Rules, Fools and Wise Men: I Shan't Forget This Trip!

During the long summer holidays of my schooldays, my parents would occasionally take me on a day trip into London. These outings would often include a visit to a museum: The Science Museum was my favourite, although The Natural History Museum and Imperial War Museum were good too. I did not enjoy The Victoria & Albert quite so much. These outings would also usually include a visit to a newsreel cinema. Long gone now, these theatres showed newsreels and cartoons rather than feature films: there was one at Victoria Station and another at Waterloo[1] and I would laugh and laugh until my sides ached watching the antics of Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny et al. The newsreel theatres are now a thing of the past and no doubt many people have never heard of them, let alone remember them.

Victoria Station Cartoon Cinema: it closed in 1981

Lunch was usually sandwiches my mother had made, but there would sometimes be a treat at a Lyons Corner House before we made our way home. We would pack a lot into our day, and I remember a phrase we would associate with the day, and which I think came from the Rupert Bear comic strips, which was "I shan't forget this trip!" I thought back to those days last week, when Val and I had one of those days where we covered a lot of ground and saw three shows.

Some months ago I booked tickets to see Derren Brown's show, Derren Brown: Underground at the Charing Cross Theatre, a show he is doing preparatory to making his debut on the New York stage. Which I completely forgot about when I applied for tickets to see Jeffrey Archer interviewed for the BBC's World Book Club on the same day. And then we got tickets to see a recording of The Now Show, also at the BBC, again on the same day. Logistically this was potentially tricky. Obviously, having paid for tickets to see Derren Brown, that show could not be missed, but fortunately The Now Show was a lunchtime recording with World Book Club in the late afternoon, scheduled to finish at 6.30, leaving an hour before the show at the Charing Cross Theatre, and since it is only a thirty-minute walk from Broadcasting House to Charing Cross, it worked out fine.

We walked from Liverpool Street and along the South Bank to Embankment in glorious March sunshine before catching the tube to Oxford Circus and on to the BBC to see The Now Show, a topical stand-up and sketch show for those of you unfamiliar with it.[2] Inevitably this included references to Donald Trump and Brexit, although jokes about the former are becoming increasingly stale, after all how much mileage is there in humour about someone who is in many ways beyond parody? The Budget and the upcoming French Presidential election came in for treatment, and there was a (partly) serious piece about covert surveillance and 'wire tapping' with intelligence specialist Julian Fisher, a former intelligence officer who worked on the Channel 4 show, Spies.

Jeffrey Archer as he appears on his Twitter profile.

After a stroll in Regents Park - it was a beautiful Spring afternoon - it was back to the BBC for Jeffrey Archer on World Book Club, talking about his 1979 novel, Kane and Abel, which has sold over 34 million copies and is on its one-hundredth reprint. The recording will be transmitted later in the year on the BBC World Service. It is well worth a listen; Lord Archer may not be everyone's cup of tea and as a writer he has sometimes been dismissed as unsophisticated, but boy can he tell a story, both on paper and in the flesh. Asked about plotting novels, Archer said that basically he doesn't, on the basis that if he doesn't know which direction his book is going in, then the reader is unlikely to. It is a world away from the image one sometimes gets - and hears - of authors scrupulously plotting their stories using spreadsheets or covering walls with Post-It notes. But Archer is not the only multi-million selling author to claim not to plot their novels meticulously. Val and I saw Lee Child - bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels - speak at Waterstones some months ago, and he too said that he tends to let his stories take him where they will, too.

Val and me with Lee Child

Apart from plotting, some writers are more painstaking with their research than others. When we saw Lee Child for instance, he told a story about a particular tree surrounded by railings in a Washington cemetery with such assurance that one was convinced that he had gone to great lengths to research its history...and then he told us he had made it all up. Sometimes it isn't necessary for a story to contain absolutely, 100% historical or factual information, as long as it is convincing, and unlike Ian Fleming's James Bond stories, doesn't try to make you believe that gay men cannot whistle, or that being covered head to toe in gold paint will kill you. Jeffrey Archer made the point that some research can be done retrospectively; if a character takes a flight to Boston, then a cab into town before checking into a hotel, the writer doesn't need to know the name of the airport, how long the cab ride takes or the name and location of the hotel when they write, that can be done later.

Derren Brown: Underground at The Charing Cross Theatre. Photo: Rebecca Woods

After a brisk walk from the BBC to Charing Cross to meet our daughter, it was two hours of watching Derren Brown baffle his audience with his usual mixture of illusion, deception and apparently psychic readings. To avoid spoilers in case you are seeing the show in London or New York, I won't go into any detail, except to say that we spent the whole show saying "How did he do that?" including the part where he told members of the audience - my daughter among them - facts about themselves which it was difficult to work out how he had gleaned. Derren Brown makes it clear that he does not claim any psychic powers, nor that anyone claiming to have them actually does for that matter, but it is easy to see why people - particularly those who want to believe - could imagine that entertainers with his talent could have real psychic powers.