The Stand-Up Theologian
James Cary, BBC comedy writer, author and touring stand-up theologian is on a never-ending quest to understand comedy, the Bible, culture and the church.
The Stand-Up Theologian
Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?
James Cary talks to comedian Andy Kind, author of a new book, The Wayfarer, a laugh-out-loud memoir about his third attempt to walk the Pennine Way. They also talks about the state of stand-up, the impact of the pandemic and the line - or salty path - between truth and storytelling.
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Welcome to the Stand Up Theologian podcast with me, James Carey. I am the Stand Up Theologian. My guest today is Andy Kind. Eventually we end up talking about Job, and I'd rather enjoy this bit.
SPEAKER_02:Job always surprises me with Job when when people use him as an example of redemption. They say, oh God gave him back so much more. Well no, his family was still dead, you know, like he didn't get it all back. What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_01:We are talking about Andy Kine's new book called The Wayfarer.
SPEAKER_02:Somebody said to me, and I think they meant it as a as a compliment. I think it was one of the reviews for The Wayfarer. Let me try and remember what it was. It was something like he's not the best comedian, and he's not the best writer, but he's funnier than all the writers better than him, and and he's a better writer than all the funnier comedians.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, I've almost run out of hands to be backhandedly complimented, but it's like that's it's like pick the bones out of that. Whoa! Yeah. I think you're gonna like this one. Here we go. So Andy Kind is kindly joining me now, and uh he's written a travel book called The Wayfarer Through the Pain Towards Redemption along the Pennine Way. Andy, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, James.
SPEAKER_02:So nice to be uh zooming with you again. It's been a few years post-pandemic this time.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, indeed, yes. And you've written a book, and I would love to know why you have written a travelogue walking book. Are there travelogue walking books that you've I mean, obviously you wanted to go for this walk that comes across in the book that this wasn't just a stunt, but are there books that have influenced you in terms of what you were going for?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, my favourite book of all time is Three Men in a Boat by Jerome Say Jerome. Ah magnificent choice. I mean, I'm largely I'm largely influenced by those Victorian and I suppose Edwardian to a degree, um, writers, the British humorists, uh Jerome, Sarkey, War, Woodhouse. These are my crew, basically. And um these are my these are my church fathers. Yes, yes, indeed. In terms of writing, they're my Augustine. Yeah, yeah. I remember reading Three Men in a Boat. I've read it, I've only probably read it twice, actually, but I love it so much, partly because it's so it's much funnier than you think the Victorians were.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and thank you for saying Victorian, because it is late Victorian, yeah, it's not Edwardian, and it's really easy to think this is PG Woodhouse contemporary, um, who also goes back further than you think and just lived a comically long time. Yeah, we're talking late Victorians, and so actually these guys would have grown up and been grumpy old men in P. G. Woodhouse novels. Yeah, but here they are tearing up and down a river causing mayhem.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, um, I think it's it's what 1888 or 1886 or something, it's around that time. Yeah, because he did Diary of a Pilgrimage, I think 1891. Yeah, um, but anyway, I love it so much, partly because it's much funnier than you think it should be, and second of all, because it's not about anything, it isn't it isn't it isn't about anything. Yes, um, it's you know uh nominally about a river cruise. Yeah, but the way that he um will take deliberate meandering uh rivulets to uh topics that no one cares about that are not relevant to us now, and yet it's one of the most hilarious and compelling um books that I've ever read. And and so I I love him. He's my hero. He's so so loosh, so laconic, so grumpy. Yeah, and and that's not necessarily how I am, but what I try to be, I try to be incredibly grumpy.
SPEAKER_01:He also does that brilliant thing where he's able to uh speak in his own voice, but also be the butt of the joke because you realize that he is slightly grumpier than he thinks, he is slightly lacking self-awareness that what he says and who he is are not quite aligned. It's it's a very hard trick to pull off in the first person, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and and I just think what I love about that whole um epoch of writing was that they had that wonderful pretentiousness and and yet they were completely inept, the humour writers, anyway. So it's that lovely, that lovely balance of of being uh belligerent and snobbish and also completely inept.
SPEAKER_01:It also starts the book starts with a wonderful joke. It's called Three Men in a Boat. First words, there were four of us. Yeah, it's just yeah, I mean, straight out of the gate. It's just incredible, absolutely incredible, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:And then the opening passage is about him being in the library, yes, working out which diseases he has and deciding he has them all, yes, uh, apart from housemates knee. Yes, and you just think you you get you just think, okay, he's already earned the right for me to finish uh reading this book. So um, yeah, I I wanted to do that. I read that, I think, for the first time during the pandemic, and then within a year of that, had walked the Pennine way, which is something I'd always wanted to do, but I but I think when I read Three Men in a Boat, I thought, oh, I could see that I could walk the Pennine way and try and write something like this. So although the the Wayfarer, the book, is influenced by lots of writers and lots of things and lots of real life events, you could boil it down to saying this this is Andy Kine's attempt to write three men in a boat for the 21st century.
