921\. From Comedy to Cosy Crime 🎤📚 (with Ian Moore)
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plus groundbreaking benefits you'd only get from a true challenger of the industry. Boost Mobile will let you try the network risk-free for 30 days. So visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or find us online at boostmobile.com today. You're listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teacherluke.co.uk. Hello, listeners. Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. I hope you're doing well today.

and that you're ready for another dose of English listening practice. So this time, it's another conversation episode, and my guest today is my friend Ian Moore. It's actually the third time he's been on the podcast. I wonder if you remember. Some of you listening won't have heard those episodes because they happened a few years ago now.

Some of you listening, if you're long term listeners, you will have heard those episodes, but there's a chance that you've forgotten about them because they happened before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. When, of course, our memories all got wiped. So you've probably forgotten. So just to recap the basics about Ian Moore.

He's from England and has spent most of his professional career as a stand-up comedian, doing gigs up and down the UK, comparing at the Comedy Store in London, hosting corporate events and generally making audiences of people laugh out loud for a living for a few decades. Ian's on-stage persona is quite dry. He's sarcastic. He's very conversational and always very funny.

Some years ago, Ian and his wife decided to have a total change of scene and move from England to the Loire Valley in central France. And this had always been a dream of Ian's wife, who is half English and half French. And she convinced Ian without too much trouble.

that he could live in rural French bliss while also commuting back to the UK every weekend to continue his stand-up career. And that's what they did, and that's what Ian has been doing for the last couple of decades, living with his family and various animals in the French countryside, running a B&B, that's a bed and breakfast, OK, a B&B,

That's a sort of guest house for tourists. OK, a place where you have your home and you open up part of it to guests who come in like a sort of a kind of like a hotel, but not quite as formal as a hotel. So that's a B&B, a bed and breakfast. So they've been living in the French countryside, running a B&B.

while Ian has also been pursuing his other life of stand-up comedy in England. And this juxtaposition of these two things, of Ian who is normally quite an urban English guy living out in the French countryside, this juxtaposition has been very fruitful for his comedy and for his writing career as well. In recent years, Ian has also transitioned to writing and has written quite a lot of books.

both fiction and non-fiction, featuring the idea of an Englishman in the French countryside. These days, the writing of books has taken over from the stand-up comedy as Ian's main vocation, and writing fictional murder mysteries is now his main professional preoccupation. Ian writes two kinds of crime novel. The first is a series of what is called cosy crime fiction.

Now, Ian talks about this during the episode, but basically, cosy crime fiction...

is a genre of crime story, crime fictional, murder mystery. It's a genre of murder mystery which is not too dark. There's not a lot of violence and sex. Any sex and violence that happens in the story is never explicitly described. The detective in each story in the cozy crime genre is normally an amateur detective.

rather than a professional, just an amateur person who ends up finding themselves trying to solve some sort of murder mystery. So they're normally quite light, quite funny, quite light-hearted, and generally the sort of thing that make you feel good, even though they are about murder mysteries. So he's written three of these cosy murder mysteries, Death and Croissant.

Death and Fromage and Death at the Chateau. So obviously there's the French theme in there, the croissants, the fromage, the chateau. So that's the cozy murder mystery series. But Ian also writes another type of crime story. And these ones are known as the Juge Lombard series. That's the main character in each story. And these ones are darker in tone. They are

more serious crime mystery books. He describes them as European noir. That's the genre that he has kind of created himself. And those two books are The Man Who Wouldn't Burn and the new one, which is called Dead Behind the Eyes.

And as well as these works of fiction, Ian has written several funny memoirs about his family life in France. So he's gone from stand-up comedy as a career to doing writing of crime stories as a career now. You can find out all about Ian's work on his website, ianmoore.info. So let's catch up with Ian. And I want to ask him about life in the French countryside, running the B&B,

and then his process for writing his books and whatever else comes up during our rambling conversation. I hope that you find it interesting, especially the bits about writing, coming up with ideas, finding the discipline to write thousands of words every day, and how murder mystery stories are created. And by the way, this conversation is just like totally natural, not graded for any particular language level, not really graded for a specific level of English.

It's just a conversation that I would have with Ian like I would have with him in the pub, you know, regardless of whether we were being recorded for a podcast. So this is a totally natural and ungraded conversation.

which might make it difficult for you to follow. But if you have any trouble keeping up with this and you feel that there are moments when you get lost and you don't quite understand what we're talking about, it might be because we're making a few specific references that you can't catch. Like there's a ref, we start going off on a little tangent about the band The Monkees. I don't know if you've ever even heard of The Monkees, but they were a kind of a pop group from the 1960s.

So there's a bit about the monkeys and a few other little tangents. So it might be that we make little cultural references that you just aren't familiar with.

Or just generally because the pace of the conversation and the fact that everything is being spoken with connected speech and all that stuff, it might make it hard to understand. But if you get lost at any point, then check the page for this episode on my website because I'm going to publish a free transcript for this episode. So you can read it all and check up on any bits that you feel you've missed. So you can find the link for that in the description.

So check the page for this episode on my website to get a free transcript for the episode. Okay. Hello, listeners. This is Luke from the future. I'm interrupting this episode because I've decided that I should add some comprehension questions before the conversation. Adding this is definitely going to extend the length of the episode a little bit. Sorry about that. But...

I promise I've been making a real effort recently to stop doing incredibly long introductions to my episodes, and yet here I am doing it again. But I hope you forgive me because I do have good intentions with this one to help support your listening comprehension because I think this conversation might be a bit difficult to follow. So here are some questions to help you focus on the content of this conversation. As you listen, see if you can find answers to these things.

You could consider this as a listening test if you like, but really it's just supposed to be a way for me to help you and to, at the end, summarise some of the main points in this conversation when I go through the answers to these questions, and that way you can check what you've understood. You can find these questions on the PDF included in the transcript. I probably have too many questions here, to be honest.

and you won't be able to remember them all. But, you know, it's okay. Just remember what you can. And in any case, these questions are a sort of roadmap of the conversation, which hopefully will help you follow it all. So here are those comprehension questions. See if you can find answers to these questions as you listen. So number one, how does Ian feel about the period between 2010 and 2023? 2010 to 2023, how does Ian feel about that period?

Second question, why do I laugh when he says, well, I needed the rest? So he says, well, I needed the rest and I laugh. Why? Third, how was Ian's COVID lockdown period? How did it affect his life? Did he have a good lockdown, bad lockdown? How was it for him and how did it affect his life? Number four, why did Ian have to stop travelling to the UK to perform stand-up comedy every weekend?

Why did he have to stop going to the UK to do stand-up? Question five, was Ian fed up with stand-up? Meaning, was he unhappy with it? Did he not like it? How did he feel about it? Was he fed up with it? Six, has it been difficult for Ian to stop doing stand-up comedy? Why or why not? Okay, number seven, how did Ian feel about doing comedy gigs on Zoom during the COVID lockdown?

So let me just explain that question. Zoom, this is a video conferencing software. Of course, during the COVID lockdown, you know, there were restrictions in place so people couldn't go out to comedy shows. So a lot of comedy shows got cancelled. So professional comedians did a lot of online shows. That's basically where it's the same as doing a comedy show, but it's on Zoom.

So the comedians in front of their computer doing the comedy into the camera, into the microphone and the audience, wherever they are, are watching on Zoom. So that's a Zoom gig. A gig is like a comedy show. It can be a music show as well, but in this case, a comedy show. So how did Ian feel about doing comedy gigs on Zoom during the COVID lockdown?

Number eight, Ian did one particular corporate gig on Zoom during COVID. Did it go well or did it go badly? How did he know? So a corporate gig, that's where you do a comedy show for a company. So a company, sometimes a big company, will pay a comedian to come and do comedy in front of all of the staff, all the employees, etc.

That's a corporate gig. So Ian did one particular corporate gig on Zoom during COVID. Did it go well? Did it go badly? How did he know? Number nine.

What did the expat group of English people in France ask Ian to do by email? How did he feel about it? So an expat group, expat, that's expatriate. So an expat group is a group of expatriates. Expatriates are people who've moved from one country to another country and they're now living there. OK, so interestingly enough, we call people who've moved from England to live in France. We call these people expatriates. We don't call them immigrants.

Interesting that. But anyway, so lots of English people live in France and a lot of people move there, perhaps in their in their retirement to go and have a more relaxed life with better weather, maybe. And you often find these groups of expats in little communities.

So the expat group, this group of English people who'd moved to France, this group asked Ian to do something by email. How did Ian feel about it? Number 10, what do the local French people think of Ian when he speaks French? Number 11, what does Ian tell people about his accent in France? What choice does he give them?

For example, if he ever does a stand-up show in French, what is it that he says at the beginning about his accent? He gives people a choice. What is it?

Number 12, what happened to the three goats Ian talks about? Goats are animals that you would find on the farm. They go, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh. Right, now they're not sheep, they're goats. They're similar to sheep, but they don't have loads of wool all over them and they have horns on their heads. These are goats. They typically, they're known for eating anything. So Ian had three goats. What happened to them?

Number 13, how does his wife feel about this? How does she feel about what happened to the three goats? Number 14, what's the difference between being a stand-up comedian and the host of a bed and breakfast guest house? What's the difference between those two jobs?

Number 15, what did Ian say to the Dutch guy who wanted hot milk? So a guest in his guest house from the Netherlands, a Dutch guy, asked Ian something about the, about, he wanted some hot milk. What did Ian say to this customer, this guest? Number 16, was Ian a good host? Was he a good host of the guest house?

