right now.
James Ross
Okay.
Charles Adrian
This is Why Do You Let Me Stay Here by She & Him. You're going love this.
Music
[Why Do You You Let Me Stay Here by She & Him]
Charles Adrian
So that was... that was Zooey Deschanel and Matt Ward singing Why Do You Let Me Stay Here.
James Ross
That was very cheerful. I imagine if... I imagine if I was capable of love, that's the sort of song that might soundtrank [sic]... soundtrack a montage of it happening.
Charles Adrian
I like... yeah... I'm going to...
James Ross
[speaking over] No, that was very nice.
Charles Adrian
I'm going to imagine that that is what was happening in your head while we were listening to that.
James Ross
That's what it was. That's why I was bobbing my head gently from side to side, thinking about plaiting daisies into it.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Okay. I'm going to... So here's the book that I'm going to give to you.
James Ross
Okay.
Charles Adrian
I think you are one of my few genuinely Marxist acquaintances.
James Ross
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
I don't know very many people who are as dedicatedly Marxist as you are.
James Ross
Oh stop. You!
Charles Adrian
So this... this has influenced my choice. I've chosen The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.
James Ross
Okay. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
You're lucky I didn't choose a steampunk novel, actually.
James Ross
[laughing] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
James Ross
Awkward!
Charles Adrian
This is... So this is... This is obviously... This is sci-fi...
James Ross
Yeah,
Charles Adrian
... in a way - sci-fi stroke fantasy - but it's really a political novel, I think.
James Ross
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
It's a very... It's very, kind of, you know... It's a basic satire on two different political systems. So she has a very... like, a very basically communitarian system and a very basically individualistic system. They don't really equate to capitalist versus communist but...
James Ross
If this is the one I think it is, I might actually have read this.
Charles Adrian
Aha! This is a good moment, then, perhaps, for you to revisit it.
James Ross
Yeah. I think it's the... [indistinct]
Charles Adrian
So it's set on a planet and its moon.
James Ross
Yes, I have read this.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
James Ross
I have. I have indeed read this. And there's their... Yeah, there's the Soviet analog and various different, kinds of, bits and pieces where the... the analog of the Soviet continent is trying to relate to the anarchist continent say... claiming a common ideological heritage, which the anarchists on the moon are having nothing of because the Soviet analog on the planet is a, sort of... an oppressive, small T totalitarian, authoritarian state and they... they reject this. It's one of the elements that would have stuck in my mind...
Charles Adrian
You may... [laughs]
James Ross
... but probably not other people's.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] I don't remember any of that.
James Ross
No, no, that's fine. It was... It's, kind of... it's in the discussion of the planet.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] There's a scientist...
James Ross
There is a scientist.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] There's a scientist and he takes a rocket from the... from the anarchist planet, if you like...
James Ross
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
... to the other. That's my memory of this. [laughs]
James Ross
Yeah. No, well, I remember...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Let me read...
James Ross
... I remember. Oh, sorry, go on. You're going to read a thing.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] No.
James Ross
Read a thing. I'll shut up. Read a thing.
Charles Adrian
I'm going to read the first page.
James Ross
Okay.
Charles Adrian
I think you should reread this and I think that... to see if it feels differently now.
James Ross
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
How long ago did you read it?
James Ross
Four, five years ago, something like that.
Charles Adrian
Okay. Interesting.
James Ross
Give it a go.
Charles Adrian
I
Anarres • Urras
THERE WAS A wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared; an adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.
Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended on which side of it you were on.
Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres. On the field there were a couple of large gantry cranes, a rocket pad, three warehouses, a truck garage, and a dormitory. The dormitory looked durable, grimy, and mournful; it had no gardens, no children; plainly no one [sic] lived there or was even meant to stay there long. It was in fact a quarantine. The wall shut in not only the landing field but the ships that came down out of space, and the men that came on the ships, and the worlds they came from, and the rest of the universe. It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free.
Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine.
A number of people were coming along the road towards the landing field, or standing around where the road cut through the wall.
There you go.
James Ross
Thank you.
