Buchan Forth...

John Buchan was in bed, suffering from a duodenal ulcer when he wrote the book that changed my life. And he later described it as a “shocker”. Not in the sense that we take that to mean, but Buchan used “shocker” to refer to works that contained events that were very unlikely to really happen – and that readers were only just able to believe in.

And The 39 Steps, as this work became, along with its hero, Richard Hannay, was a success and has influenced many a film adaptation (to date, 3, with one more in the pipeline), as well as a spin-off drama series on ITV in the late 1980s.

I need to nail my colours to the mast here. I don’t like the 1935 Hitchcock version very much. As a film, its well-constructed, and well made – but its not the story Buchan wrote and I fell in love with.

The Hitchcock film was re-made in colour in 1959, starring Kenneth More, and was an upgrade of the original, but essentially the same, with the same altered story.

The 1979 film starring Robert Powell was far more to my taste, but I still can’t stand the ridiculous dangling-off-of-Big-Ben ending that has become so famous.

I discovered the novel at the age of 14. We’d been forced to move house to an area I didn’t like and away from all my friends – my bus ride to school was now two buses and was long and torturous. The Christmas coming up didn’t seem to be too promising to me then. And when I wandered into a little bookshop in Orpington (which has long since gone), I had no idea what would happen when I picked up a small book from the Wordsworth Classics display. I’d only looked at that because they were all just £1 each, too.

On Christmas day, we travelled to my nan and grandad’s house near Croydon. I had the book with me – not because I didn’t get anything nice for Christmas, or because I was expecting to be bored. But I had it because for once, I’d read something that intrigued me from the start. That first chapter – read in slight desperation because I wanted to go to sleep on Christmas Eve – had had my mind whirring ever since I’d woken up. But until that car journey, there’d been too much going on to read – there’d been church, and then a visit to my other nan and granddad’s… But now I could see how it would continue.

I read the rest of the book between then and the end of the evening. I’ve not read many books within 24 hours, and this was the first. I read it again over the next week. I was enthralled. This was escapism as it was intended. I didn’t care one jot what was going on elsewhere – I was in a world of espionage and treason, where you couldn’t trust anyone completely. Brilliant. Just what I needed.

So that’s basically why I don’t like the Hitchcock film – because its nothing like the book. I was so excited when I managed to get hold of a copy of the film… and so disappointed when I watched it. The ending of the book is so Holmesian in its reasoning, so suspenseful – and its totally changed.

It’s a very good film, I concede, but its not the film I want it to be – the whole plot is altered substantially when The 39 Steps are changed to be the name of an organisation rather than what the book says it is. And even more when a love interest is introduced. The importance of the Memory Man character to the film is very clever, and well-worked, but it all seemed rather less than only just believable to me.

I only really mention this stuff because I read these articles today:

BBC to remake Buchan classic

Austen? Buchan? It's time for more unusual adaptations

I’ve been waiting for the BBC to do this. It’s been my dream for roughly 15 years to write a new version, and I am obviously only hurt because the BBC didn’t ask me to do it… But Rupert Penry-Jones is a great casting choice for Richard Hannay. Its being written by Lizzie Mickery too (who, amongst other things, co-wrote the marvellous The State Within), and the BBC have been at pains to say that although it’s an adventure first written and set in the first years of the twentieth century, it will be worthy of a Bond of a Bourne story.

I’m in two minds about that. On the one hand, it’s a brilliant idea. But on the other, I’m nervous of the implication that it could be somewhat more, shall we say, modern. When trying to play up to the Hollywood standard, TV adaptations generally simply put in more CGI and explosions. I hope this won’t happen here. It looks promising, but I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed!

Springer Case Dismissed by Lords

I am very pleased to hear this...

It should finally put an end to a ridiculous set of events surrounding Jerry Springer: The Opera.

It is just such a shame that Christian Voice have to be so flippin' patronising about it.

This is from the article linked above:

"Christian Voice called the decision an "ignoble move".

"It brings down the judgement of God on us all," said Stephen Green, national director of the evangelical lobby group.

"I love my neighbour and I do not want that to happen."

You love your neighbour enough not to credit them with enough intelligence to work out whether they find the show offensive for themselves? You love them so much that you're telling them that they should find it offensive, and if they don't then the warming coals of Beelzebub's fireplace will greet them in the afterlife?

You love them so much that you thought you'd drag this pathetic, holier-than-thou, anachronistic complaint out for over three years?

This is a controversial show, there's no doubt about it. When it was shown on BBC Two, it prompted 63,000 complaints from viewers. But this was mostly people complaining that it contained over 200 swearwords, not Christians complaining about the content.

Christian Voice complained that the show contained images that "vilify God and the Bible". Of course it does. It's a satirical show that deals with modern life as seen on the Jerry Springer show. You think they're all God-fearing, good-intentioned tea-totalers? Any joke that deals with religion would meet that statement. It doesn't mean that every joke is another nail in the coffin of humanity's future. Maybe it means that God can take a joke because he knows that its not everyone's opinion. And, well, it's just a joke.

If its that serious, why would He need you to take up the fight? I'm sure he could retaliate if He wanted to. Get down off your high horses and let someone else have a rant. You don't represent the whole of Christianity. And you certainly don't represent my "Christian voice". So pipe down.

Opening A Vein

There was a time, years ago now, when I wanted - more than anything - to be an actor. I loved, and I still do love, the feeling of being on stage, of showing all those people gathered in front of you that you could be someone else, that you could make them laugh, appall them, shock, frighten, warm, comfort, sadden them, with just an action or a phrase.

There's a very good saying that Phil Hammond used on last Friday's News Quiz on BBC Radio 4: "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put tomatoes in a fruit salad."

I don't know whether I was ever any good as an actor - I was certainly told that I was quite a few times, but confidence is a huge part of doing it. My confidence was always battered by a memory that is fast-attaining legendary status for its faliures. After all, it's all very well being able to recite Stanislavski's acting system, but being able to do it is far more valuable than knowing it.

But there was a moment - one of those moments that you know will affect how the rest of your life will go. It happened at school. I was in the sixth form (year 13 for those of you who are too young to remember proper school years...), and I was rehearsing for my A-Level drama practical exam. I'd chosen one of my favourite speeches from Shakespeare for my monologue piece - its in Much Ado About Nothing (my favourite Shakespeare...), when Benedick first believes that Beatrice loves him - in the Branagh film, it's the bit when he's wandering around the garden with a deckchair...

I knew the speech inside and out, I'd researched into it, I'd concentrated and worked on every inflection of every syllable, and worked out timings. I'd even begun blocking the scene. Then my teacher asked me what I was doing again. I told her. She stared at me as if I'd just accused her of eating students during detentions (she was, after all, big enough for that to be believable).
Her words have stayed with me ever since:

"You'll have to change it. You can't do Benedick - you don't look like a romantic hero."

Well, to me, that's the point of acting. If I was any good at all, it wouldn't matter one little bloody jot if I didn't look like a romantic-sodding-hero. If I didn't look like one, I could act like one and speak like one. I could BE one. But instead, I had to do the only soliloquy anyone ever remembers from Richard III. And I hated it. I like the play, and I thoroughly recommend the film version with Ian McKellen as Richard III, but I hated doing it. If there's one thing I was probably less suited to be than a romantic hero, I'd have guessed at murderous hunchback king... Still, I suppose I was lucky she didn't get me to be Othello...

It was that moment, when she said that preposterous, insulting sentence, that I decided that it wasn't for me. I was going to follow something I'd been doing for just a few months - writing. I wanted, instead of being on the stage speaking someone else's words - I wanted to be the person who'd put those words in the actor's mouths.