17/02/2012 The Review Show

On tonight's Review Show... Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock in

Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Six

months after his death, a huge retrospective of one of Britain's

greatest artists, Lucian Freud. Acclaimed novelist Colm Toibin

explores how families created the great writers. And a look back at

the most celebrated director of them all, Martin Scorsese. And

mulling over all of that, this week's panel... The comedian and

activist Mark Thomas, who's been building his own political

manifesto on Radio Four. Crime novelist Denise Mina, who's

currently scripting the graphic novel of The Girl With the Dragon

Tattoo. Former Director of the Edinburgh Film Festival, now a

writer, Hannah McGill. And journalist, commentator and critic,

Sarfraz Manzoor. Good Evening, and welcome to the Review Show.

Throughout the programme we'll be luxuriating in the wisdom of Mark,

Hannah, Denise and Safraz, but we also want to hear from you, so do

get in touch through e-mail or twitter, we're always waiting for

one polite enough to read out on air. First up, a film six years in

the making. Jonathan Safran Foer burst into the literary world in

2002 with his novel everything is illuminated which was later adapted

into a hugely popular film starring a Elijah Wood. His second novel,

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, has just undergone the same

treatment, this time a starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, directed

by Stephen Daldry. It is the story of Oskar, a young New York boy

struggling to come to terms with the death of his father in the

World Trade Centre. Please just a Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks are

the parents of the boy. His father is very sensitive to the child's

eccentricity, creating adventurous puzzles for him as an attempt to

overcome his shyness and idiosyncrasy. Computer consultants.

One amateur everything? It is a compliment. Amateur pacifist?

Amateur inventor? OK, we are all said. When, after his father's

death, Oscar finds a mysterious key his latest adventure becomes clear

- to find the lock the key fits as his father's loss challenge to him.

A quest through New York ensues, taking the Oscar far from his

comfort zone in Manhattan. As much as it is a physical journey for him,

at heart, it is an emotional challenge. I am trying to find a

lot for this key that was in the envelope that belonged to my father.

I am sorry, I don't have anything about the key, or your father.

cameos are bound including violet Davies, and now be -- and Max von

Sydow, as the mute Llodra, who has received the Oscar not. Do you have

a criminal record? Maybe you heard people for a living? What is your

Everything is illuminated seemed to please fans, so has Stephen Daldry

been as successful with this film which was based on a more complex

narrative? And which delves into Mark, it is more than a decade now

since 9/11 so do you think it seems a less taboo subject for a film?

think it has been less to do for a while. For example, United 93, a

great movie about what happened then. So it is not the taboo

subject, the problem with this film - and I did try to find positive

things about it, which is hard - the problem is it is over

sentimentalised, cloying, the characters are not really

believable and actually it is vaguely insulting. Did you think it

was insulting? I thought it was unbelievably cynical. If it was not

for the fact it was based on a Booker would have thought they had

deliberately named the child Oscar because they wanted but award! He

seemed to be trying to take the right of passage film's structure

of a boy who needs to overcome his dad to become a man, then crowbar

and use the structure of 9/11 as an excuse for it. I think that is

offensive. The you think 9/11 was just crowbar it in? I was a bit

more interested in how it portrays parenting and childhood as it is

regarded in America at the moment. I think it is a kids' film,

completely, that is not necessarily derogatory. I don't think it even

tries to make any emotional depth to the adult characters. It has

this child to everybody kowtows and facilitates this fantasy, his

hypersensitivity, his neediness, to such an extent that by the end you

think this is not real life, this is a fantasy where everybody

gathers round and says yes, your fantasy of your perfect father and

the worst day of all time and the fairy tale of everyone in New York

coming together loving each other, everyone conspires to protect him

in his fantasy world. For me, that was the scary thing, more than the

9/11 stuff, this weird, cosseted child he was not coming up against

the real world but actually does being encouraged to live in a

fantasy. It is the sense that it is not exactly magic realism, but

heightened reality say we should not be too forensic about the

detail. -- so we should. Although you can do that in prose, you can't

necessarily do it in film and the child comes over as a peculiar, not

a peculiar child which are suggested by the autism, but a

bizarre construction of childhood which has a very American thing.

