The Write Stuff

In search of a January day out in London on a shoestring, we took a trip to the British Museum to view the Staffordshire Hoard, accompanied by dozens of sticky-fingered kids who had already left their marks on the two glass cases. Whilst I am sympathetic to the lobby for the retention of the find in the Midlands, the greatest argument for a permanent display at the British Museum seems to be so that it can be viewed side-by-side with the haul from Sutton Ho where there are clear comparisons to be drawn. We followed this with two back-to-back recordings of The Write Stuff, a literary quiz hosted by Jim Walton. With firm instructions to laugh loudly when we might otherwise have smiled and nodded sagely, we took our places at BBC Recording House Studios to sit back and enjoy. Whilst the quiz itself provided moments of amusement (and immense satisfaction when we knew an answer the panelists didn’t) the most enjoyable parts of the evening were when the team members were asked to write a pastiche, (all carefully pre-prepared) firstly of Sherlock Holmes facing a modern day conundrum and then of Nancy Mitford in Irving Welsh’s Scotland. The hero of the Sherlock Holmes challenge for me was John O’Farrell who had Sherlock Holmes faced with an Ikea flat pack, to which the punchline was ‘Self-assembly, my dear Watson.’ He was followed by a close second from Martin Billingham who had Moriarty, calling himself Mozza, hack into Holmes’s Facebook account and change his interests. However, it is the editing of the Nancy Mitford scenarios that will pose the greatest of the compliance nightmares as there was little that I can imagine they will put on air. I can only say that they asked for it…