Get Booked – John Uttley, No Precedent

Hello, I'm Hazel Butterfield, and this is Get Booked for Women's Radio Station and Men's Radio Station, a show all about books and writing which focus on supporting our emotional well-being, which pretty much any book can do. Uh, it just enriches our life in so many different ways. If you want to sponsor Get Booked, please do get in touch with us via our website at womensradiostation.com, or you can contact me via hazelbutterfield.com. I hope you're all ready and raring. I've got a fantastic guest Joining us remotely in the studio, John Utley, the author of the incredibly successful Where's Sailor Jack? and the newly released No Precedent, which we'll be focusing on today. A bittersweet tale of modern-day life, the North-South divide, politics, religion, and relationships. It is incredibly unique in its format, educational in its subject matter, and thoroughly entertaining with its raw pragmatism. John, hello! Hi, good to be here. Here remotely during COVID I'm going to be listening out just in case your doorbell goes to one of the deliveries. You can hear the clock just a minute slow ringing right now, yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I actually, I started your book at the beginning of last week and Rather interestingly, as I got to the end, my son came in and I mean, I'm a proper northern lass, you know, you've got to really do something to get me crying, but I was weeping a little bit towards the end and I then had to pretend I had something in my eye, so I had my son basically making me an eye patch because he thought I'd hurt myself, because otherwise he gets upset if he thinks that I'm upset about something. No precedent, it's fantastic, you must be so incredibly proud of it. Whether it's a better book than Where's Sailor Jack, other people have got to judge. I think I was, I'm writing better by the time I've written No Precedent. Where's Sailor Jack, I was learning a bit on the job, I think. So I'm, you're always pleased that a book comes out and tells the story you want to tell, and I think I did manage that. Well, I think, I mean, if we backtrack a little bit, if you want to tell, because No precedent follows Where's Sailor Jack, doesn't it? It does, yes. So what is a very basic premise of Where's Sailor Jack? Well, Where's Sailor Jack is really telling the family history of these two families, the Swarbrick and the Shackletons, right the way from 1945 to 2035. It's the sweep of history and it's really It's trying to show, I think, that history can make sense over that time scale, that although you have all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in your life, that somehow when you look at life in the sweep of things, it does make sense. And of course, we're all trying to make sense of our own lives. We're going to live our threescore and ten, plus or minus a bit, and then we're going to, we're going to die. And it's what— it's a feeling of what have you created, I think, in life. Have you created something which makes sense? I mean, maybe the tragedy of modern life is that by the time we die, so many of us now are suffering with mental health issues because we live so long. But that's— and I do cover that to an extent in, in both books. But it is— it's a— it's important, I think, that your life seems to make sense to you. And that's what Wes Saylor Jack tried to do. Whereas No Precedent rather more focused in on the last 5 years. Now I've got to say, I can't make any sense at all of what's been going on the last 5 years. It's been a chaos— no, in the public domain it's been a chaotic time. There's nothing that you feel right about at all. Is that because it's the last 5 years, or is it because I'm nearing the end of my term and the world is just gone around a few too many times and it's gone away from me, if I can put it like that, and I'm not sure, but certainly the two books together are meant to be trying to examine that. Do you know what, and I was speaking to my friend this morning on a dog walk, now she's from all over the place, she does now live in the leafy burbs of the Richmond Borough with me now, and I knew that she'd appreciate the content, and also because she, you know, spends a lot of time up north as well, I knew that she'd understand, like, the whole dichotomy of different perspectives, which is— this covers absolutely brilliantly. But I said to her, at the end of this book, I actually feel like I understand a little bit more about what's happened in politics and Brexit. It's like a really good— it's like an entertaining version of— this is pretty much summing up what's happened in the last 5 years. And the way that the kind of tongue-in-cheek and pragmatic way that you talk about it makes it quite readable without feeling like, you know, the Telegraph is kind of preaching to you, if you see what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I've obviously told it with the northern perspective clearly there. I'm never sure if I should feel imposter syndrome when I'm, when I tell it from a northern perspective, because it's a long time since I've lived in the north, but I still feel I do identify with it. I think, you know, obviously something like Jonathan Cole's book has written about Brexit, but he's written it from perspective of Middle England, and I've tried to write it far more viewing where the working class might be feeling about it. And really, I felt I couldn't finish the book. Obviously I was writing it while Brexit, all the Brexit, the endless Brexit debate was going on. I was writing it But I couldn't finish it until the general election had taken place, and I think what the book probably points to is why the Red Wall seats did go this time. I think the distinction that I as a northerner can draw between the towns and cities of the north is something that people elsewhere find it very difficult to grasp. They tend to think that the Liverpools and Manchesters and Leeds are the same as the Boltons, the Blackburns, the Huddersfields, and they're not. They're so different. And, uh, we lived in an era when the towns did rather better than the cities for a long, long time, but we've had the reversal of that. I mean, you, you go into Liverpool now, Liverpool's was always a byword of a poor city, wasn't it? You know, not anymore, it's booming. Liverpool One shopping development, the docks there, the statue of Billy Fury, you know, it's booming. Going to Bolton, because this obviously my book to make a great play of Blackpool