When I watch American films I think do they have kids there, because

they are like little middle-aged men. The character is hyper

literate, but it does not work as well on film. I thought the use of

this potential suggestion of Asperger's was a bit of a cop out

clause in a sense because it meant you had somebody who was supercar

precocious, literate, speaks like a 30 year-old, without requiring the

majority of wisdom and insight that a 30 Roald would have -- Super

precocious. So in the end Sandra Bullock can say bad things happen,

we cannot explain them. That is not a good enough. If it is always

literally at the Chow's level, it can seem infantile, if they are

more sophisticated you think the ABBA writer does not have the

child's point of view. I think a child does a good job. -- the child.

The thing about his character is it is Berry constructed in a lazy

fashion. Self harming, it is just like any kid who has an emotional

time is a self harm. If they are precocious they need a bit of

knowledge, they need to be naive and then you give them Asperger's.

It seems reconstructed. Don't you think we get more depth from the

character, the mute man played by Moxey -- Max von Sydow. He has a

simpler thing to do because his character is straightforward

whereas the child carries the weight of being the audience's

fantasy of what it would be like to be a child to anybody would do

anything for. -- who anybody. It never comes across as a human.

is a self-centred damage because the mother is damaged. The

grandmother is damaged. Everything is just about this kid and his

needs. But is quite a selfish thing. His 80 year-old grandmother is

standing there saying shall I come under there with you, under the bed

because he is having a hard time, it is like everybody is going under

there with him. This child doesn't seem to care about the people

around him. He is horrible. Isn't part of this that when you watch

this movie it has been constructed in such a way, we know it is a sad

tale, somebody has lost their father in 9/11, it will be sad, but

every bit of it underlines it and says this is really sad, but this

is really, really sad. They have the idea of the The Falling Man

which is the famous image from the World Trade Centre, but they kind

of rendering it -- render it in a way it is like the opening sequence

of the film. I found that offensive. It was different from the subtlety

of the book where the Cha's obsession with the falling and only

gradually emerges after time. have the scope of VAT in a book but

it just comes over as really cloying and far too much. It would

be enough for his father to die. It did not have to be within the

context of the tragedy. Not a positive verdict, it is fair to say.

Now, when Lucian Freud died in July, he was still hard at work on a

painting, characteristically, of a nude man reclining with a dog. That

is just one of many works on display at a major new

retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery in London. We sent

In the first large-scale display of Freud's work since his death, 130

works have been assembled from collections across the world.A

arranged chronologically, the exhibition highlights sometimes

dramatic changes Freud made in his technique. That early style of

painting was painstaking, and it was very - it was incredibly slow,

and so quite relatively early on, he abandoned this way of working

and moved on to moving much bolder brush strokes.

We have in the exhibition Hotel Bedroom, which was the last

painting he made sitting down, and we see that he begins to pull out

from the subject so that you start to see the interiors. Throughout

the exhibition, Freud's obsession with the human body is dramatically

in evidence. His first nude was painted in 1966, and he felt

himself that he wanted to pull out from the head and start looking at

the whole body. The exhibition also highlights the intimate

relationship Freud had with his subjects.

Some people he got to know through painting them. Others, he'd

obviously known for a very long time - for example, his portrait of

David Hart -- David Hockney David calculated took 130 hour, so

although they were friends already, you get to know someone in a

different way through that sitting. One of Freud's most frequent

subjects was himself. Self-Portrait shows the importance of him because

he felt that he ought to understand the rigours of what he was putting

his sitters through. As he got older, the self-portraits became

more reflective and moving, and the final self-portrait we have in the

exhibition, he almost appears to be engulfed by the wall of paint

behind him. So is the inevitable posthumous reassessments are made,

does this exhibition justify the claim for Freud as one of the

greatest in modern Britain? Denise, this is such a wide-ranging

exhibition, but I thought the early pictures, in particular, were

really striking, so different from his more famous work. Very

different, more stylised, quite flat, plain. The ones that were all

about skin I found quite - absolutely beautiful - I mean,

really a pleasure to the eye. You wouldn't go walking about with big

headphones on listening to the whole history of the painting. You

would just look. I find the earlier pictures much more intimate. I

don't know how you felt, but the naked ones where you're staring at

someone's per kneeum or some intimate part of them, you felt

really distant and he was almost trying not to say anything about

them, and it actually felt quite cold - an experiment on a surface

paint pattern. I thought his attitude was really interesting -

he couldn't connect with his mother until she was no longer interested

in him because she was depressed. He invited his children in to paint

them to have a relationship with him. Even when he does saccharin

pictures - children with ducks - Lee is in the background of the

portrait leering out. He had things to say. It feels very much he's

holding back from the viewer somehow, he's always hiding away.

