25/11/2011 The Review Show

Tonight, celebrity and the media, from Marilyn Monroe to a Prime

Minister, blackmailed into bizarre sex, live on TV.

In a week when contemporary stars talked about the price of fame, the

new film explores Marilyn Monroe's inner demons, and her conflict with

celebrity. All people ever see is Marilyn Monroe.

The public's appetite for scandal is laid bear in Charlie Brooker's

parable of a Prime Minister's terrible dilemma. Do we secretly

relish media intrusion. I will be executed.

Plus, hidden treasures brought to light at the Ashmolean museum in

Oxford. The long lost first novel of Jack

Kerouac. "the sea stretching around the horizon, the rich clean sound

of the bow spliting the water. Music from Beer Jacket.

# The blows hard in your dead heart # Captain of the soul

I'm joined tonight by the actress, Maureen Lipman, the journalist

Sarfraz Manzoor, writer and critic, Paul Morley, and Sarah Churchwell,

Professor of American literature at the university of East Anglia. Join

in the discussions at home by sending in tweets, we read each one.

All through this week we have heard celebrities and others expose the

underhand tactics of the tabloids, but they feed a public appetite,

which is hardly anything new. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe could

barely walk down a street without being mobbed. A new film, My Week

With Marilyn, aims to uncover more about the real woman behind the

public figure. She's here, said the headlines,

everyone now it meant the American film star with the famous shape and

wiggley walk. Marilyn Monroe visited the UK only once, in 1956

the world's most famous movie star, boarded a plane with her new

husband, Arthur Miller. She had come here to make The

Prince and the Showgirl, with the acclaimed actor and director,

Lawrence Olivier, it was her first film as producer and star, and

crucially, a chance to prove herself as a serious actress. But

the production wasn't a happy time for Monroe, who was becoming

increasingly addicted to prescription drugs and alcohol. She

and Olivier clashed over everything, from her lateness on set to her

obsession with method acting. With the marriage to Miller already

crumbling, Monroe felt very vulnerable. Enter 23-year-old

assistant director, Colin Clark, the old Eatonian son of art

historian, Keneth Clarke, who was starting his first job in the

business. My Week With Marilyn is based on his memoir of the week he

spent with Hollywood's most memorable actress. She and Olivier

were talking a dlifrpb language. She decided this wuing man, Colin

Clark was someone to trust and befriend, eventhough they had aner

rottically charged few days together, she was able to recapture

her lost childhood with him. Given this is his first feature film,

Curtis has managed to assemble an impressive cast, including Kenneth

Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Dame Judi Devon, and Michelle Williams.

knew Michelle Williams was a great actress, but I didn't know what a

great dancer and singer she was. It was great to surround her with a

great team of people. At the heart of it was Michelle's brilliance. I

love seeing her sing the songs from the tripbstripbs and other times in

Marylin's life -- The Prince and the Showgirl, and other times in

Marylin's life. Does My Week With Marilyn manage to give new insight

into the legendary star, or is it just another tribute to a pop icon.

# The way that I move # That thermometer proves

# That I certainly can Sarah, you have written about

Marilyn Monroe, you know her life very well, how well do you think

that Michelle Williams manages so capture the essence of the woman

and the star? It is a performance that is getting a lot of hype. I

have to say I think it deserves it, it is an extraordinarily,

technically remarkable performance. She gets not only Marylin's

mannerisms, she really gets her voice very well, particularly. She

also gets the tremulous that Marylin brought to her performance,

she quivered, she was almost like a humming bird. I think the problem

for anyone playing Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe is Marilyn Monroe

for a reason, it is like trying to play Cary Grant, there are a

handful of people who were transcendant, people use words like

"all chem me" and "magic to talk about her, there is no word for the

presence she has on the screen. Nobody can do that. However good

the performance is, and Michelle Williams can't do that. It is not

her fault, it can't be done. close do you think Michelle

Williams got to the all can he me? You are being -- you are being

asked to play an energy. It is in the middle of a pedestrain film, a

film made up of a lot of acting, some acting you will like, you will

like Branagh's Olivier, because he brings Olivier to us, you won't

like Emma Watson, or the lady who plays Vivien Leigh, and within it

is the performance of Marylin, for Michelle Williams it will put her

on the Oscar list. Her performance is a photocopy of a photocopy of a

rumour someone once said about Marilyn Monroe. If you are up on

Marilyn Monroe it is disappointing, if not it is a film of good acting.