SPEAKER_01:Excellent. We can talk a bit about the fact that your book doesn't quite have that contrived ending that you sometimes get where the whole thing has been slightly engineered and you can kind of see it coming from a mile away. Because three men in a boat, and this is not a comment on your book, but three men in the boat is a little bit of a bag of bits and is probably less than the sum total of the parts. Yeah. And when I I read it aloud, I think to my kids as well, I think it does slightly tail off as they run out of steam. But I mean, the parts are so glorious. I mean, the pineapple chunks alone might be one of the finest sequences written in the English language. Um and so, you know, the cheese as well that uh he ends up clearing railway carriages with his uh his cheeses.
SPEAKER_02:And where he where he says, Um, I was looking for somebody who could be easily frightened into helping me.
SPEAKER_01:It's so wonderful, it's such a wonderful book. So, yeah, so you've you've gone down that route, you've not done the thing, and it you must have been tempted at various points because, let's be honest, you you are a working comedian and you have been so for many years. There's quite a common trick amongst comedians to basically contrive a life experience so that you've got an Edinburgh show.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And if comedians amongst themselves, if one of them has some kind of relatively significant personal tragedy or trauma, other comedians will go, Oh, you're so lucky, that's your Edinburgh show sorted. Yeah, which is which is the dark world in which comedians operate, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it it really is. Whilst there was definitely life events I wanted to talk about, I don't I don't think as a stand-up anymore. And that's something that's become clear to me in the last few years. I've done stand-up for 20 years, but I'm I'm also a uh a sort of 40, well, I'm not sort of, I am a 44-year-old father of two born-again Christian. And so I um I don't I don't think in the same way that the 24-year-old uh fresh out of university uh starting on the comedy circuit did.
SPEAKER_01:I don't they have to be the funniest person in the room. It's all of it's complete identity stuff, isn't it? It can really wrap you up and uh and do a number on you, can't it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and whereas now I I try to be, and I'm not sure that I always succeed at this, if ever, but try to be the most gentlemanly person in in the room, the most gracious person in the room, because and part of that is age, and I think you know, if if you if you don't if you don't become a complete sociopath, most people get to their 40s and think, actually, I'm probably not quite who I thought I was going to be, probably haven't achieved what I thought I was going to. Um, what I've got left is my character. So let's let's focus on what's focus on that. But I mean, like you, I mean, I have had moderate limited partial success.
SPEAKER_01:Um the the the fact Can I put that on my posters? Moderate limited come and see James Carey, moderate limited partial success. Yeah, it's true, it is true. I've I wanted to write only Falls and Horses, and I've not done that. You know, I've been involved in Miranda, that did well, but my name is not top of the bill. It's also sometimes on the front, sometimes on the back, and on the third series, not there at all. Yeah, there's a story there, which one day I shall tell.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and with you know, Bluestone, you had what was it, two ep two series of that with a Christmas special?
SPEAKER_01:Three series, and also we we might have gone big because we were scheduled to go on after Top Gear at one point, where we might have really found our audience. That was the time that uh Jeremy Clarkson decided to behave badly, the episode was pulled. We then went on after an episode of something with Simon Reeve, the travel guy. Yeah, and that's not our audience, and so there we go. My fate turned one way and my career went the other.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, and and and that happens, and I think it does, and I think actually there's there's nothing there's nothing wrong with the phrase jobbing comedian or jobbing writer. Yeah, if writing is your job, you have done incredibly well, yeah, and and way better than most people who want to be writers can do. Absolutely yeah, give thanks, yeah. Yeah, no, and uh I mean I'm a huge fan of you, as you know, and I I even read your underground stuff.
SPEAKER_01:So um uh yeah, I must I must find out what that is. Do I write poems on the underground? Is that what under a pseudonym?
SPEAKER_02:Uh pretentious poetry, it's all a joke, really. Yeah, but I I think when going back to what you said about, you know, oh you found your Edinburgh shield. I think when it comes to books, yeah, you can only really write for three reasons. You you write because there's something you need to say, yeah. You write because you're trying to make money. Yeah, easily the worst reason to write. Yeah, but you but often the most common reason, yeah. And or you write because you're trying to leave legacy. And for me, I mean the wayfarer is all three. There's been other things I've written that were just about legacy or or or just about sort of splurging for the thing.
SPEAKER_01:You had to write it, you had to write it, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Like coughing up bile almost, um, or coughing up phlegm. You've you've you've got to get it out. Yeah, but the wayfarer is all three, but uh, but I do think that if for a lot of a lot of books written by comedians, they are quite speculative. They if if you're writing just to make money, I think that's where you get the the caper idea. The oh, what if I only ate carrots for a year? Or what what if I took a fridge and went around this country, or whatever. Yes, that's right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Good book, Round Island with a fridge, but arbitrary. That's the frustration, isn't it? These things are often arbitrary, they don't really say anything.
SPEAKER_02:I I think you can start a book because it's funny. I don't think you can finish a book because it's funny. Right. I think it I think it has to be something else. I knew when I was writing The Wayfarer, I knew two things. I knew that I had an ending that was pathetic in the sense that it had pathos, and I and I knew that I know how to write funny things on a on a page.
