0:00:17 > 0:00:23Thank you. Welcome to My Life In Books, a chance for our guests to talk about their favourite reads
0:00:23 > 0:00:29and why they're important. With me tonight, Rick Stein, chef, restaurateur
0:00:29 > 0:00:35and TV star, known for his seafood, his restaurants in Padstow and the late Chalky,
0:00:35 > 0:00:40who in my time was one of the most requested clips on Points of View.
0:00:40 > 0:00:46Alongside him, our finest classical actress, Fiona Shaw. She's also a director and writer.
0:00:46 > 0:00:51No part has ever daunted her. The first ever female Richard II,
0:00:51 > 0:00:56Aunt Petunia in Harry Potter and, of course, Marnie the witch
0:00:56 > 0:01:01- in the massive US hit vampire series True Blood. Welcome to you both. - Thank you.
0:01:01 > 0:01:03APPLAUSE
0:01:03 > 0:01:08- Rick, can we start with you? - Why not?- Where were you brought up?
0:01:08 > 0:01:12In the Cotswolds, in Oxfordshire, on a farm outside Chipping Norton.
0:01:12 > 0:01:16A very idyllic place to have been brought up, really.
0:01:16 > 0:01:21I was born on the farm that I lived on until I was 18.
0:01:21 > 0:01:28- And plenty of books around? - Well, yes. My mother read a great deal to us, all of us.
0:01:28 > 0:01:33- It's a great gift, a mother who reads.- Such a great thing to do for your kids.
0:01:33 > 0:01:39- Fiona, how about you? Where were you?- Well, I was brought up in Cork, just outside Cork.
0:01:39 > 0:01:45For a while I lived in Cove in County Cork, and my mother read to us at the end of every evening,
0:01:45 > 0:01:52after the rosary and before homework. So we had enforced Dickens, but, of course,
0:01:52 > 0:01:57- it became addictive.- What was Cove like?- Cove was an eccentric place.
0:01:57 > 0:02:03It was a hangover from the Second World War. It was a port which had been given back to the English
0:02:03 > 0:02:10and so it had a lot of leftover British navy folk, Commander McGoldrick and one who measured
0:02:10 > 0:02:15the tennis court net every day. They were like something from Alice in Wonderland.
0:02:15 > 0:02:20Not surprisingly, then, your first book is Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
0:02:20 > 0:02:23- by Lewis Carroll.- It is.
0:02:23 > 0:02:28I don't really like... I never liked Alice. She was too prim and proper.
0:02:28 > 0:02:34And she was, of course, English, but the strange Anglo-Irish element to my early childhood meant
0:02:34 > 0:02:39that I had some sense of what being English was.
0:02:39 > 0:02:44- How old would you have been when you read this?- I can't remember.
0:02:44 > 0:02:49It must have been after Enid Blyton and before Evelyn Waugh!
0:02:49 > 0:02:53- So I suppose it must have been 11, maybe 11.- And quite a scary book.
0:02:53 > 0:02:57A very scary book. And it's had a terrible history since as a book.
0:02:57 > 0:03:03It's been psychoanalysed almost into being pornography now, but I read it in all innocence,
0:03:03 > 0:03:09as I hope most people continue to. If art or genius comes out of great suffering,
0:03:09 > 0:03:12Lewis Carroll or Dodgson had a lot of suffering.
0:03:12 > 0:03:18But he did produce an enormous amount of not just clever, but strange interludes
0:03:18 > 0:03:23about people's mis-hearing, abilities to mis-hear things.
0:03:24 > 0:03:31People playing croquet, of course, with flamingos is a kind of possible thing.
0:03:31 > 0:03:38- It's just surreal. And I love always the Mock Turtle. Shall I have a read of that?- Yes.
0:03:38 > 0:03:42The Mock Turtle, for those of you into education,
0:03:42 > 0:03:45is a mock turtle. Maybe Rick would know about mock turtle soup.
0:03:45 > 0:03:52Nobody touches turtle soup any more, but the mock turtle was made from some sort of stock
0:03:52 > 0:03:56- and didn't have any turtle. - He sort of plays on that.
0:03:56 > 0:04:04So they went up to the Mock Turtle who looked at them with large eyes full of tears, but said nothing.