Charles Adrian
I think it's... Yeah, it's beautif... it's a beautiful beginning. This wall is a really wonderful... Because she... she tries to show you the freedom on both sides of the wall and also the... obviously, the inevitable lack of freedom on both sides of the wall. But, yeah, it's a very... it's a very nice novel I think, and a very... Yeah. I feel like maybe having... having listened to you talk about it, I need to read it again but...
James and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
James Ross
Thank you very much.
Charles Adrian
I think it's a very good one. So I hope you enjoy it for the second time.
James Ross
[affirmative] Mmm hmm. Super.
Charles Adrian
Maybe you will enjoy it for a third and a fourth and a fifth time.
James Ross
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Who knows? So I'm going to play some more floaty crap now.
James Ross
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
This is Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois by Sufjan Stevens.
James Ross
Right.
Music
[Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois by Sufjan Stevens]
Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
It is, it's London Fields Radio, which is something I didn't say earlier. I'm Charles Adrian. I'm here with James Ross in The Bell in Aldgate - in that fair... what would we call it... district?
James Ross
Um.
Charles Adrian
What is Aldgate? It's an area of London, isn't it?
James Ross
Yeah, pretty much.
Charles Adrian
I was going to say this fair city of Aldgate. It's not, is it?
James Ross
[speaking over] No, not even slightly.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's a gate to the city, isn't it.
James Ross
Yep. Yes. I mean, it's, kind of, like... in ye olden times. It's, sort of, part of the, sort of, classic East End.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. We're on the borders of Bethnal Green, aren't we?
James Ross
Yeah, it's, kind of... Yeah...
Charles Adrian
Stepney.
James Ross
Bethnal Green and Whitechapel and Stepney to the east.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Whitechapel.
James Ross
Yeah, that sort of thing. And then the City immediately to the west. Shadwell's just up the road. That sort of thing.
Charles Adrian
Absolutely. So that's where we are and... Now you're going to give me... you're going to give me something.
James Ross
Oh, yes.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] You're going to give me a book.
James Ross
I'm going to give you this book. This was...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] You're going to read. You're going to tell me and read about a book.
James Ross
[speaking over] Tell you and read it. Okay. Cool. This was a book that I was given - I was originally introduced to - by a friend of mine and former flatmate, a chap called Niall Spooner-Harvey, who's an excellent performance poet. I'd say go and check out his stuff but he's in San Francisco so you might struggle. But, you know, he might do things. And this is a novel called Christie Malry's Own Double Entry by B. S. Johnson, who's had a, sort of... quite a dramatic life himself. He's, sort of, a... an experimental socialist novelist of the, sort of, late sixties and seventies. Kind of, committed suicide relatively young. I think he was about forty-something.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
James Ross
And the only book of... The only work of literary biography I've ever enjoyed has been the story of his life. It's called Like A Fiery Elephant, which is a description of his...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh nice title!
James Ross
... yeah... of his rampage through life.
Charles Adrian
Right.
James Ross
Because he's very much a, sort of... an angry young man. And he's, sort of, you know, paradoxically and weirdly, just really big in Hungary for no obvious reason...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Uh huh. [laughs]
James Ross
... things like that. So, yeah, he wrote, kind of, quite experimental novels. Like, some of the other ones he wrote were, sort of... There's one where he's, kind of, got, like, little bits cut out in the pages so you get, like, foreshadowing flashes of things that are going to happen later in the novel...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh cool. Okay.
James Ross
… and also, like, when you flip over that page, it's got, like, a backtrack...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
James Ross
... to, like, a, sort of, memory of a thing. And there's another one called House Mother Normal, which is told... It's exactly the same sequence of events told from the perspectives of twelve different patients and staff at an old people's home. And they're all in various different stages of dementia and disability...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
James Ross
... and mental incompetence. And that's fascinating and brilliant. And, like, everything he does is just - did... Obviously, he's dead now. He's going to struggle to, you know... difficult fourth, fifth book. But he also did a wonderful book called... Oh, I can't remember the title of the top my head but that is a series of different sections and you don't get it in book form you get it in a box, and you can read it in any order.
Charles Adrian
Wow, cool.
James Ross
So it's all this, sort of, like, weird experimental stuff...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
James Ross
... but that's also, like, reasonably accessible. The Christie Malry's Own Double Entry is definitely the most accessible of his work. So if you're going to read anything...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
James Ross
... read this one. It's also short so...