SPEAKER_01:You definitely do, definitely do. You are I've I've always said this. You're you're a very fine stand-up comedian, but a lot of standard comedians can't write, and you are an excellent writer.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. Well, I I somebody said to me, and I think they meant it as a as a compliment. I think it was one of the reviews for The Wayfarer, and it's it's at least partially true. Let me try and remember what it was. It was something like he's not the best comedian, and he's not the best writer, but he's funnier than all the writers, better than him, and and he's a better writer than all the funnier comedians.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, I've almost run out of hands to be backhandedly complimented by it's like that's it's so pick the bones out of that. Whoa!
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but so but that's that's the niche I inhabit. Um that's an amazing review, yeah. Although maybe David Badil would have something to say about it, because I think you know that he's a bit a comedian who's a better writer than uh than I am. But yeah, certainly I think that most that most stand-ups can't couldn't have written The Wayfarer, yeah, and uh certainly most most writers uh wouldn't have been able to make it that funny. So maybe that's the niche, but again, it's all it's all it's all speculative, it's all hot air until it actually lands in the right hands. Because as you know, it doesn't matter how good a book is if it doesn't find its market, yeah. Usually via a sort of it needs at least one king maker, doesn't it? It's like the Earl of Warwick, it needs a kingmaker. Yeah um books can spread via word of mouth, but these days it word of mouth, a friend telling a friend telling a friend telling a friend, that doesn't get you the sales that that you want.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, unless one of that unless that friend's friend's friend is a significant writer in your field who then just goes, Oh, you should totally read this, you know.
SPEAKER_02:And then you've got then you've got your kingmaker. Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it is hard not to be competitive, isn't it? And I think I hadn't planned on talking about this, but let's talk about it. I just ran a recently a session on um you've had an idea for a book uh at a Christian festival at the Keswick Convention. Yeah. And you know, it is really hard not to want the book to be successful or delude yourself about the what the real reason for the book is. And actually, you have to write the book because you want to write a book, you have to write the book because you sort of want to get better at writing. There's a whole load of other reasons, but the moment you get into I want to write a better book than this other book or this other thing or whatever, you know, that way madness lies. And that stand-up comedian world, especially where there are three or four on a bill, that is. I mean, I've never done so. I've I've done a lot of performing in the last few years, but it's just me on the bill, you know, I'm the turn. Um, but you've done plenty of occasions when there's three, four people on the bill, and it is quite hard at that point not to be a bit competitive, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it absolutely is, and I don't really, I don't really like it anymore. It can be quite nerve-wracking. I also I also think on the on the comedy circuit that it's reached a stage where everybody's very good and everybody's exactly the same in club in club comedy. The overall standard is higher than it sort of, yeah, the sort of mean standard is is higher than it's ever been, but uh but the variety is very low. Right. And and yeah, I mean it's the good thing about gigging with other people, there is something very special about gigging with people who you gigged with 10-15 years ago and you're all still going, um, you've survived, and you're still sort of making a living, all of you, and that's really precious. So to to gig with yeah uh old hands, and I would probably be seen as a fairly old hand now after 20 years, which doesn't seem fair or reasonable, but but it is nevertheless the case. But I I think um certainly at the lower levels, it's the most competitive it's ever been, and and the gigs aren't any any any better. Yeah, and I can't think that there must be many people certainly on the circuit just making a living from doing comedy, yeah, because the fees have not gone up at all in 20 years.
SPEAKER_01:Even dairy farming's not that bad, you know. I'm the son of a dairy farmer, and milk prices are slightly higher than they were 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I do stand up at the moment, and like you when I do stand-up, I do tend to do my own solo shows now. Um, and I I do it still because I need the money. Yeah, but of the things I did, if I had enough money from the other things, I would stop doing stand-up straight away. Oh wow, okay. I'm done, I'm done with it really. I've said I've said the things that I wanted to say. Yeah, I've both achieved a lot more and far less than I thought I was going to. Right, okay. And like probably with with you, you know, if if you spoke to yourself 25 years ago and said, Oh, by the way, yeah, in 25 years, you'll have done this, this, and this, you'd think, wow. Yeah. And and then you'd say, Okay, so I must be X, Y, and Z. No, you're not X, Y, and Z. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you have done this. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You have done A, B, and C, but you're not X, Y, and Z. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, you're also dinging a bell in my head, which I uh there's a book by a guy called David Brooks, I think, um, called Road to Character. Uh, so uh he's an American writer, journalist, commentator, and um he wrote a book about how the intro is really good, and the rest of the book doesn't actually work because it doesn't back up, he doesn't they're meant to be examples that back up his premise and they don't actually do it. But his premise is essentially you spend the first half of your life trying to achieve things and build your CV. Halfway through that period, you realize my CV doesn't really matter very much. The thing that matters is what will people say at my eulogy? And they'll say, Was this person a good dad? Was this was this person there for me? Was this person a joy? Is there gonna be anyone there? You know, it or will people just turn up to your funeral just to check you're dead? Yeah, and so I think in your 40s you are realizing, oh, this isn't quite what I thought it was. And you you you sort of realize that success is a bit of an outlier, it's a nice to have, you get a bit of it, you maybe get a lot of it, it doesn't last, maybe it does, in which case you can't escape, and that brings its own challenges. So it seems like you've had that kind of sense of it's not what I do, it's the way I do it.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely, and my primary aim always with everything I'm doing career-wise, is to make enough money to keep being able to do it, yeah. And and to make sure that you know my daughters don't have to have bread and butter for every meal, and they've never yet had to have just bread and butter, so we must have done something right. But uh I think you do start to think about legacy, and legacy is character, but legacy is also what you leave behind for people to read at at a later date. And uh so it increasingly when I'm reading, when I'm writing something, I'm thinking in a in a hundred years in the same way that I'm reading Jerome K. Jerome and thinking, I'd love to meet this man. If you read his first work, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, you might not want to hang out with him actually, because he he does seem to have changed a little bit over the course of his uh writing, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. It actually at times is just a bit much, even for me. Yeah, but uh I can imagine that a lot of people, uh, if they tried to read that now, would have him cancelled in a second.