0:04:04 > 0:04:09"This here young lady," said the Gryphon, "she wants for to know your history, she do."
0:04:09 > 0:04:15"I'll tell it to her," said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow voice.
0:04:15 > 0:04:19"Sit down, both of you, and don't say a word until I've finished."
0:04:19 > 0:04:26So they sat down and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice thought, "He can't finish if he doesn't begin,"
0:04:26 > 0:04:32but she waited patiently. "Once," said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh,
0:04:33 > 0:04:36"I was a real turtle.
0:04:36 > 0:04:44"When we were little," said the Mock Turtle, he went on more calmly, though still sobbing,
0:04:44 > 0:04:47"we went to school in the sea.
0:04:47 > 0:04:52"The master was an old turtle. We used to call him Tortoise."
0:04:52 > 0:04:56"Why did you call him Tortoise if he wasn't one?" Alice asked.
0:04:56 > 0:05:01"We called him Tortoise because he taught us," said the Mock Turtle.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05- That's wonderful. - APPLAUSE
0:05:07 > 0:05:13- At that time, you weren't when you were reading that, Fiona Shaw. - I was Fifi Wilson.
0:05:13 > 0:05:19My father's name was Wilson, but when I went to RADA, they felt Fifi no one would take seriously.
0:05:19 > 0:05:25And there was another Fiona Wilson in Equity and so I had to change to Shaw.
0:05:25 > 0:05:28I took my grandmother's name.
0:05:28 > 0:05:32- And you were never Rick Stein. - No, I wasn't.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35My mother christened me Christopher
0:05:35 > 0:05:40and I got called Rikki because my oldest brother, Jeremy,
0:05:40 > 0:05:46my mother had clearly been reading from The Jungle Book, the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,
0:05:46 > 0:05:50and I guess I was 2 or 3 at the time and had a lot of red hair
0:05:50 > 0:05:56and maybe was nosing around into various things like a mongoose.
0:05:56 > 0:06:02It's a bit tricky if you get called a name as a child. It does stick in the family.
0:06:02 > 0:06:06It can't be that bad. You have chosen this one.
0:06:06 > 0:06:10It's funny because you're right. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
0:06:10 > 0:06:12It has a sort of resonance
0:06:12 > 0:06:17through everyone's life. I think the point of it is
0:06:17 > 0:06:24that it's the story of a plucky mongoose and it's quite a lovely picture of a family in India.
0:06:24 > 0:06:28But there's danger lurking in there. That's a bit like real life.
0:06:28 > 0:06:32There's a lovely, chirpy mongoose and the lovely kids,
0:06:32 > 0:06:36but there's the snake, two snakes, Nag and Nagaina,
0:06:36 > 0:06:40who are like the dark side. Life has to have a dark side.
0:06:40 > 0:06:46I've just chosen this passage which introduces us to Nag, the cobra.
0:06:46 > 0:06:51From the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss,
0:06:51 > 0:06:56a horrid, cold sound that made Rikki-Tikki jump back two clear feet.
0:06:56 > 0:07:03Then, inch by inch, out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag,
0:07:03 > 0:07:05the big, black cobra.
0:07:05 > 0:07:09And he was five feet long from tongue to tail.
0:07:09 > 0:07:14When he had lifted one third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro,
0:07:14 > 0:07:21as a dandelion tuft balances in the wind. He looked at Rikki-Tikki with a wicked snake's eyes
0:07:21 > 0:07:27- that never change their expression whatever the snake may be thinking. - That's wonderful.
0:07:27 > 0:07:29APPLAUSE
0:07:30 > 0:07:34- Yeah, it's lovely.- We've got a picture of you.- Really?
0:07:34 > 0:07:40I think you're a bit older. How old are you there? It's the whole family, isn't it?
0:07:40 > 0:07:44With me in a duffel coat, John, my mum and dad.
0:07:44 > 0:07:50I think we would have been on our farm in Oxfordshire. We used to have Easter standing on the terrace.
0:07:50 > 0:07:57- It would have been there, I think. - Oxfordshire, Cornwall, then sent to school at Uppingham.- Yes.
0:07:57 > 0:08:00I went to...to Uppingham School.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04My brother, who is a lot brighter than me... It's a problem I have.
0:08:04 > 0:08:09I always, through my life, felt a bit second string, I think.