Charles Adrian
Well, I will read this one.
James Ross
Yes. Do. Yes.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
James Ross
I shall put it into your hand...
Charles Adrian
Because you're going to give it to me.
James Ross
... force you to read it.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
James Ross
I'll force you to do it at peer pressure point.
Charles Adrian
Read me the first page.
James Ross
Cool. I will read you the first page. One of things I like about this so much is that it's... like, it's a wonderfully... wonderfully self-aware [sound of pages turning] book. [to himself] Where is... hang on... [for podcast] And it's, kind of... it's got this, sort of... sort of, Tristram Shandy-esque thing. I'm trying to find the page I was going to read you now. Okay. Right. Here we go. Okay.
Christie lived with his mother at this point, near Hammersmith Bridge, in the stump of Mall Road left after the flyover and associated highway improvements.
When he arrived home on this day (time now being more or less continuous) his mother rose and welcomed him. Then she delivered herself of a statement, thus:
‘My son : I have for the purposes of this novel been your mother for the past eighteen years and five months to the day if I assume your conception to have taken place after midnight. Now that you have had your Great Idea and are set upon your life's work there is nothing further for me to do.’
Christie's mother paused. Then continued.
‘I do not complain. I have every reason to be satisfied with what I have done. I have cared for you without cosseting, cooked sensibly for you without running risks from whatever disease was fashionably connected with food at each of several times. Those parts of my body under taboos ruling over the last quarter of a century have not been exposed to you since at least the age of three. I have, husbandless, brought you up not to miss a father, without damaging what they would call your normality. I flatter myself that you are yourself, that you are both more and less than what I have made you, if that means anything. Nor have I let your character be moulded by such other men as I have allowed (for I am not a wooden block) to cross my path and enter in at the ti...’ [sic]
I'll do that last bit again.
Charles Adrian
It's okay, you've got to the end of that page.
James Ross
Yeah, it's cool. Cool. Yes. And so it continues.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
James Ross
So, yeah, basically, the first chapter is him and his mother and... yeah, like I say, I just... I really like the fact that it's very self-aware and it's quite funny and it's very nicely-written.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's lovely. It does have a... It does have a, sort of, Tristram Shandy-esque atmosphere to it.
James Ross
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I like it. I like it already.
James Ross
[indistinct]
Charles Adrian
So this is... we've... Thank you very much. This is the end of... This is the end of this... this edition, episode, podcast. It's going to go up, as we said on the... on... or around the 4th of June. You have some things to plug.
James Ross
I do. I'm doing a show at the Edinburgh Festival this year and we're going to be on at the... It's.... I'm going to be doing a mixed stand-up set with Steve Violich, another former member of Fat Kitten Improv. We're on at the Voodoo Rooms at 3:55 for the full run. And it's a free show. It's done by donations, thanks to PBH Free Fringe. Wonderful, wonderful organisation.
Charles Adrian
Woo!
James Ross
Hooray! If you're not up in Edinburgh, we're also doing a couple of previews. We've got one on June the 4th and another on the 2nd of July, both at the Green Note in Camden. And we're also going to be doing, like, an all-dayer previewsy thing, I think, in theory. Fingers crossed. So if you want to add me on Facebook, I will tell you all about that. It is James Ross. I am not the James Ross with the Confederate flag as his Facebook profile picture.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Wonderful. So that's... So if you're lucky enough to catch this on the 4th of June you could run up to Camden and see James in the evening.
James Ross
Do it. Do it.
Charles Adrian
If not, the 8th of June, as I've discovered after a quick Google, is the day that Leah Todd and Max Moon are getting married. So, with that in mind, I'm going to play... Here, to play us out, is... is our wedding song, James.
James Ross
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Our first dance, as it were. It's the Zombie Hop by Zombina - is that right? Zombina...
James Ross
Zombina and the Skeletones
Charles Adrian
... and the Skeletones.
James Ross
Yeah! Oh, I love this.
Charles Adrian
Thanks very much, James.
Music
[Zombie Hop by Zombina and the Skeletones]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]