and Bolton, the two towns that I arguably know best. Bolton, from being the best shopping centre, Telegraph called Bolton the best shopping centre in the country, about 20, 25 years ago. It's now all boarded up the way that— yeah, these towns are. And Blackpool, from being the mecca for entertainment, now you, you look at whatever they're going to get in the pantomime and it's a local star. They're not getting the big name. Frank Sinatra played Blackpool Opera House. He wouldn't play it nowadays, or the equivalent wouldn't. I remember when it was an actual treat for my mum to just say, right, let's go to Blackpool. You'd be like, this is Brilliant. Now you'd be like, what did I do wrong? Please, please don't take me to Blackpool. And do you know what, this is the thing, I mean, what you're saying about all these different areas and how they've changed, I mean, there is such— this book does pinpoint the interchangeability of life, but the range of your cultural knowledge and perceived nuance, it completely enthralled me throughout the book. I mean, if I hadn't have had, you know, the press junket, the kind of the publicity part, I wouldn't have been able to figure out whether you were 22 or 82. Much nearer the latter. Yeah, well, I now know that. But it was interesting because you just— the knowledge, especially of things like, I mean, one of my favourite programmes is The Big Bang Theory. Yeah. And obviously with your background in physics, you know, I mean, do you actually watch it yourself? I've watched it many times, yes. I love it. I found it very, very funny, yes. It is, it's quite brilliant, and in the same way that it's still an American sitcom, so it's still kind of, you know, it has been labeled in such a way as well. But I mean, the clash between the physicists the engineer is so funny, you know, because the things I've lived throughout my life, you know, and the physicist and the biologist. I mean, obviously the biologist woman is very bright, you know. The engineer is patronized by the physicists, of course. They can't patronize the biologist, much as they try. It does say it all, that rivalry between the scientists is excellent, you know. Oh yeah, I'm an astronaut, I've been into space. Yes, and we've heard about it many, many times, and we don't hold it against you that you are a scientist when in fact blah blah blah blah blah. I think Sheldon's fantastic, me and the kids are absolutely addicted. Oh yeah, Sheldon's an absolute gem, isn't he? Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. But I just, I mean there's so many different people actually who I've been telling, talking about this book to and I'm going to make sure that a lot of them buy it but there's at least somebody today who I've kind of promised I'm going to pass it on to because I said, because you know, they've got some Northern connections as well. It's sometimes, do you know what, when you get— Hello? —from a writer, it's a little bit like— Oh, can you hear me? Yeah, it just— you just went missing for a second then, yeah. Oh no, not a whole second. No, I was just saying, it just sounds a bit like going home sometimes when you've got such a cross-reference of— I mean, you obviously know London, but yet you were talking about up north, and even though it's Lancashire and Yorkshire, and you know, put us side by side and it's different, but you know, in terms of London, anything north of the Watford Gap is up north, isn't it? It is, yeah. And it's kind of, it is a little bit like— yeah, well, exactly, yeah. And how long have you lived in London? Well, on and off. I mean, I went to Oxford when I was 18, 19, you know, I was nearly 19 when I went up to Oxford, and really I've lived in the south of England most of the time since. I've had two spells in London, I did have 6 years in Birmingham, Birmingham area, and briefly returned to the northwest for a couple of years, but I've been mainly in London in that time, you know, different parts, south and north London. My wife is a Londoner, so She doesn't even think that South London's in London, of course, being from East London. Not going south of the river. Well, this is the thing, isn't it? I mean, we talk about the north-south divide, it's north and south of the river. I mean, I am, you know, Richmond and Twickenham. Yeah, you're proper north, and yet, you know what, you've managed to keep your accent. Yep, I think we did more in the '60s, I don't know. People in the '50s would have got on the train in the North speaking Lancashire and they got off at Euston with the Received Pronunciation. I remember Linda Lee Potter wrote those very words, the old Daily Mail journalist, she was from Leigh and precisely what she did, she got on the train at Warrington speaking Lancashire and got off at Euston speaking Received Pronunciation, occasionally getting it wrong of course, but yeah, and that's what people did in the '50s, but by the '60s of course it had all happened, the Beatles had hit it big, regional accents were in, so did I deliberately keep it or— I don't know, I really don't know, but I'm very glad I've got it. It's interesting because within about 5 years of me moving down south I ended up working in Barnes, and Barnes is, you know, an extremely affluent part of— yeah, yeah, I mean, it is, you know, you've got to be earning the big bucks to kind of live there, and it was very posh around there, you know, you can get a cup of tea for about £6.50, yeah, and I was working in finance as well, and I found that my accent really turned quite Southern, and I've been in acting anyway, so you know, quite often— I noticed there you didn't have the 'oh.' To me, it's just keep the 'oh' rather than 'ah.' Yeah. But you've lost that bit, I can tell. Well, I do get in a lot of trouble when I go home, and pretty much when we go down the M1, as soon as we get to Sheffield, I say to kids, 'Right, add in your random Ts, drop your Hs,' and I swear to goodness, if you say you want brioche when you're hungry, you are going to get in so much trouble, you ask for a barm, right? And they're like, "Aye, that's okay, I'm on it, Mum." Right, yeah, yeah, cool. And then we walk into the local pub and you go, "All right, Rob, how are you doing?" They'll go, "Oh, here she is with a southern accent." And I'm like, "I tried so hard." Madge, I've got to tell you this. When we were importing The File, which is St. Chad's of the book, you know, we went into the butcher's and to get a sausage balm, yeah, they didn't have any sausage