The Agent

A lot of people have asked me how I got into the role of ‘Claire’. Well, one day my agent came to me with the script for the show, and I said ‘no’. And he said ‘yes’, and I said ‘no’. And he said ‘yes’, and I said ‘Dad’, and he said ‘don’t call me that when we’re working’ and I said ‘Daddy, we’re just sitting in the kitchen’, and he said ‘We’re having a working lunch’, and I said ‘I’m not eating anything’, and he said ‘Good, with a figure like that it’s no wonder you’re not getting any decent roles’, and I said ‘I think I should be in school’ and he said ‘You’re just a comic device, your school didn’t exist until you mentioned it until just then’ and I said ‘Well, since it does exist now, can I go?’, and he said ‘If I did permit you to go, that would somewhat undermine the callous father figure that I seem to represent’ and I said “Would that matter?” and he said “It’d be bad writing” and I said “Isn’t having a conversation descend into a discussion of whether it constitutes bad writing bad writing?” and he said “It depends how long it lasts” and I said nothing, because we suddenly both decided that the conversation had finished.

Darwin

Much of Darwin's later writing was on earthworms. Very few people read it, as it was quite difficult to get them to stop wriggling for long enough to read the words. Darwin could only fit a couple of words on each worm, so potential readers had to go to the book shop with a wheelbarrow, to bring a cubic metre of worms home. On the journey home, the worms would, rather inconsiderately, re-arrange themselves, meaning that it could take a good hour to find two consecutive worms, and the best part of a fortnight to read a sentence.

Reviewers widely agreed that they preferred his work on finches.