The clash between Marilyn Monroe and Lawrence Olivier, who you have

worked with in the past? I did, and Kenneth Branagh is fantastic. He

gets the normality of the man, along with the, the fact is, that

period of time, Olivier wanted to do what Monroe could do, and Monroe

wanted to do what Olivier could do, she wanted to be a great actress,

and he a movie star. He didn't know how to deal with her, she was just

was on the screen, and he acted. I think possibly Michelle Williams

does work from the outside in. And like Marilyn Monroe did, I think

that Kenneth Branagh worked from the outside, like Olivier did,

there is these wonderful moments when he says it's like teaching

Urdu to a badger, and he goes completically, it is so familiar

that, I gets it right. -- completely, it is so familiar, he

gets it right. The world of these two huge egos, and then comes the

character of Colin Clark, in a sense an outsider? He was the

weaker part, Kenneth Branagh is brilliant. Michelle Williams, like

you say, it reminded me of Will Smith playing muham med Ali, it is

such an incendiary character. In the novel's so campy, making

comments, he has interesting thoughts, but the guy who is Clark

in the film is bland guy. Firstly, you don't understand why Marilyn

Monroe would invest her faith in him, and secondly, this sexual

thing, which is this erotically- charged relationship. In the book

you realise he has an experience of gay sex in the diary. You think why

don't you sleep with Marilyn Monroe if you have the chance. It raises

two points, if we believe Colin Clark, it is based on two books he

wrote, one published in 1995 and 2000, years after everybody

involved was dead. My own sense is this is boardering on apocrophy, it

is embellished. There are lots of diaries of Marylin, I have read

hundreds of them. It is probably very embroidered. The second point,

the film is very, very polite to both of the principals, even in

Colin Clark's books, he has a bitchy side, he allows both of them

were monstrous, which this film don't. It want them both to be

really nice people. It has a Sunday night television quality, the way

it is shot, everything is order, the darkness about Monroe doesn't

come through. And Olivier. Colin Clark is played almost like, it is

a very gentle, very, it is vaguely charming. It is a biopicture, it

isn't the whole of Marilyn Monroe's life, it takes a week. And we learn

more about her from that week? of course, he, the Eddie Redmayne,

and he's very good a cross between Mia Farrow and Andy Murray, he just

looms and is adorable. The film is interesting, and you mentioned this

with Olivier and Monroe, it does capture a moment where celebrity

changes and actors are passed on and stars are becoming, the film is

a passing of the torch. Olivier knows his time is gone, and the

acting he does is on the way out and the acting Monroe does is there.