There was a big change in technique, wasn't there, from the early to the

later paintings? And he stood up. I like the early stuff. And picked

another brush. Picked up a whole set of brushes - I agree. It's good

to see the early ones just to see he wasn't born with that signature

style and had an entirely different way of painting in the '50s, but I

just thought the later stuff was amazing. It is intimate. There was

a quote I read which said he liked to think of human beings as animals.

I think there is a sense that he's looking at everybody naked as an

animal whether they're wearing clothes or not. What was quite

interesting is that a lot of the paintings - they don't name who

they are. There is a sense he's looking at everybody as a species.

Actually at the end of it, we're all just bags of skin. We're all

going to die. We're all going to have mottled skin by the end - it

felt like a zoological study more than... Not quite a celebration of

flesh but a compulsion to paint it. I thought it was a celebration,

actually, because this was my first Freud exhibition I have been to. I

left it a convert. I adored it. You could chronologically follow his

point. You could see those points he made the changing in his paging.

The flesh - I became absolutely drawn into this because the detail

on it is just incredible, and you just - it got to the point where

I'd walk up to a picture of someone with clothes on and say, I don't

want to see it. I was just drawn into it. I thought the characters

of the people did come out. I think in his mother it came out. When you

see portraits of other artists you can really see this character

coming through as well as his flair. Were you as drawn in as these

pictures? Some of them you're drawn in. They're very, very variable. I

prefer the more stylised things earlier on, the fleshy ones. For me,

they're very cold and distant. I read a quote from him where he said

the head is no different than a hand or a foot. He's not interested

in the personality as expressed by the face, but as it's splayed out

and you're lying in an awkward position. I find these awkward

positionings awkward as a viewer, and they're meant to be, but the

feeling of someone in a position they'd never be in in any natural

way - sometimes that really works. The Lee Barry one is really great

because this was someone who was an artist of his body. Even in those

most awkward position, he looks like... Absolutely. They're amazing.

He has this great face as well. Some of them - looks like he just

had someone lie over there, look awkward and hold a rat and that'll

be really weird rather than say something about the picture.

you find the distance in the self- portraits because I thought there

was a Piersing gaze there? I felt as though I was slagging him off

because I loved this exhibition. I don't want to sound like that but I

felt he was very influenceded by the expressionists and always

denied it. He references Rembrandt. He references Andy Warhol. Why? He

was the most vacuous painter ever. The interior after war hole is the

least effective group paintings. I really do love it. But I do find

he's moving away, and I felt the self-portraits were a cynical

reference. He is placing himself in the cannon and doesn't need to do

that. I noticed you could really get close to the paints. It's

amazing you could literally see - not even just two-dimensional.

There was a portrait of I think a woman called Ria, and her face was

a mound of paint coming out. Yeah. Just the idea that painting is a

physical activity. It's for the sitters and Freud as well.

gizical activity for him right up until the very end which is so

important because you have that last... That last picture is

amazing because it's half finished. There is immense tenderness in

those. I thought they were very moving. Very moving indeed. I am

glad you all enjoyed that. The Lucian Freud Portraits

is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London until

27th May, and you can see an exclusive documentary about his

life tomorrow night here on BBC Two. Now, New Ways to Kill Your Mother -

not an idiot's guide for would be matricides but a new collection of

essays by the acclaimed writer Colm Toibin about the relationship

between writers and their families -which aims to shed light on some

of our greatest, and emotionally complicated, authors. From feuds to

funerals, from Jane Austen to Barack Obama, New Girl explores how

19th and 20th century writers have written about family relationships.

It begins with a 19th century reference to write out parents

altogether in favour of aunts citing the works of Jane Austen and

Henry James. In most cases, of course, the mother is the dominant

character. You cannot rake me. something! Your mother insists.

an Irish author himself, Colm Tobin is drawn to writers like the

playwright JM Sing whose evangelical domineering mother

deplored his literary success. Then there was what Samuel Beckett

described as the "savage loving" of his mother. Then of course there is

the traditionally fraught paternal relationship. He observes, for

instance, the rivalry between Henry James and his father, who tried his

own hand at writing, then resented his son's success. More recently

James Baldwin and Barack Obama have explored sons and fathers, absent

or otherwise, in their work. The deployment of inter-generational

dynamics to portray change also an interest to Tobin. In Doyle's

writing about his parents, he sees the changing face of Ireland

through the course of the 21st century. This the band, is it?

