The Wycliffe Companion

Radio Interviews - Transcripts

3.  24 May 1992

WJB on Radio Cornwall (Review of Sunday papers)

Wycliffe and the Dead Flautist just published in paperback this week, Wycliffe and the Last Rites in hardback.

I: Where do you get the ideas? Become very complicated.
WJB: Well they have to do I think, it’s a demand of the people who read them. They don’t like the plots to be too simplistic. But it is very difficult to weave a complex plot and it doesn’t, as far as I’m concerned at any rate, amount to thinking it all out in advance. We have at home what my wife and I call the Page 38 Syndrome, when you’ve written 38 pages and you wonder where the devil you are going from there, and that’s when the real crunch comes and you start to really work out a systematic plot. You can’t afford to have too many loose ends after that.

I: But do you know the end when you start at the beginning.
WJB: Yes indeed, certainly by the time you get to, as I say page 38, you’ve made a decision, and then of course it involves modifying the characters you’ve created, because you can’t have a very pleasant sort of bloke turning out to be the culprit. You do have to do a constant reshuffle, and the word processor is a godsend.

I What is Wycliffe like. Slightly more like Morse than the Flying Squad type detectives, isn’t he.
WJB: He’s certainly not …

I: He’s methodical, isn’t he?
WJB: Not brillliant, but thoughtful and certainly gentle and he has aspects of his character which are not apparent in many policemen. He reads a great deal, he’s very keen on biographies, and he says that he reads biographies in order to make himself feel that he’s as it were working along the grain of the world, that he’s in line with people. He hates to feel out on a limb. When he finds that other people in biographies have the same problems as he has, he feels reassured then, this gives him a little bit of confidence.

I And Wycliffe is a family man as well.
WJB He has got twins, a daughter and a son. The son is working in Kenya, and he and his wife have just had a baby. The girl in the latest book is living with her boss, she’s a PA for an industrialist and she’s living with him, and she has marital problems, which Wycliffe doesn’t approve of.

I: Do you feel that Wycliffe is living round at your place in Holywell Bay, do you feel he’s part of you?
WJB: He’s become part of me. Eighteen Wycliffe books and you’re bound to feel that you share something with him, and I suppose some aspects of his character are mine,but I don’t think that most people who know me and have read Wycliffe would identify us by any means.

I: You were a teacher. Where have you got your insight into police procedures etc.
WJB: You only need a certain amount, but I wouldn’t for one moment claim that my accounts of police procedure are accurate. For one thing it would be extremely boring I think if they were. I have talked to two or three policemen about this, and their reaction has been, ‘Well, if you work in CID, anything goes anyway, you can’t go wrong. What you want to do is listen to The Bill, and that’s the way you behave next day’. It seemed rather good advice.

I: What Sunday papers do you normally take in your house?
WJB: We take the Express and the Sunday Times.

I Start with Sunday Times. What’s taken your attention in that paper?
WJB: Well Prince Charles warning about drought. It’s something which has been concerning most people, I think. This problem of drought seems to me to be one which has been created largely by the way in which we waste water, but certainly the climate also seems to be changing. Our use of water is altogether too lavish. You only have to stand and watch a dishwasher or washing machine, the way in which we flush our toilets and so on seems to me to be extremely wasteful.

(I refer to Prince Charles’ goings-on on the Isles of Scilly)
WJB: I was a bit shocked by that. It seemed to me quite unjustifiable interference with people’s liberties that their cameras should be taken. This is the confiscation of trippers’ cameras on Tresco during the Prince and Princess Diana’s visit. Apparently as they landed at Tresco their cameras were taken from them, and not returned until they were leaving. According to the Mail on Sunday this was due to instructions from the Prince. One wonders on what authority he could do this, but I suppose being a private island it was possible. Whether it was wise or not seems very much in question. I can understand him getting fed up with it, but of course it’s a part of the job. Publicity is his lifeblood. He must be prepared to put up with it, I think. We pay his wages.

WJB I was interested in an article on the abolition of the LEAs, which the Sunday Express seems to think is imminent. The handing over of the control of schools to the schools themselves. I remember as a very young child going to school in Falmouth and the schools were controlled by the local council, and we were told that if the county council took over you know these large organisations, we wouldn’t be anything like as well off, and we shouldn’t be able to have books, we shouldn’t be able to have exercise books, and all this sort of thing, and we seem to be getting back now to an even more restricted form of control. I’m not sure I would welcome it. I think a certain amount of bureaucracy is necessary in order to distance the control from the actual application of the policies.

I You don’t think it’s a good idea for headmasters to have the money in their pocket to spend how they see fit?
WJB: No, I, quite frankly I think it’s a backdoor method of restoring the grammar schools. Restoring the grammar schools would be in my opinion a jolly good thing, but I would like to see it done in an honest and straightforward way.

WJB: Surprising article in the Observer about traveling on the Looe line. I’m not a railway enthusiast but I like traveling by train. I much prefer it to driving.

WJB: I like the Spring mostly, when you have got the best of both worlds, reasonable weather as a rule and reasonably lonely countryside, not too many people about.

I: Wycliffe hasn’t appeared on television yet. [The pilot was broad-cast on 7th August 1993, a year and more after this interview.] Have you not have any approaches?
WJB: Well yes, there is a possibility. One of the TV companies has bought an option on all the Wycliffe books, which they will hold for two years. But of course that doesn’t guarantee that he will ever reach the screen, but at least it’s a move in the right direction as far as I’m concerned. I would enjoy having him on television because you sell more books.

I: What about the idea that they may actually change your character?
WJB: I would be disappointed, but that’s something one has to deal with. They have to sell their product, the same as I do.

WJB: Wycliffe and the Last Rites. The story is based on the River Tresillian, in fact I put a rather larger village in place of St Clement, and called in Moresk, which incidentally is the old name of ….(interrupted)
The next one is based on the Hayle, St Ives area. The Body in the Dunes or something of that sort it will turn out to be.