He goes to the Royal Court and sucks out all the new Osbourne

stuff. It is It is a turning point for Olivier it is the stage and a

new wave of theatre. Ultimately the take on both of them is fairly

superficial, the more you know about Marylin, there is more

interesting things, even in the filming of The Prince and the

Showgirl, Olivier said terrible things about her from the beginning,

before all of that, he was rude to her before. Many of the things in

the film could have been told 40 years a there doesn't seem to be

any use of our hindsight. It is not a new take. It was about the part

of in his downfall. It was very important to Colin Clark, it wasn't

important historically, and I don't suppose Marilyn remembered it at

all, it was a couple of weeks. claims she called him just before

she died. Using this as a small kernal, it was tamely written. It

could have been an episode of Downton Abbey. Same casting. Green

light casting. Marilyn Monroe did pay the ultimate price for fame

with her famous and untimely death from an overdose. To what limits

will people go to cling to fame and power. That is a question supposed

by Charlie Brooker's new drama, The National Anthem. Script writer,

comlumist and author Charlie Brooker, is renowned for his

commentry on contemporary culture. With 400,000 followers on Twitter,

it is no surprise the social media revolution has inspired his latest

TV series. Black Mirror is his take on the Twilight Zone, the American

1950s sci-fi drama, which reflected fears about nuclear war and the

McCarthy era. So, what are the contemporary British issues which

Brooker wants to explore? I was thinking about the relationship

between rolling news and things like Twitter, you get these waves

of opinion and information, rolling in at you. It is sort of too much

to take. Often many days you wake up and think the news has gone

surreal today. It feels like nobody is really in charge. The first of

three films, The National Anthem covers the hours following the

kidnap of a member of the Royal Family. Please don't kill me.

Prime Minister is responsible for securing the Princess's release,

but the hostage-takers make a rather unorthodox randsom demand.

The PM, Michael Callow, played by Rory Kinnear, is forced to question

how far he will go for Queen and country. Saving the Princess's

bacon would prove his loyalty, but also cause widespread revulsion.

The sensational news story spreads rapidly around the country. Forcing

traditional media to defy Number Ten's attempts to keep it secret.

Technology is a thread running through all three Black Mirror

films, and Brooker isam belief lent about our current obsession with it.

The first thing I do when I wake up is grab a smart phone and start

checking Twitter and e-mail and things like that. Everyone can feel

their brain is being rewired in some way. I'm for technology, I'm

worried about what it is doing to us, it is a destrubgt jif and de--

destrubgtive relationship. It is described as a twisted parable for

the Twitter age. What does it say about how the media shape the news

and how we consume it. What now, what is the play book. This is

virgin territory, there is no play book.

This could be done slapstick and purely for laughs, it isn't like

that? It is fantastic. I thought it was an amazing piece of sat tie, it

is black and bleak, and it is very -- satire, it is black and bleak

and very worrying, it is impecably cast, every actor in it is

completely right and good. The timing is so good, the director has

done such a good job. It looks amazing, it is quite shocking. It

is what satire should be. There is a fantastic twist at the end. Not a

twist, it is not fantastic, it is good. Rory Kinnear, is such a

talented actor. He plays the Prime Minister, his wife is well cast. It

is very funny. You laugh in spite of yourself. Were you as

captivated? No, I feel like you are decribing a different film from the

one I saw. I agree it is very dark, I didn't think it was remotely

funny. I didn't laugh for a second. You didn't laugh at the first sight

of the person? No I didn't. The thing for me is a satire, it is

called a twisted parable, it needs to be funny, it needs to be like

The Thick Of It, it begs comparisons there, or needed to be

more twisted. The quote there where he says it is virgin territory and

there is no play book, I thought I have seen this a lot of times

before. They have pushed it, I don't want to ruin it. But they

have just gone further than most people are willing to go. That is

not actually to me making it fun or more meaningful. The twist at the

end, you say, it is a twist at the beginning, you are avoiding the

twist at the beginning because you are not going there at all, you are

holding off that to deliver that to the fresh audience. It is a very

difficult one. It is not something you want to discuss but you don't

want to spoil the splot. It is as if David Cameron is having to have

sex with a pig to save Kate Middleton what ultimately turns out

to be bleepbleep. It is the blackmail threat. It is a plot to

engage with this kind of thing. Possibly the programme that will

save Channel 4 next year on the 30th anniversary, at last some

intelligent life, a response to where we are, and what is happening

to it, from someone aware of it. Charlie Brooker is very good on

this world. Even he can make one of the funnyiest lives in it, "it is

trending on Twitter", or "it is someone she knows from Downton

Abbey", it is something happening lately. It is reality itself

changing, and an attempt to respond to that. How the traditional media

has been caught out by the Internet, the news spreads. You were mention

about The Thick Of It, I was thinking about Day Today and Brass

End, news was God, they are talking about the mainstream media held to

randsom by Twitter and all that, now everyone is chasing after

things. In that sense, the other thing interesting about it, I think

it is basically a one-line programme run to an hour. But it is

a comedy that has been directed as a political thriller, in that sense,

because the acting is so overthe top, and hamy, if you want to put

it -- over the top, and hamy and over the top. What that girl does

at the beginning is one of the hardest things an act stress can do.