Number 17, why did Ian become a writer of cosy crime novels? So why did he become a writer in the first place? 18, what does Ian find hard about writing novels? What is difficult about it?

19, Ian mentions two schools of thought, meaning two ways of thinking or ways of approaching something, in this case, writing. So, Ian mentions two schools of thinking or schools of thought about writing crime novels. And when we say schools of thought, these are not actual schools. It's just ways of thinking about things. So, Ian mentions two schools of thought about writing crime novels.

That's the planners and the pantsers. Okay, the planners and the pantsers. These are the two schools of thought. So what are they? And which? So what are these two schools of thought, the planners and the pantsers? And which approach does Ian take? Which school of thought does he belong to?

Okay, we're still not finished. We've got more questions. How is writing a book like waiting to go on stage to do stand-up? So writing a book, according to Ian, in some ways is similar to that moment before you go on stage as a comedian to do a stand-up show. How are those things similar? Writing a book and waiting to go on stage to do stand-up comedy. Number 21. When and where does Ian work best? So what time of day...

And in what kind of location does Ian work best? And I say work best, I mean write, write his books. Number 22, what does Ian say about sending himself emails? He says something about sending himself emails. What's that? Number 23, just got a few more questions. What's different about how Ian writes books and how he used to write stand-up? So he writes books and used to write stand-up in slightly different ways. What's the difference?

Number 24, how do we end up talking about the monkeys? So there's that band I mentioned again. How do we end up talking about that? Number 25, what is the connection between David Bowie and the monkeys? David Bowie and the monkeys. What's the connection that is mentioned by Ian? Number 26, why does Ian mention a particular car? That car is the 1979 Renault Alpine, a kind of French sports car.

a vintage French sports car. So why does Ian mention the 1979 Renault Alpine 27? Is writing a crime story just like solving a jigsaw puzzle? And a jigsaw puzzle is one of those things that's basically a big picture and it's been cut up into lots of different pieces and you have to put all the pieces back together to create the picture again. That is a jigsaw puzzle. So is writing a crime story just like solving a jigsaw puzzle?

why and why not and number 28 how is writing murder mysteries like a game how is it similar to a game in some way and finally what does ian prefer about writing compared to stand-up what is it that he prefers about the writing compared to doing stand-up now um

Obviously, that's a lot of questions and you might not be able to remember them all. But if you were motivated enough or if you could be bothered, you could check out the PDF and you could see all the questions and you could kind of like look at the PDF, look at the questions and consider those things, have them in front of you, if you like, while you listen to this, if you want to. There's no pressure. You don't have to do that. But anyway, OK, those are the comprehension questions and I will give answers to those at the end of the conversation.

So without any further ado, let's get into it and talk to Ian Moore once again on the podcast. And here we go. Ian, hello. Welcome back onto my podcast. Very nice to be back, Luke. It's been, is it, I'm trying to remember the other day how long it's been. Was it pre-COVID? It was pre-COVID. It was 2019, I think. Good Lord. The year before COVID. I've completely, I've completely lost track of years ago.

Just completely, there's a whole period between 2010 and I think 2023, which it just feels like I was in a coma. I just have a complete blank. That's a long coma, 2010 to 2023. Yeah. Well, I needed the rest.

Yeah. Okay. Most people, the coma is from 2020 onwards, you know, after COVID came along and sort of wiped everyone's memories, but you got in there early. Well, I think to be honest, and maybe you're not supposed to say this, but I tend to say it quietly and wait for other people to tell me I shouldn't be saying it. But I actually think I had

quite a good COVID. I know that that makes it sound like, you know, the summer of 69 or something like that, but I just, I, it was life changing, obviously, but for me, um, quite positively, um, I got away with it, you know, um, I was ill obviously and had long COVID for a bit, but I mean, in terms of the changes I had to make in my life because of COVID, um, if that hadn't come along, I'm not sure I'd have made those changes. Yeah.

Because previously you were commuting to the UK to do stand-up comedy. I was actually going to ask you about this anyway, that your lifestyle before was that you're there in the centre of France-ish, in the Loire Valley, and then regularly going to England on the Eurostar.

to do stand-up comedy every weekend. Every single weekend off you go to England to do stand-up. You're traveling around the country and whatever on stage. And then COVID arrives and you're not even allowed to leave the house.

Yeah. So how did that affect you? It was great, wasn't it? It was. It was. Well, it's just such I physically I was unwell before COVID came along anyway. I was diagnosed just before then with rheumatoid arthritis, which meant that travel became harder and harder and more painful. And I was more and more tired and unable to.

to cope with this travel comedy lifestyle that I'd got into because it had been, we'd been here, we'd lived in France for 15 years by then. So it's 15 years every weekend and it had really taken its toll physically and mentally. But I couldn't let the stand up go. It was, I was too terrified to, to, to take that leap. If you like, I knew I had to, but,

I knew I had to cut down or just concentrate on the corporates, which I have done. So if COVID hadn't come along and forced my hand on that, I probably wouldn't have had the nerve to say, right, I'm just stopping that part of my life. Yeah. So was it primarily the health issues and stuff that made you decide to stop doing stand-up or were you kind of fed up with it?

I wasn't really fed up with it. The time on stage was always fun. And also, if you're fairly chaotic mentally, which I can be, then the time on stage is actually one of those rare moments in your life where you actually have control.

And that's a very, it sounds ridiculous to say, but stand-up was actually, was very relaxing. It was a very relaxing environment for me because I was completely in control of that environment. And I could rest and all I had to concentrate on was the performance and the crowd in front of me and all the other things that people have to think about all the time.

couldn't impinge on you and if they did you could rant and swear about it and get it off your chest in a in a funny way anyway so um i it wasn't i was fed up with stand-up at all i was just so tired and and and really really struggling to maintain the health to be able to do it every week yeah

A lot of people, when they learn that you're a stand-up comedian, they kind of don't understand how you can do it. They're like, how do you do that? They think it's crazy that you're able to go up in front of people. But perhaps what they don't understand is that it's an addiction or a compulsion. It's something that you kind of need to do. So has it been difficult? It's incredibly cathartic, really cathartic. Yeah.

Sorry I interrupted you. Has it been difficult? No. It's not been difficult to stop, I mean, yeah. No, no, not at all. It's like one of those things when they say if you want to give up smoking, you've really got to want to do it, and you've just reached that point where everything comes at the right time and the right apex of various things, and you're able to just stop. So with stand-up, I realized I'd done everything I could

could do with what, with what I have. Um, I'd achieved great things. I've met great people. Um, so that was fine. I had no issue with, with stepping back from that. And because I was writing, because the books, the first book came out in, uh, not, not the French memoirs books, but the first fiction book I wrote came out in 2021. So it was almost seamless to then, to then slip, slip from one to another. But also during COVID, I would do gigs on zoom, um,

And although, you know, they're never the same, it was a different environment completely, but it could still be a fun environment. But also I just, you know, my office was like 50 metres over there, so I didn't have to get a Eurostar. Yeah. And so I had that as a kind of sort of drip, drip, drip as I was going solely into writing.

And now it's just solely writing with the odd corporate gigs thrown in. Okay, good. So you've made the transition. That's really nice. Yeah. I hated doing Zoom gigs myself. Absolutely hated it. Did you though? Why? Why did you? I don't know. There was that thing. I mean, I'm quite, I compared a lot during my career. And so it was a lot of interaction and that obviously is more difficult now.

on Zoom gigs, but you could do it in a way that, you know, people were in their front rooms. So you'd literally have more, you'd have more to work with. You know, you'd go, what on earth is that terracotta thing you've got on that shelf there? Is that your granny's ashes? You know, and all of those things that you could still work with them because you're at home. It was, I found it actually quite enjoyable. Not always, not always. There was one gig I did, it was a corporate gig. I can't, it was some kind of lawyer's thing.

And they had this new platform where the only thing I had was a table plan. And there were little figures on the table plan, this aerial view of a table plan. But I had no visuals of the room itself. There's no camera on the room. And there was also no sound for any feedback. Oh, God. So it was literally...

shouting into the internet, which there is far much of, let's be honest about that. Yeah. Far too much of people just shouting into the internet. But that's all I was doing. I was doing it for about 25 minutes. And eventually my time was up and the thing clicked and the organizer came back on. And I said, I have no idea how that went at all. I have absolutely nothing there. And he said, well, it wasn't very good. LAUGHTER

Okay. All right. Thanks for that. You still got paid though, I suppose, right? Yes. Yes, I did. I did. Yeah. Oh, that's all right then, I guess. Now, I do want to talk to you about your writing because this is the main thing that you're doing these days and stuff. But I just wanted to kind of chat to you about some other things as well. Now, yeah, it's been about four years, I think, since the last time you were on the show. I was just wondering if you remember the general concept of my podcast and what this is all about. Yeah.

Do you remember? It's about language learning, isn't it? Yeah, it's about learning English specifically. Yes, of course. Yeah. So all my listeners... Was my accent not good enough? No, I was just wondering because I thought that would be a way to kind of get into it. You live in France. And so do you spend much time speaking English to the local people?

or not i mean you're kind of in the sticks compared to me i'm in paris and completely i find myself speaking a lot more english and obviously as an english teacher i do as well but um out out there in the countryside do people speak english people yeah it's only me there's no um there have been a few other expats over the years but

um, kind of went home, uh, or, you know, just didn't stay in contact with them. There was a group of expats who got in contact with me. We'd only been here a few months. We know it would have been here nearly a year. That was it. So we moved in in January and then I got an email from this local expat group in about November time saying, we, uh, we hear you travel back to the UK a lot. Um, here's our Christmas shopping list. If you can,

If it can bring back, you know, four dozen crackers and, you know, an unsmoked gammon joint. And...