balms, they had pulled pork balm cakes, would you believe? No! Yes, pulled pork balm cakes. Wow! Have they opened Wagamamas as well? It does, doesn't it? I mean, it's just, you don't know where you are, at least down south you know, right, that you can get your quinoa, your edamame beans, and you you know full well that hummus is going out of fashion, right? But up north you don't know what to get anymore. It's the place where you just don't know where you are. And the cake shops have gone too. One of the great things about the north, there used to be lovely cream cake shops, you know, where you could get vanilla slices, eclairs, cream crisps, cream horns, all that sort of stuff. Savoys, oh, I guess Savoys are from London originally, but lovely cakes. Very few of them exist now. Obviously you've got Greggs, but not quite the same. Aye, but you've got Greggs down south as well, I mean, and the only thing is, if you want to have a traditional cake up north, you need to go to Betty's, and then you're paying London's prices. Yeah, well, yeah, and Harrogate's a long way away from— Well, Harrogate is basically the down south of the north, isn't it? Mind you, I spent teenage years in Southport, which also had some claims in that regard. As a result, I went to one of the finest grammar schools in the north, King George V South Fork, is where I went. Terrific grammar school. Yeah, but I remember the head at an assembly saying that he'd been to a headmasters conference and somebody had said to him that how well they regarded King George, they considered it on a par with Manchester Grammar. And the head said, "I told him that that was very, very kind of him to say so, for Manchester Grammar." The thing is, in No Precedent, you really do pinpoint the kind of grammar school issues amongst up north as well, in the class system, and you kind of challenge the views of different class systems as well. I mean, how true to life is No Precedent for you in your life? Oh, I think it is very true to life. I was born in a terrace— well, I was born in Blackpool Victoria Hospital, but we lived in a terrace house with an outside lav, yeah, no galvanized steel tub for a bath. That's where we lived for the first 6 years of our life. You know, and you might, you might think, oh, that's a tough upbringing. But by the time we'd reached 1962, yeah, my sister came. She got married younger. She came around and we got Corona, the Corona man delivering pop, you know. And she couldn't believe how, in just in those 15 years, life had changed totally. We were in affluence, you know. I mean, relative affluence, obviously, but the world, the world changed so much. We had it— we didn't have it tough, despite the fact that it started with humble origins, you know. But by the time you reach your 60s, there was plenty about, there were jobs for everybody. Yeah, and of course, the grammar schools— I would never argue in favor of grammar schools because they did cause a lot of social tension with— to have drama schools, you have to have Sec Mods as well, and the Sec Mods didn't succeed in their purpose. The technical schools never took off, so if you went to the tech, you know, you, you, you did okay, but not enough places were available at the techs. So I'm not arguing in favor of the past, but for those of us who went to grammar school, they did us an enormous favor. Yeah, I mean, That is— the thing is, Britain likes to have something to take the mickey out of somebody else, and to kind of— it's part of our culture, isn't it? I mean, you said then about the outside toilets, it was only probably about 10 years ago that I stopped hearing those jokes about, "Oh yeah, no wonder you stayed down here, you know, the streets are paved with gold and you can actually pee indoors," and I'm like, wow. Yeah, that's it, we still have outside toilets up in Huddersfield. Yeah. But it is, so I mean, just before we came on air, you were talking about how your dog had died a couple of years ago. Is that Hattie in the book? No, no, no, Hattie was a total invention. Right. I've had two great dogs in my life, One came into my life in 1949 and died as I went up to Oxford in 1965. Never forget him. Yeah, and the other one, uh, uh, it was Timmy, who we got when the kids were younger, and he died 3 years ago now. He was a Border Collie. Rex, the first dog, was a mongrel, but they were both big, big, medium to big size dogs, you know, whereas Hattie was a little dog. Yeah, right. Oh, I see. I don't think I quite got the size of what Hattie was. It was just more to do with being— She was a Lancashire healer. Right, I see. Yeah, a Lancashire healer, which was obviously put into effect. Yeah, but what other similarities are there with No Precedent in your life then? Because I mean, the craziness of what's gone on as well within No Precedent, and what must be going through your head to come up with some of these stories? I think it's fantastic. Well, no precedent is— Where's Ever Jack wasn't autobiographical. It's interesting because I did these two characters, Bob and Richard, to try to avoid any autobiography in the characters, you know, because you've got two guys who were rather different if coming from similar backgrounds. Now my wife says that I'm Richard who wants to be Bob, that's what Yeah, now Bob's obviously the alpha male, you know. My wife probably gives me beta double minus on a good day. There is a difference in the characters of the two guys, which is Bob is looking for purpose in life, Richard is looking for meaning in life, and that I think all the time that That's the distinction between them. Now, No Precedent is mainly Bob. Yeah. Where Sailor Jack was more equally poised between the two. Yeah, although Bob has become the main character, possibly because I recognized that Richard was more autobiographical, and it gave me more license with Bob to be— to write him the way he developed. And I wasn't tied to anything that I wrote about him as such. And also, I mean, Richard needed to take a bit of a backstop for Paul as well for a bit. Yeah, well, Paul, I mean, I don't know where the hell Paul came from. I really don't know where Paul came from, you know, but he appeared in the graveyard as I sat down to write the book. Well, I mean, this is— the way you've written this book is so unique in a kind— I mean, I don't want to ruin it for the listeners who want want to experience the book for themselves, but it's quite, it is quite a unique format in that I'm sure I can say that, you know, just