The Cut

When I was a kid I wanted to write a spy thriller about a secret agent who crossed the Pyrenees into Spain to perform some dastardly act or other. I wrote to the Spanish embassy in Australia and asked them if they could supply me with maps and any relevant secret material that may make the plot development easier (not in those words). I never got anything back. Clearly there was more to the art of research.

So instead I did a lifetime’s worth of observation, and collected a career’s worth of ideas, and thought to myself: ‘what to you want to say’. The answer at the time (2018) was “Cut the Crap”, but if that’s all there was to a story it would be pretty pretentious, cliched, indulgent, grumpy – and too reflective of tiredness and burnout after too many years of too much work.

The idea of podcasts seemed reasonable. All very trendy / on point. So I started thinking about a book full of podcasts. However after not-too-long, over a lunch (September 7th 2018) with Lorna and Steve W at Le Timbre in Paris (thoroughly recommended), I was persuaded that this would be extremely boring and the podcasts would need a presenter who was much more interesting than me. Harvey Pearce was born and the story began.