And I'd never met these people at all. And this was my first contact with them. I just emailed them back and I said, I'm really, you know, good luck to you and all of that. But I did not move out to rural France to join in your Christmas cracker parade. I'm just not, that's not me. You know, Merry Christmas. Don't ever talk to me again. So there's nobody, I don't speak, I speak a lot of English because this is an English house, even though my wife's half French.

My two youngest sons are both born over here. So everybody's fluent. I'm not. My wife appallingly said that I'm fluent recently, which is just a terrifying notion. It means that people test you out. But we speak English all the time. So apart from that, if I step out the front door, it's French. So you never speak English to the local French people? No.

Okay. No, they don't, they don't understand it. I mean, my hairdresser, she's retired now, but she, she would occasionally, you know, she, if we were having a conversation, she'd then go, Oh, I know the English for that word. And that would be about, that would be about it. Yeah. Okay. And when you speak French to French people, how is, what do they, how do they react to that?

there's that moment isn't there when when they look at you like a cockatoo looks at a mirror in its cage and the head sort of cocks to one side and they look and you know you've lost them you thought you were doing quite well but you've got it's like running when you're unfit you've just your legs have gone too quick for your body and you start falling over and you lose all confidence um

I'm pretty good in a situation I know I have to prepare for, like lawyers or accountants or things like that. But it's that if I feel like I've lost my audience, like stand-up, if I feel like I've lost my audience, I'm desperate to try and get it back, and it gets worse. So, you know, I think people think I'm just a bit eccentric sometimes.

Yeah, okay. Well, that's all right. Yeah. There are worse things to be considered. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Plus, you're very well-dressed, and I think that probably makes a huge difference. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, for years, they just kind of called me Monsieur Soe British. That was just, oh, look, Monsieur Soe British. That was how they kind of hailed me. Yeah, perfect. When I speak French to people, they just instantly reply to me in English.

Well, that's Paris though, isn't it? I mean, that is Paris. And there's a sense that...

There's a sense that they're helping you, you know, whereas really, you know, you'd just like to be rewarded with an actual French response to make it sound like you've actually got through to them. I know. The old stereotype is that people in Paris don't want to speak English and everyone just responds to you in French and pretends not to understand your English. But this is not true anymore. People do speak English and, in fact, they refuse to speak to you in French unless your French is perfect.

So, so it's, it's almost like it's still rude, but it's still, it's the other way around. Yeah. It's a kind of helpful road, isn't it? I remember I was having a row as such, but I was having this kind of lively conversation with a waiter in Paris and we were both so stubborn.

in our conversation in that he would only speak English and I would only speak French. And it's just both refusing to back down on this. Yeah.

Ridiculous situation. That is bizarre, isn't it? It's a bizarre situation. That happens to me quite a lot, yeah, where you kind of... I have to force the conversation towards French and they're desperate to do it in English because they've spent all this time at school being told that speaking English is so important and all that kind of thing. Yeah, oh, definitely. But I mean, my accent also is really quite poor. And I do this when I've done stand-up in French. I will say...

at the top of the show, look, you can either have the words or the accent, but the chances of both occurring at the same time are fairly slim. Yeah, yeah. So in the French countryside, you live in, is it a farmhouse? Is it actually a farmhouse? No, well, it would have been once. The actual property has two houses.

big barn conversions and we have some livestock, though that has diminished greatly over the last period. We did have three goats and then one goat died on the 23rd of December. He'd been ill for some time. Popcorn, he'd been ill for some time.

And then on the 27th of December, his twin brother, Chewbacca, he died as well. And then on the 29th of December, the other goat, Bambi, died. And it's really strange with goats. They're such sociable animals amongst themselves, essentially.

what I mean. So that when Popcorn died, his twin brother was so heartbroken and affected by it, he just decided to stop living. Wow. And then the third goat, when the other two had gone, made the same decision and just decided to stop living. Utterly, you know, and in a way, my wife is absolutely heartbroken at this, but in a way it's even more tragic because

knowing that that was the reason that two of them just went, you know, I'm switching off. What's the point? And they're able to do that. Yeah, that's bizarre, isn't it? It's quite an astonishing thing to watch. Yeah. Just the light goes out in the eyes. Yeah, really. And just a matter of days. Yeah, three in a week.

Wow, that's really strange. Yeah, yeah. Sorry to bring the mood down. That's all right. Very dark moment there at Christmas time. Yeah, well, it was, you know. My three sons were here, so I didn't actually have to dig any graves. Oh, yeah, of course. They decided that I'm too old and feeble with my arthritic joints. They did all that, and I just directed them.

Yeah, okay, good. So you used to run a B&B guest house there, but it's closed for business. Is this right? It is. It is closed. In fact, like I said, the property has two big barn conversions, and the B&B, the Chambord-Dort, as they call it in France, which is very different. It's actually quite a different thing between the Chambord-Dort and B&B. I think in B&B...

In English, it has these connotations of quite private and quite austere places that you stay in. Whereas a chambre d'hote in France, it's more of a convivial thing. Guests will meet each other and chat over breakfast and all of that.

but it was horrendous. You were the host running the guest house and you would have sort of people coming to stay, guests. Yeah. And yeah, you've told me before that you absolutely hated it. Why?

I think part of the problem is that it is an invasion. Once you open up, even though it's a separate building, once you open up your property to people, that does feel like an invasion, even though it was my idea. It was supposed to be a kind of – we decided on this pre-COVID. It was going to help me reduce my travel, that it would be part of the income.

that I would run this thing. But what you realize is that, you know, 20 years of being a stand-up comedian does not prepare you for a role in hospitality because you just tend to say the first thing that comes into your head. And if people behave badly, I'll tell them they behave badly. And that's, you know, I took...

I made no attempt to try and water things down. In the end, towards the end, it was decided that I should be retired from the whole meet and greet aspect of the business. Yeah, really. But I would serve breakfast and that was it. They are quite opposite skill sets, really, aren't they, doing stand-up and hosting a guest house? Especially if you're quite...

I'm not morose or I'm not even deadpan, but I am sharp. I am very dry and sarcastic. So you can't, that's my instinct. And it was too ingrained to tread on that. You know, I mean, I was just, I remember there was a Dutch bloke this summer with his family and he said, I just came in because I very, with breakfast, I just serve it before everybody got up.

and they just flit in and out and try not to make eye contact or anything like that. A lot of our reviews for the B&B complimented me on my discretion, which just meant I didn't want to see you. I just didn't want to be there. But this Dutch bloke, he said, I wandered into the salon and he said, so do you serve hot milk?

And I just went, mate, there's the milk. There's a microwave. See what you can rustle up, chef, eh? And he looked at me and I knew then that this has to stop. It has to stop. I have to... It just didn't endure it. It didn't endure it at all. In stand-up, you can be pretty direct and quite rude to people, really, because the situation allows it because...

You've got this big group of people and you can... It's kind of dynamic, isn't it? Yeah, you can say some very direct rude thing about one person on the front row and the entire room loves it and they all laugh. But then when you're hosting a guest house, you absolutely can't do that. But it must have been an instinct for you when you were engaging with the public. It's my survival instinct. And you realise...

the big difference like you said there is that the rest of the room is with you in a comedy show well the rest of the room really isn't with you if you're a rude host yes b&b um so i it just it became something that almost was giving me sleepless nights that i just couldn't stand it um you know we we opened it up with all the best intentions and stuff and that you know because they were

The idea would be that the guests who were staying at the B&B would share our swimming pool. We've got a swimming pool on this side of the property, that the guests could share that. But then, you know, then they stopped leaving. Then they stopped, you know, the guests would just stay there all day rather than go out and see a chateau. And that really got on my nerves. So, you know, we eventually sort of said, well, now there's a timetable. You can only use the pool now.

during certain times, which was in the end, I think, reduced to about seven minutes around aperitif time. Yeah, it's a bit of beer. It's bread and breakfast, not afternoon. Absolutely. Absolutely right. And it doesn't matter how much I stalked about the place, tutting and being very kind of, you know, John Cleese about the whole thing, they just wouldn't.

take it in at all. So I, it was, no, I mean, we're selling it. We're selling that half of the property. Oh, you really? As a separate house. Yeah. I did briefly try and set it up as a writer's retreat. But in the end, you're still, you know, you're still people. Yeah.

Yeah. Hell is other people, right? Hell is other people. Exactly. Was that, is that Philip Larkin? It's, it's, isn't it John Paul Sartre? Oh yes. I think you're right. Yeah. And he was a pretty horrendous individual as he was. Yeah. Uh, yeah. John Paul Sartre, uh, came up with that and Robert Crumb, um, adapted it and said, hell is other people, but hell is yourself too, which is also true. You get stuck with yourself. Um, yes. Um,

So you mentioned writing, the writer's retreat, and we talked about the fact that since the last time we spoke, you kind of have transitioned to being a writer now rather than a comedian. So tell me about the writing that you've done. You've written quite a few books, actually, over the last four or five years or something like that. And these days you're an author. So what kind of things do you write?

