Holly Walsh on BS Johnson

Great Lives

BBC

History, Documentary, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

BS Johnson was born in Hammersmith in 1933. A wartime evacuee, he never quite shook a sense of dislocation for the rest of his life. Holly's favourite book, she calls it the gateway drug to his work, is Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry. It's the tale of a disaffected accountant who applies the principles of double-entry book keeping to his own life; any perceived slight permits him to repay the same on somebody else. These stretch from minor acts of personal revenge to poisoning London's water and blowing up the House of Commons. "The things I find attractive about him are the things I'm a little bit scared of. His work is so raw - it's so different to how I feel." Holly Walsh Joining Holly and Matthew Parris is the novelist Jonathan Coe, author of The Rotter's Club and Like a Fiery Elephant, an award-winning biography of BS Johnson's life. The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ever wondered what the world's wealthiest people did to get so ridiculously rich?
0:05.5	Our podcast Good Bad Billionaire takes one billionaire at a time and explains exactly how they made their money.
0:11.9	And then we decide if they are actually good, bad or just plain wealthy.
0:15.5	So if you want to know if Rihanna is as much of a bad guy as she claims,
0:19.2	or what Jeff Bezos really did to become the first person in history to pocket a hundred billion dollars,
0:24.6	listen to Good Bad Billionaire with me, Simon Jack, and me, Zingsing.
0:28.5	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:32.4	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:35.9	BS Johnson is not Boris Johnson.
0:39.7	BSJ was an experimental novelist and poet who sometimes made short films.
0:45.4	He was hefty like the other Johnson, but his initial stood for Brian Stanley.
0:51.0	Something both men shared was a high opinion of their own abilities.
0:55.1	An early press release about BS Johnson described him as
0:58.7	the most important young English novelist now writing.
1:02.4	BS Johnson wrote that press release himself.
1:05.1	Fear not, he's fascinating.
1:06.9	And we have a crack team here to tell us more,
1:09.4	beginning with Holly Walsh, comedian, BAFTA winner, and now a director too.
1:14.7	Holly, tell us more about this man and why you're proposing him today.
1:19.0	I think he is a brilliant writer and I have loved his books,
1:24.4	but I also think he's deeply problematic and quite confusing.
1:29.3	And I find that very attractive and endearing about anyone in a creative sense.
	...

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