SPEAKER_01:He did have some political views as well, I think, because I read a biography of Joan K. Jerome and he was quite an interesting character, nearly kind of briefly homeless uh as well. Um and he was an actor, he wanted to be an actor, his family didn't support him. Uh, he was in a production which got cancelled, and when it got cancelled, he was like, Oh, what happens now? Yeah, and then eventually, because he was sort of fairly literate, he could get a low-pay paying clerk job.
SPEAKER_02:That's it.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, he properly grafted. I don't think he resented his success in the way that others do as well. I don't think he quite thought the three men on a boat was quite the albatross around his neck that some people might think if if you if you he wasn't exactly a one-hit wonder, but that is the thing that stood the test of time, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and and he he never recaptured that sort of popularity, but he it did mean that for the rest of his um career he was able to write. And um, he says in Diary of a Pilgrimage, Society has uh called me to be a writer, that's all I need to do. And I thought, yeah, that's a lovely place to be in. It's also a really prescient book, Diary of a Pilgrimage, because it's again 1890s, and he's he goes to Germany, and uh he I don't know if you've read this bit, but he said, the Germans are an interesting people, they seem to be loyal to a fault, and this will be fine for them. It's gen I'm paraphrasing, this is the message. This will be fine for them uh as long as they continue to be ruled by the right people. Wow. The problem for the Germans will come if somebody with malintent starts ruling over them. Holy moly! I know. So it's yeah, that's quite interesting. Yeah, prescient. I don't it's not meant as prophetic, but it's certainly prescient and we we've sort of gone around the houses a little bit. It's a podcast. It's a podcast. The Wayfarer is of all the books I've written, it's it's got the most of me in it. And certainly if I if I read um my first two books, which are over a decade old now, Stand Up and Deliver and the Gig Delusion, I probably wouldn't quite recognise myself as I am now. Yeah. And uh so it was at least good to write something that updated my uh my character CV. Yeah. No, very helpful.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, hope you're enjoying this episode. Not much to say this week other than I'm still touring the UK with my show, God the Bible and everything in 60 minutes. Go to jamescary.co.uk and you'll find where I am. And if I'm not near you, you could make it happen and I could be near you. Get in touch via the website. Also, don't forget there's a Facebook group for this podcast, and you could go and join the discussion about episodes there. I'll be honest, it's been a bit of a slow start, but you've got to start somewhere, and I'm just gonna give it a go because I kinda like Facebook. And lastly, why not help me spread the word on this show and share it with someone? Maybe say, oh, this episode was interesting and have a chat with them about it, and maybe we'll get some more listeners. Try that. Anyway, that's enough from me. Let's get back to the show. So you did this journey, you bit if because at the start you sort of say that there'd been a number of false starts to walking the Pennine Way, and it seems to me like this is something that you felt you needed to do before you were going to write a book about it. You didn't do the Pennine Way so you could write a book about it, did you?