And why did you – well, I think you've explained why, actually, you started to write rather than do stand-up. Yeah, there was a number of – I mean, I do various things. I mean, I first wrote a couple of books 2012, 2013, and they were about living in France but being on the road as a comedian as well. So they were quite specific to –

to me and our family and our family situation. And I always said that I wouldn't do that. I always said, you know, there's no way, just because we've moved to France, I'm not doing that Peter Mayall thing. It's wrong. It's, you know, but, you know, within a few years, I was hawking my family around like a show business troupe. So I wrote those books. And then when I opened the B&B, like I say, I found it really interesting.

just, just beyond my capabilities. And I started, I started to think, well, I really do need to write. If I'm going to step back from standup, I need to have some kind of, um, outlet for, for my skills, for my observations and what have you. And, um,

The memoir books were great and they did pretty well, but it wasn't something that you can keep doing. So I wanted to turn to genre writing. And I really like crime. I really like crime writing and crime novels and crime TV and stuff. So I started writing what's called a cozy crime. And it's not...

It's bigger and bigger, cozy crime, all around the world, but it doesn't necessarily – people aren't necessarily aware. There's so many different genres within crime itself. I was asked to do a kind of presentation at a French book festival where I had to explain to the French audience what cozy crime was. And essentially there are certain rules with cozy crime that you –

you never see any, uh, blood, all the, the violence of what have you is off camera as it were. Yeah. Um, there is, um, there will always be a resolution. There'll generally be amateur detectives, uh,

And it's light. You know, it's what it is. It's cozy. It doesn't send you to bed with nightmares. And the French audience kind of looking at me going, well, you know, that's just crime writing, isn't it? And I said, also, there's no sex in it. And the whole audience just went, oh, yeah, so it's really English then. And I said...

Um, so that was what I started writing. I had this idea for a cozy crime because the main setting for my cozy crime series is, um, and forgive me if I, if it looks like I've done pitifully little research here, but the main character in the cozy crime series is a guy called Richard who runs a B and B in, uh, in central France in the lower valley. Yeah. And, um,

It became doubly cathartic. It wasn't just that I was writing sort of as me in a way, but also that I could kill off the guests in a B&B.

through fiction without actually killing the guests that were in my Chambord. It's better that way. It is. It's much better for your TripAdvisor rating, apparently. And so that's what I did. And I wrote it and called Death and Croissant the first one. And that became a big bestseller. I mean, still, that was four – that'll be four years this summer. And that's still – I looked –

I looked before we started doing this and it's, it's still, it's number 73 in the top 100 Kindle, which is fantastic, you know, and it's so that really sort of, for whatever reason, I got very lucky with my timing because it came out just around the time that Richard Osman's first one came out. So suddenly cozy crime was this big thing that everybody was talking about. Um, so I was very lucky in that respect. Um,

And then the fifth one of those comes out this summer. So I do one of those a year. And then the publisher of that one went basically, have you got anything else? And I'd written this more serious crime novel, also set in France, about a juge d'instruction, an investigating magistrate. The French legal system is very different from France.

um a british legal system in that the a french investigating magistrate will control the police investigation from an independent legal point of view it's not left up to the police who then present the case to the cps as it would be in the uk and i'd written this book and tried to sell it um self-publish it and try to do it that way which was really hard i realized very early on just

how hard self-publishing is because you have to work harder on the marketing than you do on the writing. And I just didn't have the time for that. So I withdrew that. But the publisher that published the Cozy Crime series said, well, let's have a look at it. And so they published it. And then they've contracted me for four. Really? Two books a year I write. Right. So that is very productive, very prolific. Yeah. Yeah.

People always say that writing a novel is extremely hard. Is it as hard as people say? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. It's literally, you have a bad day at work, you have a good day at work. If you've got the idea and you've got a certain amount of discipline, then that's fine. But it depends...

It depends also what you think is hard. I don't have any problem yet in coming up with the ideas or writing the dialogue, for instance, or all that because the two series are quite separate. But what I do find hard sometimes is if, like, for instance, I'm supposed to do a chapter tomorrow, which is chapter 20 in the book, and it's all mapped out on my whiteboard behind me. Mm-hmm.

And I feel slightly less motivated to write that now because it almost feels like just joining the dots, just colouring in. Because it needs to be that heavily plotted, that chapter, because there's so much in it. But you feel like you've done the work almost. So that I find quite hard. But I don't find the loneliness of it hard at all because, you know, stand-up has always been like that for me anyway and travelling on my own. So I'm used to all of that.

It's just about self-motivation. And if it's your job, you've got to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Murder mysteries. Is that, would it be fair to say? Yeah. Murder mysteries. It's really difficult. Cozy crime is one series. That's the foley valley. That's the death and croissant death and fromage series.

Death at the Chateau, Death in Le Jardin, and then Death and Bull comes out this summer. There's a thread. You may notice a thread through those. Yeah, a bit of death, maybe. Yeah, a bit of death. What's the fifth one again? Death and Bull.

Death and Bull, like the game. Yeah, Petanque. Yeah, okay, Petanque, yeah. Yeah, quite a lot of death in that. There is. And then the other one is there's also death, but no jokes. So the cozy one is the jokey one. And the other one, I just don't know how to –

I don't know what genre it would fit. It's kind of European noir. I've no idea what that means. That sounds good. That sounds really good. A bit like the sort of Nordic ones, but set in France. Not quite as dark. Not quite as dark as the Scandinavians can get. I kind of describe it as a sort of Morse, Inspector Morse on tour. Exactly.

Expect him what's on holiday? No. Yeah. Well, he's in tour as well. So they're set in tour, which is my local big city. So it's that kind of, like I say, investigating magistrate. He's not grumpy as such, but he's had a bad time. But he's kind of rebuilding his personality after some bad events in his life.

But he's actually quite playful. And he's half English and half French. So when in the first book, which is called The Man Who Didn't Burn, there's an English expat who is found crucified on the hillside. It's really jolly.

um he's found crucified in the hillside but because he's he's investigating this being half english and half french like the french don't trust him because he's half english and the english don't trust him because he's half french so it's that kind of very much looking at his own identity which i found really interesting because not not for me necessarily because i'm you know i'm very english really but my eldest son

When we moved to France, it was on his fourth birthday. We moved into our house on his fourth birthday. And so he's always struggled to a certain extent with his identity. Is he English or is he French? And it's been a real struggle.

not massive problem at times, but it's been really interesting to watch. And that's what I wanted to get across in this book that, you know, roots are really important. If you don't know what your roots are or your, your roots are questioned by other people, then it does affect you. It does affect your personality. Yes, absolutely.

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And the way that the storyline is set up to kind of surprise the reader. I always find it amazing that people write that kind of thing. I mean, what is your process? Do you have a particular process to, first of all, actually getting all of the work done, but secondly, dealing with the twists and turns of a plot and then actually filling all the, you know, joining the dots, as you say?

It's really interesting that because there, there tends to be two schools of thinking in terms of crime writers, that there is one school, which are the plotters and the other school, which are the pantsers. They're called the pantsers, which means basically you're just flying on the seat of your pants. You have no idea what's happening or where it's going. And I'm, I tend to,

be a bit of both um because i do obviously i want to know the story beforehand i want to know pretty much the story arc i don't always know who did it right at the start but i want to know why someone was killed yeah um as for intricate little plot details and twists and turns and stuff like that i don't know how you can plot everything in advance because you you some you can be

typing away and you've got two characters having a conversation and suddenly something will come to you and you go, that would be a great twist there. But you can't just say you're on, I don't know, word count 45,000 out of 75,000, but you can't just come up with that on 45,000 and not have any hint of it in the first 45,000. So you're writing that there and then you're, you're making notes and you've still got the whole plot in your head up to that point. So you have to go back and remember that.

to change little things and put little clues in. So it looks, when you're reading something like that, you think, well, how on earth did you come up with that? And you went there and then you went there. A lot of it's done in, not in hindsight, but retroactively, retrospectively. One of my favorite books is a book called Aunt's Aunt Gentleman, which is a P.G. Woodhouse. It was the last Jeeves and Worcester book. Aunt's Aunt Gentleman.

Aunt's Aunt Gentleman. Yeah. And he wrote that as just an ordinary prose book, got to the end of the story and went back and then put all the jokes in. Oh, okay. So, you know, and sometimes even as an author, you forget that you think, Oh God, what am I going to do there?

You can go back and change what you've done. It's not like reading it. That's not set in stone. So I can go back and do all of that. It's not a linear thing. You can kind of keep going back to different points and kind of adding. And as you come up with an idea, halfway through, you can go back and sort of add those things in. Yeah, but I still find that very...

complicated do you so do you get a rough idea then of what do you do do you kind of work out the basic story and then reverse engineer it so that the events unfold or what i i work out the story um and then start and i tend to do it in in blocks so for for me what it's normally been is about 80 000 words so generally say 40 chapters 2 000 words

And you can start writing it. You've got this story in your head and I've got notes hanging up everywhere and loads of notes all over the place. And I'll keep, and I'll start every now and then I'll start a new line of notes of stuff that I've missed from the other line of notes. And it just gets very complicated, but it's all there. So when I then get to the end of the book, I tick off and I go through, did I put that in? No, I've got to put that in. So I've got to go back to that. So that'd be chapter 13. So I'll go and do that there. Um,

And it really does get to a point like my next deadline is the end of February and we're recording this on the 13th of Jan. I've done 33,000 words. So I start prevaricating and going, so that's what, 4,000 a week? I'm working out word counts rather than the plot, thinking how do I get to this on time? Yeah.

And I, there is, it does get to the point where you're writing and you think, I really wish I had plotted this in advance. So I know what the hell I'm doing. Right. A bit like, you know what? It's a bit like, um,

waiting to go on stage as a stand-up. You have that thing that goes through your head where you go, why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through this? I just want to run away. So there's an element of that with the writing as well. And it just makes...