Unlike a lot of political satires like this, where the Prime Minister

would be a two-dimensional stoodge, we are sympathetic for him and the

might. At the end, the resolution with his wife is very unpredictable.

The whole thing is. It is beautifully acted. There are people

doing things in this that they are not doing in the Shakespeare.

view it as a drama. But that to me is what kills the joke. On the

contrary, they play it straight, that is funny. It would be if the

lines were funny. The problem is. It is trending on twiter, that is a

brilliant thing. I think that Charlie Brooker is an incredible

writer and I was looking forward to it. What struck me about it n the

week of the Leveson Inquiry, was the public attitude towards what

was happening and how gripped they were. And how complicit they are in

this, which is something we have seen. 140 characters changes a

Government. But also I think part of that is this is the relationship

that Black Mirror deals with in way that My Week With Marilyn doesn't.

It is a two-way relationship, the public can respond to things, and

have a view, and what is interesting in fact in Black Mirror

is the Prime Minister is constantly being told about on-line polling.

His decision making is having to be done based on on-line polling. That

is a more reactive world than my week. Definitely tackling a world

where the control seems to be in the hands of ordinary people, but

in fact they have been given the illusion of control but it is all

taken away from them. What is interesting with Black Mirror, is

although the narrative is that Twitter, it is trending on there,

the blackmailer wants the event to be broadcast on TV. There is still

a sense that actually TV does matter. That tension between the

mainstream media and the Internet world hasn't been resolved. It is

that tension between media and celebrity and what people will do

for power. That goes back to what we were saying about Marylin too?

One of the things, one of the strix that film misses about celebrity

and Marylin's relationship to celebrity, is fame was the great

achievement of her life and the proof of her value. When we talk

about the way the crowd can control these sorts of discourses, it is an

illusion. In part, because so many are chasing fame themselves. Talk

to young people today and so many say their goal is to be famous.

irony of all irony is the Leveson Inquiry is said to be hijacked by

celebrity. The father of one of the 7/7 victims won't appear in front

of it because he fears that. Charlie Brooker says in his

interview, to respond to a piece of satire or a response to it when the

thing itself is becoming more and more surreal. I was watching the

DVD in Black Mirror and behind was the Iveson, the two things were

merging together, to give a hint. Never has Hugh Grant been more Hugh

Grant-like. And Hugh Grant for Prime Minister, was on Twitter.

has already played that. To have something that is engaging with

dislocation and dissolving of reality is very refreshing. It is

very difficult to do. And everyone is very scared of it. It seems to

be spoiling the party. You will all get a chance to see Black Mirror if

you want on Channel 4 on the 4th of December. Fame beyond the grave was

guaranteed in Ancient Egypt by the most elaborate funeral arrangements

in his treatment most of it is on show on the first ever public

museum, the Ashmolean in Oxford. It was rebuilt some years ago, a

series of Egyptian galleries will be open to the public, showcaseing

one of the finest archaeological exhibitions in the world.

Amassed over 300 years, the Ashmolean collection of Nile Valley

art facts reflects the long standing British passion for

Egyptling to. Now six new galleries showcase mummies, coffins, shrines

and statues, many of which have been hidden away in store for years.

The result is a journey tracing 3,000 years of culture in Egypt and

Nubia, now Sudan. Featuring some remarkable pieces. This is the

shrine of the king who ruled in the 25th dinnasty. Excavated in Sudan.

It was sound by the first professor of Egyptology, who packed the

shrine away into 150 creates and transported it back to dk cats and

transported it back to -- crates and transported it back to the

university. This is one of the most iconic piece, the Princess fresco,

excavated in the 1890, and an intimate portrayal of the Royal

Family, lounging at a palace, including two of the six daughters

of the king and his Queen Nefertiti. Behind me were r two huge statues

of the fertility God, they were excavated in 183, we have

reconstructed them at their original heat.

