0:00:00 > 0:00:05Collected Columns.
0:00:05 > 0:00:07Few writers have equal success as a novelist and a playwright.
0:00:07 > 0:00:11Michael Frayn is one of that rare breed.
0:00:11 > 0:00:13He made PG Wodehouse laugh, he's written farce and serious
0:00:13 > 0:00:16drama, and a clutch of prize-winning novels.
0:00:16 > 0:00:19He's also a celebrated newspaper columnist,
0:00:19 > 0:00:22in the Guardian and the Observer in the 60s and 70s, and then again
0:00:22 > 0:00:26in a later flowering in the 90s.
0:00:26 > 0:00:29And a new collection of those newspaper columns is just out.
0:00:29 > 0:00:39Welcome.
0:00:46 > 0:00:51Michael Frayn, it's a long time since you became a columnist.
0:00:51 > 0:00:53Was it deliberate or accidental?
0:00:53 > 0:01:01It was a long series of accidents.
0:01:01 > 0:01:04I was a reporter on the Guardian, and I was supposed to be writing
0:01:04 > 0:01:07a reported-type column, interviewing visiting dignitaries
0:01:07 > 0:01:11and whatnot, and I just couldn't get around to collect enough material
0:01:11 > 0:01:14to do three columns a week, so my former boss, the news editor,
0:01:14 > 0:01:19made this brilliant suggestion that I should do what other funny
0:01:19 > 0:01:29columnists had done, which was introduce some
0:01:30 > 0:01:31fictitious characters.
0:01:31 > 0:01:33I've been making it up ever since!
0:01:33 > 0:01:37I discovered making things up is much, much easier.
0:01:37 > 0:01:39You've mentioned characters who can be created.
0:01:39 > 0:01:42Do they then take on a life which has an energy
0:01:42 > 0:01:43of its own, and can lead
0:01:43 > 0:01:46you on and give you ideas, as it were, as if they're a part
0:01:46 > 0:01:48of your mind you haven't been conscious of?
0:01:48 > 0:01:49Well, it does.
0:01:49 > 0:01:59Fictitious stuff is pretty much, in fact is a lot better
0:01:59 > 0:02:02than real staff, really, because they don't put in awkward
0:02:02 > 0:02:04wage demands and whatnot, but it's also because the world
0:02:04 > 0:02:07inside your head is much better organised than the world
0:02:07 > 0:02:10outside your head, and the danger of writing fiction is it all seems
0:02:10 > 0:02:11too organised, and too easy.
0:02:11 > 0:02:14What an idea for something is, for a fiction, is something
0:02:14 > 0:02:15organised into a plot, into a story.
0:02:15 > 0:02:16Definite characters, definite places.
0:02:16 > 0:02:19And I've often thought that writers of fiction ought to be required
0:02:19 > 0:02:24by law to go out occasionally and do a bit of real newspaper reporting,
0:02:24 > 0:02:27because when you get out there and look at the world outside,
0:02:27 > 0:02:30it's not at all like the world inside your head.
0:02:30 > 0:02:32It's all muddled and curious, nothing fits together,
0:02:32 > 0:02:35nothing leads to anything else.
0:02:35 > 0:02:37People will know your work on stage, Noises Off, consistently voted one
0:02:37 > 0:02:43of people's funniest and favourite plays,
0:02:43 > 0:02:49which of course is a picture of everything falling apart.
0:02:49 > 0:02:52Do you have that sense of chaos around us which we're always
0:02:52 > 0:02:57struggling to try to put back together and are doomed never
0:02:57 > 0:02:59to quite succeed?
0:02:59 > 0:03:03I think this is what human activity is, an attempt to reverse the second
0:03:03 > 0:03:08law of thermodynamics, which says that everything
0:03:08 > 0:03:10is gradually sort of falling to pieces, to simplify it slightly!
0:03:10 > 0:03:11Yes!
0:03:11 > 0:03:15And to try and stop things falling to pieces.
0:03:15 > 0:03:18I mean, at the simplest level, just trying to keep your house
0:03:18 > 0:03:23organised and stop it falling down, that takes a lot of effort.
0:03:23 > 0:03:25To actually keep society running takes an enormous amount
0:03:25 > 0:03:28of intellectual and physical effort.
0:03:28 > 0:03:32But why is the human struggle to do that,
0:03:32 > 0:03:39which may be doomed, so funny?
0:03:39 > 0:03:40Why is anything funny?
0:03:40 > 0:03:42I think it is some mismatch between our hopes and intentions,
0:03:42 > 0:03:47and reality.