0:08:09 > 0:08:15So I wouldn't go to the school he went to, Winchester, partly because when I went with my parents
0:08:15 > 0:08:20I noticed that they were washing themselves with a jug and a bowl
0:08:20 > 0:08:23and Uppingham had showers.
0:08:23 > 0:08:27That mattered to me as a 13-year-old, I must say.
0:08:27 > 0:08:30How about you, Fiona? School-wise?
0:08:30 > 0:08:35Not boarding school. I went to a day school. It was a lay school, very unusual in Ireland,
0:08:35 > 0:08:41rather than a religious school. My mother was nervous about my spending too long with nuns.
0:08:41 > 0:08:44- Quite right.- Yeah, I think she was.
0:08:44 > 0:08:48A highly religious school, but full of eccentrics.
0:08:48 > 0:08:50It was just a house, actually.
0:08:50 > 0:08:54What was the main thing you were interested in?
0:08:54 > 0:08:58Probably I was like a lot of children. My father was quite severe
0:08:58 > 0:09:04and at school I was able to be wilder. That was probably... A bit of that was in it.
0:09:04 > 0:09:11And I flourished with poetry because I found that suddenly being able to do a poem in front of the school
0:09:11 > 0:09:16- was very empowering. A lot of kids find that.- So your next choice,
0:09:16 > 0:09:19it's The Collected Poems of WB Yeats.
0:09:19 > 0:09:24Yes. It's maybe an unusual choice for somebody so young at the time.
0:09:24 > 0:09:29But I went to a lady called Miss Scott at the School of Music in Cork
0:09:29 > 0:09:36and she would say, "Right, off you go." She'd give me some poem like Yeats' of later life.
0:09:36 > 0:09:41"That is no country for old men. The young in one another's arms, Birds in the trees
0:09:41 > 0:09:46"Those dying generations at their song, The salmon falls..." I didn't know what it meant!
0:09:46 > 0:09:53But it sounded grand. And I think actually it gave me permission to see that, in the end,
0:09:53 > 0:09:58the great thing about poetry is that it is language which comes from yourself,
0:09:58 > 0:10:04but it can either be aerated and doesn't have to have logic.
0:10:04 > 0:10:10Like Rick, my elder brother was a scientist and incredibly clever and he was getting scholarships,
0:10:10 > 0:10:16but at least I had this imaginative language that was a tool against everybody else.
0:10:16 > 0:10:20Rick, when you left Uppingham, was cooking on your mind?
0:10:20 > 0:10:25Well, not really. I had rather an overbearing father
0:10:25 > 0:10:29who was very keen for me to do something with my life.
0:10:29 > 0:10:32He tried to get me into BP, but I didn't want industry.
0:10:32 > 0:10:37So I hit on the idea of becoming a hotel manager
0:10:37 > 0:10:45as a way of appeasing him. So I joined British Transport Hotels as a trainee manager.
0:10:45 > 0:10:52And spent the first part of that management course... training...cooking.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57But it all came a bit unstuck. My father, who had been... who was a manic depressive,
0:10:57 > 0:10:59killed himself.
0:10:59 > 0:11:04It came as a real shock to me because I think my mother...
0:11:04 > 0:11:12Well, I know my mother, her role in life was hiding the real reality of my father's illness
0:11:12 > 0:11:18from the rest of the children. It was the protective thing she did for us, really.
0:11:18 > 0:11:22So when he did die, it was a shock.
0:11:22 > 0:11:26But also, I have to admit it, a slight sense of relief
0:11:26 > 0:11:31because he had been so oppressive to me for so many years before that.
0:11:31 > 0:11:37I now can see that the problem with serious depressives is
0:11:37 > 0:11:43that you feel so inadequate that anybody that reminds you of...of you
0:11:43 > 0:11:48is somebody that you don't like yourself, I suppose.
0:11:48 > 0:11:53He saw in me that I was the most like him of all his children.
0:11:53 > 0:11:58So he was really hard on me and I found it quite unpleasant at times.
0:11:58 > 0:12:04I sort of gave up work and I fled abroad, really, for two years,
0:12:04 > 0:12:10mostly in Australia and New Zealand. And, interestingly, the book I want to talk to you about
0:12:10 > 0:12:16- is one of Conrad's books.- Lord Jim. - He ran away to sea, in a sense,
0:12:16 > 0:12:20being Polish and he joined the British Merchant Navy.