Display cases protect items carefully restored. Modern medical

technology has revealed more about some objects in the collection than

had ever been known before. Complimenting the ancient exhibits

is a new installation, by the artist, Angela Palmer, based on CT

scans of a two-year-old boy mummy, died at the end of the Egyptian

century. There is contemporary art to allow the public to peer below

the bandages. The new galleries show case one of the greatest arbg

facts of the period outside of Egypt. How does it help our

understanding of this ancient civilisation.

You enter these new galleries through what was once the shop,

into what was probably the most unusual part of the exhibition, the

predynastic work, we are not familiar with that? I loved this

exhibition. When you see Egypt you see the blockbuster, the pyramids.

They were doing the narrative story, the beginning, the connections

between 3,000 years of history, the thing I most loved about it was it

was telling you the human story, underneath the civilisation. You

keep talking about things like, Egyptian civilisation, pyramids,

kings. What was really important the small items about the human

stories, the clump of human hair, things that people were buried with.

Suddenly you are not talking about civilisations, or thousands of

people, it is individuals. I found it incredibly powerful. The things

they buried with was their every day life, everything they would

need for the next life. wonderful boat carved with 14

different characters doing different things to take them to

the rest world. Jewellery, various things, it was just gorgeous. A

lovely exhibition. There was a particular piece of jul jewellery I

love, a naked woman holding a little bowl. With a ceramic spoon.

A spoon for make-up. Exploring back to the predynastic period, pieces

of art that looks abstract. Completely contemporary. I find

when you go to these exhibitions, as much as you are looking into the

past you are looking into the future. An extraordinary sense of

how they were making works of art, how they were decribing their

feelings, how they were preerpbg for death. Is so un-- preparing for

death. It is so modern. It is an extraordinary amount of information

to fill in what are inextra ordinary gaps in knowledge. Because

the gallery is filled with intimate moments and takes you through the 6

though words in such an intelligent way, you don't feel overwhelmed and

you piece together the information. Little laund royalists and sick

notes written on -- loyal sick notes written on -- little sick

notes written on there. And the idea of knowledge, you could take

three or four hours to digest T the first room is a bit deceptive, it

is empty, and there are two big statues, it gets more and more

intense, and the displays get more filled. You could spend hours. It

is wonderful, one of the things I loved about it, we haven't

mentioned it. They have done architectural renovations to create

parallel spaces, so you can see, as Egypt is evolving, Nubia, or Sudan

is evolving simultaneously. They used space to move through time so,

you can look across the room and see this is the Sudan at the same

time, this is what they are doing. You start to get the sense of the

cultural interchange between them. There is a wonderful piece that

they had, I loved this, it was a script, they haven't desieveered it

yet, they said there -- desieveered this yet, they said there were

scolars working on it as you saw T The fact you see how the -- the

fact you saw how the Egyptians influenced the rest of the world. A

roam boy mummified. And a Roman woman painted on her, she is

mummified but this Roman thing on it. She has the criss-cross

bandaging with the goldam mulets. The fact that it was in the Roman

empire and it carried on. For the first time in that exhibition I got

that sense there is Egypt in us now in England. A lot of that is

traditional museum curating they have done, I liked they had the

guts not to reinvent everything. Not modernising it, they don't do

tweets! There are modern touches, the interactive computer to see the

CSI, CD video of the thing. Angela Palmer, it plaiks you feel at the

end of the exhibition how shocking and sudden and beautiful things

were at that time. The colours are still preserved, buetloofl

terracottas and blues. -- beautiful terracottas and blues. How did they

deal with the idea these are human remains? They do it really well and

intelligently. One of the women the mummies they have, had an

inscription that was meant to be read out as a memorial. They are

encouraging visitors to read it out. That is the ritual she wanted

people to be participating in. She wanted to be preserved, they have

put her in state-of-the-art preservation, she is lasting longer

than she expected. The fact they are portraits, you can see the

faces of the woman and man, not just the bound things. I thought

they were really people, for the first time I thought. It is a

constant theme that has gone on ever since that death is the team

of life. You recreate your life in the next life. Something in Egypt

that they really went to town in terms of preparing for the

afterlife. In terms of just the amount of servants and these mini-

bakeries. They create the immortality, we are still looking

at those things. They were right. The immortality exists. It is like

Marilyn Monroe. Was she a mummy. She had one but wasn't very nice to

her. Like Marylin, Kerouac is another of those single words that

carry a whole host of associations, Jack Kerouac also died in the 1960s,

his profile, too, like Marilyn Monroe, has never faded. Next year

we will see a film version of his best known work, On The Road. And

this week, Kerouac's long lost first novel is finally published.

Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel, On The Road, has axe fired cult stages as

its pages incaps late the literary movement that Kerouac dubbed The

Beatles. People ask why I -- Beat Generation. People ask why I

wrote these books, I wrote what was true and what I saw. Before he took

to the road he took to the sea. In 1942 having dropped out of Colombia

University, Kerouac completed his first tour in the United States

Merchant Marine, the trip fed his love for adventure, and inspired

him to keep a journal, detailing the daily routine of life at sea,

and the characters of his fellow shipmates. These journal entries

forpbl the basis of his first novel. The Sea Is My Brother hasn't been

published in its entirety until now. The only reference to his existence

lay in Kerouac's private letters. It centres on two men, both of whom

share characteristics with the author. One leaves his teaching job

at Colombia, following his new friend, the ruthless drifter,

Wesley Martin, a man who Kerouac said loved the sea with a strange

lonely love. The sea is his brother, and sentences he goes down. He felt

the thrill of anticipation as he sat there dosing, in a few days,

back on a ship, the sleeply thrum of the propeller chuorning in the

water below, the soothing rise and fall of the ship. The sea

stretching around the horizon, the rich, clean sound of the bow

spliting water, and the long hours lounging on deck in the sun,

watching the deck of clouds, ravished by the full, moist breeze.

A simple life, a serious life. To make the sea your own, to watch

over it, to brood your very soul into it, to accept it and love it

as though only it mattered and existed. The book also contains an

assortment of other early writings from the same period, as well as

letters, sketches and photographs. Is The Sea Is My Brother a valuable

record of an author's early efforts, are was is juvenile book,

previously unpublished, for a good reason.

Did they book deserve to be unearthed? Absolutely, anything

that gives a clue of how a great mind was forming. Jack Kerouac has

become more a personality, a great American personality. Anything that

can remind us he was a great American writer as well is very

important. As a brand he gets underestimated as an American

writer. I love him as an American writer, I love seeing this happen,

in the 1940s you see a young boy, influenced and wants to be a great

novelist by all the great writers, but also at the same time, at that

moment by Charley Parker and Leicester Young, it is merging

together and you are seeing it ferment and bubble. The sentences

gets longer during the 1920s and 1930, you see a forming of the mind

that remind you that above all EMS he was a great American writer not

just a -- else he was a great American writer. What did you

think? It is embryonic. The problem is, he wants to be a great writer,

but like so many aspiring young writers, he has absolutely nothing

to say. Here there is nothing to say here. It is derivative at best.

It is a sketch, really. It wasn't published for ran. Kerouac himself,

before he died, referred to this novel as a croc. I think we can

trust the man's assessment here. At best at flimcy. There is some

really bad writing. He does that thing that bad writing 101, won't

use the word "said", you runs through other words, he greeted

hello, she yawned and then says something, she mild hello. 'S only

20 years ol. It is not complete this book, it -- he's only 20 years

old. It is not complete this week, it is like an early demo for a band.

I never got into Kerouac, I preferred Steinbeck in terms of

road movies and novels. I want to say that what is interesting about

it is just the fact that he does have this tension between being an

intellectual and the physical world. He has that and follows it through.

Everheart is an academic builty about being an axe dij. In the

sense of -- academic, in a sense of seeing that grow is interesting.

had to staple this book to me I found isth almost unreadable. It is

so hard to read, so endlessly macho. And cold beers, and people who

punch each other in the stomach as a form of greeting, and kick each

other up the pants. So American, and misolg sojist.