Bet you two are shitting yourselves. Tobin revels in the anecdotal value

of family. Pul itser prize winning author - loathed his wife, his home

in upstate New York and sexuality. Tennessee Williams was throughout

his life haunted by the ghost of his sister Rose. Deeply written in

his often funny prose, Tobin chart misunhappy family relationships.

Safraz, it's almost received wisdom, isn't it, the text should be

everything in finding out about writers' lives is a bit of a guilty

pleasure, but there is a real power of autobiographical information

running through these essays. is. What's interesting is it tells

you a lot of people's fiction is inspired by the reality they didn't

necessarily write about except in journals in letters. Most of the

collection of essays he's published elsewhere - it feels slightly

random in terms of the writers he's chosen. I had mixed feelings about

it. In a way that was my own failing because I hadn't read all

the writers he was talking about. Therefore you could only connect

more with certain ones than others. The thing I found more interesting

is the little human facts - the stories - come through. John

Cheever comes across as a monstrous man who hates women and was having

a penis-measuring competitions in college whilst having three kids.

Those anecdotes come through. Also coming through is the damage having

a family to a writer. It's impressive the range of writers he

discusses through the Irish writers right up to John Cheever, Henry

James, so on. It is impressive. The problem is unless you know the

writers, you're always going to be one step removed. It's always going

to be harder to get into it. That was certainly barrier for me to

begin with. But it's fantastically gossipy. It's very personalised. I

love - there was stuff like the letter us that Yates' father sent

his son. "Have you read my poems yet?" What are you doing? There was

a certain emotional car crash to this... That it takes a very long

time how to write a play, "dad!" There are great moments, "When you

have seen my play and seen how good it is perhaps you'll let me give

you a few tips -" Whoa! You do begin to see similarities, so the

relationship between Yates and his father is like the relationship

between Henry James and his father. In a way I think there is a

randomness to it, there is a sense of these essays vaguely tied

together by the family thing. It doesn't necessarily need to be

about writers, just that being nosey about other people's families

is great. These families are more likely to have diaries and letters.

There is a slightly spurious way of tying it together saying the

novelist is trying to kill the parent which I didn't think worked.

He starts with this essay about, why is it literary characters seem

to have unconventional family set- ups? It's a bit like saying why do

action heroes get into car chases? It's the wrong way around. Isn't he

saying about 19th century writers the reason why aunts become

paramount is if you have a character without the ties of

parents, they can become much more independent? I think that's the

first chapter which is really more of an introduction before the

beginning. That's the only place women appear in a role other than

very annoying mothers or the wives of homosexual men, pretty much, so

it is a very - it's not ran David Miliband. It's really about men, so

- and it's also about - you're talking about the theme of - all

writers want to kill their mothers - do they? Do they? That doesn't

really work. Doesn't say that. talking about - everybody wants to

usurp their parents. There is one line where he says the children of

failed artists always try to outshine their father's artistic

failures so they can then show their mum they're a better man,

things like that and never allowing - but that is one of the lovely

things about it is he makes these random statements about thing, then

tries to back them up. I found that really exciting. I found the fact

that he would just go, no, this is what I think - he was just very

bold about it. And I loved the fact that halfway through the book, he

suddenly goes, look, happy childhoods might make good citizen,

but it doesn't help you when you're staring at a blank page which is

essentially at the core. The play by Barry is vaguely inspired by

Charles Hawkney. He had three healthy kid, but that wasn't work.

Fiction creates necessities, which means you have to have more

complication. I think the line of how you take fiction and move on

was quite interesting. In that chapter he says everything is

byeography because Hinterland is very much based on biography. He

says this is all about the writer. I think it's all about him and a

kind of autobiography. It's beautiful because of that because

he makes those sweeping statements. He really connects - tries to

connect - when he talks about Ronnie Doyle, he talks about the

fact that he knew someone who knew someone who was the sister of the

grandfather - he really tries to make those connections. There is

melancholy there in the lives of the writers destroyed by homophobia.

He talked about John Cheever... don't know how they had time to do

any writing. There was the strain of incredible paranoia and neuroses

and fear. That chapter is about being a repressed homosexual and

not dealing with it. It's much more about his crisis and Thomas Mann

and his insane family - talk about good gossip - generations of incest,

suicide and madness - for me, it's more a great piece of gossip than

anything else. The whole thing about you needing good drama for

fiction, in a way the writers who honour their parents aren't going

to make as good of stories. That is true - scope for new work, perhaps.