SPEAKER_02:No, I walked the Pennine Way because I'd always wanted to do it, and we were still really in the pandemic. We there was at least a year to go of the pandemic. Um, and obviously in our industry, the pandemic lasted a bit longer because the work didn't really come back in the way that we were never unfurlowed. Um, so it was deep in the pandemic. It was 2021, early, uh late spring 2021, and just as things were opening up, and I thought I am I'm a bit cabin feverish, I need to do something, I need to get out, um, I need to start breathing in the air of life again. And also I turned I turned 40. Yeah, and I I thought, well, um, even if I'm being generous, I'm probably halfway halfway there now, halfway to halfway to glory at best. Yeah, and so uh what do I want to do with the second half? What do I want to say? And also, because although I did quite well with the HMRC grants, because I'd been honest on my self-assessments, I I also thought, I'm not sure that stand-up is coming back. I don't I don't know that it's coming back at all. Yeah, what am I going to do? And so the Wayfarer was lots of things, and it was it was very honest and it was very authentic, but also I am a self-employed um uh single father of two, and I I have things that I have to do in order to um keep doing things that I want to do. So it it wasn't it wasn't written cynically, no, but it was written tactically, of course.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yes, that's right. I mean, because there are loads of things you could do. I've got a great long list of projects. In fact, over here, the uh the the audience won't be able to see it because this is a podcast only, but I've just written a whole list of I must get around to doing these things, but I do need to work out which order in which I need to do them, and some of them are books that I can sell after gigs as well. One of them's a book I've technically already written, but haven't quite sort of gone over yet, and yeah, all these kind of other things. So you you know, you are and actually when I was writing TV scripts, I was doing all right, I didn't really have to worry about the order of things, but now I kind of do have to be thinking about these things properly, and it it kind of keeps you honest, really, doesn't it? It makes you not want to waste time just um pursuing idle pursuits. Although, having said that, those little idle pursuits can sometimes lead to things you hadn't expected. There's a bit of serendipity and just the the mucking about, yeah, but in a in a way it means that you just muck about slightly more intentionally, I think, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I I I th I certainly think that analysis paralysis comes in into play as well. Um, like yourself, I have six or seven ideas, and every time I read something new, I have another idea, and then I think, well, okay, and again, being totally honest, because I've done the Wayfarer and it's only been out six weeks and it's it's doing well and it's growing, and I think it might do really well. Yeah, I'm trying to enjoy that. So, and so I don't think there's anything that I have to write at the moment. I don't think there's anything I need to write, and I've got now four books that I can sell after gigs, so I don't need another product. But now I am thinking, okay, price of living still goes up. Yeah, my income continues to go up, but it's it may or may not be in line with the standard standard of living.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I am 44, I have no pension, I don't own a house. If I want to continue to do this, at some point, just realistically, at some point, I'm going to have to start really landing some blows financially. I'm really gonna have to start being more tactical, being more successful.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, note to self, be more successful.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, note to self, be more successful. So I do I I try not to be cynical, and I can't write cynically. I can't write to a market because I I I just never really I just get bored. But I do think, okay, is there something that you would really like to do that you also think might really might land? Yeah, that's sort of the game now.
SPEAKER_03:Uh I think. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:There's an excellent podcast called the Novel Marketing Podcast, which I highly recommend. It's about books rather than novels, and it's all about how to market books. And the greatest bit of wisdom from that is essentially write a book that people already want to read. Because quite often people just think, I'm going to write a book, right? How do I sell it? It's like, well, actually, maybe think about the kind of books that people like reading. So either genre, if you like a genre and you want to write in a genre, or if you have an audience who see you do a gig and you just think, what kind of book would they like to buy after they've just seen me be funny uh for an hour? So these are all wise things to do, but we're we're so hypersensitive to morality, to truth, to honesty that we sort of don't want to be ha have a hint of being cynical. Speaking of which, at the time of publication, you've timed your book wonderfully. I know for the revelations that another travel book about walking around the coast of England called The Salt Path was deemed to be well, have have a whiff of fraudulence about it, although nobody's quite knowing what, and it doesn't sound like the author's gonna give away anything and are sticking to their guns. And um so yeah, so yeah, I just thought it might be worth a little brief conversation. And I I I read a piece, an early piece in this debacle by Matthew Parris, who said one of his best-selling books, it was a travelogue of his going round South America, I think. And he said, I mean, it kind of happened like it did in the book, but people don't really want a grindingly truthful and honest account. They want a summary. I mean, clearly your book has all the hallmarks of a pretty honest account, and I think the skill of the comedian normally is to go towards the knobbly bit, the awkward conversation and the weird and dwell there. But I guess, you know, how do you how do you feel about how you shape a narrative that is passing itself off as being truth, truthful?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think it's a very uh good conversation. I think about this uh a lot. Um I I don't have a problem with uh reading a story that's written as true and it's not true. I don't have a problem with that. Uh because you have to suspend disbelief when you read a novel. No one's really reading a novel and thinking, oh well, I hope this really happened. And three men in a boat is fictional. Yeah, it's based on his honeymoon. He did he didn't do it with his friends. I hope his wife isn't Harris. Yeah, no, but he he um the boat trip along the Thames was on his honeymoon with his wife. Right. Uh at least one of the characters is completely invented, yeah, and the other and the other two are umalgams, I think, of two other people, aren't they? Yeah, yeah. Whereas with the Wayfarer, the people who witnessed this are still alive today. So uh so um yes, I I And may yet launch a civil action. Yeah, that's right. So a few names have been changed, yes, but um yeah, but most of the characters' names have haven't been changed. So uh I as I say towards the end of the book, I've taken some artistic license. Of course I have, yeah, because we Walking isn't that interesting. It's not that interesting. Um, yeah. I I probably knew a bit better than it seems I do in the book what was going to happen in the final day. I sort of knew that. And I did I like the fact about the book, because I'm a comedian, I like the fact that it's not a happy ending in the way that it looks like it might be. Yeah. Like you get you get to the point where you think, oh, this is gonna end really well. And it doesn't.