01/03/2013 The Review Show

The Pop Art legend Roy Lichtenstein gets the Tate treatment, as over

150 works go on view. Richard Gere plays the villain in a film about

greed and deception in the world of finance. 475? So we made a good

deal. Fellow actor Jeremy Irons voices

concerns about the waste washing up on some of the world's most

beautiful shores. Historically we have always buried our trash. It

seems that now we sometimes don't dig, we just dump.

A writer's account of victimisation at the hands of an on-line stalker.

In a real-life story that exposes the peril of the internet. At a

certain point I did realise I was becoming the object of some kind of

obsession. And from Bake-off to sitcom, Sue Perkins's new series

about an awkward vet, struggling with her sexuality. I don't want to

spend my weekends playing catch with a load of big-tited children.

Joining me is Kerry Shale, the actor, author and journalist, Alex

Preston, and Heather McGregor, also known as the Financial Times

columnist, Mrs Moneypenny, and the presenter of SuperScrimpers on

Channel 4. You can join the debate on twittwiter.

Mickey Mouse and Donald book had never been seen on the roles of --

Donald Duck had never been seen on the walls of art galleries, Roy

Lichtenstein changed all that. He put them in eye-catching canvasses

that reflected the post-war consumer boom. The Tate Modern has

the first major Lichtenstein retrospective in 20 years.

When Roy Lichtenstein xibgted his giant comic book canvasses in the

early 1960s he divided opinion. Some considered him a genius, but

one magazine dubbed him one of the worst artists in America.

The comic book image is the black lines around everything, the more

or less primary colours. All of this was to symbolise what we were

really getting into, a kind of ready-made and plastic era.

Taking us from Lichtenstein's pre- pop days, to his rarely seen

Chinese landscapes of the mid-1990s, Tate Modern's retrospective tells

the story of his 40-year career, in 13 dazzling rooms. Schooled as an

abstract expressionist, Lichtenstein stumbled on his

signature style almost by accident, when his son challenged him to

paint something as good as a Mickey Mouse cartoon. There followed three

years of highly controversial comic strip works.

By applying his trained painting skill to the banal, Lichtenstein

challenged artistic snobry his use of bold black lines, primary

colours, and b Ben-Day dots. He didn't stop at comic strips, he

applied the same style to many other subjects. Pastiches of iconic

works by modern masters like Picasso and Matisse, reworkings of

the traditional female nude. Landscapes and even sculpture. This

new retrospective represents over a billion pounds worth of art. Does

Lichtenstein deserve his reputation as a legend?

These images are so familiar, aren't they, the reproductions have

been reproduced. Account original still have any kind of impact?

Definitely. I remember when I first saw Whaam!, was a photograph of it

in a magazine. And then years later, many years ago, when I first went

to the Tate, and I Whaam! In person for the first time, I was

completely knocked out. Reproductions can't do it justice.

You can't see the Ben Day dots properly all the stuff is gigantic

and works because of that. But I remember when I was seeing the

exhibition this time, I in theed people, everyone takes photos on

their phones now. And I was kind of angry, because I thought be in the

moment, just look at it, it is huge, don't reduce it to that. But I

thought that's part of the joke of Lichtenstein, he would approve of

that. That it would be rero duced again in a different way. --

reproduced again in a different way. That is the secret of his genius,

that it is a copy of a copy of a copy, it will always be copied.

you have the same attitude to the originals? I was familiar with all

the Pop Art, I had seen it in one dimension in magazines and books

and things. I had also been to the Tate and seen Whaam!, and to the

Met and seen one of his pictures there. Nothing prepared me for

seeing all of those pictures together. For two reasons, first of

all, when I saw it, I realised actually he's not just a copy book,

a coppic book copy. He can actually compose pictures. He can use colour.