I'd say I thrive on that pressure. That's just how it is. I couldn't do it any other way. I couldn't plot it so finely in advance. I know a lot of writers do, but I found it interesting actually. I did quite a few literature festivals last year and how many authors say, you know, I've got to do this in advance because I'm spending a year writing

writing this book and so therefore I have to have all of that in my head and all of that research and all of that and I'm thinking I get five months per book and I've got to research, write it, plot it, publicize the other one that's coming out at the same time. So I just don't get that time. So I have to just sit down and go this is vaguely where I want to be in this chapter

write it and see what happens and you can always tell you can always tell if you're just writing to chase a word count you always know when you're just extemporizing and thinking you get into the point you go i'm not actually saying anything here this is this is just salad this is nothing um so then you've got to stop and then you've got to sort of plot a chunk

You're quite productive though, because yeah, if you are doing what some people take a year to do in just five months, do you find that you don't struggle to just come out with stuff then? Or do you have to engineer the situation so that you are productive? I had no, I mean, I, I, I'm fairly, I'm pretty disciplined that I, I know when I work well and that is in the morning. Um,

But I also kind of, because I spent so many years traveling, I also became really good at writing on trains. And I found the rhythm of writing on trains is very helpful. And I can just create this bubble. So like, for instance, last Thursday, I'd reached a kind of

in the book that I'm writing now, and I got on a train. And I went to tour and I walked around the area that I'm writing about, and I did a thousand words on the train there. I did my research and then I did a thousand words in the pub in tour waiting to get the train home again. So it was, you know, if you can do that and be productive,

It's actually a really nice way to do it rather than being stuck in my office as I am now. Different times of the day, different locations. Absolutely. Just change it up. Just really like Tuesday mornings, what I like doing on a Tuesday morning is my wife will get up early and go to work.

And as long as she hasn't disturbed the dogs, I can stay in bed and I'll write in bed until about 11 o'clock. Again, it's just a change of environment. And it tends to work a lot. I do quite a lot at my desk here, but it's not the only place. Yeah. And it can't be, you know, it just can't be.

I have to do quite a lot of writing for my podcast as well in various ways. And I find that if I go to a cafe, I'm so much more productive. Yeah. There's far more distraction at home, isn't there? Because...

You know, it's your home, so you've got your DVDs. I've got my kettle there. I've got my bag of chocolate eclairs. I'll be right and go, oh, do you know what? I really fancy a chocolate eclair. Whereas there isn't a chocolate eclair option if you're on a train, unless you're brought with you. So there's far more distraction at home than there is if you can get out. Mm-hmm.

Do you have a different approach to writing your books, to writing stand-up? Do the ideas come differently? Do you write them down differently? No, I still am a sort of aggressive note-taker. So I will make notes constantly and I'll...

I'll send myself emails. Like if I'm out walking the dogs, I will get lots of ideas doing that. And I will send myself an email. And it's a pathetic sight of this middle-aged man walking his dogs and he's tapping into his phone. Yeah.

yeah and then i put the phone in my pocket and then my phone will beep and i'll pick it up and go oh it must be an email and it is because i've just sent myself a bloody email so and i go through this every single time and i might send myself four emails on a dog walk so it's a it's a look like jack tatty wandering around the fields of rural france um but the biggest difference between writing stand-up

and writing books is that I sit down writing books I used to stand up when I wrote stand-up um I don't it's not very visual this but I mean this is a sort of triangle gabled office um my old office is the same sort of style and I had blackboards painted onto the walls so that I would walk up and down my office and I would make notes about stand-up but I try and get the rhythm of the stand-up

Without having to sit down and put it into prose and then rehearse it and all that, it would come out almost fully formed. Yeah. Whereas obviously with books, I sit down. Apparently Hemingway stood up with his typewriter. He stood up and typed Standing Up.

Really? It's interesting. Fighting off bulls and stuff. Eating pigeons and whatever. Yeah, he had a very particular sort of style, didn't he? Very direct, quite short, brief sentences. Maybe that's something to do with what happens when you stand up. You're like, I can't write a full sentence. I'm too tired. He had constant pain in his back.

Just wanted to get it done. Yeah. It's weird how people do different things, but, I mean, that's the beauty of having a laptop is that I can just, you know, you can just go anywhere, can't you? So with a typewriter, you know, it would have been quite tricky standing up. I mean, I can stand up with a laptop sort of in my arm like that, like something out of Star Trek or something, but, you know, you can't do that with a typewriter.

No, you could try, but you're going to drop it on your foot, aren't you? You're going to have to sit down. A lot of Tippex. A lot of Tippex is going to get used. Yeah, God, Tippex. No one uses Tippex anymore, do they? You know who invented Tippex? No, Mr. Dave Tippex. No, Mike Nesmith's mum. Mike Nesmith. Mike Nesmith of the monkeys, his mum invented Tippex.

Wow. That's a great fact. Mike Nesmith, listeners, I don't know if you, I mean, I know exactly who this is. This is one of the guys in the Monkees, that band that were created after the Beatles. Sort of first artificial boy band. And they were supposed to be the American answer to the Beatles. And he was the lead singer.

He also went on and he became a solo artist in the early 70s. And those are really good albums, folk rock albums. Yeah, the Monkees are interesting because they were actually kind of

in their own right who were, I think, something like answered an advertisement for a boy band. These were people who were already on the scene and they were brought together to create this band. Peter Jones was English and he was in Coronation Street and he had no musical ability at all, but he looked quite cute. Yeah, that was it. That,

That's all we have. Well, they're all right. You know, the Monkees are quite like a lot of their stuff. Not that they actually recorded the instruments in the studio, I think. Well, they did because Peter Tork was a very talented musician. He was a really talented musician. Mickey Dolenz, I'm not sure he did. I think he did play the drums.

And Nesmith played guitar, but David Jones just shoved maracas around. Yeah. You know, I mean, apart from being in the Monkees, probably his other greatest claim to fame, and apart from being in Coronation Street, was that he had to, David Bowie had to change his name because of David Jones. David Bowie's real name is David Jones because there was a Dave Jones in the Monkees.

David Jones had to change his name to David Bowie. That got very confusing. I'll go through that. I'm not sure if that makes any sense at all. Wait a minute. I thought we were talking about his books. Who's David Jones and what's going on? Um,

I've got a couple of questions from a friend of mine called Fabio, who does a podcast called Stoleroid Stories, and he's very interested in writing. He does a lot of stuff about writing. A couple of questions from him. One is, what have you learned from the process of writing a book? Have you learned anything about yourself or about the world?

It's really interesting, you know, because the two series that I do, like I said, one's very light and one is darker, not completely dark, but darker. And I am a very different person when I'm writing the different books. I am a lighter person.

just as a human being when I'm writing the cosy because they're quite breezy and they're quite fun and I'm constantly in my head working on comedic situations whereas the darker the European noir stuff I'm going to call it that for now is much more introspective and I've spent a lot of time reading psychology books and

philosophical books as well because I wanted to get the character of Jules Lombard absolutely right that he is inquisitive about life now having been surrounded by death for so long and I wanted to make sure that I knew that but what that inevitably means is that I am researching pretty heavy topics most of the time when I'm writing a Lombard and

You know, my wife, on many an occasion, my wife has just gone, you haven't heard a word I've said, have you? You've got your Lombard face on. I can tell you're in a different world. Whereas that doesn't happen with the cozies, you know. So, yeah, I've learned not just a lot about myself, but just a lot, because you, especially with crime genre writing of any kind, I think, is that

You really can't be lazy because people really will pick you up if you have the slightest thing wrong. There was, in which book was it? I think it was Death and Fromage. I wrote about a 1979 Renault Alpine being disabled by just removing something from the engine. Now, I know nothing about cars, absolutely nothing about cars.

But I did the research and I asked a couple of mechanic friends as well. And then I was out promoting the book after that. And this bloke came to this book event in Yorkshire. And he said, you know, that distributor thing where you disabled the 1979 Renault Alpine. Who told you that?

And I said, well, I got it. I did the research. I got it from a mechanic. And he went, no, no, no, mate. No, see, this is what would happen. And he went through the whole process of how he thought it would have happened, as if I was going to go back to the mechanic that I'd asked the original question for and say, look, you've completely pulled this up. Yeah.

So you do, you learn an awful lot, but you learn an awful lot about yourself being on your own in terms of, you know, you learn an awful lot about yourself being a standup as well. If you spend that much time on your own and you're having to create all the time, you are constantly looking within yourself for the next idea.

Always. And that's like so many jobs, teaching. My wife was saying this the other day, exactly the same. There's no opportunity to switch off at all. You are constantly on. Seven days, 24 hours. And I knew this morning when I got up and knew that I was supposed to be writing chapter 20,

And I was awake from about three o'clock going, well, that should happen. That should go there. This description, or I really liked this line. I wrote this down as a, there's a 3am post-it note, no decorations, a sure sign that it took itself too seriously. I have no idea what that means, but it will, it will come back to me at some point. So I'm going to put it on my, on my little clothesline of notes and,

So it's quite a messy process, but it all goes down and then eventually you start to get all these disparate elements and bring them together and make the whole thing consistent. Well, you hope. Fashion it all together. You go through that period where you go, I don't know what this... I have no idea what I'm doing here. This is... I was watching Murder, She Wrote and Jessica Fletcher...