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so I deliberately, I almost started with the last line. The last line, it won't give too much away, but the last line is for the second time that day, I began to cry. And I love that I did that because it sort of undercuts the the comic memoir idea. Uh it undercuts the sort of Deus Ex Mackinna happy ending, which I've not got a lot of time for. Yeah. I know I sound very post-modern, don't I, here? But uh not at all, no. I didn't want things to be tied up. It's largely a book about endurance, and actually, endurance doesn't s doesn't stop. You there's always new things to endure, and I'm sort of spiritually Christian but philosophically stoical, and and so those those two things philosophically halfway through Job. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. I I don't mind uh reading something that's not true. I suppose what people do mind is having the wall pulled over their eyes. So if it's a story, let pe say at the start this is a story. Um and I think the problem with the salt path, as I understand it, yeah, I think the thing they really have a problem with is that it there are suggestions that there was actually criminality at work. And if that's the case, well then yeah, we don't want to read something like that. Yeah, um, but I I don't think people have a problem with reading a good story which is not fully true. I don't think when you're reading a memoir you expect it to be wholly true. When I write, I always think, is this emotionally true? Yeah, is it uh am I are the symbols true? And most of most of the Wayfarer is literally true, and and the the part of the book which seems like it's the most invented, which is the chapter in Hebden Bridge, has not been embellished at all. Like that that happened stroke for stroke as it's as it's written. There obviously are bits that are uh symbolic, yeah. And we'll you'll probably want to talk about the parables in a second, but I'll give you an example. There's a bit on the final day in The Wayfarer where I come across this young lad who uh like me is carrying a mascot. He's not he doesn't exist. I put him in because the idea is that he's me, he's me from 20 years ago. So uh, but people don't need to know that. And actually, I think a couple of people have said, Did you make this up because he's supposed to be you? Yes, and I think that's fine. Yeah um, but every step I took on the Pennine way, I actually did take. The people who walked with me were real and again are still alive today. The reason for walking it was the reason that comes across, and and the the climax is as it was, and I didn't rip anyone off to write it, so or pass yourself off as having a medical condition which doctors find quite hard to believe, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so uh thereby giving false hope to fellow sufferers. Yeah, you can sort of tell normally if something's got a whiff of made-uppery about it, and actually, we found doing this Bluestone show that you've referred to, set uh in a Ford operating base in Afghanistan, we did a lot of military research, and actually, almost every single plot line is basically true or has been military checked as being believable. Again, most of those things wouldn't happen within the same 48-hour period, yeah, but some would. But also, you're not saying it's always like this. What you're saying is, well, this is a busy 48 hours, um, and so it's being presented in that way, and normally, as you say, the truth, the the strangest truth is bits are are are real, yeah. Sometimes you have to change them because no one would believe them. The most clear example of that I seem to remember in the movie A Bridge Too Far, I believe that the screenwriter had to change the military reality after a load of folks had stormed across a river during daylight, had absolutely been cut to pieces, it hadn't worked, and they basically had to regroup and do it again. And they said, if we show that, people will go, No, this movie is not believable, it's not to be trusted. In fact, it that is exactly how it happened, but to show it as happening, the true story would seem unbelievable. Yeah, so actually, what we find credible and believable, it isn't necessarily a good, reliable uh guide to what actually happened and you know um what actually happened. Yeah, I I guess the the the commandment, one of the ten commandments is not giving false testimony. I think there's that sense of you're lying about people intentionally, you are being deceptive. I think most of that sense is rather than fabricating stories to create something, because the in the book of Jonah, for example, is very strange and cartoon-like. It's one of the best. Uh I did a degree in theology, and I actually got a strangely high mark on my Jonah uh essay that I did. But it's very cartoonish, isn't it? That this reluctant prophet is so determined not to follow the voice of the Lord, he sails literally in the opposite direction, is thrown off board, swallowed by a whale, spat, vomited onto dry land, goes to Nineveh, and is so wildly effective as a preacher that not only do the people repent, but they put their animals in sackcloth as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it's just like what? You know, it's it's it's bonkers, isn't it? And it's and I I I'm per I'm prepared to believe it's true. I I I have wondered, is Jonah just a cartoon? And that's what I was taught to believe out of a secular theology degree. But Jesus refers to it in a way that implies that Jonah's a real person, that this really happened in some shape or form. But at the same time, we don't we don't want to be just sort of literalist brutes about it and just and can't enjoy the story and and the extravagance of it. Uh I don't know. We can be a bit overly literal at times, can't we?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's right. And I think we want to be literate as um and not just literal like you. I'm I'm perfectly prepared to believe that um all the historical stuff in the Bible is um is historically true. It that it doesn't matter to me too much. Old Testament, certainly, if if it's written symbolically or um parabolically. Um I I think it's slightly different with the New Testament. I think if if the the writers um are of the of the Gospels are making stuff up to make a point that they still think is true, I have more of an issue with with that. But um but again, I think with with Jonah or with Job. Oh, it's surprising me with Joe when when people use him as an example of redemption, they say, Oh, God gave him back so much more. Well, no, his family was still dead, you know. Like he didn't he didn't get it all back.