vaguely, that there's two major sections, one from the perspective of Bob and then one from the perspective of his wife, about what goes on. And it's just like you're recording what's happening in your life so you can give it to your kids later on, and it's, it's It's a beautiful concept, especially because of, you know, we have different perceptions of reality and events, and we quite often assume what somebody else is thinking, and I think this is quite succinct in how it beautifully exemplifies this. But I don't know, did you— Well, did I manage to get the two voices different enough, Wendy and Bob? I mean, I was obviously trying to write them very differently, but I mean, obviously I'm a— okay, a beta double minus, but I'm a male, you know. I was quite surprised at how you did it because interestingly you'd managed to make it even as if, you know, Wendy was chatting to her friends around a table, and then suddenly I would catch myself and go, wait a minute, she knows that her husband is going to read this. So if you start thinking that, then you obviously have caught the character well because you're involving yourself in their life and the repercussions of what they're writing. Yeah, and I also try to do that bit of writing in Lucy's novel. Now I don't think— Lucy's play— I don't think that came off as well somehow. I think I channeled my inner Peter Tinniswood rather too much. Well, the thing is it depends on what kind of image you have in your head of Lucy. I mean, I wouldn't expect Lucy's play to be particularly interesting or the most amazing piece of art anyway. I mean, it was all, it was more of a vanity project and to keep her entertained in a, you know, a little bit of a less eventful village where she had an excuse to chat away to various men in the village. And utilize them. But I do think the way you caught Maddie as well— who have you been hanging out with to actually— just for the listeners, Maddie is Lucy's daughter. She's a kind of typical post-pre-millennial, um, I think she is probably just pre-millennial. She may even be millennium. Isn't she? You've got to define these terms carefully. Yeah, where she basically wants to challenge everybody. Yeah, yeah, she wants to challenge everybody's opinion of her. She wants everything because basically, you know, the youth do have everything at their fingertips now. She hasn't quite decided if she likes men, women, you know. She knows the powers that she can have and, you know, the world is completely open to them. I mean, anybody that is born now in England, if they're born in any part of England, they don't expect that they have to stay there for the next 70, 80 years like people would have thought 60, 70 years ago, you know, the world is completely everyone's oyster. Yeah, that is true, Maddy obviously is very mobile, she's a strange— I mean, I try to give a bit of psychological background to Maddy as the story develops as to why she might be the way she is. And at the end, I mean, she, she, she does seem feckless, but I think she does have a heart, and I think that did show in the end. Yeah, well, the thing is, I mean, I know that you've got a physics background. I do want to talk about your background a little bit more later in the show, but every single character had— I mean, we all have psychological things that have impacted our life, you know, well, events that have impacted psychologically. But everyone had quite an underlying theme of certain things that affected the way that they are and who they are in terms of, you know, Lucy and, you know, the father of her daughter and having a miscarriage and how, you know, her turbulent life has affected the way her daughter is and how, you know, the way that your ex behaves affects how you behave, and how Wendy's not-so-ex-husband, the impact he's had and how it affects her. It's kind of riddled with so many— it's like you've done a cognitive psychology course, have you? No, I haven't. I did a divinity degree. Yeah. And I mean, the two papers that I enjoyed most there were Meidenperson and the Philosophy of Religion, and religious language, you know. And so I got my fix of all the reductionist views of mind, Derek Parfitt and the like. But also, I don't know if you've ever read Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self, which really made— you are all that you've lived through, you know, that you have to take everything with you is the way I would describe it. Yeah, and you are, you know, you can't, you can't say that didn't happen if it did happen. You have to absorb it into your personality. And so I think that's, uh, uh, that, that was the big source of, uh, the idea that these characters have to be, uh, so full. Yeah, I mean, I've just written a note of that because I want to make sure that I have a look at it as well. But what you just said then as well, I mean, there's I don't want to ruin it for other people, and I've got to be very cautious about some of the best bits in the book, and I can't really talk about it without giving too much away, but some of the lines, page 309, and just when you're speaking to Richard towards the end about life, and you've kind of gone off to your favourite steak place in Smithfield, and some of the lines there, I mean, they were what made me a little bit more teary. Than some of the other bigger events that happened in No Precedent because they were so profound and, you know, they kind of completed what happened throughout No Precedent. Yeah, but of course that, if you've read Where Sailor Jack, that state bar figured right at the start, or very close to the start, of Where Sailor Jack. When Richard and Bob met up. So, uh, it did— that was almost a complete circle for the two boys, right? Oh, you see, I read No Precedent first, and I've just started with Where's Sailor Jack because that came a little bit— so very early on, they're in the state bar together chatting things over. Yeah, right. So before Bob's met Wendy, before Bob's even met Wendy then. Yeah. So are you telling me that you've never met Maddie then? Have you never met that? The, the— I know Maddie, yeah, if I'm honest, through daughters of, uh, people I know. I've heard— uh, oh, the door's ringing. I hope my wife's answering. Those are the first of your two deliveries today, John. Yeah, I bet it. Yeah. So it's interesting, do you— when you're being an author, do you find that when you have people over They're going— do you think they get a bit nervous about whether they're going to get written into one of