Love of books a great way to bring festival to a close

Comedians and authors Josie Long and Robin Ince brought more than 150 people out to the Georgian Room at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery for two events showing casing their love of writing and of reading.

The evening started with Josie Long on stage as interviewee and Robin Ince as host to talk about Josie's book "Because I don’t know what you mean and what you don’t", a collection of short stories around a range of subjects and characters.

The collection of stories paints a life in miniature and offers an escape chute from the catastrophes of modern life, with stories ranging from teenagers believing they're witches, to a woman defacing a local billboard and a WhatsApp group chat around eggs.

The two friends and colleagues brought a warm and comfortable feeling to the room as they chatted about Josie's first favourite writers, with Josie saying she loved horror and also bought the graphic novel Tank Girl thinking it as a comic book.

She also spoke of how she had looked at writing a book for years, but always struggled to get things done, something which finally began to make sense to her when she was diagnosed with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in lockdown.

She said the diagnosis had explained a lot for her, as it did for Robin Ince, who said that the thought process for someone with ADHD can be to write the start for one thing and the ending for another.

Josie spoke about the process for writing the book, which came from hating life renting in London and saw her began fully working on the book during the Covid-19 pandemic, having found that she wasn't able to rely on gigging as a comedian to keep her mind active.

The discussion around the book looked at the sense of character and how they could feel alive from the first line, its setting in a future a year from now and the dystopian feeling of the stories and how she felt pleasure from the first line and last line and how she could choose moments.

It was clear, listening to Josie, how much she has enjoyed writing this book, how it helped her to evolve her style, but she pointed out that anyone who expected 16 funny stories, due to her being a comedian, should check those expectations as some of the stories could get a bit dark.

Overall though, the sense of achievement was there for Josie, being the first person in her family to write a book and being able to tell her five-year-old daughter that she can write a book one day, while you could also tell how pleased Robin was that his friend had followed through on her plan and written something she was proud of.

Having taken on hosting duties, Robin then returned to the stage to perform as a solo performer for the first time in five years in Wolverhampton with his Edinburgh Festival show "Weapons of Empathy".

Robin Ince is a bibliophile, someone who loves books and loves collecting them, with his house full of books and, at the festival, at least three bags full of different types of books, all of which formed props and pieces for 50 minutes of blistering fast and hilariously funny comedy.

Starting off with his love of the literature festival and the West Midlands arts scene in general, Robin put on a show that was breathless, fast-paced and went off on more tangents than it was possible to keep up with.

Among the tangents were how a Daily Telegraph writer had accused the BBC of not having enough indigenous programming, only for a cursory read of the Radio Times to show just how much Britishness there was on the network, then a wonderfully funny story about his dad and his reading habits, talking about his curiosity of the world.

There were other tales of octogenarian women telling him how they discovered themselves in Tiverton and how Brian Cox persuaded him to buy a Kindle, only for it to end up in the washing machine (with a very funny Brian Cox impersonation thrown in).

At the centre of it all, however, is his love for books and for reading, saying how much he finds excitement in books and how he called them weapons of empathy for the messages they provided.

He detailed some of his favourite books and showed them off to the audience, including one he bought in Cornwall called "The fear of the Lord" colouring book, a story and prop which brought the house down with laughter.

There were serious points within the humour, talking about how people had complained of books not being for them, while some people also complained that there weren't enough books for men or white people, a point Robin said was a sign that someone hadn't made it to a book shop recently as they would see the shelves full of both.

Eventually, he made it to the poem he had been touting throughout the show, the show title "Weapons of Empathy", which helped bring a fun and entertaining evening to a close.

Josie Long's book "Because I don’t know what you mean and what you don’t" is available to buy at waterstones.com/book/because-i-dont-know-what-you-mean-and-what-you-dont/josie-long/9781838856083