0:12:20 > 0:12:26But while I was away, I made the big mistake of travelling on my own at sort of 19,
0:12:26 > 0:12:29and I was incredibly lonely.
0:12:29 > 0:12:33And so I read a great deal and I read a lot of Conrad,
0:12:33 > 0:12:39but much of Conrad - I'm thinking of Nostromo and Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim -
0:12:39 > 0:12:44is about loneliness and alienation. It's a fabulous bit of writing.
0:12:44 > 0:12:48That's what I love about Conrad. He's such a fabulous writer.
0:12:48 > 0:12:53Fiona, while you were at school, did you want to be an actress?
0:12:53 > 0:12:57I very quickly wanted to be an actress, yeah.
0:12:57 > 0:13:03I didn't know what that meant. We didn't have any theatre locally. We had an amateur dramatics.
0:13:03 > 0:13:08We never had any Shakespeare or anything. I just wanted to be one, whatever it was.
0:13:08 > 0:13:15I played the judge in Trial By Jury at school. I did everything I could and my father absolutely forbade me.
0:13:15 > 0:13:19A bit like with his father, my father was...
0:13:19 > 0:13:26He was pretty strict, just pretty 19th century and very keen we all got jobs that were proper jobs.
0:13:26 > 0:13:30When I tried to propose going to audition for RADA, he just thought
0:13:30 > 0:13:34it was morally and spiritually wrong!
0:13:34 > 0:13:39So I had to go to university. So I did go to university locally.
0:13:39 > 0:13:43I went to University College, Cork, and I read philosophy there.
0:13:43 > 0:13:48But you did as he asked. You got your degree and then he allowed you.
0:13:48 > 0:13:54He did. I think I half ran away and auditioned for RADA and then told him I'd got in
0:13:54 > 0:14:00and dared him not to pay the fees! He was very decent about it and that was fine.
0:14:00 > 0:14:07You're passionate about this book. The Mill On The Floss by George Eliot. Why is it so important?
0:14:07 > 0:14:12I think George Eliot, in the end, holds in this book
0:14:12 > 0:14:18the essence of what I think novels are. It's not that I haven't enjoyed many other novels,
0:14:18 > 0:14:25but this book is about a family who live in Dorlcote Mill, near the Floss,
0:14:25 > 0:14:30some time in the early 19th century. It almost doesn't matter.
0:14:30 > 0:14:35They're described, each member, so beautifully, but particularly Maggie Tulliver,
0:14:35 > 0:14:40who loves her brother, Tom. Tom isn't so bright. Maggie is very bright.
0:14:40 > 0:14:46I don't identify with her, in the sense that I had a very bright brother. It wasn't that dynamic,
0:14:46 > 0:14:53but Maggie Tulliver is flawed. She just... She so loves her father, she so wants to be loved,
0:14:53 > 0:14:58like we all do. But she has fits of kind of surety about things.
0:14:58 > 0:15:03She runs away with the gypsies at one point and tells them she's going to live with them.
0:15:03 > 0:15:08Very kindly, the gypsies take her back and meet her father.
0:15:08 > 0:15:14In later life, when she is meant to marry Philip Wakem, a lovely man, she falls in love with Stephen Guest
0:15:14 > 0:15:20and goes off with him until she realises... She says, "It doesn't matter what happiness is.
0:15:20 > 0:15:26"All that matters is that we listen to our conscience." And it is agony that this girl has impetuousness
0:15:26 > 0:15:32and, for me, impetuousness is actually the opposite of what Catholicism is.
0:15:32 > 0:15:37I think people sin first and they regret the sin afterwards.
0:15:37 > 0:15:42People make mistakes and they're unforgiven or they are forgiven, if you're lucky,
0:15:42 > 0:15:48but it's the essence of literature. It tells you there are other people like you who make mistakes
0:15:48 > 0:15:53and then live out the consequences. I think that is what literature is. Compassion.
0:15:53 > 0:16:00- You eventually did get to university, didn't you?- Yes. Possibly because I'd read so much
0:16:00 > 0:16:06that I sort of realised I probably could. I've always had a great interest in literature.