And at the end of it, she said, well, you know, solving a crime is just like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You know, everything comes together in the end. But it's not. That's not. Because when you're doing a jigsaw puzzle, you have a picture of the puzzle in front of you that's completed. So it's not because I'm actually making a jigsaw puzzle, but I have no idea what it looks like in the end. So it's not quite the same. And so there are those moments where you go,

I've no idea. How do I link that with that? And what do I have to do with this? Yeah. And you're constantly walking around with it in your head all the time. Yeah. So you have to have that kind of overall vision and keep that in mind. And that's what helps you kind of clear up all of the details. Yeah. And like I say, I go through a list at the end.

When I've done the first draft, I'll read it through again and make another list. And then I've got all these lists of things that have to be included in the book in order to give it the right frame and to give the reader a chance at getting the answer before it actually comes. Is that something in your mind then as you're writing? Are you thinking, I'm going to give the reader clues to help them work out what's happened? Yes, definitely.

Definitely. Agatha Christie was always accused of putting in characters in the last two or three chapters wherever they hadn't been there before. And I think that's actually very unfair. I've never found that with Christie. That's the kind of reputation that she got. You have to play fair.

You have to give people a chance. Even, you know, I worry constantly. So this is the thing. Once I know, and I know fairly early on in the writing process who the murderer is and why. So therefore, I'm constantly battling myself through the book going, well, isn't this obvious? Haven't I made this too obvious that that person, because I know who did it, it now screams at me everything that person does.

is now so obvious I have to try and temper that so it is a game then because whenever I read crime stories I read a lot of Sherlock Holmes it's my favourite stuff

And I can never, ever. All of that is really not good for your listeners, obviously. But behind me there, that shelf there, that is a collection of Sherlock Holmes pastiche. And then all the original Conan Doyle ones are there. I love Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, me too. Sorry, I interrupted you there. That's okay. I was just saying that when I read Sherlock Holmes, I just enjoy the world of Sherlock Holmes. But in terms of...

actually being able to work out what's happened before it's explained to me. I never, ever can do that. But it is a game then, is it? From the point of view of the writer, you are playing a game with the reader where you're perhaps allowing them to predict or guess what's happened. Yeah, but you're also laying false clues as well. You know, you've got to, in your mind,

In your group of suspects, there has to be a possibility that 90% of them could be considered to be the murderer, that they will have means, motive and opportunity until it's disproved that they're not. And then almost at the end, it should be like a rabbit out of a hat, really, who the purpose traits are is,

But if you went back and read the book, you go, ah, right, I see now. You know, that kind of thing. Yes. Interesting. Which one is better, writing books or doing stand-up? And if you had to choose to just do one forever now, what would it be? I think I know the answer. I think it would be books. I think it's got to be books because the thing about stand-up, although I loved it and I did very well out of it, it's so...

it's so ethereal ephemeral and then too mixed up but it's just it's gone yeah it's gone the minute you've done it it's gone that moment isn't there whereas i get not just enormous pride but i get a really psychological boost out of seeing my books in a shop that is that is such a massive thing um

and knowing that they're all over the world. And like the first series, sorry, the first series, the Cozy series, the first one, Death and Croissant, that was chosen by the Samaritans in the UK as part of their, they do a monthly book club thing because it cheers people up. And that is an enormous thing.

and not just a confidence boost, but incredibly gratifying and very proud of that. That if some people find that it's a help, then that just means so much. I mean, you get that out of stand-up as well, but you're not...

You don't know that necessarily. And like I say, the moment's gone and they don't, you know, most of the time they don't even know. Yeah. With, with, with standup, you can have a fantastic half an hour or something where you're in the room and everyone's laughing, but then when you finish, you leave the venue and you're just walking down the street, going to a hotel and then you're in a hotel room on your own. It might as well not have happened.

And that's an incredible – I found that increasingly hard to deal with, the downtime after the gigs. And, you know, like I say, because it is so ephemeral, people don't really know you, whether it's good or bad sometimes. You know, you can feel like you're top of the world. But I did a corporate –

a corporate event would have been around this time last year. And it was just horrendous. It was horrendous. It was all blokes and you know, they didn't want to, they couldn't be bothered. And I quickly, I couldn't be bothered either, but it's one of those things where you don't, you don't run away. You,

you front it out. And so I went to the bar after I'd done the gig and I'm standing at the bar waiting to order. And this, this bloke turns around to me and he just went, that comic was shit, wasn't he?

He didn't realize it was you. No, I had no idea. But it was weird. And I'm standing there going, yeah, awful, awful. So it really doesn't mean that much, you know, whereas books really have this physical quality that I've felt.

Yeah, they're so much more permanent, which can be, it's great. Yeah, I totally understand. Again, it's a similar thing being a teacher that you can spend lots of time in the classroom in front of people who are your students for a few weeks. Because, you know, not as a school teacher, but as a language teacher teaching adults, people come and spend a few weeks with you and then they're just off, you know, you never see them again. Yeah.

So that's very ephemeral as well. It's exactly the same, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, you know, I don't write books, but doing a podcast is a bit more permanent because at least I've got my list of episodes that are always there, you know. Of course, it really is. It's something that you can –

You can literally point to, and that's the thing. You can't just point to a place. Well, I mean, I do often point to places that I gigged at and bore my kids relentlessly. If we were wandering around London or something like that, where I've played in hundreds of venues, I'd just go, yeah, I did a gig there. Yeah, and they're like... Some brothel in Bethnal Green. Yeah. You know how it is. Yeah.

All right, great. Well, so what's coming up in 2025 then, finally? Three books. Three this year? Well, I've got five books coming out this year. So how it works is the first book that will come out in March will be the paperback of Death in Le Jardin, which was the hardback that came out last summer. Then in...

I've got two books coming out in June, The Hardback of Death and Ball, firstly. But then also, remember those memoirs I said I wrote years ago? They've been re-released. So the second one is being re-released this June as well. So that's – I can't even remember what it's called. Yeah, but they've changed the title because Alamod became Vive le Chaos –

And so what's it? What do you think? It's so lovely. I think it's called now. I don't know. And I did a book tour about, well, about last summer when Viva Chaos came out. And so I did this tour and I was asked, you know, lots of questions about things that happened in the book. And I'd written this book, like,

13 years ago standing in these book events going i have no idea i have no no idea what you're talking about my son did that did he um so coming out and then the book i'm writing now which i the word count is 34 000 this car that comes out in october and that's called the cry of the immortals that's a serious one and then the

That's a serious one, yeah. And then the paperback of Dead Behind the Eyes, which is the second in the Lombard series, comes out, I think, in November. Okay. It's all go. It's all go, yeah. A lot of writing to do. Well, great. I'm glad that the books are being well-received and that, you know, new ones keep arriving. You keep coming up with ideas. This is great. Well done. Keep it going. Yeah.

It's really exciting though. I mean, I'm incredibly privileged to be able to do that. You know, just sit here in my triangular garret in the Loire Valley and just bang out books. It's, you know, it's what I always, it's what I always wanted. Yeah. You're living the dream. I am. I am living the dream. I'll remind myself of that when I can't think of a plot point tomorrow.

yeah just remember you're living the dream okay yeah yeah um all right well great uh thanks so much for talking to me and my audience uh again and uh thank you you know uh all the best for the writing and uh fantastic keep just keep make keep writing books it's brilliant yeah and and hopefully you know like the cozy series has been the tv rights has been bought for that

So hopefully something concrete with that will come out in the next few months. A TV series based on the Cozy Crime stories? Yeah. Great. Yeah. Is that British TV, French TV? Well, the producer is the same people who put Agatha Raisin out on Sky TV in the UK.

But he's looking for a French TV partner, which would make sense. Yeah, totally. That's the plan with that. All right. Brilliant. Okay. Well, excellent. Have a lovely afternoon. And I don't know if you're going to get some more work done now, if the afternoon, you write in the morning. I don't know.

Yeah, probably not. I mean, no. The snooker's on. Yeah, cup of tea and watch some snooker. Sounds perfect. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Okay. All right, mate. Nice one. Thanks very much. Thanks, Luke. Thanks very much indeed. Cheers. Right. Thank you very much again to Ian for being a guest on the podcast for the third time.

Now, before I do my usual ending ramble bit, I just need to give you the answers to the comprehension questions which I set at the beginning of this episode. Remember them? Loads of questions which you probably couldn't remember. I don't know. Did you manage to answer any of them? Let me go through the answers. So this is where you can kind of check what you understood from earlier. Let's go through the questions and answer them. So question one, how does Ian feel about the period between 2010 and 2023?

He can't remember that period. He says he can't remember it. He's lost track of years. If you lose track of something, it means that you just sort of like lose a sense of it. You lose your awareness of it. You just can't really remember it very well. He's lost track of years. We typically say to lose track of time. For example, I'll be teaching in a classroom and I'll look at my watch and go, oh, my God, wow, the...

it's nearly the end of the lesson. Wow, I completely lost track of time. Meaning you lose that sense of what time it is. Ian said that he'd lost track of years of his life. He feels like he was in a coma. A coma is a sort of a condition, physical sort of health condition, where you are

completely unconscious for quite a long time. It can be quite a long time. A coma is a prolonged state of deep unconsciousness caused especially by severe injury or illness. So if someone has a really bad accident, they might end up in a coma, which is like a form of deep unconsciousness, often the result of severe trauma, physical trauma.

So if Ian joked that he felt like he'd been in a coma for the last 15 years or something, he said that he has a complete blank. So when he tries to remember the last decade or so, he just can't really remember any of it, which is a thing that happens as you get older. Secondly, why do I laugh when he says, well, I needed the rest?

