Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps

that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream

van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

He came to fame, exploring and celebrating a metropolitan England very different from Mrs Thatcher's.

Yet his latest work is set in a country house, and he now speaks warmly of Kingsley Amis.

He's been a fierce opponent of religion, but uses its language to defend the value of literature,

is known for his fascination with sexual

transgression, but seems held in thrall most powerfully by the father-son relationship.

My guest in extended conversation this evening is Hanif Kareishi, novelist, screenwriter and

dramatist, who turns 60 this year.

His screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette, directed by Stephen Frears, won him an Oscar nomination,

and his novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, won the Whitbread Prize for first novel.

What marks both is his ability to mix comic and incisive social commentary in his exploration of a London life characterised by shifting identities, both sexual and racial.

Since those early successors, he's produced a stream of work, fictional and non-fictional,

often found himself in public scrapes, whether defending Salman Rushdie are being attacked by his family for misrepresenting them, and especially his father.

His latest two works reflect on the values of the 1960s and 70s in the New World Order.

Le Weekend is a film which involves an older married couple who go to Paris, the scene of the 1960s revolts, a visit which tests their relationship.

His new novel, The Last Word, sent us on two men, one old, one young.

Mamun, a famous Indian novelist, who reviewers of notice, seems to have more than a

passing resemblance to V.S. Nypole, an irascible man who loves to offend liberal sensibilities.

And Harry, son of a psychiatrist who aims to be Mamoon's biographer. Set largely Mamoon's

country house, there's also Harry's drunken

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