Satire

That is all.

Verb Whore: An Interview with Author Felicity Katz

RICHARD: Felicity Katz, your latest work Whither Manhood? has been nominated for the Booker Prize. 

KATZ: That's right, yes. Whither Manhood? by Felicity Katz. ISBN 978-1-78748-223-1, priced at £12.99, published by Penguin Books and available through all good stockists.

RICHARD: It tells us a great deal about your early life, in particular the difficult relationship you had with your mother.

KATZ: My mother was quite a character. She had an uncanny knack of knowing when the kettle was about to come to the boil. Remarkable woman. 

RICHARD: She wasn't a happy woman, was she? 

KATZ: Well, she had rather a difficult upbringing, herself. Her father was a Scottish Jew and her mother was Chinese, but ironically they were no good with money. Actually, when my father met my mother she was working as a chanteuse at an opium den in Shanghai. He went in there - I think he was looking for the British Embassy or something - and that's when he caught my mother's eye. Damn thing was glass, kept falling out all over the place. But anyway, one thing led to another and within a couple of weeks she was expecting. However, when she told my father he simply took off. 

RICHARD: Did you ever find out what happened to him? 

KATZ: I heard he'd succumbed to the Big 'C'. 

RICHARD: Cancer?

KATZ: Jesus. He joined a convent of nuns as a gardener. The convent itself didn't know this until 57 members of the order suddenly became pregnant. It's hard to track his movements after that, but I believe he may be dead. That or he's a very jubilant 120-year-old.

RICHARD: An either-or situation, really.

KATZ: And vice-versa, yes.

RICHARD: His desertion must've hit your mother quite hard.

KATZ: Not really. This was wartime, you see. Back then, it was a case of pull your socks up. There was no place for personal trauma - that was the army's job.

RICHARD: It was your mother who started you off writing, wasn't it?

KATZ: She gave me a great deal of encouragement. From the age of five she was always getting me to write little things for her.

RICHARD: What sort of things?

KATZ: Prescriptions, mostly. Of course, I worked under a pseudonym: Dr Harrison, or some such nonsense. It was all rather fun, for a while. But then she started to beat me.

RICHARD: Beat you?

KATZ: Chess, Scrabble - you name it. My mother was a wizard. Or a witch. Depends on how you look at it. But after a while I realised I had to escape, so I stowed away on a tramp steamer bound for England.

RICHARD: Where you were accepted into Oxford at the age of-?

KATZ: Seven. Yes, it was quite a thing, I can tell you. I was actually the youngest undergraduate to have an article published in the Isis. Well, I say article: it was more of a letter, really. You know, I sometimes wonder what would've happened if Professor Mackenzie hadn't had such bad B.O. otherwise my career certainly wouldn't have taken off.

RICHARD: And you have had a remarkable career, spanning eighteen novels, four autobiographies, six poetry collections, three plays and countless newspaper articles.

KATZ: I'd like to thank God for this tremendous gift I've been bestowed, but I can't. It's all me, really.

RICHARD: And your mother?

KATZ: No, just me.

RICHARD: I mean, do you keep in touch with your mother?

KATZ: Every day. She's living in Bangor at the moment. We have a running joke between us where she pretends she can't remember who I am. Great fun!

RICHARD: Before we draw this to a close, Ms Katz, I just wondered if you have any advice for the budding authors out there.

KATZ: You know, when asked questions like this, my mind drifts back to the words my mother gave me when I showed her the initial draft of my very first short story.

RICHARD: And what were they?

KATZ: I can't remember.

"Poyekhali!"

Happy International Space Day, everybody!

I just thought it would be appropriate to mark the occasion with a little tribute to the man who started us on this adventure.

Yuri, this one's for you.

Space Race or not, this was a defining moment for humankind. Suddenly we weren't just a group of tribes divided by politics or religion: we became one. We didn't fully realise this at the time, and we're still struggling to grasp it now, but the moment Vostok 1 soared into the heavens we became part of a wider reality. We may occupy a small blue-green planet falling through space, but we're not little, trivial people anymore: we're citizens of the universe with greater responsibilities.

In addition to the achievements of Gagarin, Alexei Leonov, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and the many other brave men and women who pushed the boundaries of human exploration, we should also take a moment to remember those we lost along the way.

This is your day, too, guys: in our hearts forever.



Soyuz 1 pilot: Vladimir Komarov

The crew of Soyuz 11: Vladislav Volkov, Georgy Dobrovolsky and Viktor Patsayev

The crew of Challenger: Ellison Onizuka, Michael J. Smith, Christa McAuliffe, Dick Scobee, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik and Ronald McNair

The crew of Columbia: David M. Brown, Rick D. Husband, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, William C. McCool and Ilan Ramon

Brexit: Article 50 in action

Okay, bit of a cheap shot. Historic stuff, though. In related news, here's an exclusive photograph of Theresa May engaged in breathless, uncompromising negotiation with President Tusk.

To listen in, calls cost £1.50 a minute and will appear on your telephone bill.