This is because he said he felt like he was in a coma. And I said, well, that's a long coma. And he joked, well, I needed the rest. Okay. It was funny at the time. Number three, how was Ian's COVID lockdown period? How did it affect his life? Well, he feels a bit guilty admitting it, but he had quite a good time during lockdown. He

He did catch COVID and long COVID, which is a form of COVID-19 in which the symptoms last for a long time. So he did get that. So that obviously wasn't great. That wasn't good. But it gave him a chance to make certain changes in his life. So overall, the COVID lockdown was quite good because it allowed him to make changes in his life. Number four, why did Ian have to stop travelling to the UK to perform stand-up comedy every weekend?

So before COVID...

He was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which is a medical condition in which the joints in your body, right? The joints, that's the parts of the body where bones meet each other and your body bends, right? Your elbows, knees, the joints in your hands and fingers, your wrists. These are your joints. So rheumatoid arthritis involves getting very swollen joints, right?

It's very painful and uncomfortable and it restricts your movement. And, you know, you can be very uncomfortable a lot of the time. So staying in hotel rooms and things and travelling around is really not very convenient. So before Covid, he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. So travelling and staying in hotels became too painful. He couldn't cope with the lifestyle anymore. Number five, was Ian fed up with stand up?

No, he wasn't. He loved the time on stage because it was, strangely enough, a peaceful moment for him when he could be alone with his thoughts and had total control of the situation.

He found it cathartic because he could express his emotions and frustrations. So he was not fed up with it. Number six, has it been difficult for Ian to stop doing stand-up? Why or why not? No, it hasn't been difficult to stop. He felt it was time to stop and he wanted to stop so it's been easy.

So even though he's not fed up with it, he's decided that it was the right time to stop. So it's been easy to stop. When you feel like the time has come, then it's easy. It's a bit like smoking. When you feel like, OK, that's it now. I'm done with this. Then you can give up quite easily. Same thing with stand-up. He feels he's achieved everything he could achieve with stand-up, so it's OK to do something else now. Number seven, how did Ian feel about doing comedy gigs on Zoom during the COVID lockdown?

He thought it was not the same as on stage, but you could still have fun. You could, for example, make fun of people's living rooms because you'd end up in there. You know, you could see their living room so you can kind of make fun of the things in their rooms. And he liked not having to travel to gigs. It was it was in his home, so he didn't have to travel. Personally, my experience of doing Zoom gigs was not good because I didn't get couldn't get any feedback from people.

the audience. I like getting, I like feeling the reaction from the audience and responding to it. Um, and with zoom, you don't get any of that. So it's a bit odd. I mean, it shouldn't be that weird for me doing zoom gigs. It's not dissimilar to doing a podcast in a way.

Number eight, Ian did one particular corporate gig on Zoom during COVID. Did it go well or badly? How did he know? Well, he didn't know during the show if it was going well or badly because all he could see was a table plan. All he could see was a table plan. He couldn't see the faces of any of the people watching the show online.

everyone had their cameras and microphones switched off. He just ranted into the computer. That's where you kind of talk for a long time on your own, maybe in a kind of an angry way, which can be a funny style of doing stand-up, you know, if you're just kind of like complaining about something and making it funny. So he just ranted into the computer. And when it was finished, he told the organizer he had no idea how it went. And the guy said, well, it wasn't very good.

Number nine, what did the expat group of English in France people, or the expat group of English people in France, ask Ian to do, and how did he feel about it? As soon as he joined the group, I suppose it's some sort of online group or...

email list or something as soon as he joined the group they emailed him to ask him to buy some things from england when he went there maybe he said to them i'm going to england and they were like oh since you're going to england could you buy some things for us and they gave him a shopping list of things they wanted including christmas dinner ingredients and christmas crackers christmas crackers are like sort of fun things that we have at the dinner table at christmas time

They're made of paper. You pull them, they go crack and a little toy comes out. Ian refused and told them he didn't want to be part of it. And I quote, good luck to you and all that. But I did not move out to rural France to join in your Christmas cracker parade. I'm just not. That's just not me. Merry Christmas. Don't ever talk to me again.

Number 10, what do the local French people think of Ian when he speaks French? Well, they look at him weirdly, a bit like a bird looking in a mirror. They kind of cock their head to one side and look at him a bit weirdly. And he knows that he's lost them and then his confidence drops. I know how he feels. Number 11, what does Ian tell people about his accent in French? What choice does he give them? Well, he says to them that they can have the words or the accent, but not both.

Number 12, what happened to the three goats Ian talks about? Well, sadly, they died one after the other. The first one died because it was sick. The second one, and that was the twin brother of the first, died because it was heartbroken by the death of his brother. And the third one decided not to live anymore because she was alone. So, weirdly, these goats just gave up on life and died. The two...

The first one died because it was sick, but the other two just kind of decided to stop living because they were lonely, which is a very sad story. 13. How does his wife feel about this? She's heartbroken, understandably.

I think Ian's wife is the one who adopts these animals in their countryside house, and she cares for the animals a lot. So the way that these three goats died in quick succession in just a week was obviously very heartbreaking for her.

Number 14: What's the difference between being a stand-up comedian and the host of a B&B guesthouse? Well, being a comedian, you can be quite rude, making jokes about people in the room, saying exactly what you think and breaking the normal social rules. That's during a show, of course. But as the host of a guesthouse, you have to be very polite all the time. Number 15: What did Ian say to the Dutch guy who wanted hot milk?

He told him, there's the milk, there's the microwave, see what you can rustle up, chef. So to rustle something up means to prepare something with limited resources, like cooking a dinner with limited ingredients. You might say, well, I'll see what I can rustle up. Basically, to prepare something with limited ingredients. There's the microwave, there's the milk, see what you can manage to do.

He was being sarcastic or ironic, and I think the Dutch guy didn't get it and found it rude, of course, because Ian was basically saying, just do it yourself. Sixteen, was Ian a good host? Well, obviously not. He said having guests in the house felt like an invasion. Seventeen, why did Ian become a writer of cosy crime novels?

So he wrote a couple of books before, which were about his life in France. Then when the guest house business didn't really work, he realized he had to write because he was going to stop doing stand up.

specifically about cosy crime. He likes the genre of crime writing and cosy crime is getting bigger and bigger in terms of popularity in the world. Also, it was cathartic because he set the novels in a guest house, so he was able to kill off the guests in his stories, which he wanted to do in real life.

If something is cathartic, it means it allows you to release certain feelings which may be built up inside you.

Okay. So, for example, doing sports can be very cathartic. Doing some sort of vigorous exercise can be cathartic because it helps you release stress. In this case, it was cathartic for Ian because all of these sort of resentment and negativity that Ian and frustration that was building up inside him about having to deal with these people who were coming into his home and asking for warm milk and other things. It's annoyed him so much that being able to write these stories in which

There were murders being committed in a guest house and the guests were in fact the ones being killed. This was quite a relief for him. It was quite cathartic for him, which is quite funny, really. Number 18, what does Ian find hard about writing novels?

He finds it hard to do the actual writing when he has already thought of the ideas. So he enjoys coming up with the ideas and the creative side, but the more mechanical side of just joining up the dots or connecting the ideas that he's had and being very meticulous and actually doing the writing, he finds that difficult. 19, Ian mentions two schools of thought.

about writing crime novels, the planners and the pantsers. What are they? Well, planners plan everything as they go. So they plan everything in advance. And pantsers, pantsers, that means that they fly by the seat of their pants. So in...

The word pants, you've got the word pants. Your pants are your underpants in English. And the idiom to fly by the seat of your pants means to just kind of improvise and make it up as you go along. Imagine, for example, if I went into an English lesson and I had no lesson plan at all, I would just say, well, I'm just going to fly by the seat of my pants. It's quite an informal one. I wouldn't say that to the students. I wouldn't say, hello, welcome to the English lesson today.

There's no lesson plan, so I'm going to just fly by the seat of my pants on this one. I wouldn't say that. I might say that to one of my colleagues who I'm kind of friends with. We've got no lesson plan. God, it's a nightmare. I don't know. I'm just going to have to fly by the seat of my pants, I suppose.

What I'd say to the students would be, so this is going to be a freestyle lesson, which means that we've got no specific aim. So instead, the focus will be on responding to your English needs as they occur in the moment. Otherwise known as flying by the seat of my pants, which can actually be a genuinely good approach to an English lesson, I have to say. Improvising, being willing to...

kind of deviate from a plan and respond to the needs of learners in front of you as they occur is a perfectly good way of teaching.

Referring to it as flying by the seat of your pants seems to suggest a sort of unprofessionalism, which actually might not be the case when you're essentially using the dogma teaching approach, which is an academically recognised approach to teaching. Anyway, so planners plan everything in advance and pantsers...

fly by the seat of their pants, which means they make it up as they go along. Ian, as a writer, is a combination of the two. I think he seems to be more of a pantser and enjoys that side more than the necessary planning and organisational work of putting a book together. So he's more on the side of being a pantser, I think.

He talked about how you write it, you kind of make things up a bit as you go along, but you have to make sure that you go back and make sure everything makes sense. He writes ideas in a fairly sporadic way, and then he kind of goes through a checklist, making sure that he's included all of those ideas, which often means going back to stuff that he's written and making changes to it.

But he also has an overall vision of the storyline, which he plans in advance. But then the details, it's a bit more granular, let's say. Number 20, how is writing a book like waiting to go on stage to do stand-up? So he says that you think to yourself, why am I putting myself through this? Meaning, why am I making myself have this difficult experience?

especially when he's in the middle of writing a book and everything has become quite messy. So just before you go on stage as a stand-up comedian, you're feeling nervous and you're looking at this audience of people and thinking, I can't believe I'm going to have to go out and make them laugh. I must be insane. Why am I doing this to myself? This feels horrible. And then you go on stage and it's all right. But often it feels horrible and painful and

you know, uncomfortable. Similarly, I suppose when you're in the middle of writing a book like that, you might feel the same way. Why am I doing this to myself? Number 21, when and where does Ian work best? He says that he works in the morning. He works best on trains. He writes really well when he's on a train for some reason. And on Tuesday mornings, when his wife goes out early and he can write in bed until about 11 o'clock, as long as the dogs have not been disturbed.

