James Herbert

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty six, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:29

Castaway today is in the top ten of best-selling British writers and indisputably the number one writer of horror fiction. His first novel, The Rats, was described by one reviewer as rubbish. It went on to become a huge best-seller, was reprinted twenty-one times, which is why the reviewer is not our Desert Island guest today, but the author is. He is James Herbert.

Presenter0:50

Jim, how daunting is it, a a review like that? I mean, that day were you?

Presenter0:54

Very first book you've ever written. It got a review in which the critic suggested it was thrown into the garbage can, I think.

James Herbert1:00

Yeah, I mean it was so traumatic. I remember that very Sunday morning because it was a a critic on the Observer.

James Herbert1:07

And I'd collected all the Sunday papers and uh I went through them with my wife and found no reviews at all except this one that said The Rats is is rubbish.

James Herbert1:18

And I said to my wife, Well, that that's it, I'm no good as a writer, I'll stick to uh advertising, which was the the job I was doing at that time.

James Herbert1:25

And I really thought I was finished before I'd even started.

James Herbert1:28

And yet the following week the Sunday Times said the book was brilliant, so uh I kind of leaned towards the Sunday Times.

James Herbert1:34

Let's have a first choice of record.

James Herbert1:37

My first choice is Blueberry Hill, my flex domino.

James Herbert1:41

And I had this one years ago. It came out in nineteen fifty six. I've still got it on a an old seventy eight. And the reason I love this record is because I lived in a street that was very narrow, and there were cobblestones, gas lighting. It wasn't that many years ago, but it was uh one of the oldest streets in London.

James Herbert2:00

It was so narrow it it was like a funnel, and it went up to all gates.

James Herbert2:06

And I my house is at the bottom of this street and I used to blur out this record and people used to come from the house to see what the sound was. And that that the first record was Blueberry Hill that I played in the Michigan.

Presenter2:18

I've found my thrill.

Presenter2:23

Old Blueberry Hill.

Presenter2:29

On Blueberry Hill.

Presenter2:34

When I found you

Speaker 12:40

The most distill

Speaker 12:45

On Blueberry Hill.

Presenter2:49

So, James, this area of London where you had Fat's Domino blasting out in the streets, whereabouts was it? What kind of an area was it?

James Herbert2:56

Well, it was the back of Petticoat Lane at the market, in fact, around Augate East. The street I lived was called Tyne Street.

James Herbert3:04

We moved in there when I was about nine years old.

James Herbert3:07

And it was due to be demolished under a slum clearance plan.

James Herbert3:12

and we thought Terrific would have a a nice new flat in about six months. But I stayed there for about fourteen years before they pulled it down.

James Herbert3:22

Half the street was uh gutted houses that had been bombed out during the war.

James Herbert3:26

There was a a tiny alleyway just two doors away from me where uh Jack the Ripper actually sliced up some of his victims. At the back of our house were the stables from Petticoat Lane, where they left all their rotted fruits and and veg.

James Herbert3:41

Our toilet was out in that yard, and over the wall was this a vegetable graveyard that was full of rats, big rats.

James Herbert3:49

This all sort of stuck with me over the years. I think this is where the horror element came out in me. What about your parents? What did they do? Well, they're called fruiterers, street traders. They had a stool in the market, one in Bethnal Green Market, and one in uh Brick Lane on a Sunday morning. Before that they had a fruit shop in Hackney Road.

James Herbert4:08

which they sold as well as fruits and potatoes, they sell coal.

James Herbert4:12

Chickens eggs. We had chickens out in the back and uh my mother used to shovel the coal up from the cellar. You know, it's an incredible place.

James Herbert4:19

And then things um went slightly bad and that's why we ended up in in Tyne Street.

James Herbert4:25

But uh good memories of all these places. Good memories.

Presenter4:27

Good memories.

James Herbert4:31

No, no, because the the thing is when you come from that environment

James Herbert4:35

You don't realize that you're poor, and in fact the kids in your class there are a lot that are worse off than you. An example, you know, I used to pay half price for dinner because of our circumstances. So I paid instead of sevenpence, old pence, I paid threepence.