The day before I had been trying out the latest 3HD glass, I

realised look -- 3D glasses, and when I looked at his pictures I

realise I had didn't need them, he painted in 3D. When you got to the

end of his life, he was painting in the 1990s, there were paintings you

could see. He was using all the techniques he built up before. If

we hadn't had a proper retrospective, you would never have

seen that chronological development. Of this the point of it, was to see

the balance of work through over a period of time? Yes, that is what I

found so profoundly disappointing about the show. When you have a

retrospective, you want to see the march of genius through time and

reinvention. It seemed to me what you got in this receipt trot

pective, which I thought was -- retrospective, is it was remarkably

pious. Wasn't it fun? The first three rooms were wonderful, someone

described it as an acid shock. It was exactly that. You have this

mournful picture of Lichtenstein trying to recapture the epiphany

moment of Whaam! And Mickey Mouse. It struck me as cynical and an

empty perfection to it. I don't buy that. Did you not, I really loved

at the end interior with nude leaving -- Interior with Nude

Leaving, we had the dots, the colour, the composition, we had the

black lines of the Pop Art. Everything was in there.

Chinese landscapes, I never thought I would be moved by Roy

Lichtenstein, but I was moved by the Chinese landscapes, where

almost everything becomes dots. They are gradations of grey, white

and black. That is rather good, they were the highlight of the late

stage of the exhibition. There was something angelic about it, you

knew he was going to die. It was very much a man sitting on a rock

looking back. I absolutely agree. The By the mirrors. Still using the

dots: The mirrors are what he's about. The self-portrait is anti-T-

shirt with a mirror. By all accounts -- an empty T-shirt and a

mirror. But all accounts he was a pretty self-effacing guy. What

would you hang in the living room? Whaam! I would have a Chinese

landscape. I thought they were a great discovery and worth the price

of admission to see that. problem I had is he is still all

about surface. He said he wanted viewers to be able to take in the

whole impression of his work in one blink. And I need my art to do more

than that. I want depth. I want abstract Expressionism, I want

Jackson Pollock, and my artist to be tortured. There is the sense of

detatchment, you talked about the mirror paintings. Absolutely in

those it is the very essence of detatchment? It is deceptive. I

think the main thing he is, he is fun. He came out of a time with

people like the Beatles, who were having fun and had depth at the

same time. I think that there is a surprising amount of certainly

intellectual depth there which I don't particularly understand, I

read three Lichtenstein books this week. But they do, so I won't go on

about that, I think they do jump out at you. I love the way the

colours are so saturated, that they look different from every angle,

and they look different when reproduced. I love his take on

reproduction. The fact that he takes a comic strip and turns it

into a painting. The value of the paintings, I know we shouldn't

judge them. Does it change your view of them within you go around

an, Biggs like this knowing they are worth millions and millions of

pounds? I have to say, the one thing I still don't get is why they

are worth that much money. Because you know, if you look at Jackson

Pollock, and others, these are people who also, Jackson Pollock

conveniently died in a car crash, which makes everything very, very

valuable. Then there is a much shorter life. Where as Lichtenstein

painted for years and years and years. Some of it is truly dread of.

The first and the last room, his earliest paintings, I wouldn't give

tuppence for them. They are all worth a fortune. I don't think they

are worth what they say they are. If I had millions of pounds I would

definitely be buying one of those Chinese painting. You can make up

your own mind on the Lichtenstein retrospective, it is on at the Tate

Modern until the 27th of May. Richard Gere's character in the

film Arbitrage, has a keen interest in contemporary art, leading him

into dangerous territory. That love of risk is his approach to making

money. The thriller, set in the sky describers of Manhattan, sees Gere

in a contemporary tale of greed and corruption at the core of the

financial industry. Richard Gere won a nomination for

the Best Actor Golden Globe for his portrayal of Robert Miller, a

charismatic billion Nair who finds himself in trouble after a series

of bad decisions. Arbitrage opens as Miller is on the verge of a huge

deal to offload his New York hedge fund. A deal that masks a string of

deceptions. 475. So we made a good deal.

Actually I lied. I would have taken four. The film, the feature debut,

Paolo Guerrero, whose parents were stock brokers, shows a man whose

life becomes increasingly corrupt. And whose risk-taking has become

ever more dangerous. Miller's messy private life means his deceptions

don't end at the office door, as he battles to protect his business

deal and reputation, he faces increasing pressure, after

announcing the suspicion of NYPD detective Bryer, played by Tim Roth.

Why did you lease an apartment for Mrs Colt. She needed a place to

entertain buyers, she came from Paris. Do you rented an apartment?