Number 22, what does Ian say about sending himself emails? Well, when he's out walking the dogs, if he gets an idea, he writes it in an email to himself and then he forgets.

that he's written himself an email and his phone pings. It goes ding and he checks the email. And if someone saw him, they would think he was a pathetic sight, like some sort of middle-aged man who doesn't know what he's doing, standing in a field with his dogs, checking his phone and being surprised to have received an email until he realises it's the email that he just sent to himself. Number 23, what's different about how Ian writes books and how he used to write stand-up? Well, he writes stand-up

He sits down when he writes books, but stands up to write stand-up comedy.

Number 24, how do we end up talking about the monkeys? Well, Ian mentioned Tippex, which is a kind of white correctional fluid that you use to correct mistakes when you're writing on paper or using an old typewriter. Do you know Tippex? So let's say you're typing on an old typewriter or you're writing on paper with a pen and you make a mistake. You can't rub it out with an eraser, so you have to get that little pot of Tippex and you open up the cap and there's a little paintbrush

and you kind of paint some white stuff onto the page, that's Tippex.

correctional fluid. So, Ian mentions Tippex at some point, because we're talking about writing, and then he tells me that the person who invented Tippex was the mother of a member of the group, the Monkees. So, Mike Nesmith, one of the members of the Monkees, his mum invented Tippex. So, it's just a fun fact, which sent us off on a bit of a tangent about the Monkees. Number 25, what is the connection between David Bowie and the Monkees? Well,

Davy Jones was a member of the Monkees. He was one of the singers in the band. And David Bowie, his original name is David Jones. So he changed his name to David Bowie. He had to change his name when he started his career in music because there was already another David Jones on the scene. And that was the one from the Monkees. So David Jones from the Monkees was the reason why David Bowie changed his name to David Bowie.

Number 26. Why does Ian mention the 1979 Renault Alpine? That's that French sports car. He mentions this because it's an example of how you have to get specific details exactly right in his books. Or he has to.

Because people will notice and correct you on technical mistakes you make, like some detail about an obscure car. So I think he was talking about the fact that you have to go into great levels of research when you're writing these books. And that can cause you to learn things like, for example, learning specific technical things about old 70s sports cars. Because readers will notice technical problems and correct you on them.

Number 27 is writing a crime story just like solving a jigsaw puzzle. Why or why not? He says, no, it isn't. He refers to a TV show called Murder, She Wrote in that it's a kind of murder mystery detective series. The detective in that it's kind of a cozy crime series. Her name is what's her name? She wrote. I can't remember her name. Ian mentioned it in the in the episode.

Anyway, she's a writer and she sits writing stories on her typewriter and also she solves crimes. And Jessica Fletcher, is that her name? Anyway, she says in the show that solving a crime or maybe writing a crime story is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. But Ian disagrees because when you're solving a jigsaw, you have the complete picture in front of you. It's on the front of the box.

But when you're writing or solving a crime, you don't have the picture. You're making it up yourself. Number 28, how is writing murder mysteries like a game? Well, for Ian, it is like a game because you're playing a game with the reader. So you leave clues for the reader to give them a chance to guess who committed the murder.

and the reader maybe can work it out, unless you're me, because I can never do that. Number 29, what does Ian prefer about writing compared to stand-up? He prefers the fact that the work is more permanent. Stand-up comedy is quite ephemeral. Ephemeral. It doesn't last. When the show is over, it's all gone. It doesn't really matter either, really. But writing is more permanent, and he likes that about it.

Okay, so there you go. I hope that helped. Remember, you can read all of this on the episode transcript link in the show notes.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that was my guest, Ian Moore, back on the podcast for the third time. If you'd like to listen to the other episodes, and they're actually very funny, because Ian talks about his struggles with learning English, his struggles with learning French. And there's a particularly funny story that he tells about the French citizenship test and

what it was like doing the language test for that. So episode 648 is that episode. And also before that, he was in episode number 332, in which he talked about mod culture, which is something we didn't touch upon in this conversation. But another thing is that Ian is a mod. A mod is a kind of UK subculture, a British subculture, which...

really sort of first started in the 1960s in England but has continued since then and these days it's considered to be the kind of classic British style. Mod relates to really an approach to clothing, a style of clothing but it's also a general culture which includes things like music and

a certain attitude. But anyway, Ian is a mod and that means dressing in a very specific way, a very smart, very stylish way. So we talked about mod culture, which I think is a big part of British culture, especially British clothing. We talked about that in episode 382 a few years ago, and then other stuff, including stories of...

Ian's life in the countryside and how his children got threatened by a farmer with a shotgun and other tales. So that's episode 382, 383 and also 648 from my episode archive, teacherluke.co.uk slash episodes. But that's the end of the conversation. I hope you enjoyed it and that you were able to follow it all.

And for me personally, I thought it was fascinating to hear Ian talking about his process for writing books. Because for me, I love, as I said in the conversation, I love reading these murder mystery stories, especially Sherlock Holmes stories. But there's so many others like Agatha Christie and all sorts of other writers. But I'm always amazed at how someone can just come up with that stuff from scratch and

how you can come up with a mystery story from nothing. And I've always wondered what it takes to actually do that. And it seems that in Ian's case, I guess initially he has the idea, he has his first idea. And then it's a case of fleshing it out, writing thousands of words every day. And you probably come up with ideas and then you have to go back to things you've already written and change those things. I mean, for me, writing...

an episode of this podcast, which could be how many thousands of words are each episode? Well, definitely a lot shorter than a book. That can become really complicated for me because if I change one thing later on in the episode, I've got to go back and it's very hard to keep track of the entire project.

So it's amazing really to sort of get any insight into how writers actually write their books and the sort of discipline that's involved in doing it. I thought it was interesting the way that Ian talked about how changing his location for working and working at different times of the day helps him to be productive, like writing on a train or writing in his bed, etc.

So anyway, you can leave your comments. I hope that you found that interesting to leave your comments on the page for this episode on my website or on YouTube or wherever you're listening to this.

A reminder that you can get all of Ian's books, you know, from most good bookshops. If you're in the UK, you can find them in all of the high street bookshops and stuff, but you can get them online as well. Maybe the best place to go is simply Ian's website, which is ianmoore.info. ianmoore.info, that's where you can find out about all of his books and all the other work he does.

And you can get yourself copies of them. I think the Cozy Crime Mysteries would be the right kind of thing to read in English. If you want to find some sort of enjoyable, funny mystery stories to practice your English, then that could be a good thing to buy. So ianmoore.info. Death and Croissant.

death and croissants. I don't know, how do you say croissant in your language? A croissant is a kind of pastry. It's a French pastry that's sort of in a kind of crescent shape. It's basically made of butter and butter, as far as I can tell.

Kate Billington explained how a croissant was made on this podcast at some point. But it's pastry and butter with a bit of extra butter baked in the oven. Absolutely delicious. So that's a French thing. Death and croissants. That's the first...

the first book in the series, the Cozy Crime series. What do you call a croissant in your language? Or at least how do you say croissant in your language? In England, people call them croissants. Croissants, really. But in French, they're pronounced croissant. So death and croissants, death and fromage, which means death and cheese, and death at the chateau, which is like death at the castle kind of thing. Um...

So check out IanMoore.info for info about Ian Moore, surprisingly, but also his books and his other work. And he also wanted me to say that the B&B that he talked about is for sale, by the way.

Not his entire home, but the half, the building that he used as the B&B, that is available for purchase. One of those buildings and the garden, they're both up for sale. So if you're interested in buying a B&B in the Loire Valley, then get in touch. And as well as that, he also wanted me to let you know that he has a full-size antique snooker table. Do you know snooker? It's a kind of...

parlor game. Is it English? Is it just English? I know it's very popular in China, but snooker is like billiards. It's a game where you have a big table covered in a green fabric and there are pockets in the corners and on the sides of the table and balls on the table. And you have these long wooden cues and you hit the balls with the cue and you have to put the balls in the pockets. It's a bit like pool in America, but

Although everywhere now as well, pool, but the tables are much bigger and the rules are a bit more complicated. So anyway, Ian has got a an antique snooker table, which he's trying to get rid of. He can't get rid of it. In fact, he's not just selling it. I think he's willing to just give it away.

So, again, if you are in the Loire Valley and you want a big antique snooker table, full size, then get in touch because Ian has got one and he's trying to get rid of it. OK. All right, then. Don't forget, you could get a transcript for this episode by checking my website.

Check the page for this episode on my website and you'll find a PDF transcript there. So if there are things that you'd like to check up on, you can go through the transcripts and have a look and think, what did he say then? What was that? What was that word? I didn't catch that. What was that anecdote? I didn't get that. What's going on? What is going on? You can check the PDF and see the stuff in writing there.

And, you know, maybe check those things in the usual online dictionaries or whatever that could be useful. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed this particular episode as your chance to do some more authentic listening in English. Get in touch with your comments. And if you want a snooker table or indeed the entire building and the garden, then get in touch as well. We'll do some sort of deal. We'll work something out.

I'll speak to you again in the next episode, but for now, it's just time for me to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teachaluke.co.uk.

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