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Season 1 Episodes

Charles Adrian is joined this week by his younger sister Lissa, who brings smooth music and good chat. Between sips of tea and mouthfuls of cake at the Chiswick House Café, they discuss their suspicion of people who haven’t read Harry Potter and their shared appreciation for the playfulness of Jasper Fforde; Lissa, after some deliberation, introduces Charles Adrian to a world of opium.

Chiswick House And Gardens are well worth a visit - and entrance to the gardens is free. More information is here.

The Outsider Tart, which is mentioned, is on Chiswick High Road; you can find out more about it here.

Sea Of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh is also discussed in Page One 167.

This episode was recorded at the Chiswick House Café for London Fields Radio.

This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.

A transcript of this episode is below.

Episode released: 24th June, 2013.

Book listing:

Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

Shades Of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Sea Of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Links:

Chiswick House And Gardens

The Outsider Tart

Page One 167

Charles Adrian

Episode transcript:

Jingle
You're listening... you're listening... to London Fields Radio.

Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to Page One On The Run. I'm here in Chiswick House - or in the... rather in the... what would you call this... the cafe, the Chiswick House cafe - for the 41st Page One.

Lissa Gillott
[speaking over] A glass cafe.

Charles Adrian
It's a beautifully designed glass and stone building. This is the 28th Second Hand Book Factory going up on or around the 24th of June. The Solstice is past now, the year is already in decline. I forgot to mention that last week. So here... here is Take That with Never Forget.

Lissa Gillott
[laughs] It's my favourite!

Music
[Never Forget by Take That]

Charles Adrian
That was... That was Never Forget by Take That. Do you remember that, Liss?

Lissa Gillott
I'll never forget that. [laughs]

Charles Adrian
[laughs] Awesome. So I'm here with my sister Lissa Gillott.

Lissa Gillott
Hello.

Charles Adrian
Is Lissa short for anything?

Lissa Gillott
No it isn't.

Charles Adrian
[laughs] I've written that down so I wouldn't forget to ask you that because I thought of that the other day. I was like, “That's funny. I'll ask you that.”

Lissa Gillott
Although, apparently, yeah, for the first five years of my life I didn't know what my name was.

Charles Adrian
Is that right?

Lissa Gillott
Yes.

Charles Adrian
What did you think it was?

Lissa Gillott
I frequently introduced myself as Lissa and got told that, “Oh, Lisa, that's adorable!”

Charles Adrian
Oh yeah, right.

Lissa Gillott
Or, “Melissa!” I don't remember saying that.

Lissa and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Charles Adrian
Easy to get confused, though.

Lissa Gillott
Yeah.

Charles Adrian
So what's the book that you like?

Lissa Gillott
The one I like? So the one I've brought along... this is Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone.

Charles Adrian
Yay!

Lissa Gillott
Just to be really childish.

Charles Adrian
I love it.

Lissa Gillott
It's so much fun. I think the reason I chose this one is because I... a) remember reading it and b) I remember it, kind of, opened the door to the most fantastic journey of all the other books. And...

Charles Adrian
Because you must have started reading it before the others were published.

Lissa Gillott
Yeah, I did. I started in '99.

Charles Adrian
Right.

Lissa Gillott
2000... '99... in preparation for university.

Charles Adrian
Yeah. Well. [laughing] Yeah exactly.

Lissa Gillott
[laughs]

Charles Adrian
Were you disappointed when you got to university that it wasn't quite like Hogwarts?

Lissa Gillott
No one was reading it. I thought everyone would have read it.

Charles Adrian
Yeah. I'm still surprised when I come across people who have not or will not read it.

Lissa Gillott
They don't know what they're missing.

Charles Adrian
I agree. And you're right that now it's, sort of... the excite... part of the excitement was that the other books hadn't been published yet - they hadn't even been written yet. I remember finding that tremendously exciting, that you don't know what she's... Is she going to manage to finish it and is it going to be good?

Lissa Gillott
Well totally. But, then, I don't think it really mattered. I mean, even if she'd just got to four, you'd have been like, “I'm happy with those four books to be honest”. They were fantastic. It was very much like The Worst Witch. I enjoyed reading The Worst Witch. Fantastic series of books. So... Yeah, definitely.

Charles Adrian
Would you... Would you read us the first page?

Lissa Gillott
Oh yes. So:

CHAPTER ONE
The Boy Who Lived

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.
Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.
The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never ever [sic] seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn't want Dudley mixing with a child like that.
When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away...

Charles Adrian
Wonderful. Thank you. I just... I love the title of that chapter - The Boy Who Lived. I think it's... I think that's beautiful. Like, it's so simple and it's obviously... it's used in a lot of... you know, whenever Harry Potter is talked about he's talked about as the boy who lived. It's such a great description of someone - of a character.

