You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.

I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.

I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,

relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.

So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,

and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.

So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

At one point in his new book, Colin Toybean describes what drives writers to write novels.

The dramatic revelation of matters that are hidden and dark and difficult.

But there's plenty that's dark and difficult to be found too in the essays collected in a guest at the feast. What is it

that's impelled him to explore these subjects? He joins me now down the line from Dublin in order to

help us find out. Colin, welcome to open book. Thank you. So the book covers everything from art and religion to sexuality and politics, but it begins

with an, I think, extraordinary account of your experience of cancer in 2018.

Would you read to us from that essay?

When the doctor arrived, I worried at first that I had started the joke too quickly.

It was about Randolph Churchill having a tumour removed

and a tumour turning out to be benign and Evelyn Waugh saying that they had removed the only

part of Randolph that wasn't malignant. The doctor laughed. He seemed like a good-humoured guy.

He checked that I would be able to inject myself in the

stomach every night with some blood-thinning agent. He told me not to take any long-haul flights

for the moment. He suggested I see him before Christmas, and then he told me, I could go home.

...