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, 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 is some level of genius. It also helps

it. 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. Welcome. Not many

people have sent the queen parachuting out of a helicopter.

Even fewer people have grown a massive primeval forest all across Trafalgar Square.

And really very few indeed have given two young boys 200 million odd quid and told them they need to spend it in the next 10 days.

But my guest today has done all of those things and more on screen because he is Frank

Cottrell Boyce. Now Frank is a screenwriter, a novelist and a children's author, but in some ways

none of that really expresses the range of what he's added to our national life, imagining it

in new and creative ways. He was the chief writer for the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony with Danny Boyle.

He's scripted movies in a decades-long collaboration with Michael Winterbottom,

from the heartbreaking Hillary and Jackie about the cellist Jacqueline Dupre

to the Puckish Millions.

He's written plays for radio,

and he's even fulfilled the greatest

wish of any of us aged over 40 or under 20. He's written an episode of Doctor Who. And on top of all

of that, in June 2012, he became the UK's first ever professor of reading. So culture, and our

shared culture, popular, high, serious, even silly,

is at the heart of what Frank does. At a time of a new national era of change, the former arts

minister, Ed Vasey, said a couple of weeks ago that it was time for culture to bring our nation

together. And I suppose we have to time for culture to bring our nation together.

And I suppose we have to ask if culture can bring us together where politics has exposed various fault lines. Well, we'll find out very shortly. So would you please give a very big welcome

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