It was by the holding company. Susan Sarandon plays Ellen Miller,

who uses her husband's fortune for philanthropic ends. Her interests

lie in protecting the family, it is far from clear if she's complicit

in her husband's actions. We vpbtd signed the paper, for some reason

they are still on it. It will always be fine, just follow the

plan. What is that plan? Confidence equals contract. Following recent

high-profile scandals in the financial industry, Arbitrage seems

to be a timely examination of corruption in big business. Half of

the fund's assets are missinging. Does this tale of a billion Nair

with dubious morality give us real insight -- billionare with dubious

morality give us a real insight into those who take risks with

other people as money. Alex, in a world where we have the

Libor scandal, Madoff, all the misks that led to the financial

crash, how realistic all the risk that is led to the financial crash,

how realistic was all this? You were a trader before? Something I

would like to leave behind. This struck me as an extraordinarily

disappointing film, a missed opportunity on par with Oliver

Stone's Money Never Sleeps, equally disappointing. It seemed entirely

divorced from the world of now. And shown up by a recent film Margin

Core, a debut director too. It felt as if the director of this will be

some how marooned in the 1980. He seemed to show no interest in

staying in touch with what was going on in addressing the great

issues of the age. In no way engaged with the cred dt crisis, it

seemed an extraordinary -- credit crisis, it seemed extraordinarily

removed. I was disappointed when I saw this. I was all ready to love

it. I loved Margin Call, I loved Wall Street, I loved last year's

Inside Job, the Oscar-winning document treatment the two issues I

had were, one on the technical level, I didn't believe it at all.

There were mistakes? I think there were things that were unbelievable.

You know. Such as the post-Madoff and post-crash, that you would be

able to invest $100 million in a copper mine and take a hedge on it

t and borrow $100 million from the company for somewhere else all

without your chief executive not knowing. The FT has a bit of a love

affair with Richard Gere, our review irhas previously described

him in previous films as -- reviewer has previously described

him as someone who has "lack qered grace and fee lean features" I

really wanted to love this movie. All that was accurate there is when

you are on a private jet have a lid on your coffee pot. One of the

risks with Richard Gere in the film is having him as a villain

throughout. What did you make of the performance? He's the most

gorgeous 64-year-old on the planet. 63. It irritated the hell out of me

on many levels. I think he's a good actor but not a great actor. I

suspect that this could have been offered to Clooney and people who

would have given it more depth. It irritated me because decided to

play him cute. I didn't believe that. His eyes were always ciankled

and lovable. Wasn't that clever, someone who is villain ous, but you

are sympathetic throughout the film to him? I thought the whole movie

was cute. You showed the crash scene. I was enjoying it as a

Hollywood three-act movie. And when I went off it was when one of the

characters, her throw away line was "real life isn't like TV", it was

something trashing TV I thought, you know mate, you don't have the

right to do that, TV is better than this. The crash was taken from

season two of Mad Men. It was taken from Bonfire of the Vanties. In Mad

Men he's talking about friend French films, they are drunk, it is

a mistress. Well you are right it is Bonfire of the Vanties on

steroid. There were moments in the script, when he talked about

himself as a patriarch, I don't think people who are patriarchs

talk about themselves like that. One doesn't like to construct too

many conspiracy theories behind this. Jarecki senior, the two

brothers who are directors, their father is a master of the universe,

he owns two of the British Virgin Islands, he was a commodities

trader. It is more interesting if you think of it as on Eid pal thing

going on, here oedipal thing going on here, here is a father bringing

havoc upon his family and their father was a banker in the 80s.

There is a lot more autobiography in the film. Are there people like

Robert Miller? Yes there are. First of all, you know, there are people

who use the word "variation margin" in their normal life. I had to stop

and replay it to make sure I had heard it. I thought about it

afterwards. I thought it was unbelievable, this man is taking

unbelievable risk in his personal and professional lie. Then I

realised I could name three billionares, who are personal

friend of me, who have taken unbelievable risk in their

professional life and you ask why. They seem to have everything, why

do they do this, and live their lives like this. These people

really exist, even now. That is the very nature of the job, isn't it.