0:03:47 > 0:03:51The basic joke that, the archetypal joke of someone
0:03:51 > 0:03:53slipping on a banana skin, what's funny is not that they slip
0:03:53 > 0:03:57but that they think they're in control of the situation,
0:03:57 > 0:04:00walking in a dignified way, and suddenly it's gone.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03You've been making people laugh and making them think in plays
0:04:03 > 0:04:13and books and in newspaper writing from many, many years now.
0:04:13 > 0:04:16Looking back to those newspaper times, what was the joy
0:04:16 > 0:04:18of writing a column of 800, 1000 words, finishing it,
0:04:18 > 0:04:21and seeing it on the page in the Guardian, the Observer,
0:04:21 > 0:04:22or somewhere else?
0:04:22 > 0:04:28What's the thrill of it?
0:04:28 > 0:04:32One of the joys of writing a funny column in those days is that
0:04:32 > 0:04:35newspapers were much smaller, and on the whole more impersonal.
0:04:35 > 0:04:39Most of the news in the serious paper, like the Guardian
0:04:39 > 0:04:42or the Observer, was impersonal news about the world.
0:04:42 > 0:04:48For someone to be expressing personal opinions and being flippant
0:04:48 > 0:04:51about things that other people were taking seriously,
0:04:51 > 0:04:54it stood out quite sharply from the stuff around it.
0:04:54 > 0:04:56A wonderful playground to be able to operate in?
0:04:56 > 0:04:57Absolutely wonderful playground.
0:04:57 > 0:04:59Nowadays, papers have changed.
0:04:59 > 0:05:02They're so vast, there are many, many personal columns,
0:05:02 > 0:05:05and it's much more difficult to make your personality
0:05:05 > 0:05:09as a columnist stand out in a newspaper.
0:05:09 > 0:05:12There must be something satisfying about filling that space,
0:05:12 > 0:05:17having a comic idea, a sense of absurdity,
0:05:17 > 0:05:20a sense of rage about something that you want to expose,
0:05:20 > 0:05:24not in a pompous way, but by making people laugh at it,
0:05:24 > 0:05:28and knowing that if you find the right words and the right
0:05:28 > 0:05:32structure, you can do it and tie it up with a ribbon in that little
0:05:32 > 0:05:33space at the bottom of the page?
0:05:33 > 0:05:35It's a very special feeling, isn't it?
0:05:35 > 0:05:38Well, it's very nice when it works.
0:05:38 > 0:05:43When it goes...
0:05:43 > 0:05:46It's like writing a book - when it's working, it seems
0:05:46 > 0:05:48to be writing itself, but you have to do a lot
0:05:48 > 0:05:49of preparation for that.
0:05:49 > 0:05:51When it goes wrong, it's horrible.
0:05:51 > 0:05:55I often thought you really earn your royalties with the things
0:05:55 > 0:06:00that don't work, and I certainly had days when I was writing that column
0:06:00 > 0:06:05when I just simply could not do it, and had to go to bed,
0:06:05 > 0:06:08get up very early in the morning and write it in desperation
0:06:08 > 0:06:12before my deadline first thing in the morning.
0:06:12 > 0:06:14But it never failed.
0:06:14 > 0:06:17I think it was Douglas Adams who said, "I love deadlines.
0:06:17 > 0:06:23I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass."
0:06:23 > 0:06:26You can't miss a newspaper deadline, that would really be the end.
0:06:26 > 0:06:27I don't think I ever did.
0:06:27 > 0:06:30But you'd come right up against them, and that's lovely.
0:06:30 > 0:06:31Very close, yes.
0:06:31 > 0:06:36A whooshing sound comes very close.
0:06:36 > 0:06:38Finally, do you think of yourself, looking back, people will enjoy
0:06:38 > 0:06:41these collective columns as they've enjoyed your successful novels
0:06:41 > 0:06:41and plays, of course.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44Do you think of yourself, at root, still, somewhere in your head,
0:06:44 > 0:06:49as a newspaperman?
0:06:49 > 0:06:52Those first couple of years I spent as a reporter won't cut very deep
0:06:52 > 0:06:56into my personality.
0:06:56 > 0:06:57Actually doing serious newspaper reporting,
0:06:57 > 0:07:03looking at the world and trying to make sense of it,
0:07:03 > 0:07:04is an education in itself.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07The idea of trying to write short for newspapers, trying
0:07:07 > 0:07:11to catch people's attention in the opening paragraph,
0:07:11 > 0:07:16I think is not a bad training for all kinds of writing.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19And just because it's fun doesn't mean it doesn't matter?
0:07:19 > 0:07:22All the best things are fun!
0:07:22 > 0:07:25If your job's not fun, you should be doing something else.
0:07:25 > 0:07:35Michael Frayn, thank you very much.