0:16:06 > 0:16:10I did English at university. Not terribly successfully.
0:16:10 > 0:16:14I was probably enjoying myself a bit too much.
0:16:14 > 0:16:19I left Oxford again under a bit of a cloud, I suppose.
0:16:19 > 0:16:26I'm always leaving places under a cloud. I had been running a mobile disco at the time.
0:16:26 > 0:16:28It was the only thing to do.
0:16:28 > 0:16:35And I found this nightclub on the quayside in Padstow. I'd moved there from Oxfordshire.
0:16:35 > 0:16:40And I bought it with a friend of mine. We both had a bit of money.
0:16:40 > 0:16:46I had an uncle. A great uncle in Germany, called Otto left me 12 grand,
0:16:46 > 0:16:52which in the early '70s was a serious amount of money. We opened this club, lasted a year
0:16:52 > 0:16:58and were closed down by the police as not fit and proper people to run a club.
0:16:58 > 0:17:03And I opened the restaurant as a way of paying the bills, really.
0:17:03 > 0:17:08For the first years it was just hard slog and I can remember a time
0:17:08 > 0:17:12sort of wishing I was in London, wishing I was in Oxford,
0:17:12 > 0:17:17wishing I was not working on the stoves every night
0:17:17 > 0:17:20and my mother, in my early 30s, gave me
0:17:20 > 0:17:23A Dance To The Music Of Time.
0:17:23 > 0:17:30And the reason above all that I loved it was because it was about London.
0:17:30 > 0:17:38Actually, well, it starts in the First World War and moves on to the '20s and '30s
0:17:38 > 0:17:44just describing life for, I suppose, upper middle class people in London,
0:17:44 > 0:17:48but meeting all these slightly dodgy characters.
0:17:48 > 0:17:54It's just the way that Anthony Powell, although I don't think you pronounce it like that,
0:17:54 > 0:17:58but I do. I can't say "Pool" or "Pole".
0:17:58 > 0:18:05He just has a delicious understanding of people's failings and weaknesses.
0:18:05 > 0:18:11So it was just a sort of life that I sort of felt I should have lived,
0:18:11 > 0:18:17but I was cooking and I wouldn't say I wasn't enjoying the cooking,
0:18:17 > 0:18:21but I just felt I needed to be back with the literature.
0:18:21 > 0:18:28We have actually got a clip of a very, very early appearance on television.
0:18:28 > 0:18:32Your first ever, in fact, appearance on television.
0:18:32 > 0:18:37- You're the sidekick to Keith Floyd here.- Yes.- It's 1984.
0:18:37 > 0:18:42OK, so you've all got that at home. You could use any root vegetables you fancied.
0:18:42 > 0:18:46- This is Nick's own very special recipe.- Rick, dear boy.- Rick! Sorry!
0:18:46 > 0:18:53- Once you've seen one cook, you've seen them all! Can I call you Charles?- Why not?- Great.
0:18:53 > 0:18:58- This is a TV programme and film's very expensive. Get on with it.- OK.
0:18:58 > 0:19:00APPLAUSE
0:19:01 > 0:19:06- Was that quite deliberate? - I think it was deliberate.
0:19:06 > 0:19:12Looking back on it, we fell out of love for a few years, I must say, soon after that.
0:19:12 > 0:19:16I think, well, he wanted to be top dog
0:19:16 > 0:19:22and by the time I was talking to that, I was getting on famously with the director, David,
0:19:22 > 0:19:27- and I think Keith saw...- Jealous. - He saw the warning lights.- Yeah.
0:19:27 > 0:19:33He had a right to be jealous because I have my own sort of style on TV now,
0:19:33 > 0:19:38but I copied a lot of things he used to do - his mannerisms
0:19:38 > 0:19:42and that sort of wonderful blokiness that he had. He was very charismatic
0:19:42 > 0:19:48- and, fortunately, towards the end of his life we made up.- Oh, good.
0:19:48 > 0:19:52And ended up good friends. And then he died.
0:19:52 > 0:19:58Fiona, you might have felt out of place at RADA to begin with,
0:19:58 > 0:20:02but by your second year you were just gathering all the prizes.
0:20:02 > 0:20:09There was no doubting. You excelled. You got the Ronson Award, the Bancroft Gold Medal...