Some of these financial jobs, you are required to be a risk-taker to

make the money in the first place. I don't know a millionaire, let

alone a billionare. I imagine there is one on the sofa next to you.

Speaking of million, one of the problems with the film is it was

pretty cack-handed in the dialogue. One of the characters said you owe

me $4.5 million and you want it back. They know it was tonnes of he

can position, there was cliches, get this tie -- exposition, there

were cliches all over it "get this guy to the hospital". Why are the

films poorer when you have the real-life scandal? I think the best

thing to have come out of the credit crunch is Jonathan Dees book.

He says "these people were rewarded for their work lives, they acted

with impunity in their home lives", the novel does it in such a way

that makes you root and hate the protaganist. I only hated Gere, I

loved his hair and hated film. Along with those films is Queen of

Versailles, a few weeks ago. That was a brilliant film. It started

off being a celebration of this guy, it ended up being him having a

nervous breakdown. He was another billionare. I have heard good

things about that. Arbitrage, the film, opened tonight.

Now to a disturbing true-life tale of harassment, which reveals the

perils of using the Internet. Writer, poet and academic James

Lasdun's life was turned upside down when former student turned

stalker. Waging a sinister campaign, which he describes as verbal

terrorism. He has published an account of his victimisation, that

might prove a cautionary tale in the age of on-line trolls and

cyberbullying. "Her campaign, it appeared, was no

longer for expressing their anger or embarrassing me. But something

much more concrete and practical. It was at this time that she

conceived that crystal line formation of the true nature of her

mission. "I will ruin him". Lasdun first came across Nasreen, as he

calls her in the book, when she was a student in his creative writing

class. Two years later he received an e-mail asking for advice on the

book she was writing, and Lasdun pro-politely obliged. A

correspondence began, and it was only when Lasdun felt the need to

cool off their friendship, that the tone of her communecations began to

change. I began to get concerned when the volume of e-mails went up

to every day, then a few a day, then several a day. They weren't

hate mails at that point. They were just chatty gossip. But at a

certain point I did realise I was becoming the object of some kind of

obsession. The first accusation she made was one of plagerism. From

there she began bringing my agent and his editor -- this editor she

had worked with into a strange conspiracy they arey. Then she

began with accusations of sexual misconduct. She accused me of

having her drugged and raped. That I suppose was the furthest she took

the accusations, from there she went on to threats against me,

against my children. As well as meticulously recounting

the harassment he endured, he takes literary excursions to make sense

of his experience. Ranging from erotic obsession to anti-semitism

suffered by his own father, the architect, Sir Dennis Lasdun.

Yes, the story of her attacks is the spine of the book. And

obviously it is quite dramatic. I think it is any way. But off that,

I digress, I suppose, into these other topics that arose naturally.

Lasdun's book is strikingly honest about his own victimhood. But are

there risks and moral issues raised by writing this as a memoir, rather

than a novel. This description of Nasreen, the

name given to the student turned stalker, as a verbal terrorists. Do

you think that was justified, given the way Lasdun describes his

experiences? Do I think it was justified calling her a verbal

terrorist? My God, yes. The abuse she subjects him to is terrifying,

it is horrific. I was hoping at one point. I don't read scary,

terrifying books, this was really a very frightening book. I was hoping

at one point it was a post-modern novel, so that it was a novel

rather than reality. He said this on radio shows, so I can say this,

I was stunned by theing, she is still sending the e-mails. He -- by

the ending, she is still sending the e-mails. I would be afraid to

walk down the street under that. She threatens to kill his kids, it

is virulant anti-semitism and accusations of rape. The thing is,

is she sane That is the problem with the book. That is the moral

issue at the heart. I think it is beautifully written, he's a fine,

fine short story writer, wonderful poet. There is an ethical hole at

the centre of this book. That is how quickly and speciously, he

dismisses the idea that she's mentally ill and actually he should

be helping her. He had her family's e-mails and never contacted them.

He should have been reaching out to this girl, who was clearly deranged.