James Herbert4:51

But there were kids in my class who paid nothing. You know, so it's all relative, you see. And you never actually felt that you were poor and I certainly didn't suffer from it. I never felt that I I went without.

James Herbert5:04

The only time uh you realize it is years later.

James Herbert5:08

When I went into advertising, I remember going to lunch with some friends, and in the restaurant, there was a bottle of sauce on the table, and it said

James Herbert5:16

Give to this organization a country holiday fund.

James Herbert5:20

And it said, Do you realize they're children that have never seen a cow?

James Herbert5:24

They've never seen a sea.

James Herbert5:26

These are deprived children. And I thought, well, that was me. I used to go away on the country holiday phone and then a lump came to my throat and that's the only time you realized that you were bad up at it. You didn't need to deprive me. Not at all, not at all.

Presenter5:35

You don't know the fragmentation.

James Herbert5:39

That's right.

Presenter5:40

But That's

Presenter5:41

James, what's uh your next choice of record?

James Herbert5:44

Next again, I'm afraid this is all sort of fifty stuff because that was my, I think, my formative years and I've got happy memories of it.

Presenter5:44

Animal

James Herbert5:52

Again at a very old seventy eight, it's called Little Darling by the Diamonds.

Presenter6:02

My whole drawn up.

Presenter6:05

Yeah.

Presenter6:08

Commissioner.

Speaker 26:08

Hello, what good?

Speaker 26:10

Fucking fucking fucking fucking older.

Speaker 26:14

Pradma Helawa.

Speaker 26:18

What was that?

Speaker 16:21

Yeah.

Presenter6:27

James Herbert, I share your your passion with this fifties music that we're hearing here now, because I I remember it well and I remember also, I don't know if you do, too, the machine we used to play through me, this huge like a sort of uh one of those cinema organs when we used to play.

James Herbert6:36

Huge, yes.

Presenter6:41

Don't hear that word anymore.

James Herbert6:43

But but we got this machine. I mean it was horrendous, but it was beautiful. My oldest brother, Peter.

James Herbert6:49

As he arrived one day with a barra, a wheelbarrow,

James Herbert6:53

With this huge machine on And we said, Well, where did you get it from? He said, Oh, the local youth club was throwing it away. We found out later, of course, he'd just picked it up and taken it away.

James Herbert7:05

But it was a wonderful machine because it had a a heavy arm on it and tin needles. After every second record you had to put a new tin needle in. And the arm was so heavy it used to actually eat its way through the record, almost for the other side.

Speaker 17:16

Oh my god.

James Herbert7:18

But a a lovely thumping bass in it, which the whole street used to reverberate to. It was wonderful. You mentioned earlier your mum and dad were both uh street traders. Are they still alive? They're still alive, yes.

Presenter7:23

And it was

James Herbert7:30

At the age of seventy two, my mother, who's worked hard all her life and she still works a bit now, and she still supports me in fact.

James Herbert7:39

She did a O level in English at seventy two and and she passed.

Presenter7:41

Yeah.

James Herbert7:44

and when she passed she immediately divorced my father.

James Herbert7:48

You shouldn't laugh at things like that, but why? You've got to understand I'm from a broken home. It explains a lot.

Speaker 17:50

Yeah.

Presenter7:50

There you go.

Speaker 17:53

Explains that love.

James Herbert7:56

The reason why, well, obviously I can't say too much, but my father is a is a great man, he's a great drinker.

James Herbert8:03

and a great gambler. Years ago somebody told him he looked like Humphrey Bogart.

James Herbert8:09

And when Humphrey died my father carried on with the legend.

James Herbert8:12

But at seventy odd, you know, it gets a bit hard to take.

James Herbert8:16

Drives you to all that.

Presenter8:19

Yeah.

Presenter8:20

That's another choice of record, please.

James Herbert8:21

Yeah, the next one again uh played on this big machine, but this in the old days actually reminded me so much of sitting on a a desert island and playing records, and it's it's Love Letters in the Sand by Pat Boone.

Speaker 18:34

Yeah.

Speaker 28:39

And the sun

Speaker 28:44

Oh yeah.

Speaker 28:48

When I cry

Speaker 28:51

Each time I saw the top

Presenter8:56

Take our love.

Presenter9:01

From

Presenter9:04

Jim, apart from this extraordinary family that surrounded you in London when you were growing up, what about other influences? I mean, what about schools, for instance? Where do you go to school?

James Herbert9:12

Yes, my first school was Our Lady of the Assumption, which was a Catholic school in Bethnal Green, and that was run by nuns.

James Herbert9:20

After that I did the good old Eleven Plus, which I wish we had to this day, and so I was sent up to a school in Highgate called St Eloysha's College, which was run by priests and brothers.

James Herbert9:32

So I had a a good Catholic education. That was really drummed into me, which is probably why I I rebelled quite a bit against it. In what way did you rebel? I didn't go to church.

James Herbert9:43

I found there were too many questions that never got answered for me. I mean, I I believe in God and I believe in Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, but

Speaker 19:47

Uh

James Herbert9:52

There were other questions to do with the dogma of the Catholic faith that I demanded answers to, and I never got satisfactory answers. So that made me go my own way a bit. I still maintain I'm I'm a good Catholic now, although I still don't go to church very much.

James Herbert10:08

But it it was good in other ways. It was a good harsh discipline. Those old brothers were never reluctant to use the cane.

James Herbert10:15

But somehow that made the things that you did that were quite outrageous even funnier, because of that scare element, the danger of being caned, and they used it really whack you.

Speaker 110:23

Dang.

James Herbert10:26

Really? So uh yeah, so although I hated school

James Herbert10:29

I had good memories of good laughs with friends there.

Presenter10:33

What about ambition? I mean, you're quite obviously a bright child. What do you want to be?

James Herbert10:36

What did you want to be? I must admit I had none at all. You see, my subjects were really art and English was a secondary subject. Well, where did you get your your love of art from? I think it's something that's instilled in you.

James Herbert10:47

It's certainly not from the family.

James Herbert10:50

It's just something that is there. And you see, for me it was a great escape.

James Herbert10:55

Although oh yes, I enjoyed my childhood, there were certain things around us.

James Herbert10:59

that you wanted to get away from. So a great way for me was to sit down and draw pictures. I mean, I was never a big kid, I I guess you could say, but um

Speaker 111:05

I mean I was

James Herbert11:09

weedy. So I was left alone an awful lot and I would pass the time either reading or drawing and painting.

James Herbert11:18

And that that got me through so much, you know.

James Herbert11:21

And then and that environment's optised through that old house.

James Herbert11:26

The nights I was on my own sitting there and drawing and uh the light would just go out. You know, we had those old chillimeters in those days, and I would have to light a match and creep down to the cellar

James Herbert11:38

which my old man kept a a a beetroot copper there for boiling beetroots.

James Herbert11:43

and creep down there and put a shilling in a meter, if I had a shilling.

James Herbert11:48

Otherwise I'd sit in that creepy old house, and a creaky house as well. Most of it was made of wood, would you believe.

James Herbert11:55

and I used to sit there on my own, and the imagination used to run riot.

James Herbert12:00

So in the daylight I used to do some pretty uh riotous pictures as well.

James Herbert12:05

That's another choice of record. This music actually could sum me up because I I'm pretty easygoing as a rule.

James Herbert12:12

But once I get uh worked up about something,

James Herbert12:16

This music actually suits the mood.

James Herbert12:19

It's from the planets, and it's Mars the bringer of war.

James Herbert12:23

For this whole sweet, the planet sweet, it gives so many characteristics of the nature of man, if you like.

James Herbert12:31

Like Saturn the bringer of old age, which we want to forget about, but uh Uranus the magician and Neptune the mystic, for me it's part of the stories I write. And in Mars the bringer of war.

James Herbert12:43

That could actually sum up

James Herbert12:45

Any last chapter of any one of my books, because it's all there the big climax.

Presenter13:54

Jim, before you became a writer you worked in in advertising. You went straight to advertising from art school. First of all, art school, I mean Hornsey College of Arts. Was it an enjoyable period of your life?

James Herbert14:03

Oh, it was one of the best periods. I mean, you can imagine the the sort of strict

Presenter14:03

Oh.

James Herbert14:07

regime of these cane wielding brothers and police and then going to uh art school where they couldn't hit you. You know, it was wonderful. And the great thing about art school, it was full of musicians. Everybody played a guitar. I used to sing in a little group there, you know, just on a very casual basis.

Speaker 114:10

Please.

Speaker 114:13

You know,

James Herbert14:24

I learnt the guitar as well, and that's why I still am a frustrated rock singer and player.

Speaker 114:26

And that

James Herbert14:31

And that's why a lot of my music goes back to those rock and roll days.

James Herbert14:35

A guy that I loved at that time, of course, was Buddy Holly, and I remember going to uh my my first school dance, in fact, which was at uh St. Adoys.

James Herbert14:45

and there was a very stuffy band on a quartet playing most of the evening, but during the interval.

James Herbert14:51

I went up to get a a glass of orange juice, which is all we're allowed to drink.

James Herbert14:56

and a band came on and they played all these buddy holly numbers.

James Herbert14:59

And uh the man who was uh the leader of the group was Mike Berry, who's still around nowadays, and he's still a buddy Ollie's.

James Herbert15:07

One of my favorite records of his it was a cricket's number in fact, not a Buddy Holly, aficionalado's word to know the difference, but it was Don't Ever Change, and I still have that record and I still play it. I'm still trying to learn the chords.

Presenter15:21

You never wear a stitch or lace

Presenter15:25

Power is never born.

Presenter15:27

Hey!

Presenter15:29

You're always wearing jeans except on Sundays

Presenter15:37

Please don't ask.

Presenter15:39

Chain

Presenter15:41

Nope.

Presenter15:42

You ever train?

Presenter15:45

Kind like

Presenter15:47

Chips

Presenter15:48

Where you are

Presenter15:53

A castaway is the author James Herbert. James, before you started writing, you went into advertising. Was this in the kind of um the heyday of the advertising industry?

James Herbert16:02

Yes, it was. I mean, this was the sixties, the the swinging sixties.

James Herbert16:07

I went to a great agency that was just building up. They used to do a lot of uh city advertising, financial type of advertising, but they were getting into the consumer market. And I joined just at the right time. The agency was called uh Charles Barker, they're now called Erb Barker.

James Herbert16:24

And I got in on the ground. So when we started getting accounts like Chanel, Clarell, Van Heusen Shirts, Harp Lager, I was there. So I was part of that. And that helped me in my career in advertising.

James Herbert16:38

I found that um I used to love the work as an art director. I used to love the people'cause there's a great buzz going on in advertising and no matter how dead you felt in the morning

Speaker 116:46

Yeah.

Presenter16:46

No matter how

James Herbert16:49

You always got a buzz and you felt better just in time to go to the pub.

Presenter16:53

When you started writing, was this because you you ultimately didn't find the world of advertising all that fulfilling?

James Herbert16:59

But yeah, it what happened was I got early promotion in a way, uh at twenty six. I wasn't a whiz kid, but uh I suppose I wasn't bad at the job.

James Herbert17:07

And I has made what they call a group head, so you're in charge of a few other people.

James Herbert17:12

handling uh a lot of money from clients, uh big billings, but I found I was going to more meetings than actually doing the work, and I was delegating a lot of work. So I think and this is all post fractionale,

James Herbert17:25

I think I got a bit frustrated. There wasn't enough challenge in it for me. And it as I said, the job was good. I went all over the world for for this job. You know, some good trips to the Philippines, uh, Malaysia, Singapore, and so that was all good experience.

James Herbert17:41

But something was lacking and around me I had lots of copywriters, of course, who all had their manuscripts in a drawer that they would take out, dust off,

James Herbert17:52

and say, This is the one that's going to get me out of advertising. It seemed to me a lot of people were looking to get out at that time, which to me was crazy. I I just wanted to stay in it.

James Herbert18:02

But I thought, yes, write a book. That's not a bad idea. I mean, that's our naïve.

Speaker 118:06

Naive

James Herbert18:07

I was at that time. But if you're on the crest of a wave

James Herbert18:10

And I think I was in advertising.

James Herbert18:12

There's no limits for you. You think, well, you could do what you want.

James Herbert18:16

And so I sat down and wrote a book. But you wrote The Rats? I wrote The Rats. How long did it take you to write? That took me eight or nine months, just working on weekends and evenings.

Presenter18:20

How long did it take?

James Herbert18:26

With no

James Herbert18:28

I didn't think any reward at the end of the day because it may be as uh arrogant as I was, I really honestly had no idea that would get published. I just hoped. And that came the story came out of your childhood? It did. You know, you're always told as a writer you gotta write what you know about.

James Herbert18:43

And I knew about the East End of London.

James Herbert18:46

And I certainly know about giant rats, big rats.

James Herbert18:50

And the the whole story, in fact, I know it's uh quite a gory story, but it was really about the environment of the East End. There was a whole message in there, but uh people didn't seem to see that message. I tell you one interesting thing about the rats there.

James Herbert19:03

And I've never told anyone this before, but when you write a novel,

James Herbert19:08

You have an idea in mind of the character who is the hero. Now, naturally.

James Herbert19:13

The guy's thinking, his attitude, a lot of that comes from you, but you get a physical picture in your mind.

James Herbert19:21

And my physical picture for the hero was Michael Parkinson.

James Herbert19:26

I don't believe you. Honestly.

Presenter19:26

I still believe you. Honestly.

James Herbert19:28

My cost, I was a rat. You you had exactly the right attitude for me and the right craggy features, do I say. You you were a oh, I I don't want to make you blush, but you are a man's man. You're the sort of bloke I want to be my hero. It's why I like people like Michael Kane, because they're down to earth, you know, they're they're not wimps. And

Presenter19:50

And so my hero

James Herbert19:51

Okay.

Presenter19:53

Instead of being attacked by that emu, I could've been eaten by a rice.

Presenter19:58

Let's have another chance to record Die of Shame.

James Herbert20:01

Well, my next one is Summertime Blues by Eddie Cochrane. And the reason I've chosen this is because years ago.

James Herbert20:09

when I was about nineteen.

James Herbert20:12

Three friends of mine, we bought an old Full Poplar car. Remember those old Full Poplars, you know.

Speaker 120:17

Yeah.

James Herbert20:18

It cost us eight pounds and we went to Monte Carlo in this car and we virtually pushed it all the way. But we went to Monte Carlo and back in this old, old Paul Pablo. And on the way down, all I remember us singing is summertime blues.

Speaker 120:40

I'm a Goorazer first, I'm a Gooraza Fall.

Speaker 120:46

I'm about to work in all summer just to try to overthrow her.

Speaker 120:52

Every time I call my baby, try to get a game. My boss says, no doubt you gotta work late. Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do. But there ain't no cure for the summertime.

Presenter21:06

James, in spite of your success with The Rats and it became a a huge bestseller, in fact it was some time before you gave up advertising, wasn't it, and became a full-time writer? Yeah, that's true.

James Herbert21:16

That's right. I think because I probably felt insecure and from my background you can understand that and I still do feel insecure.

James Herbert21:24

And I didn't want to give up a good job and a real job just for writing, which, you know, I had no idea that I was even a writer, even with that success. I I really had no idea if I could do it again.

James Herbert21:36

So I carried on in advertising, but I was working seven days a week, just writing the books at weekends and advertising which is a pretty hairy game anyway.

James Herbert21:45

Done at Journey Week

James Herbert21:47

Seven days a week I wasn't seeing much of my children or my wife.

James Herbert21:51

The text numbers.

James Herbert21:53

Taken most of the money.

James Herbert21:55

And I was actually killing myself doing that. So one had to go and after five books

James Herbert22:02

There was no competition. The books was it, the Survivor. You know, I I was gonna stick with books.

Presenter22:04

Yeah.

Presenter22:07

Now let me ask you about the kind of books you write. So so you are indisputably our our number one bestseller of horror fiction, well best writer of horror fiction. Why did you choose that particular form of writing? I mean, was it because it was seemed a very good market to sell books in, or is it because you can't write about anything else?

James Herbert22:25

Yeah.

Presenter22:26

No, it would be

James Herbert22:26

You see, you can never take a look at the market and say, ah, that's going to sell, so that's what I'm going to do.

James Herbert22:32

It was just purely accidental that I chose the route because of you know the street I lived in.

James Herbert22:39

The environment as a kid, being told ghost stories all the time, Jack the Ripper slicing up his victims two doors away

James Herbert22:46

It just seems to come out. And a great thing about horror writing is that you can write.

James Herbert22:51

Humour?

James Herbert22:52

You can write romance, you can write political thrillers, and it can all come under that heading of horror.

James Herbert22:59

And the other good thing about it is that you can write what seems to be a very ordinary story, and o most of my books start off this way.

James Herbert23:07

And then when you get slightly fed up with the the mundane aspects of that story, you can take that leap and you invite the reader to take that mental leap with you. You can bring in something that's totally outrageous. So you'll get your own interest and your adrenaline flow.

Presenter23:23

The people who will criticize you and people like you, I mean not just you all the time, they would take the aspect of the blood and gore and of the of that kind of messy horror in these books.

James Herbert23:29

Yeah.

James Herbert23:30

The messy horror in these books. What I don't understand is when I first started writing, the horror that was around was never really.

James Herbert23:38

fulfilled. It was all suggestion, which is fine, and I I do a lot of that in the books.

James Herbert23:43

But I I wanted to do something different. Now I hate violence anyway, and I always believe.

Speaker 123:46

Anyway.

James Herbert23:49

That if you depict violence, you've got to show it in detail to show how bad, how nasty it is. I'm not one for Tom and Jerry violence, where that the cat can hit the mouse and the mouse jumps up immediately afterwards. I think you've got to

James Herbert24:03

Feel it. The reader has gotta feel it. So that's why I wanted to explore that territory, if you like.

James Herbert24:09

Unfortunately, because of the success of the books, a lot of other writers jumped on that particular bandwagon.

James Herbert24:15

And they did it for, if you like, exploitation. And I took the rap for a lot of these these people.

James Herbert24:21

You know, there is a market for that sort of thing and I don't want to knock it too much. But there are lots of other elements in my stories. For instance, I've all got a very strong moral tone.

James Herbert24:32

There is, I believe, some good writing, some very subtle bits in the books.

James Herbert24:37

And there is a lot of suggestion rather than overt description.

Presenter24:40

Yes, and and of course in the Newbury Britney, the Magic Cottage, I mean there's not blood and gore and slicing up in that as such. I mean it's a very different story.

James Herbert24:45

That's a very different story. That's right. It's a reputation I've earned well, I've earned it unfairly. It's because people have read The Rats and then The Fog and then they forget about the Rats. They know me for that. But this is like uh twelve years on now. You know, you actually develop. Let's have another choice of record, yeah. This one takes me back to uh New York. I I went over there on a publicity tour.

James Herbert25:09

And it was a sort of heady day as uh Harold Robbins sent his car to Clapmeer's big black limousine, tinted windows.

James Herbert25:17

Chauffeur-driven, he'd sent his press secretary along.

James Herbert25:21

Just to uh show me the sights as we drove into New York. We got clear customs, no problem at all. I I just skipped through them because of uh Robin's uh influence.

James Herbert25:31

And we drove into New York City on a Sunday afternoon.

James Herbert25:35

and I was laid out in the back.

James Herbert25:37

And we we went past a museum. All the kids were out, teenagers.

James Herbert25:41

and they saw this big black limo passin' by.

James Herbert25:44

and suddenly they were all round it.

James Herbert25:46

and they saw this youngish guy in the back,

James Herbert25:50

Laid back, literally, and they thought he must be somebody, and they were banging on the window. It was like being mobbed, you know, and I got a glimpse of how a film star or a pop star must feel. I had a pair of sunglasses in my pocket, which I casually took out and slipped on, so that really got them interested. And it was such a good feeling about New York. And the whole two weeks that I was there, I had this, it carried through. So the record I've chosen is I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City by Harry Nelson.

Presenter26:27

I'll say goodbye.

Presenter26:29

To all my sorrow and by tomorrow

Presenter26:33

I'll be on my way I guess the Lord must be in New York City

Presenter26:47

In the development of James Herbert, the writer that we've been talking about, what's the next step, James? What's the next stage in the development?

James Herbert26:54

I don't look to the future at all. In fact I never have. Uh it's going to make a a few people chuckle this, but I don't think I've ever been ambitious.

James Herbert27:03

It just seems to have happened for me. I believe in working hard and going for things, but uh

James Herbert27:09

I don't look to the future too much. Uh I guess what I would like now is some good films made of the books. Shrine is uh on the way to be on a film at the moment. We hope to film next year.

James Herbert27:20

I've done a a T V series for the B B C, which should be very scary. Not uh

James Herbert27:28

horrific in a sense of uh well blood and gore, but uh psychologically very chilling.

James Herbert27:34

I've got high hopes of that because the BBC have been very good. They've actually gone along with me with everything I've asked for. So we hope to start filming that uh next May.

James Herbert27:43

Uh and that's actually a series and it's gonna scare, I promise you that. And that that's as far as I look. I I'll still carry on writing books, I'll still carry on designing.

James Herbert27:54

Yeah, no, it's a nice way.

Presenter27:54

Well, of course you designed this latest book, didn't you?

James Herbert27:56

Romagic cusses, yeah, I I did the cover, the inside. My publisher had to go to five different printers to get the typeface for the the inside of the text of the book.

James Herbert28:05

I even took the photograph on the b so it's great uh you know, again it's uh fulfilling that art side of me, uh the design, the graphic design part. So that so that's nice.

James Herbert28:16

I want to do eventually um children's stories so I can do the illustrations for them and really tie up the two things, art and and writing.

James Herbert28:25

So there they're things to look forward to when I have time.

Presenter28:26

When I had

Presenter28:27

Final choice of record

James Herbert28:29

It's uh from Pierghent.

James Herbert28:32

Miss Grieg's morning. My choice of this is because if you're on a desert island, land there, and it's sea and sand and palm trees around you.

James Herbert28:42

It's great to be reminded of pastures and hills and streams and flowers. And I know Pierghent was about Norway, but this particular theme of morning, it reminds me so much of England. So I I guess that would bring a lump to my throat and make me make efforts to get back.

Presenter30:04

So, Jim, we're now on this desert island. How would you fare on it, do you think? It'd be any good?

James Herbert30:09

Survive. I'd be bad to begin with and uh I'd make a lot of mistakes and uh if I didn't kill myself within the first fortnight I I guess I I'd get by. Now what book would you take with you on this Desert Island? H. T. Wells, The History of mister Polly.

James Herbert30:25

And I chose that because I read that when I was about twelve years old.

James Herbert30:30

It got me away from comic books and Biggles and Jennings. It got me onto

James Herbert30:36

Slightly more serious reading.

James Herbert30:39

That put me on to an H. G. Wells anthology, which was science fiction, as well as, you know, just very ordinary stories.

James Herbert30:46

And that broadened my outlook, if you like. And suddenly I realized I liked the written word, the ideas that it conjured up. So maybe if uh I could have the anthology with H G Wells included with that anthology.

Presenter30:59

Would that have been a certainly you can. You're allowed one record of the eight, of course, not the eight records. So which one?

James Herbert31:03

So eight, yeah. Again, it's an easy choice for me'cause it'd be uh Morning from Pierre Gint. Uh again because of the images it conjures up. But also the story of Pierre Gint has always fascinated me and that might promote other stories in me. What about the luxury object?

James Herbert31:19

I suppose hot gossip is out of the question.

James Herbert31:23

Yeah.

Presenter31:23

No, no, it is out of the question actually.

James Herbert31:25

Yeah, inanimate object. My obvious choice would be pencil and paper, so I could do art and uh and write. But again I'd be working. I I feel like a little bit of a break now. And I've got a huge grand piano at home that I'm learning to play. I I mean I just bash out rock and roll stuff on it at the moment. So I think I'd like that with me. And then if I got fed up I could chop it up and make a boat.

Presenter31:50

James Herbert, thank you. Primitive. Thank you.

James Herbert31:51

Thank you.

Speaker 231:59

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.