Lissa Gillott
Yeah, definitely. And I... Yeah, I mean, it's just such an intriguing way to start... start a book. As well, I think the problem was that I, kind of, knew what would happen so you're, kind of, reading the first page [indistinct] you know that there's this whole Pandora's box that's going to... that's going to, kind of, erupt or...

Charles Adrian
That's right. And you already know it's about Harry Potter so you're like, “What are the Potters?” [laughs]

Lissa Gillott
[laughing] Yeah, exactly, yeah. [in high voice] “What's going on? Where's the main character? The Dursleys??”

Charles Adrian
”Get them off! Get them off!”

Lissa and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Charles Adrian
Superb. Thank you very much. I'm... I'm thinking maybe I should start reading all of those again.

Lissa Gillott
Oh God. [laughs]

Charles Adrian
I haven't read them for a while. [laughs] I don't actually have all of them, surprisingly.

Lissa Gillott
No.

Charles Adrian
Yeah, I don't know how that... that is possible. I think I must have borrowed a lot of yours.

Lissa Gillott
Probably. Well, yeah, no, mine did go around the house.

Charles Adrian
Right. Okay, let's... let's play your second track - your first track, rather.

Lissa Gillott
My first track.

Charles Adrian
Our second track, your first track. So this is... I've chosen Daddy by Emeli Sandé.

Lissa Gillott
Excellent.

Charles Adrian
She was the woman of the moment in August and September last year, wasn't she?

Lissa Gillott
Yeah. Which I didn't really... I hadn't really clocked on that I actually had one of her songs.

Charles Adrian
Did you already have that [indistinct]?

Lissa Gillott
Yeah!

Charles Adrian
I'd never heard of her.

Lissa Gillott
No. Exactly. Neither had I. I went to Starbucks and they give you those things that you download every week and I'm addicted to those. I don't like Starbucks necessarily. [laughing] I just...

Charles Adrian
You just like the music.

Lissa Gillott
I like [the] music, get it for free. And, yeah, downloaded it and loved it.

Charles Adrian
Cool. This is lovely. I mean, I got a bit bored of her during those six weeks. I was like, “Emeli Sandé again?” She was in every ceremony, I think, but... but her music is beautiful and her videos are stunning. This... This video is gorgeous. The people in it are gorgeous. She's gorgeous. Everything is good about this. This is Daddy.

Music
[Daddy by Emeli Sandé]

Lissa Gillott
Thank you.

Charles Adrian
So that was Dam... Daddy, sorry... That was Daddy by Emeli Sandé featuring Naughty Boy. Although we're a little mystified - we don't quite know what Naughty Boy is doing on that track.

Lissa Gillott
I think he does the booms.

Charles Adrian
You think he does the [laughs]... the booms.

Lissa Gillott
I think he does the [hums part of the track].

Charles Adrian
That's the technical term for that moment when... yeah…

Lissa Gillott
Yeah. When he drops it.

Charles Adrian

[speaking over] Anyway, he's dropping the beat.

Lissa and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Lissa Gillott
He's like, “Oh what do I do now?’

Charles Adrian
He does drop it like it's hot, doesn't he?

Lissa Gillott
[laughs] Pretty hot cake-ish, that one.

Lissa and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Charles Adrian
Okay. My book for you...

Lissa Gillott
Oh, okay, good. That gives me to time to [indistinct] [laughs]

Charles Adrian
[laughs] So you can... Yeah, you can... You've already eaten... You've already eaten all your shortbread and drunk your tea.

Lissa Gillott
Yeah, I need some more tea.

Charles Adrian
I've still got that to come. So this is... I think you're going to like this. This is Shades Of Grey.

Lissa Gillott
Oh cool!

Charles Adrian
This is not Fifty Shades Of Grey. It's...

Lissa Gillott
Oh, [that's sad then].

Charles Adrian
[laughs] ... it's Jasper Fforde's Shades Of Grey.

Lissa Gillott
[speaking over] Yeah, I love Jasper Fforde. Good choice.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] We've talked about this, haven't we? We've talked about Jasper Fforde.

Lissa Gillott
That's right. Yeah.

Charles Adrian
And I think I told you that when... So when I was in Dinefwr last year at the Literary... Literature Festival, in Wales, one of the things I went to was him talking to... [in frustration] argh, somebody else whose name I've forgotten... about this book. And he was really charming. I really... I hadn't come across him before. I hadn't read any of his books. But he was a... I really liked the way... I liked both of them, actually. I wish I could remember the name of the other guy. They were both so charming about their writing and about... You know, not at all pretentious. Absolutely: “This is just what I love doing. And it's what I do. And I'm trying to get better all the time.” It was really nice. And so... And I... At that time, I didn't know really what Fifty Shades Of Grey was and I thought maybe this book was the one that everyone was going crazy about...