Instead, what do we look for from our writers, we look for empathy,

this guy has no empty. I think he has enormous empathy for her, but

it is a disturbing hole in the book. He felt himself in danger, I

imagine the professional advice might not have been to get in touch

with this woman? He said the professional advice was not to

return her e-mails and not to delete them. And to make sure he

read them incase she was threatening violence. I don't agree

he had a moral responsibility to reach out and help her if he

thought she was mentally deranged. She has her own family. I get

unbelievable quantities of e-mails for some people I think are

seriously off the spectrum. I won't go to the effort of tracking down

their families and suggesting they help them. I find one of the

reviews said this is a powerful thesis on the power of the internet

for harm. Sometimes I feel at the edge of it. Somebody has a Twitter

account that purports to be me, they have a picture of me on it and

they say things that I would never say. They are allowed to do this,

because in the last description of it, it says "parody". This is a

modern nightmare that your reputation could be completely

trashed. I did keep finding myself holding up the book and saying what

would hem -- Hemmingway do? I mean he could delete the e-mail account.

He was told by the police not to do that. It seemed to me, that yes,

the abuse was horrific. But there are ways that one could have

constructed it. It seemed to me he rather wallowed in his own misery.

I was struck by the opposite, I I was struck by his generosity and

politeness. I thought that he strips himself bare. He strips his

motives bare, with the accepting of whether or not she's nuts. But his

own motive, like did I give her any, was there any reason she should

have become obsessed with me. He was much more polite, and

empathetic towards her than I think I would have been. It is one long

piece of self-analysis. The thing he did at the beginning, which was

to praise her, overtly in the classroom, and then to go and see

her two years later. He tries to say...He Tries 0 get a novel

published. As a teacher of Krayivity that gave a moment of --

creativity, that gave me a moment's worry. The issue I had was the

first third was like a thriller, and so exciting, and then you go

into this rather nice but slightly diminuendo, deGreggss, you get this

lovely passage on the train, which I thought was wonderful, but then

the trip to DH Lawrence's chapel and the trip to Jerusalem. It did

feel it was disappearing off. is how his mind works, isn't t that

is how James Lasdun copes with this. Is by going into literary metaphor,

and Patricia Highsmith and DH Lawrence, he as trying to make

sense through literature. He's trying to regain control of his own

life and his own narrative. Through expressing it in the only way he

knows how to do it. He does write beautifully. The man can write.

God there is a wonderful image he's talking about the Arab quarter of

Jerusalem there are old men sitting around with their nargula, he

describes it as "their tender creaturely involvement with their

pipes", that was the most beautiful image. My favourite use of words

was the "unmistakable fin", that said it all. It was under the

surface there is the shark. One of the deGreggss is based on anti-

semitism, taking it from the Nasreen e-mail into an experience

of his father. That I felt of manipulative. I'm suddenly thinking

did I get this wrong, I really felt there were moral issues with that.

Whey felt he was doing. There was a much more violent anti-semetic

attack on his father, the architect of the National Theatre amongst

other things. I felt he was some how yolking Nasreen's comments,

which of course he has edited and chosen what you see and what you

don't. The controlling power of the author. And yolking the very

violent attack on his father to Nasreen. I just felt there was

something really fishy about this book. We will leave it there.

