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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator,

and this week I'm very pleased to be joined by the writer Benjamin Myers,

whose new book is Jesus Christ Kinski, which is, it's, well, I should read what the front of the proof says. It's a novel about a film, about a performance about Jesus.

Ben, welcome. Can you tell me where the kind of brainworm that produced this book started for you?

Hi, Sam. Thanks for having me.

Well, I guess it goes back to, first of all, a fascination with Klaus Kinski, the actor, who the book is about.

And I should stress it's a novel that's not a biography in case anyone is expecting a 600-page, highly detailed, you know, tomb about his life.

For those who don't know, he was considered one of Germany's greatest actors or one of the great actors of the 20th century.

But he was also considered one of the worst people to have...

Well, is it fair to say he's one of the worst people who've ever lived?

He was certainly a disagreeable person who treated everyone in his life badly.

So I was fascinated with him and the acting roles that I saw growing up.

I think I first saw him maybe in some of the spaghetti western films where he really

stood out because he was this teutonic, very odd-looking guy, but with almost white, blonde,

white hair, which always stuck out in Western films. And I also thought, who was that guy?

...