your books? Uh, I don't think so. I hope not. Yeah, I mean, uh, uh, I mean, no character is a straight copy of somebody I know. They're all— I mean, obviously you absorb people you do know, make them amalgam, you know, but I do find as I write a book, the characters change, develop themselves. I mean, you know, the idea that a novel doesn't have an author doesn't work very well with me because I get backache as I sit there writing. But I do believe that many characters write themselves, you know, the author— what has happened in the world makes it inevitable how the author writes them. Well, and yet the way that you wrote actually was as if you weren't necessarily writing it as a book, that you were speaking to a non-defined audience, where you're going, well, if you're reading this and you're still reading it now, then I haven't bored you to death yet, and I'm going to introduce somebody else because I don't want to completely— it's like, you know, you're writing it for somebody, you don't quite know who, and you don't quite know in what capacity, and it's got a little bit of a dear diary feel to it. That was deliberate, I have to say. Yeah. There was a bit of deliberate dear diary So this book is being released in July. Do you have an exact date, or has it been released? It's been released. No President was released July 1st. It's available now on Amazon. Yeah, we'll put up a nice— we'll put up some links there for people to go and get involved with. So they can understand. I mean, it is self-published. I mean, I wish I could have got an agent and got a publisher. But when you start writing for the first time, age 65, yep, and you just say, I'm writing a family saga, it doesn't actually pull them in. It's only now people have read it that they say, hey, this isn't bad, is it? You know, and you get a bit of that there. I like that. Oh, this isn't that bad. Oh, brilliant, thanks, mate. So, I mean, so you've written this. Do you think there's Do you think the third novel is going to be again with Bob in it and Richard? I think the third novel, assuming that I'm spared long enough to write it, yeah, I think the third novel will be written by Richard's side, yeah. It will be based on— with Bob, obviously Bob appearing, yeah, but it will be based on Richard's side and the Of course, this book was finishing just as the coronavirus started. You know, there was a lot of stuff about, uh, jokes about the apocalypse. And before— because I mean, Bob and Richard had standing sort of jokes about the apocalypse, uh, before we knew about the coronavirus. And so then there's the obvious— it is the coronavirus, uh, and apocalypse or not. And the book doesn't— yeah, I agree. Reach a conclusion that apocalypses are personal and not communal, you know, so we won't all go together when we go. But interestingly, as you were talking about, you know, the politics and the, and the complete farcical Brexit, it's interesting how some of the things that you say for it to just completely have to be thrown out the window, it It was ironic, it was incredibly profound, the fact that, you know, all of us have been able to read this from the 1st of July knowing full well what's happened in the last 3 or 4 months. Yeah, yeah. And it's really, it really is a book of our time, it's incredible. And actually, what you were saying before, right at the beginning of the show, about how the last 5 years are a little bit bonkers, I don't know if you've ever watched an American sitcom called The Good Place with Ted Hansen. Have you heard of it? I've heard of it, but I've never watched it, I'm afraid. Right, well, basically it's a little bit like, uh, when you die, you, you're given— you go through a point system and it's determined whether you're going to limbo, the good place, or the bad place. And there's people that are kind of, you know, the devil's working. There's so many people working behind the scenes about what's going on. And then they find out that basically there's been something wrong with the point system, and, you know, similar to being a virus in the system, and it's all gone wrong. Um, and that, you know, it's not been accurate to predict whether somebody should go in the Good Place or the Bad Place because of what's been happening. And then the devil started affecting what was happening in real life to try and— he was trying to get more people in the Bad Place. And they kind of turned around and went, wait a minute, it's all gone completely bonkers. I knew there was a reason why Earth wasn't okay. I mean, 'What? England's left Europe? Trump is president? They've done what? People are bothered about what the politicians were?' And it was all these different things that came about, and it was done in such a kind of cute way that you went, 'Yeah, that is really messed up, isn't it?' One of my— you'll gather from the book that I'm a total Bob Dylan freak, because so many of my— but one of my favorite Bob Dylan quotes, not from one of his songs, is that the devil rules the world and God is the judge. Yeah, it certainly does feel like the devil's been in the driving seat these last 5 years, doesn't it? It just— it is absolutely— but I mean, we don't even know what's going to happen next. The thing is, The Simpsons predicted all of this. Yes, and that is something cheap, but yeah, you know what, I think we could probably learn a little bit more about life and politics from The Simpsons and from No President than we ever could from actually picking up a newspaper. I don't even trust newspapers anymore. Well, no, it's not— I mean, our newspapers don't tell lies, but the way they write stories doesn't lead you to the truth either, does it? It's a— no, it's to tell bare-faced lies. Of course, I don't accuse any of our mainstream newspapers of that, but they certainly very economic with the truth when they want to be. Oh yeah, especially when they're writing nice reviews about your book. I mean, you were in one of the major rags on, I think, over the weekend. I think they were talking about Where's Sailor Jack. Yeah, somebody said the other day that they'd, um, I kind of said that I was reading this and went, oh, John Utley did Where's Sailor Jack, that was in the paper, I saw something. I was like, oh well, we're probably talking about that to remind people Yeah, of the upcoming— well, what is now being released. So, and I'll find out, I think it was The Guardian or The Telegraph or something like that. Because what I have noticed, you know, because obviously, uh, I'm