right! Give Me Everything You Have is out now. From a concerted effort

to trash a reputation, to the worldwide problems of trash

littering the environment. For a new documentary, the Oscar-winning

actor, Jeremy Irons, has travelled the globe to visit beauty spots and

beaches covered with washed up waste. It challenges us to consider

how much packaging and pollution we produce. From Lebanon to Vietnam,

from Iceland to France, Irons crosses confidents to survey the

effects of today's throw-away culture. Historically we have

always buried our trash, but it seems that now we sometimes don't

dig we dump. Waste from the ancient Lebanese

city has been brought here. To an uncontrolled dump on the edge of

the city. Irons investigates the three main solutions to the problem

of waste disposal. Sea dumping, landfill and incineration. Which

produces the harmful chemical compounds, dioxins. Dioxins are

compounds that are made from carbon. Like we are. But they have got some

extra bits stuck on. These are chlorine, or bromine molecules,

they do not occur naturally in mainstream chemistry of life. If

you set fire to them, you start to produce a set of compounds which

are very toxic. In Vietnam, Irons meets children born with birth

defects, years after the spraying of chemical over forests during the

In California he meets people hoping to achieve a target of zero

waste. We have now made it mandatory in San Francisco for

everyone to participate in our programme, from single family

residents, to apartment dwellers to all types of businesses and even

visitors. So technically, as a visitor to San Francisco, you are

legally obligated in to participate in our separation programme. Will

Irons's stark message about the issue of waste make us sit up and

listen, or is it human nature to throw away and forget about the

consequences. A feature-length documentary about

the environment have been suck he isful in recent years, there was

AlGor, he's Inconvenient Truth, and End of the Line about fishing. Is

this part of that successful tradition? I think so. With

Inconvenient Truth, whether or not you agreed it was very powerful and

made you question your own belief, so everybody had to have a belief

about climate change. I watched this for 20 minutes, stopped,

switched it off, went downstairs got all my children in a room

together, started it again and made them watch it with me. So they

could explain the chemical diagram, and we got to the end and vowed

never to buy pre-packaged vegtables again. You talk about the diagram,

it is a difficult subject to make engaging? It is, but fascinating

subject. I did feel this was one of those things. We had a geography

teacher that used to come in with terrible hangovers and play these

very ernest, and very educational films while he was rubbing his

temples in the darkness at the back of the room. This did feel like one

of those. The graphics were pretty old fashioned and there was a short

of shoestring aesthetic that ran through it. It was a shame I found

it educational rather than entertaining. Boy is it educational.

Our educator was Jeremy Irons, the actor, taking us through? Yes. I

didn't like the film. I found it, it seemed to go on forever, it

seemed to go on as long as Gone With The Wind. I thought as a film

it was a bad film. It was just one damn thing after another. And

Jeremy Irons, bless him, he can be fantastic as an actor, I felt he

was acting being Jeremy Irons. At one point he's sitting on a trash

mountain, and mumbles to himself "this is appalling", and you think,

yes it is appalling, we can see that. It is not his point, I

thought it was badly directed. does add light and shade? At one

point he tries to walk around a field and measure it. I thought

this is not a Charlie chaplain film. Someone in the edit tried to make

that funny. I felt the problem with the film of not Jeremy Irons, it

went on for a very long time with a lot of negative things. In the end

my 14-year-old started playing with an iPad, I said put it away and he

said no, it is too depressing. I felt there was endless problems and

very little time given to any solution. Absolutely right. That's

the problem. I wonder whether it is because they do sort of try to talk

about the way you deal with waste. But there doesn't seem to be a

sense of looking at why we create all this waste. You know, it remind

me, watching this, of one of the greatest novels of the past 25

years, the Underworld, the hero is waste analyst. It uses waste as a

metaphor for the rapcious bulimic economy that shoves this out with

no regard for the human. If it was an economy celebrated in the age of

Lichtenstein, that consumer culture? There is lots of scenes in

Mad Man where they leave the trash. The music is all by Vangelis.

appalling. I thought the music was very dated. The fact that Vangelis

is still alive making music made me feel old. Wasn't understated the

music? You could hear it in the clip, there was plianky, plianky,

hope, hope, hope at the end. We have to make it more hopeful what

can you come up with it. We get four seconds and a bit on San

Francisco. My problem is it wasn't political enough, not looking

deeply enough at what the underlying causes of this were. But

there were moments. The grotesqueness of those flotillas of

trash in the doldrums of the north Pacific giant. They felt like

exemplary spaces of globalisation. They seemed extraordinary images.

This plastic soup they talked about. I never want to eat a prawn again.

It is not just enough to point a camera at it. It was astonishing

and scary, you have to have political dimension. And sex it up.

Al Gore was more sexy an Jeremy Irons. I worry about the sexy thing,

I worry that in essentially a polemic film, some aspects are

presented as being objective, yes we don't know if they were?

deformed babies, that struck me as in terrible taste. It was, I think

it does provide a kind of frisson, we saw, but there were babies feet,

deformed foetuses in pickle jars in Vietnam. I felt manipulated by that.

I thought it was incredibly clunky, and even more so because the rest

of the film is so dry. It has nothing to do with trash. They were

dumping agent orange as a political act against the vet con. What are

we going to do, except buying loose vegtables. When they found the

solution, we went to a loose vegtable shop that looked like it

was in the part of the world that people would never see the vast

majority. And entirelyly populated by people who read the Guardian.

