Best-selling author and star of BBC Radio Four, RICHARD FRANCIS took time out to discuss his latest novel, Prospect Hill – and lots and lots of other things!

KIU Richard, your latest novel, Prospect Hill, has just been launched – and it’s GREAT!  Using the ‘automatic writing’ favoured by The Surrealists, please can we have a ‘flow of consciousness’ on the subject of Prospect Hill.

Richard Francis Pea sandwiches, sex on sofa, tower blocks like fingers in the sky, naked mama doing Egyptian dancing in the mirror, ah my head aches, will these hands ne’er be clean, I need a bit of a lie down.

KIU Your first novel is called Blackpool Vanishes.  Was this wishful thinking on your part? (And have you ever been to Ripley’s Believe it Or Not on The Golden Mile.  If you have, I doubt you would ever condone the vanishing of Blackpool.)

R.F But it comes back again. And anyhow it’s been stolen by tiny flying saucers, and inserted into a hill in Herefordshire called the Buttock. At one point it’s under somebody’s thumb-nail. This process of miniaturisation gives the rides quite a lot more G and voom.

KIU In Daggerman, your hero, Turner, becomes a serial killer. Who is your all-time favourite serial killer – and why?

R.F I had hopes for the one in Corrie but he failed to remove Gail and the kids from the programme in the end. Hannibal Lecter has an appealing sense of humour, in a sardonic sort of way, which is more I suspect than could be said for most real serial killers. The Yorkshire Ripper wore pullovers upside down on the lower part of his body, with his legs in the sleeves. If there was the slightest smidgeon of humour or self-irony available, he would not have been able to do this. Imagine an axis from charismatic to boring, then going down and down below boring till you hit some ultimate level where no charm exists at all and everything is dreary. That’s where you find real serial killers, I suspect. I made mine up and he even wrote poetry.

KIU You are quoted as saying that one of the themes at play in your novel The Enormous Dwarf is “our need to retrace our history so that we can find ways of living with it.”  Richard, is this wise?  Surely it’s better to put that sort of thing behind us and pretend it never happened (and lie through our teeth if anyone suggests that it did!)

R.F The trouble with history is that it jumps out of its box when you least expect it.

KIU What’s your favourite bit in ‘Oliver!’?

R.F The bit about ‘In this life one thing counts/ In the bank, large amounts’ has always struck me as rather profound and moving.

KIU Taking Apart The Poco Poco is perhaps the best book title ever.  Do you think of your titles before, during, or after you’ve written the novel? And which title are you proudest of?

R.F Usually after. One of my favourite titles was Songs for Yomping, which I did actually think of before I set pen to paper (it was a novel about the Falklands War). Needless to say my then publishers made me drop it at the last minute, and replaced it with Swansong.

When I suggested Fat Hen as a title my editor left a phone message in which he said it in about twenty different tones of voice. It became quite hypnotic. My tip: try doing that when you can’t sleep at nights.

KIU You are currently working on a biography of Samuel Sewall, a judge at the Salem Witch Trials.  Do you think there’s any truth in witchcraft (and have you ever done a spell?)

R.F No. When he said sorry Sewall brought witchcraft to an end, thank God.

Yes, but it didn’t work particularly well.

KIU Gladiator or Titanic? (And why?)

R.F Gladiator (less mushy)

KIU Please tell everyone that writing comedy isn’t as easy as it looks! (Or is it?!)

R.F It needs a finely tuned and mature sensibility, in my opinion. And rather a saintly character.

That’s because you need to have an element of sympathy for your characters, even if they are pretty crass. There’s something forgiving about comedy, including the hard-edged sort. Going on long runs provides the ideal training for it. Dogs are another factor.  There’s nothing tragic about a dog.

KIU Many of your novels are set in the past (the ‘50s, the ‘60s, the ‘70s.)  When writing in period, do you rely on memory – or research? And do you listen to the music of these past epochs when you’re writing to ‘get you in the mood’?

R.F Old newspapers give a lot of the atmosphere of the time. And once you’ve eaten a Vesta curry you never forget it. I put a lot of music into Prospect Hill, and got an unpleasant surprise when the permissions fees arrived. One copyright holder didn’t charge me though. He said: How can you have music in a novel – novels are silent.

Writers can save themselves a lot of money by writing in silence or just listening to long-dead composers like Beethoven.

KIU Chocolate or strawberry?

R.F Marmite.

KIU You are an expert on the Utopian Theories of the New England Transcendentalists. What drew you to this subject? (Or did you just choose it to show-off and look brainy?)

R.F I learned how to spell it and didn’t want that skill to be wasted. Funnily enough it turned out to be a quite an interesting subject.

KIU Richard, you are always on the air-waves, and are obviously a recognised darling of the Radio 4 rostrum.  Do you have to look after your silky speaking voice, and if so, what measures do you take?

R.F Chablis is helpful, and draught bitter for a more earthy effect.

KIU Your novel, Swansong, is set a social comedy set in Eighties Britain.  Do you think that there exists a strong market for social comedies set in Eighties Britain, and do you know of any ‘in the works’ which you could recommend to people and/or publishers looking for this sort of thing?

R.F When I wrote Swansong the eighties were the present. Now they’ve gone away we need someone to find them again, just to remind us that civilisation does progress after all. I visualise a comic novel about politics, pop culture, the dole experience. Does anyone spring to mind?

Thank You, Mr Richard Francis!