New Ways to Kill Your Mother is out now, published by Picador. Last

Sunday, even the sea of stars at the BAFTAS was outshone by a humble

speech from one of cinema's living legends. Martin Scorsese. So, in

the week he became a BAFTA fellow, we look back at his long career.

Martin Scorsese occupies the throne amongst Hollywood royalty. His

career now spans over 40 years from first feature, Who's That Knocking

at my Door made straight from film school and starring his classmate

Harvey Keitel. That girl is bothering you. Shut up. Don't tell

me to shut up. You get out. Don't tell me to shut up in my car.

his most recent movie, the Oscar- nominated Hugo. Halt!

distinctive directing style covers Roman Catholic guilt, redemption,

period dramas, music and perhaps a subject close toast his heart,

Italian-American immigrants, which can be seen in the early film he

made features his mother and father. You were going to show us about the

sauce. You were going to show us how to do the sauce. What shall I

say? You're going to get up and show it to us. How did you learn

it? Throughout his career, he's pushed his film-making techniques

to the limit inspiring a whole new generation of filmmakers. For our

first two films, Shallow Grave and Train Spotting, we unashamedly

stole lots of things. The voice scrover was based on the Good

Fellas voice scrover. Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career.

critics suggest his weak points lie in his female characters, but he

challenged that preconception with Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, a

road trip featuring a suburban housewife leaving home with her son,

leaving Ellen Bernstein an Oscar. am not going to discuss my sex life

with you. I am not going to tell you about mine. Violent psychos and

gangsters loom large in his work, and violent movies such as Mean

Streets and Good Fellas are perhaps That is a lot of money Fourie kid

like you. Anyone asks, you got it in Vegas. Then there is the

thought-provoking work, like the last 10 - Macca the Last temptation

of Christ, and Shutter Island. Despite the illustrious career it

took five Academy Award nominations before Scorsese finally won an

Oscar for the departed in 2006. your father were life and saw you

here sitting with me I would say he would have a word with me about

this. So with Oscar Time approaching and another nomination

under his belt, can Scorsese remain at the top? You have got a bit of

talent. We have just been talking about family life and I think there

was a good example of Scorsese's interest in it with that club with

his parents. And you hear his voice and how fast he talks. That is

always strikes me about him as a person, this anxiety and drive you

get from him, he talks fast, manic, tries to move on to the next thing,

do bigger and so on. This varied, long career with this extraordinary

range of interests he has. He is always driven on, never satisfied.

He never felt he was being appreciated the right way, he

wanted the Oscar. So he never sits back. It is that anxiety that is

fascinating. It is hard to really remember how revolutionary some of

those early films were. Raging Bull was just absolutely outstanding.

The way it was shot, the use of black-and-white, the epic filming

of the shops were incredible. -- was in -- shops was incredible. --

shots was incredible. If you put everything aside, this man started

out with Spielberg, Lucas, and he is still churning out films that

have been nominated for awards 40 years later. For Hollywood, that is

outstanding. I think he is the perfect example of an argument

against awards. He did not win awards for the good stuff, started

making films that appeal to the awards committees, but it was not

as good as the early stuff which was ignored. I am not saying he was

doing this now but he was making tremendous stuff, raging Bull, taxi

driver, things like the Departed swept the board but they were not a

patch on it. I watched Mean Streets and you know that opening line when

he says you don't make up for your sins in church, you make up for

them at home. Those concepts of redemption, sin, betrayal and how

they go through in a gangster film, you talked about it... But it seems

to me a lot of people have been affected by the committee we

directed but that spirituality and the idea of guilt, retribution and

repentance, I don't think they tap into that so much. That element is

strong. He is also brilliant stylist and his use of music is

easy to take for granted because That use of pop music to undercut

something violent, music to evoke memories, that is entirely him.