SPEAKER_01:What are you talking about? And it's like I've I suspect he would rather have not had that mass bereavement, which itself represented uh in a rather funny way as well, where a servant is giving bad news, and whilst they're still speaking, another sermon comes up with further bad news. I mean it it is again, it's strangely cartoonish, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it it is, and I I think that um with the parables, which I know you mentioned in in your email earlier, uh there's the they're they're made up stories that that have a deeper truth. And and this is the thing with with myth as well. I think we can go too far the other way, can't we? We can go too literal and we can say, oh, myth is just the same as fairy tale, it's just equivalent to fairy tale. No, it isn't. Myths are big stories that have um real world truths in them, and and I think with The Wayfarer, I wanted it. So one of the early chapters is called Gawain and the Green Eyes, which doesn't really it doesn't really fit the chapter itself, other than there's an Irish girl who has green eyes. But I wanted to write it at times in this sort of mythic medieval quest uh way, like Gawain and and and the Green Knight, um, which is a story that's obviously not true, but is so meaningful for me. And and it's about a man, obviously a Christian man who is tempted and is willing to lay down his life and and not resist and not give in to temptation. And and so there's there's lots of things that's got that are going on in the the Wayfarer. It is most of the time literally true, um, with some artistic license. Yeah, but there's also there's also things that I've um put in a different order. What I did do was I did switch a couple of the events to later on or earlier on in the book, because I think that there's there's a reason why whatever film you're watching it has act one, act two, act three, or one, two, three, four, or five, depending on uh on that. So you you do need you do need a crisis point, you you do need a call to action, and you you do need either the catastrophe or the eupatastrophe in some way. And uh with the Wayfarer, you have the U catastrophe, and then I then I undercut it deliberately because I don't like facile happy endings.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:If you're writing a story and you're not a famous person, which I'm not, and so people won't just read it because oh, this is Andy Kind, um, and you want to get a new audience, you it you do have to have a narrative because everybody knows whatever we whether they would be able to articulate this, everybody knows intuitively because it's been wired into us. When we're watching something, uh you know things can't go well for too long before there has to be a drop-off. Equally, they can't be unremittingly bleak before there has to be an upturn towards redemption, and we know this intuitively, and so it's not a problem. The problem comes when it's just and and you do find this with some travel memoirs. I did this and and and this happened, and and that was the end of that day. And then I the next day I went to this place and and and this happened. I met this person, and I hope I'll see them again, and that was the end of that day. You've you've actually got to invest things with a narrative arc because that's what people expect.
SPEAKER_01:Jesus's own stories, the parables that we've mentioned a bit, defy that expectation. They're so strange and messy, they stop suddenly. You know, one of the more famous ones about the parable of the prodigal son is actually a parable about the older brother who is standing outside the barn, fatted calf killed, grumpy, arms folded, father comes out to beg him to come in.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:End.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know what I mean? It's like it's sort of that invitational, yeah. Given that who the parable is being told to, it's probably an older brother type person, and there's that kind of open-endedness, or just the the parable of the um of the labourers in the vineyard who are all given different wages. I don't want to sound flippant or irreverent, but it's not a great story. No, it's not. But it's it's like it's like a snapshot of this thing that appears to be unfair and yet isn't. It's sort of illustrative, but also kind of does a number on you. And there are other things I've written in um my book, The Gospel According to a Sitcom writer, about the parable of the bridesmaids and how they run out of oil and the other bridesmaids won't share their oil with them, which doesn't seem very Christian. And it feels like there's a different parable that could be told in that situation. So anyway, they slog off to get oil in the middle of the night and come back, and mysteriously the broom doesn't know them, even though he invited them to his wedding. Um, there there are some sort of there are there are elements of these stories where you just think, what is going on? And yet they just sort of hang together in this mysterious, enigmatic way. And it's almost like yeah, we're filling in the blanks a little bit, but then questioning how we're fitting it in. I mean, they're they're so lumpy and strange, they just sit with you for your whole life, don't they? You must have had moments where you thought you understood a parable, went back to it, and just thought, oh no, I've I think I've had this all wrong.
SPEAKER_02:As I think as a writer, I really appreciate scripture much more. As I've started to understand writing more, I really appreciate a lot of stuff that's going on in in scripture even more. And don't see it as any less uh true, because I think as you start, there's one as a lovely guy, I think it's Peter J. Williams or Peter S. Williams, one of the Peter Williamses has done this amazing book on the intertextuality of scripture and how um so much is calling back to other stuff. Like in in Hebrews, which is one of my favourite New Testament books, where it says, Oh, and somewhere else it says this, and somewhere else it says this. I mean, you wouldn't get marks for that in an essay. No, you'd say that's it.
SPEAKER_01:Citation needed, please.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. Um, and there are there are bits, aren't there, in the New Testament where it seems like the apostles are playing pretty fast and loose with the scripture that they're quoting.
SPEAKER_01:It's the very beginning of Mark's gospel, as it says in the prophet Isaiah, well, yeah, that bit is, that other bit isn't, or whatever it is. It's like, well, yeah, it's yeah, it's very strange, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:But I but I I love it. And um, I don't know if you've watched the the chosen, because there's so many ellipses really in in the New Testament and at the end of these parables, you know, such as what did Jesus draw in the sand, what did he write in the sand for the woman caught in adultery, or what happened to Nicodemus? The chosen um basically gives Nicodemus this entire uh storyline because clearly the writers couldn't bear to not know what had happened to Nicodemus.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, um, yeah, we have to join dots that the Bible sort of doesn't quite let us join. I was just thinking earlier, I just read a minute ago somewhere, Matthew, son of Alpheus, it says somewhere, and you go, hang on, there's a James son of Alpheus. Were they brothers? It doesn't say anywhere else that they're brothers, but am I meant am I misleading that? Am I yeah in one sense it kind of keeps you humble in your it keeps you on your knees in front of the text, doesn't it? Which is probably a good thing. But it's not a list of health and safety guidelines, is it? It's um very much the opposite, in fact. Yeah, it's how to get killed in many ways, yeah. How to lose friends and influence nobody. Yeah, a hundred ways to die in the Middle East.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, that would be that would be good. I I'm influenced by lots of things, obviously, and uh I I don't write maybe you feel the same. I mean, I I'd struggle to be called a Christian writer because I I don't really know what that means in the same way I've never understood what it meant to be called a Christian comedian. I am a Christian and it influences everything that I do, but I'm also uh someone who loves literature and I don't read things just because I agree with them, and I don't dislike things because I disagree with them.