clicking the Amazon, uh, to find out what the sales are like. Yeah. And suddenly I got a whole lot of sales in a different color. And I've sold about 10 copies of Where Sail the Jaggies last week. It was, it was in the newspaper, definitely. Maybe that's the reason. It was singing your praises from what I gather. I need to find out exactly where it was and then I'll send you a link over so you can— Oh, terrific, thank you very much. Yeah, no, you are very, very welcome. But I think, I mean, your style, you are very tongue-in-cheek and pragmatic, aren't you, in your prose? Yeah, I think so. I mean, you've got, you, I've got to see the funny side of things. I mean, Lancashire was famous, it has always been famous for its comedians, even now, you know, Lee Mack, is there anybody funnier than Lee Mack unless it's Peter Kay, you know, I mean, it is, it's known for humour, and I did like, what did I say at the end of the book, as Martin said to Mrs. Luther on the tram on the way to the Diet, 'Here I stand, I can do no other.' On a crowded tram on the way to the Diet, 'Here I stand, I can do no other.' You know, that, you know, with all the serious religion that I write in the book, that was my last quip on the religion. You know, you have to end tongue-in-cheek, you know. Luther's famous quote, 'Here I stand, I can do no other.' you know, and just taking the Michael because he couldn't get a seat on the tram, you know. Yeah, it's interesting though, because with that kind of style of writing, you're more happy to engage with the religious and political elements, even if you're not an avid fan of such, because it brings an entertaining element to it. But you see, you're younger than me. I mean, you've probably possibly noticed that I've got a strap-on. Line that I claim I'm the last Victorian and the first baby boomer. But in the '50s, I mean, obviously I was born in '45, but in the '50s you were still living in that Victorian world to an extent. The Oxford Movement, the Christian revival, the great Christian revival of the Victorian age was still the culture of the country. You know, and it's gone totally now, don't you? I mean, I'm all this passing, but it's passed, you know. But so religion is a big part of our lives, I think, you know. And whether we like it or engage with it, it still is. Yeah, it's still part of people my age's life, you know. And By the time you reach this age too, you know, I mean, I was brought up with my two parents, my sister, they're all gone, I'm the only one left, and suddenly you find yourself in your 70s an orphan. I know, I read that bit as well in No Precedent, and I was just like, because I was interested as to how much was true to life, and I was like, yeah, I mean, at 70 you can still go, yeah, I've just been orphaned, and it's like Wow. But again, another not very well-known Dylan song, Nettie Moore. He sings that there's nobody left here to tell. Yeah, and there is that thing. I mean, the first time I noticed it was something— again, something quite trivial. When my dad died, yeah, I just did not know what to do at quarter to 5 on a Saturday afternoon. Because I get the Bolton score and I pick up the phone and ring him about the game, and that had gone, you know. Do you know what, it's really interesting you say that because my dad died about 7 years ago and, you know, life is so incredibly busy that I had a routine every day that I went into work, I'd go to the gym at lunchtime and it was about an 8, 9, 10 minute walk back from the gym to get to the office and I would phone my dad every day. So I'd have a good, you know, 5 to 10 minute chat every single day just to check in and do whatever. And when he died, walking over that bridge was the most horrible thing because I didn't want to replace him with somebody else who I'd chat to. But it was part of my routine and it was like, it's— I know for a fact it's going over Barnes Bridge and I know that I would get funny and I would still recall that. Because that is just what I used to do. Yeah, yeah. And you feel lost, and it's not— even if you don't see your parents or your grandma for 6 or 7 months at a time, or maybe years at a time, you do have a routine with what you do. And it's the weirdest things can hit you. Yeah, I mean, I mentioned the last Victorian. The Victorians get a terrible press nowadays by the millennials. I feel sorry for the millennials. I mean, because maybe those baby boomers have stolen, like the Grinch, like the Grinch, we've stolen their future. But it's always as though the Victorians were something different from what they were really, they really were like. I remember my grandparents, the, the jobs they'd have in life were farm laborer, gardener, mill girl, domestic servant. You know, they've not had wonderful jobs in life. And you'd think that they were the, the reason for the tyranny in the world if you read some of the comments nowadays, and they were just normal nice people who built a country that, that we live in, you know, those lovely parks and everything. I, I'm happy to claim I was a Lappic and a Lappic churian. I understand that there were another set of attitudes which have caused so much problems in the world, And yeah, I'm happy to accept that, but you can't tar people all with the same brush. These were ordinary people, working-class people living ordinary lives. But I think you've come across as quite clued up and sympathetic on the kind of dichotomy of old world and emerging norms, because you kind of, you were so sympathetic to what so many people of different ages and eras and genres and areas and religions and belief systems. And yet, you know, what is emerging now where people want to do things completely differently, and you know, there's a lot what's happening in, in terms of, um, Greta and what she's trying to get everybody else, yeah, to kind of reverse the damage that we've supposedly— well, not supposedly, we have done to the planet. I mean, we have done Yeah, I mean, I was with the CGB, your National Grid group, and obviously the CGB built— burnt an awful lot of coal. You're putting all the carbon into the atmosphere. You know, in my career we reduced the amount of carbon, you know, not always for the best of reasons, but we did manage to reduce the amount of carbon. But you know, you obviously, uh, we got it horribly wrong The, uh, was there an alternative? There may have been. I'm very pleased now that the electricity market— because I wrote the settlement system, uh, software for the, uh, for