0:20:09 > 0:20:17- You were the star.- For me, it was a very lucky thing because it brought with it publicity.
0:20:17 > 0:20:22And I was very quickly snapped up by the National Theatre,
0:20:22 > 0:20:28so I went pretty well straight through. I did a film, initially, and then to the National.
0:20:28 > 0:20:32That was a lucky start. Then I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company.
0:20:32 > 0:20:38So really from the mid '80s to the end of the '80s, I was in another schooling situation
0:20:38 > 0:20:42of being at the RSC playing sometimes two or three plays a week.
0:20:42 > 0:20:48I'd play one in the afternoon, one in the evening. And really most of my life was spent
0:20:48 > 0:20:52either on the stage or off it, and I began to not know which I was!
0:20:52 > 0:20:57Then there was an important partnership with Deborah Warner.
0:20:57 > 0:21:03I was asked to do a tragedy with her and I thought, "No!" She was asked to do one with me and said, "No!"
0:21:03 > 0:21:07We just sort of got kettle drummed into doing Electra.
0:21:07 > 0:21:13And, tragically, when I went to the RSC, my brother Peter was killed in a car accident,
0:21:13 > 0:21:18my youngest brother, and I think having had, not an idyllic childhood,
0:21:18 > 0:21:25but a very safe childhood, this was the first streak of suffering that came - tragedy, really -
0:21:25 > 0:21:31right through the family. I don't think families recover from an untimely death.
0:21:31 > 0:21:37- Something really happens. The whole structure of the family shifts. - Absolutely.
0:21:37 > 0:21:41You have to hold it and I was at the RSC and...
0:21:41 > 0:21:47I was having a marvellous time, but it was terrible for my parents because he was the youngest child,
0:21:47 > 0:21:53he was still at home and he was killed at 18. So when we performed Electra,
0:21:53 > 0:21:57I kept on thinking the play was really about Orestes and Electra,
0:21:57 > 0:22:03because Electra thinks her brother Orestes is dead. And it's the first play where I realised the plays were
0:22:03 > 0:22:08actually to do with life! I just thought plays were things I was in.
0:22:08 > 0:22:14Suddenly, I connected. I should have done that a few years earlier! The plays were about real people,
0:22:14 > 0:22:22not just in a funny sense, but seriously about the evisceration of their pain being made present
0:22:22 > 0:22:26so that you could maybe feel it and not kill yourself by watching it.
0:22:26 > 0:22:32So that play was so successful that people used to camp outside the Barbican to see it.
0:22:32 > 0:22:39That was the first time I'd been part of a sensation where the public imagination was caught by a play.
0:22:39 > 0:22:44Your final book - I love this - is the Selected Diaries of Virginia Woolf.
0:22:44 > 0:22:51Yes. I'm embarrassed in a way not to be picking another novel when they're such a part of my life,
0:22:51 > 0:22:54but she just captures... And it's so innocent the way she writes.
0:22:54 > 0:23:00She writes with such a direct eye. It's not high-blown or exotic.
0:23:00 > 0:23:03It's often that she is astonished by the ordinary.
0:23:03 > 0:23:10Again, I think, that's what books give us - the ability to turn us all into artists and to be excited
0:23:10 > 0:23:16by what you see and people. Also, diaries are interesting because they become memento mori.
0:23:16 > 0:23:21You look at them and know the story. In advance of them, you don't.
0:23:21 > 0:23:29And she had a huge problem with depression and she has these terrible black times
0:23:29 > 0:23:36in which she said, "I would never have been able to be so happy if I hadn't been so sad."
0:23:36 > 0:23:40So the price is there, but she also alludes, I noticed,
0:23:40 > 0:23:46she alludes to thinking that she might not live beyond 70.
0:23:46 > 0:23:51And it's very interesting when, inadvertently, through our lives
0:23:51 > 0:23:57we allude to our own deaths. She didn't know she wasn't going to live to 70, but she says,
0:23:57 > 0:24:02"I meant to write about death only life came breaking in as usual.
0:24:02 > 0:24:09"I like, I see, to question people about death. I've taken it into my head that I shan't live 'til 70."
0:24:09 > 0:24:15- She wrote that in 1922 and she didn't die until 1939. - I'm so glad you recommended it.