SPEAKER_01:Even worse, I tend to read Christian books not expecting literature.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I think that's a problem, and that that you can maybe sense me climbing onto my high horse here. Uh I think most Christian books are not literature, most Christian books are um are well-written pieces of pastoral guidance. They're probably rewritten sermons, in fact. Yeah, yeah, they are they are functional and pastoral because most Christians have been taught to write by theologians, by academics. Uh, if you think about it's the reason that most Sunday morning sermons are essentially recited essays, because the people teaching people how to preach uh are not creatives, they are academics and theologians, and of course that's great, but you don't get points for creativity or pathos in an essay. So that there's so little genuine storytelling, so little genuine pathos in most Christian books. There's so few Christian books um or books written by Christians that could actually count as literature. Yeah, and and I I think one of the things that I'm one of the things that I'm trying to do in my own little way, it's not high literature, it's comic literature, but it's I still want to write literature, I want to write things as a Christian because George MacDonald have no problem with that, Lewis had no problem with that, Tolkien and Chesterton have no problem with with that, Marilyn Robinson has no problem with that. The problem is that I am only really known within the the UK Christian world, and so that's my primary market, but I don't write for them because actually my influences aren't from there either. So that's why I'm not very wealthy.
SPEAKER_01:So one last question then. Have you got another travelogue up your sleeve? Or or even dare I say a pilgrimage? That feels like the next natural step, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, uh well, I I don't I don't like to write the same book twice because I get bored. Okay. So if Wayfarer does really well, then of course there'll be the Wayfarer Returns. It'll be something so cynical. So if it does really well, then then yes. But um my next one.
SPEAKER_01:You could you could write a book about the salt path going round uh the coast to Cornwall, because I think that book has currently been withdrawn. So there's a market there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the true story of the salt path. There's always lots of books. Uh, the next one is probably called Preach Like an Artist, okay, which is um which is just that really bringing creative and my 20 years in the arts to bear on the preaching stage. I also am working on an idea. It the book is called The Rebirth of the English Gentleman, which is which is really it's not a history book, it's it's really a series of essays encouraging young men to live as a gentleman. And so that might do well. And then I suppose because I work in the world of apologetics, but I'm not an apologist. A lot of people I know are Christian philosophers and stuff, so I'd like to write a popular level book, which was sort of postmodern apologetics, I suppose. I did a small version of that, um, with hidden in plain sight, but there's probably a longer book there. But again, I I don't I don't I don't want to write anything that I will easily dismiss once it's once it's written. I I want to write stuff that I am proud of. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And um as well as five years later, you still want to be available so that after a gig or whatever, you're doing a speech, you're doing a talk, you can sell it without just sort of you don't want to be selling a book with tongs, just going, yeah, I wrote this some time ago, I don't quite know what I was thinking.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but yeah, no, words words are too precious for that, aren't they? You just don't want to toss them away. I that's the one thing I've been learning reading the early chapters of Genesis. Words are the source code of the universe. That's it. So let's let's use them widely wisely. And one thing you can say, going back full circle to Three Men in a Boat, it is admirably short.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:If listeners have not listened uh or read Three Men in a Boat, I highly recommend it. Once you have, of course, read The Wayfarer uh by Andy Kind.
SPEAKER_02:Um if you like one, if you like one, you will like the other. I think that's that's the thing I would say.
SPEAKER_01:No, definitely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Great. Well, Andy, it's been great. Um, people can get hold of you probably via your website, andykind.com. Co.uk.
SPEAKER_02:Andykind.co.uk.
SPEAKER_01:Andykind.co.uk. Always better to buy it directly from the author if you possibly can. And uh that way we make money. If you buy my books on Amazon, I'm pretty sure I don't get any of that. And you've just helped build another little part of Jeff Bezos's massive yacht. Yeah. So support your artists where possible by buying direct would be my would be my advice. Andy Kind, thanks so much. Thanks, bro. And you could support this artist by becoming a loyal lollard, which is the paid subscriber to the weeklift papers, and that would help me. Also, it means that you would have had this episode last week or earlier, and also it would have been extended, because at the end I put a bit from my book, The Gospel According to a Titcom Writer, that was relevant to this episode. So there was some free extra bonus audio there too. But also, you get that feeling of being a patron of the arts, which is a warm and fuzzy glow, which I hope you can enjoy. Anyway, go over to the Wickcliffe papers and have a look around. There are lots of jokes there. Become a paid subscriber, and that helps me. Anyway, we're done for this week. Is this how it ends? Yep.