I thought the ambition, the care, the idealism, the belief in

something, a lot of things that have gone missing, I saw all of

that. Especially with the novel in itself ending with the ship sailing

off and it ends there. When the ship is sailing off and what is

happening is it is taking high culture with it, he's handing that

over to popular culture. That is giving it a lot of credit. I only

went to see say for a year. You are delivering a lot of intelligence.

It did change popular culture, you see what happened in that period

end earth Dylan and The Beatles. It makes it an interesting book. It

makes it a book worth publishing. The journal is interesting, the

Journal of the Egoist, he's a having that conversation about what

kind of write he wants to be. He wants to go an eccentric artist and

he wants to do those things. There is something endearing about T

is an important manifesto. I don't agree, any creative writing teacher

has read this over and again. The fact he went on 15 years later on a

drug drag to write one good book. The rest of what he wrote is not

good. It does feel like when you are a teenager at school and you

want to use the word "picturesque" as often as you can. There is

poignancy there. We know what happens, he does and doesn't become.

Why do you think the Kerouac phenomenon has survived y is it

people want to publish this, and not just the first novel but his

letters, his friends, his poetry. His awful peoples. He became a

brand -- The poems? He became a brand name, who became famous,

beginning as a 20-year-old talking about famous authors. People who

like Kerouac don't read the novels but like the idea of him. I thought

it strange to condemn the aspiration happening in a 20-year-

old, willing it to lap, and then was part of such an important

movement to say it should be obliterated. I said it is not good,

I didn't say obliterated. I just said it is not good. But in

what sense? Part of the guy that became the brand name that creates

curiosity, this is who he was as a 20-year-old. You are never going to

agree on that one. If a stranger accosts you in the street with a

copy of a book, Maureen would be upset if it was Kerouac. It was The

Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, not a literary mugging but an act of

generosity, something similar is happening this year, this is how to

prepare yourself. This March saw the launch of World Book Night, a

new event across Britain and Ireland, which aimed to celebrate

the pleasure of reading. A million special low-printed books were

given out to members of the public, to pass on to friends, family, or

complete strangers. World Book Night was the brain child of

publisher Jamie Bing. One million books, a hell of a lot of books,

It was the biggest book give away ever, people responded

enthusiastically? Reading is the most important thing in my life. I

can't think of anything more important to me. It has shaped my

outlook on life, it has opened up a lot of safes, tradition, cultures.

Most of what I know is through reading. The World Book Night

committee recently announced the list of 25 books to be given away

at next year's event, which will take part on Shakespeare's birthday,

April 23rd. Classics like Pride and Prejudice, to Steven King's

psychological misery, and contemporary best sellers, like The

Road. You have until the end of December

to register. Visit the World Book Night for more details.

1234 That website address, along with more details of everything we

have discussed tonight are on the web side. Next week Kirsty will be

here with a book special, featuring new titles from Alice Marilyn

Monroe, and others. Stay tuned for later for Jools and his guests.

Thanks to my guests, Maureen, Paul, Sarah and Salfraz. We leave you

tonight with the television debut of Glasgow-based music, Peter Kelly,

who goes by the name of Beer Jacket. From his new album, the White

Feather Trail, this is him. # Marry young

# For the need to be alone fl # Sort of swung

# And fear of ringing telephones # Into a wall

# Who has learned to crow # The winner is the last of all

# Carried like soap # To the one welcoming cave

# Words stick in your throat # To a fold

# The winter is a first of all # Tired like courage

# We're losing to an undead past # Tired is courage

# By the act # Choosing the booze don't path

# No need for glory # Put to song

# But undone # Brownen like glass

# Into the sun # Into the cold

# And shadow meeting with the world # The window is the mover's pole

# Tired like courage # To the mast

# But losing to an undead past Tide discouraged

# By the act -- tired discouraged # By the act

# Choosing the booze # Don't act

# Wake your heart up # It's dying to trying

# Hey wake your heart up # It's dying to start trying

# Tired like courage # To the mast

# But losing to an undead past # Tired discouraged

# By the act # Choosing the bruise don't pass

# Hey wake your heart up # It's dying to start to try