Lissa Gillott
[speaking over] Raving about. [laughs]

Charles Adrian
... and I was like, “What's he doing talking to a roomful of fifty people in... in Wales?” [laughs]

Lissa Gillott
”Surely it doesn't need this kind of press.”

Charles Adrian
Exactly. It's already doing pretty well. But anyway. So I bought it and it's lovely. It's... What I will say to you, perhaps, just to warn you, is that this is only the first book in a series.

Lissa Gillott
Oh, gosh, am I going to get hooked?

Charles Adrian
And he hasn't written any of the other books yet.

Lissa Gillott
Oh! I hate waiting!

Charles Adrian
[laughing] I know. He doesn't even have plans to write the next books yet. He's got so much other stuff he's writing. But I think this is already satisfying enough because just lots of... it's a book with lots of nice ideas in.

Lissa Gillott
Oh cool!

Charles Adrian
It's fun. So I'm going to read you the first page.

A Morning in Vermillion.

Lissa Gillott
Right.

Charles Adrian

2.4.16.55.021: Males are to wear dress-code #6 during inter-collective travel. Hats are encouraged, but not mandatory.

It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with me being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn't really what I'd planned for myself. I'd hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I'd met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio or explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient.
But it wasn't all bad, and for the following reasons. First, I was lucky to have landed upside down. I would drown in under a minute, which is far, far preferable to being dissolved alive over the space of a few weeks. Second and more important, I wasn't going to die ignorant. I had discovered something that no amount of merits can buy you: the truth. Not the whole truth, but a pretty big part of it. And that's why this was all frightfully inconvenient. I wouldn't get to do anything with it. And this truth was too big and too terrible to ignore. Still, at least I'd held it in my hands for a full hour, and understood what it meant.
I didn't set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census, and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind. I found Jane, too, or perhaps she found me. It doesn't really matter. We found each other. And although she was Grey and I was Red, we shared a common thirst for justice that transcended Chromatic politics. I loved her, and what's more, I was beginning to think that she loved me. After all...

There you go. Was that sufficiently intriguing?

Lissa Gillott
Oh, that is very intriguing. Fantastic. I love his tone.

Charles Adrian
It's jaunty, isn't it?

Lissa Gillott
It's a very clever... because I think the first one I read was... Oh, hang on, let's see if it's in here.

Charles Adrian
But you can... You've taken out the bookmark. You can keep that. That came with it.

Lissa Gillott
Oh, the bookmark comes with the book. Right.

Charles Adrian
Yeah. And it's... you'll see in the front it's signed. I mean, it's...

Lissa Gillott
[speaking over] What, by...?

Charles Adrian
”For Adrian... Jasper...” Just Jasper.

Lissa Gillott
[speaking over] Oh, you've actually... Right. Okay. Oh, the... No, I didn't read... Lost In A Good Book, The Well Of Lost Plots... I think I read The Well Of Lost Plots. And it's because it's got... the main character is Thursday. But it's talking about... he just talks about... It's always grammar-related, isn't it?

Charles Adrian
He does... He said that, actually, in his talk. He really likes these games with language.

Lissa Gillott
It's such a game, the whole thing. And that's what's so... so fun of it. And the... Yeah, the one I was thinking of picking up is One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing. And, you know, you get to the point where it's like, “Oh Thursday's a p...” You know, “Thursday's this!” It's not a day or... you know... I don't want to give it away.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] You get this with... You get this, kind of, with colours. I mean, colours are colours but you realise very quickly that if you're Red it means that you can see red. You can't see other colours. Humanity is degraded to the point where you can only see the colour... you can only generally see one part of the spectrum. So Purples are very high up the list because they can see both red and blue, for example, and Greys can't really see much of any colour...

Lissa Gillott
Random.

Charles Adrian
... generally. And so there's a whole social structure based on what colours you can see. And the Greens are the worst. No one wants to be a Green.

Lissa Gillott
I mean, the thing is you sit there and you think, “Where on earth did you get... Where did you come up with this? And how did you...?” I mean, because when you think you write, you write... “Okay, I'm going write something”. But you've got to have sat down and done some kind of spider diagram beforehand to work out all the elements that you're going to put in.

Charles Adrian
Well, certainly, I think, if you're doing something like this... and it strikes me that, yeah, if you're writing a series - and, as I say, he hasn't written any of the other books - but he must have a notion of where he's going with this. So he may discover things as he goes but he must have an idea of where the first book is going to end to make sense of the series.

