Stuart Maconie and Pete Paphides in Conversation with Jo Bell

This week’s episode brings together 2 of the UK’s most established broadcasters and journalists, Stuart Maconie and Pete
Paphides to discuss their latest books, The Nanny State Made Me and Broken Greek. In conversation with writer and poet Jo Bell, they discuss the personal and cultural importance of music, their deep connection to the Midlands and what it is like to have a life so different to that of your parents.

The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast brings writers and readers together to discuss some of 2020’s best books. Each Thursday across the next few months we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions
about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. Join us each week for exciting and inspiring conversations with new, and familiar, writers from the Midlands and beyond.

Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/

Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest

Credits

Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Guest Curator: Kit de Waal
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands

TRANSCRIPT

Birmingham Lit Fest presents…podcast
Episode 1: Stuart Maconie and Pete Paphides
Kit de Waal
Welcome to episode 1 of the Birmingham Lit Fest presents…podcast. I’m Kit de Waal, writer and Guest
Curator of this year’s podcast. This week’s episode brings together in conversation 2 of the UK’s most
established broadcasters and journalists, Stuart Maconie and Pete Paphides to discuss their latest books,
The Nanny State Made Me and Broken Greek. In conversation with writer and poet Jo Bell, they discuss the
personal and cultural importance of music, their deep connection to the Midlands, redefining our
understanding of the ‘Nanny State’ and what it is to have a life so different to that of your parents.

Shantel Edwards
This episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest presents… podcast is brought to you in partnership with Dains
Accounting. Visit their website for more information about their services at www.dains.com.

Jo Bell
Hello, and welcome to Birmingham Literature Festival. You'll be used to recordings by now from all kinds of
different places, so if you hear the slight creaking of timbers, that's because my part of this podcast is being
recorded on a boat. I'm Jo Bell, I'm a poet who has often been a guest of this festival. And today I'm
speaking to two men whose recent books have a lot in common. Pete Paphides' Broken Greek and Stuart
Maconie's The Nanny State Made Me are both funny, they're thoughtful, they're what you might call lyric
histories telling the story of a personal life and looking at a larger world through the rear-view mirror.
Stuart Maconie's book looks at the impact of the welfare state through its framing of his own life. And Pete
Paphides shows us what it was like to grow up in Birmingham during the 70s and 80s as a secondgeneration Greek through the records that saw him through childhood and adolescence. So hello, both
where are you today? Stuart, where are you?

Stuart Maconie
Hi, Jo. I'm in a almost completely deserted BBC MediaCity studio. I've been incredibly the … we were
designated my show and Lauren Laverne's show on [Radio] 6 Music were designated 'key workers' at the
beginning of this, at the beginning of this crisis. And so I've been working, I've been coming here every
weekend and although there's been a slight increase in busyness, pretty much still … It's slightly weird. So
I'm in a deserted studio in Salford at the moment.

Jo Bell
Wow, wow! Thanks. Where are you Pete?

Pete Paphides
I'm – slightly less romantically – I'm in the shed at the bottom of the garden. I've sort of commandeered,
which is my daughter's office usually, but I've, I've ousted her. And so me and the dog are just sitting here.
But I do like … Stuart situation sounds quite romantic. I quite like being in radio studios when they're mostly
empty. They have, there's a certain kind of romance about it, which I dare say, probably wore off quite a
long time ago.

Stuart Maconie
No, it is. I do … You're right, you're absolutely right. There is a strange kind of feeling. It's like radio studios
in the middle of the night, people who do those kind of shows where you go, “Hi, it's coming up to twenty
to 4 a.m.” you know, that kind of thing. It's, it is quite romantic. Yeah, but, and I can see Winter Hill from
my window. So it's all quite nice,

Jo Bell
Fantastic. Ian Macmillan told me once that he had been at Radio 4 when the shipping forecast was on and
how he imagined that the whole station was just switched off like a light switch at the end, and he said,
“And it was just like that; it was just like that – they finished the shipping forecast and and then they turned
it off Radio 4 went to bed”.

Stuart Maconie
My favourite entry in the BBC Duty log, which used to be … it's probably all online now. It used to be when
people called up with complaints and stuff, they used to put it in what was called the Duty log. My favourite
complaint was, “Shipping forecast too fast”.

Jo Bell
It's important. I mean, you are, you're all doing important work for the nation. And no one is perhaps more
important than they should be focused, especially to those of us who have no real idea what it means. So
we're here today to celebrate your two books, which I've re-read and enjoyed, and I've listened to Pete's as
well as the Book of the Week on Radio 4. And it strikes me how much they've got in common and, of
course, how separate they are. So what I'd like to do is to hear an extract first from Stuart's book, and a
couple of questions for Stuart, and then we'll repeat that process with Pete, and then we'll bring you both
into a conversation together.

So I'm going to introduce Stuart first. For those of you who don't know him, which can't be many of you,
Stuart Maconie is a music journalist, a broadcaster, and author of broad-ranging social histories, which
often start from pop culture but they go much deeper; they go much wider. And in the words of the Daily
Mail – Stuart Maconie, do you want to hear this, Stuart, what the Daily Mail said about you–

Stuart Maconie
Yes, please. What did they say?

Jo Bell
They said you are “a lefty – but he's not one of those hectoring ideologues who stands astride social media
bellowing at people”. So Stuart, could you please bellow or otherwise a few words from your book, The
Nanny State Made Me?

Stuart Maconie
Okay, this is from the very short – this is the opening page or two – it's from the very short prologue, that
sort of scene setting.
“London's skyline bristles with towers old and new, bloody and sleek, monuments to kings and to
commerce, from the giants of the City's swampy money jungle, to the high-rise canyons of Camden, visitor
and native steers and orients by them, lifting your eyes from your book or your phone or your feet as the
train exhales into Euston as the bus crests Muswell Hill, as you jostle through the West End. Whenever I
pace the narrow lanes of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, I look up, fly favourite, a Grade II-listed building, more
human and generous than the monstrosities of Canary Wharf. It's had many names, and many lovers. It
looms over works by ...