Brilliant style, he loved language and that rapid-fire dialogue and

the hilarious use of obscenity, all the things we take for granted,

became fashionable in the 1980s and 1990s when everybody was influenced

by him. Without him you probably would not have things like the

Sopranos, the wire, he is part of the evolution of the series, he is

one of the big fossils along the way. A and other films like King of

Comedy. Why don't people watch that more? A brilliant film! Scorsese

tries out different things all the time and sometimes he fails. Gangs

Of New York, New York, New York, you just think oh no! He made

Robert De Niro as staff. It seems he chooses somebody and invest some

of their best films in them, but I wrote a quote ways of the job of

the artist is to make others care about his obsessions, and if you

think about his obsessions, religion, his Italian background,

cinema, that is what he has revolved around. It is what we have

become obsessed with. He is brilliant as a film academic, the

document up and preserve of cinema and quite revolutionary in terms of

insisting on the preservation and recording of film history, a full-

time job in itself. And archives of music, his documentaries about Bob

Dylan and George Harrison, keeping the songs alive. This documentary

was made by somebody who loves the music and country spat all those

influences and see them. -- and can trace back. I suppose he translated

that passion for cinema into his latest film. He is one of these

people that is an evangelist for more than just the power of cinema

but the religious fixation he has with the cinema as a church, the

transformative powers of it. I am not drawn to that whole magic of

cinema thing, the nostalgia, sentimentality and history of

cinema a bit dubious, I like him more when he is being a bit more

immediate. But his Love of cinema is infectious and if you want a

quick introductory guide to cinema he is the person to go to. And to

be 70 making films with that much energy, we were talking about Woody

Allen early on, if you think about how stayed his films are compared

to the amount of frenetic energy in the editing of a Scorsese film, it

is amazing. I am a constant reinvention. Maybe it is a good

thing is bonkers. Are we allowed to say that? Allegedly bonkers! Well,

I imagine that won't be the last time Scorsese is celebrated!

Talking of massively influential figures, yesterday was the 20th

anniversary of the death of the seminal novelist Angela Carter. We

asked Jeanette Winterson to explain just why she was so important.

Angela Carter was exciting, when she published The Magic Toyshop in

1967 she was writing her way past the social realism that seemed to

be the purpose and method of fiction after its brief modernistic

experiment from the likes of Joyce and Wolfie. Experiment which tried

to do more than reproduce recognisable situations, and

experiment with language and our unconscious, dreaming self. The

novel was back to what it could see, there was not much interest in what

it could be. Sure, there was Marcus and Calvisano, but British writers

in the Sixties played it straight, think Kingsley Amos, or Iris

Murdoch. Elsewhere, science fiction writers could get away with

alternatives because they were alternative. But cross-

fertilisation was not happening. Then along came Angela Carter, and

landed into the colourful world of fairy-tales, themselves already

pollinated by a rich, irreverent tradition where women met with

waltz and men must take advice from cats. She shifted the novel into

this different geography of out of scale plays and non-linear time,

she re read fairy stories as though they were social realism and she

rewrote realism as fairy-tale. In the company of false, filmed by

Neil Jordan, her heroine prefers to reshape as a wolf and live with her

hunted off lover rather than a return to social acceptability and

the nice husband. Her most glorious creation in the Nights At The

Circus. Is a giantess who claims to be hatched from an egg and hatches

wings. Angela Carter was a feminist but believed women were more than

the circumstances, we could be our imaginations. This put her at odds

with quite in lot of 1970s feminist thinking which was only interested

in gender experience. Angela Carter's politics included a

radical wildness, a woman as mythical and magical -- woman as

the mythical, magical and dangerous creature. She wrote as if women

could fly, should fly and as if language and storytelling were

themselves wings to hoist women over the kitchen sink and the way

from our domestic dramas and dismal histories. -- away. This was not

romantic escapism, but eight re- -- a. Well, that's about all for

tonight. Thanks to my guests Mark Thomas and Hannah McGill, Denise

Mina and Sarfraz Manzoor. Remember, as ever, you can find out more on

all tonight's items on our website, and we'll be tweeting wisdom

throughout the week. Sarfraz will be scrutinising tonight's tweets in

the Green Room in a second. Next week I'll be here with a stellar

line-up including Brian Cox and Mark Millar to discuss the runners

and riders in this year's Oscars. In the meantime, at the end of a

week that saw the loss of a musical legend we hear from a rising star

of the new generation, as part of our new partnership with BBC

Introducing. Here's Ruby Goe with I keep my gaze on you. I see my

mood and colours, something I can't When I ask for one thing, the

others prevail. When I wish for blue skies, the heavens open up.

You with Perris just my luck... -- you with her is just my luck...

Rushing like thunder, twisted realisation it was always you,

What could have been, what should have been, now why is it when I

call heads, it is always tales? And when I ask for one thing, the other

thing prevails. And when I wish for blue skies, the heavens open up.