0:24:15 > 0:24:23Much more accessible than some of her novels. Rick, you've difficulty remembering all your restaurants.
0:24:23 > 0:24:27I do. It's very...up myself, really, isn't it?
0:24:27 > 0:24:33- Five, I think.- Five.- I've got one, two, three... Four in Padstow.
0:24:33 > 0:24:40- Yeah.- And, em... Yep, four. And a pub just outside Padstow and a fish restaurant in Falmouth.
0:24:40 > 0:24:46- And you divide your time... - And one in Australia, too! - Whoops! He forgot a restaurant.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50- There used to be another star in your programme.- There was.
0:24:50 > 0:24:57- It would be unforgivable if we didn't give Chalky a look in.- Well, there we go.- Your Jack Russell.
0:24:57 > 0:25:02Well, cooks, I think they are a breed in themselves...
0:25:02 > 0:25:08CHALKY GROWLS Cooks...cooks are a breed unto themselves.
0:25:08 > 0:25:11LOUDER GROWL Chalky, you all right, old boy?
0:25:13 > 0:25:17- Do you want me to carry on? - Yeah.- Yeah, OK.
0:25:17 > 0:25:20CONSTANT GROWL I can't...
0:25:25 > 0:25:29I mean, how can I carry on with him... Ooh!
0:25:31 > 0:25:32Ah!
0:25:32 > 0:25:35LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
0:25:35 > 0:25:37- Oh, dogs.- That's fantastic!
0:25:40 > 0:25:45- It's the furry thing on the mic, is it?- Yeah, a fluffy microphone.
0:25:45 > 0:25:49I think he thought it was a rat. Or a rabbit.
0:25:51 > 0:25:55- Rick, your final book. - Well, it's Evelyn Waugh's Scoop.
0:25:55 > 0:26:01I've loved everything he's written, watched Brideshead, the film, the TV series.
0:26:01 > 0:26:08But I do think the earlier, savage books are the best. There's a reason I like it.
0:26:08 > 0:26:15It's such a wonderful satire of journalism. As I said earlier on, I did a bit of journalism at Oxford,
0:26:15 > 0:26:19and swiftly realised that... You know, with all due respect,
0:26:19 > 0:26:25- you've got to be a bit of a scallywag to be a journalist or you can't tell a story.- Of course!
0:26:25 > 0:26:30What I love about it is it's not savagely against journalism.
0:26:30 > 0:26:35It sort of understands the need and the sort of dynamism of journalism.
0:26:35 > 0:26:42And in Lord Copper, who's this sort of press baron who runs the Daily Beast
0:26:42 > 0:26:47and is a bit like a Beaverbrook or the Murdoch sort of type,
0:26:47 > 0:26:51there is a sort of male virility, which has to be, really.
0:26:51 > 0:26:56But the downside of it, of course, is most stories are fabrications
0:26:56 > 0:27:03and I think that's what comes out of Scoop, that they are a scurrilous bunch,
0:27:03 > 0:27:09but there's a sort of energy about them all, which makes it sort of OK.
0:27:09 > 0:27:13I've just got this passage which I think sums it up really well.
0:27:13 > 0:27:19"Look at it this way. News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.
0:27:19 > 0:27:24"And it's only news until he's read it. After that, it's dead."
0:27:24 > 0:27:30And then he goes on to say, "Corker recounted the heroic legends of Fleet Street.
0:27:30 > 0:27:36"He told of the classic scoops and hoaxes, of the confessions wrung from hysterical suspects,
0:27:36 > 0:27:40"of the innuendo and intricate misrepresentations,
0:27:40 > 0:27:46"the lushest detailed inventions that composed contemporary history,
0:27:46 > 0:27:51- "of the positive, daring lies that got a chap a rise." - Wonderful.
0:27:51 > 0:27:53APPLAUSE
0:27:53 > 0:27:58- Very good.- So... - Time has beaten us.
0:27:58 > 0:28:04It only leaves me to say thank you so much to Rick Stein and Fiona Shaw.
0:28:09 > 0:28:15Details from this series are on the BBC website, of course.
0:28:18 > 0:28:23And you can also hear our guests read a passage from their favourite children's book.
0:28:23 > 0:28:29Alas, this is the very last show in the series. I hope you've enjoyed it. Good night.
0:28:46 > 0:28:48Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd