Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A novelist whose romantic tales of poverty and hardship in northern England have sold 15 million copies and are the most borrowed from UK libraries, second only
On the island
Eight records
I believe in angels, and when the time is right for me, I'll cross the stream. It's not a song you can listen to and just skim the surface. There's something deeper and it's beautiful.
I'm a sentimentalist me, you know. I sort of I like to think that people fall in love and get married and live happily ever after. And I know it doesn't always happen, but this song is so beautiful, you know.
This is the one I sing when I'm doing karaoke, which I often do. I think it's just great. I think it's uplifting. It it makes you smile. It makes your feet tap.
I had not heard this chap, Peter Hoffman. Now Rudy, he was playing this Peter Hoffman, Knights in White Satin, and I heard it and loved it. So dramatic. Beautiful voice, beautiful song.
And I did this once in the little red skirt and the boots, you know, and I I gave it all I'd got, I really went for it. And uh the kids at school thought it was hilarious, but you know, I'll do it again if I had to.
Freddie Mercury, of course. What a man, what a performer. And We Will Rock You, will, you know, sort of um it will lift your spirits, I think.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:07Do you ever ask yourself why people want to read about [slum living]?
Because it is Yes. I write about people, their emotions and the world over, it doesn't matter what culture you are, what color you are, we all laugh, we all cry, we all grieve and we all, you know, sort of take joy out of everyday life. That's why people across the world love the stories.
Presenter asks
4:35Am I right in thinking [the kindly woman in your books] is always, in each book, based on your mother?
She is, absolutely Sue. And it isn't always a woman. It can be an old man, it can be a little boy, a young woman. It's the essence of the character.
Presenter asks
9:26What did poverty mean for you?
Well, it meant uh Bare f floorboards. It meant um a stand chair either side of the bed with a candle on it. It meant uh curtains that, you know, we'd got at the rag and bone shop. And you didn't expect anything better because you didn't know any any better.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
Why [did you start to write your first book] then? Why that moment?
Because up until then I hadn't had time. And then suddenly it was like life suddenly said stop. you know, before you fall down. I was confined to bed and I was going stir crazy, but uh Ken said to me, Well, look, I'll bring you some pen and paper. Why don't you write that story that you've always been talking about? So I did.
Presenter asks
29:17Where are you suggesting [the outline of your latest book] came from?
I've no idea. I've got no i it must have been ticking away in the back of my head somewhere. But it's an amazing thing. It never happened to me before.
“From when I was four years of age, I would sit on the steps down Derwent Street and I'd watch the whole world unfold around me. People making loving doorways, children fighting, dogs weeing against the gutter, everything. It all happened down Derwent Street.”
“I think that some people can't appreciate The word poverty. What does that mean? You know, you you only have one meal instead of three. Uh it means you don't have a meal at all, you know. It means that you go down on Saturday afternoon to the market uh when they're closing up and you get the food off the floor. That's what poverty is.”
“It was the most traumatic thing uh in my childhood, I think, you know, and more so than the poverty or anything, to be to be split up.”
“If I had to choose between, as I said before, my family, And everything material it would be my family. And if we had to live in a tent, so be it.”