This bow hoe utopia. The vast majority of the world can't get

their hand on the Guardian or loose vegtables. Let's be realistic about

why it happened. We never got that. Trash is in selected cinemas now.

She has become something of a national treasure in recent years

following her success in the conducting contest, Maestro, and

the enduring popularity of the Great British Bake-Off, Sue Perkins

has written material for French & Saunders, but she has written her

own sitcom which begins this week. Sue Perkins wrote and stars in

Heading Out, which is about Sarah, and a vet. I don't want to spend my

weekends playing with big-titted children. Ha ha ha, does she mean

us. As her 40th birthday approaches, she find it difficult to still

address the issue of her sexuality with her mother. I won't prime but

what's their name. Michelle, a French person, and a sales person

for a medical company. Oh yes, and what sort of things does he sell?

Leg, mainly leg, artificial legs. That's useful.

While all those around her think nothing of her sexuality, Sarah

herself dreads coming out. At her birthday party thrown by friend,

she's presented with a surprise gift, which they hope will help

prepare her for speaking to her parents. Life coach and self-styled

personal enhancement co-ordinator, Toria. I know we didn't get off on

the best footing, which a bloody shame, I'm an awful lot of fun, and

crazy with a capital "B". Perkins is keen to emphasise that

the theme of sexual identity isn't the whopbl theme. Will this series

prove a sweet treat for the audience.

Just do it, paint me. Consider yourself redecorated! So Alex, I

guess Sue Perkins really is now a modern national treasure, so

deserving of her own show? Yeah, I felt that this was much like the

Great Bishop Bake-Off it is television comfort food. It is

unchallenging, comfortable viewing. I thought it is not pushing any

boundaries, it reminded me of the Brittas Empire. Perfectly good.

There is so much goodwill surrounding her, that will propel

it into perhaps happier waters. are getting a fair number of

comedies about awkwardness at the moment. Miranda, for example?

this is very bad, I can't reprecontinued -- pretend it is as

good as pier Rwanda for the Brittas Empire. It is a group of sketches

stitches together for a sitcom. I was doing a sitcom once, and the

writer and lead actor said to me, don't do sitcom acting or you will

appear to be insane. In sitcom acting everyone is guorning and

doing this. That is what they are doing in this. Everybody appears to

be crazy. What about the social values in the programme. Sue

Perkins, worried about coming out to her mother, all her frepbtdz

think being gay is fine. I fine -- Friends think being gay is fine.

find that unlikely that you are 40 and not coming out to your parent.

You are never coming out or come out long ago. I found the whole

thing to be so far out of my comfort zone generally, I wasn't

sure if I found it funny or not. I did find it funny explaining my 14-

year-old watching it with me what a booty call was. I would like to

have been there for that moment. There are differing public

attitudes to 0 sexuality, in Eastleigh the victory today and

UKIP would have put that down to the backlash on gay marriage.

think with regards to gay marriage and homosexuality it is interesting

that Sarah is the only person in the whole of her world who has any

issue with her sexuality. It feels to me nice to see, let me rephrase

that, nice to see two mem women in bed. Nice to have not this panting,

Tipping the Velvet moment, and just seeing it as normal. It is very

normal, I felt that, it presented it as very mainstream. It is like

as though we are seeing only fools and horse, with Rodney gay and

Cassandra as a bloke. That is the kind of normality. I totally agree.

It is a good thing. I wish I had something that was funnier. I wish

it had a sense of reality. The fact she carries the dead cat around

through the whole of the first episode, a vet who doesn't care and

seem to be interested in animals. thought that was clever as an idea.

The fake cat was savageed by a real dog at the end. It just wasn't

funny, I applaud the normalisation of things. Jo the physical comedy

is not good -- The physical comedy is not as good as Miranda. That is

hard to match. Heading Out is on BBC Two. Thanks to my guest,

Heather McGregor, Kerry Shale and Alex Preston. Do remember you can

find out more about everything we have discussed tonight on the

website. And we are looking forward to reading your tweets in the Green

Room. We are leaving you tonight with the performance by the great

American pianist, who died earlier this week at the age of 73, Clyburn,