Lissa Gillott
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charles Adrian
I would have thought. Okay, we're going to have a little jingle and then we're going to go straight on to your book.

Lissa Gillott
Oh, there's a... Oh, right, okay.

Charles Adrian
Because my first track was so long that I didn't think there was time for a second track from me. So we're just going [makes rushing sound] straight through.

Lissa Gillott
Okay, but now I've realised what book I do actually want to give you and I don't have it with me.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] And you don't have it with you.

Lissa and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Charles Adrian
Well, why don't you just tell me about it?

Lissa Gillott
I'm going to have to. I'm going to have to Google Play...

Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.

Lissa Gillott
Okay.

Charles Adrian
Okay, so you've finally found the book that you think you might want to give me one day?

Lissa and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Lissa Gillott
I'll send it to you.

Charles Adrian
Okay. What's it called? And who's it by?

Lissa Gillott
It's called Sea Of Poppies and it's by Amitav Ghosh. Basically, I read it about two years ago because I came across it on the Times top fifty paperback books that were published in 2010, or something like that. And I was trying to make my way through that list. And I got to this one. And a lot of... a lot of them were all sagas and had other books and it was really annoying because I hadn't read the previous ones and I was just, like...

Charles Adrian
Oh, yes. Okay.

Lissa Gillott
... “Oh, I had to read the other ones before I got to...” Ah, and that's how I came across The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Charles Adrian
Oh, really?

Lissa Gillott
That's where I read that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I read that in a night. So this... this was similar. It was... Actually, so it's a trilogy and I read the first one and basically it's set around the ship that's got this great adventure ahead of it. And the first one is just introducing all the characters, all the different people that are going to play a part, and you're reading it and you think, “It's fine as a standalone book” and then you get to the end and you go, “How on earth...? Where is this going to go?” And it's got its own dictionary that you can look up online, a whole world that he, kind of, created. Now, the most frustrating thing was - when I finished this book - was that the second one hadn't been written or published yet and I was there going, “Oh my...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] A familiar story. [laughs]

Lissa Gillott
... [laughing] how annoying is that!” But I've just discovered now that the second one is available so I might put that on my Kindle wishlist.

Charles Adrian
Okay, good. So you're gifting me a slightly less annoying book than I'm gifting you, in a way?

Lissa Gillott
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. But similar. I guess maybe I got the idea...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Similar problem. Once I've read the second one, I'll be still, like “[frustrated sound]”.

Lissa Gillott
Oh, I don't know, though. I think he's... I think... There seems to be quite a few that... I think he might have got through them all. But... I don't know, but it's all... it's all about colonial upheaval and it's set in India so [indistinct]...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Ah. Is it about opium then?

Lissa Gillott
Yes. And I think that's largely why I wanted to read it because it was about poppies. So, yeah, that's the book I want to give you.

Charles Adrian
[laughs] Why don't you read us something from the website?

Lissa Gillott
Okay, yeah, no, I will. Sorry.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] If you can't read us something from the book itself.

Lissa and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Lissa Gillott
Talk about preparation. Okay. So, this is the description of the Sea of Poppies.

At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its purpose to fight China's vicious nineteenth century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races and generations. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling High Seas, the exotic backstreets of Canton, but it's the panorama of characters whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself that makes Sea Of Poppies so breathtakingly alive. A masterpiece from one of the world's finest novelists.

So, I mean, his origins are from Bangladesh, I think. He was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Charles Adrian
Ah, okay. Well, thank you so much, Lissa. This has been great. This has been a lovely... It's been a lovely day so far. We've bought you a helmet - we've got you a birthday present.

Lissa and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Charles Adrian
Quite late.

Lissa Gillott
[speaking over] Only three months late. It's fine.

Charles Adrian
[laughs] And we've had a lovely little cycle ride and maybe... Oh, we already had cake otherwise I would say we should go to the Outsider Tart and have a brownie. Maybe we should go there and buy a brownie.

Lissa Gillott
I would quite happily do that.

Charles Adrian
Okay, let's do that.

Lissa Gillott
[laughs]

Charles Adrian
So we'll do that and meanwhile I'm going to play us out with your second choice - your actual second choice today - of music, which is Chris Malinchak...?

Lissa Gillott
Yeah, I think that's what he's called.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] What a great name - Malinchak.

Lissa Gillott
So cool.

Charles Adrian
Chris Malinchak with So Good To Me. This is... This is really chilled. It's lovely.

Lissa Gillott
It's Pete Tong who recommended this one to me.

Charles Adrian
Did he?

Lissa Gillott
Personally.

Charles Adrian
[laughs] You and Pete, eh?

Music
[So Good To Me by Chris Malinchak]

[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]