the privatized electricity regime. I was, I was a public sector man. I like working in the public sector. I was a CGB loyalist. But I had to, I had to write these. I had to run the Settlement Systems Group, but that settlement system has brought in all the green energy stuff. If it wasn't for the liberalized market, we wouldn't have got the amount of green capacity on the system that we now have. So, you know, things have been working, but working too slowly. Yes, I'd love to see an end to carbon generation, and I'm not I'm not that pro-nuclear because I know how expensive it was, so it has to be green. Sorry, that's a bit of a diversion, I appreciate. Well, no, because this kind of explains why you actually write the way that you do and the subject matter. I mean, you do have— you read physics at Oxford and finance director at the time of the miners' strike. Yeah, I lost £2 billion first year because of the miners' strike. Oh, whoops-a-daisy! The physics is interesting because people think, well, physicists are bound to be anti-religion, they're bound to be deterministic anti-religion, and yet many physicists aren't. We've had to cope with solving Schrödinger's equations and producing normal discontinuities out of continuities, if you like. The physics, modern physics doesn't say there's an answer, and it doesn't actually believe that if you could solve all the mechanical issues you'd know exactly what was going to happen next. So I think there's a lot about modern physics which does make you an idealist as opposed to a realist, and so, you know, I'm very happy to give Power to thought, power to story. My critique of religion is when it gets too 3D, it rules out the story, and the story is what part of what makes religion. You need story when you haven't got explanation. You need story. I mean, the Wittgenstein one, whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must be silent. I mean, I tend to the view now, whereof one cannot speak thereon, one can write a bloody good story about it. Yeah, well, you know, life comes together in stories, and sometimes we tell stories because we need to make sense of something, and sometimes we need entertainment, and sometimes we just need to fill in the gaps. Yeah, it's always filling gaps. Intellectually, you'll never Bill. Yeah, I mean, I do, I must say, from No President, I actually do feel quite schooled on politics, and I know you've got such a broad knowledge of various sides of the, what is basically a very complicated fence, and it's interesting how you managed to show so many different areas and, and theologies behind what's happening in the world today, and especially in Great Britain. But as you say, I suppose with physics it helps you be a little bit more— what would the word be? Um, be able to deduce more of a kind of reasoned explanation rather than based on opinion. Yeah, yeah, I guess there is. Obviously, physics is mainly a rational subject, but I think, uh, uh, there's a— it's a mathematician called Gödel, or Gödel depending whether you put the umlaut in, uh, who demonstrated that no finite system can ever contain its own explanation in mathematics. And I think that possibly, uh, uh, is the way I tend to view my theology as well, that there's something outside the system. In the beginning was the word, you know, uh, creation was— came by a word, and that word was from outside the system, and then the system started. Now I know that it's not intellectually satisfying because then you can't say what it was outside, but it's a story which I— which makes sense to me that there is something outside the system. Yeah, and maybe we can go outside the system when we think, when we imagine. Wow. It's— I mean, you've got at least another 20 books inside you, haven't you? Not with this sciatica, no. Um, now interestingly, I have my own questions, which I haven't even particularly got on to yet, but I do— there's a few core questions that I am going to ask shortly. However, in the press pack that comes through from your publicist, I find it interesting some of the questions that they've suggested that maybe people would want to ask. Yeah. And I'm going to take two of them. On the basis that I'd like to know your answer. Are medics scientists or engineers? I mean, that's obviously been sparked by the COVID crisis, you know, and I suppose that the medics, in trying to treat something before they've got full scientific understanding, are really engineers, are trying to find practical solutions We've not had a good campaign in this country, nobody has. The scientists have been all over the place, the politicians have shown absolutely no understanding of statistics nor any ability to make a decision at the right time. So, okay, the people on the front have had a good war, the the people actually treating people have obviously behaved bravely and well, but none of the bodies at the top level have done a good job. And I think that's why the question's there. Is it because we don't understand the difference between science and engineering? Right, okay. Yeah, but I've not answered the question. There is not always an answer to every single question. There's an opinion. Yeah, a question doesn't presuppose an answer, does it? No, but— and the other one that I've seen is, what is the meaning of life for John Utley? What is the meaning of life? Oh, good God. I mean, I, I would probably say that you, you have, as far as possible, to take everything with view. It's to create a person, you know, in the hope— not necessarily expectation, but in the hope— that there's something afterwards that you've made which is useful for whatever follows. Or it can't be useful because you're not going to be doing much, but which you can contemplate over afterwards. It's creating something that you're proud of in the post-match interview. Yeah, what you've contributed to society. Yeah, as well. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and then, but on the other hand, you can't be proud of what you've, you've done because, you know, you've made so many mistakes in life. You know, you, you will hurt people. You haven't always done the right thing in your job. You know, there's, uh, so when I say pride, I think I'm not my keen on the word pride just for that reason that I'm not sure you ever should be that proud, yet I don't do humility very well either. I think, can you imagine if you never made a mistake and you never had the opportunity to need to learn to do something better and to experience a different range of emotions? I mean, you know, so many people get annoyed by when they've made mistakes, but wow, how dull would life be if you never made mistakes? Oh yes, yes, be terrible, be terrible. But one of the other scientific things is that so often you get away with your mistakes, you know. I can remember dropping a table tennis table and not far away from my daughter, and I think, oh hell, if that had hit her, you know. Now one of my fears about these people think that everything that could have happened did happen in another universe. Is in another universe, that table tennis table did hit my door, and I just couldn't hack that. So I've got to say that I don't believe in multiverses. No, I don't believe in multiverses. I think there's no proof of it, which means that it's just a construct for somebody to just increase their imagination. And I don't know, I find that absolutely bonkers. Bonkers. Maybe I haven't read enough on it, but you know, William of Ockham, wasn't it, the Occam's razor hundreds of years ago, said you shouldn't multiply entities. There's an explanation. So, uh, I'm with that. Oh good. Um, bonkers though. I mean, if we haven't got enough to think about just wondering what's going to happen in the next day, let alone what's happening in somebody else's multiverse, in a different universe. That's just not enough. I mean, you know, it makes me want to just sit there and watch at least 20-odd episodes of Coronation Street just to bring my brain back round again. Oh, you still watch Coronation Street? Yes. Here, you see, I'm on imposter syndrome again because I always said the last time I watched Coronation Street was when Ida Barlow was knocked over by a bus. That was 1961, I believe. I have seen it the odd time since, I have to confess, yeah. I don't think I've missed an episode since I was about 10. I love it. I mean, the idea of, you know, I mean, the fact that they had to reduce how much they were putting out throughout coronavirus and then EastEnders is completely gone, that they had nothing left I mean, I was a little bit bereft. I was like, this is part of my— it's part of my culture. I love my Emmerdale, Coronation Street, and EastEnders because it's a little bit of everything. Yeah, and it just felt a little bit weird that it was going. That kind of brought home just how much of a global pandemic we are experiencing when, you know, a soap that's been part of people's lives for 30, 40 years suddenly stops being recorded, broadcasted, you name it. And don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware there's lots of other things that have happened that are definitely more prominent and more important, but it is something that you have in your daily life and it's part of your daily routine. That's, that's different. I don't know, it was, it was interesting, especially the way that they've actually dealt with— because I like the social elements of how they've dealt with the storylines once they've started filming again after coronavirus, and they did— Emmerdale did these beautiful kind of two-people programs where they were showing them locked down. Yeah. And, and they recorded it where they were basically— it was all done on camera angles and they were at least 2 meters apart. And it was interesting just kind of seeing how they did it. Yeah, there's one famous episode of Z-Cars. I don't know, uh, this is more my era, but where it was— I think it was called Nothing Happened or something like that. And the two cops sat in the front of their Ford Zephyr Zodiac, I think it was, they had as their car, yeah, and just chatted for the whole hour because they didn't have any incident that night. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. There's quite a few authors out there as well who kind of write about nothing, but it's entertaining at the same time. It's just like trying talking to somebody in the pub about their life, and sometimes that's all you want to hear, and you don't want— you don't need there to be some sort of tram crashing into all, you know, the whole street and things like that. It's two different sides of the coin. We have only got a couple of minutes left of today's show, and one of the questions I like to ask all of our guests is, what 3 tips on mental health and mental well-being would you give to anybody and everybody? 3 tips. I mean, I think I've given the one— try to take everything with you, you know, incorporate it into your life. It happened, it's sad, but it did happen. You can get over it usually, but there must be people who can't get over things. I understand that. So, uh, I think obviously keeping physically healthy does matter. Yeah. Yeah, walking. I try to walk 5 miles a day just to keep fit. But if you let— even if you put on half a stone, you feel— you don't feel as good about yourself. So I think trying to keep fit, so that would be my second one. And keep the brain active as you get older, you know, whatever turns you on. Of course, people like different things, reading books, is obviously a very good one, you know, but just doing the mathematical puzzles in the paper, you know, or the crossword. I still do the Times crossword every day, but things like that to keep your mind active does seem to help against the dementia that so easily comes in as you get older. Well, I mean, you've had an extremely interesting life. You've gone out and you've done many different things, lived in different places, and yet you get around to retirement and then all of a sudden you go, ah, do you know what, I'm going to start a new career, I'm going to be an author. How does the wife feel about that? I'm not sure exactly that she appreciates, she liked it, but she's learned to live with it. I think that would be probably the best thing to say. You're driven into a When you're young, you're sent down a path, and I was sent down the path of maths, physics, chemistry. Don't regret it, but that was the path I was sent down, and it could have gone the other way. I could have read the humanities and done something different, and this has given me a chance in the second part of life to see whether I'd have been any good at it, and I still don't know. Well, read some more of the reviews, you might have a little bit more of a better idea, but I think I'm just starting Where's Sailor Jack. I've heard what other people have had to say about it and it's been fantastic. And also I've thoroughly loved No Precedent and I've really enjoyed chatting to you about life, liberty, and everything.