Robin Ince and Josie Long must be the two most enthusiastic people in comedy. I’m not sure why they even need a guest on their literary podcast Book Shambles as they can pretty much talk the hind legs off a whole stable of donkeys without any assistance. But the guests are handy as in some ways they rein in the twin-pronged Ince/Long gush-fest and the new instalment is a particularly good one.
Following Dean Burnett, Charlotte Church and AL Kennedy in this second series, the latest chum invited to share their page-turning passions is Reece Shearsmith. It’s well known that Shearsmith has a penchant for horror and at times this podcast almost turns into a chat about scary film and TV as he and Ince trade memories of staying up late to watch movies such as Tigon classic The Blood on Satan's Claw when they were far too young.
Shearsmith – like both Ince and Mark Gatiss, who was a guest over Christmas – was one of those simultaneously morbid and nerdy children who pored over every gruesome picture in The Movie Treasure: Horror Movies by Alan G Frank. Even before he had seen a Hammer film his imagination has conjured whole scenes up. And seeing them when he was older they didn't disappoint either.
Other books that he recommends include Very Special People by Fredrick Drimmer, which profiles the likes of the tiny “General Tom Thumb” and The Elephant Man. You can see how his reading habits have influenced the gothic and macabre side of The League of Gentlemen and more recently certain episodes of Inside No 9 (a third series has just wrapped).
I was surprised to hear that Shearsmith likes Stephen King’s short stories (probably because I’m a bit of a literary snob) but Shearsmith calls King “quite maligned” and champions him as a great example of a modern horror writer. And Josie Long also likes King. She would have talked more about the subject as she had recently bought Ince some scary comics on her recent trip to Portland, but she forgot to bring them to the studio.
Ince has almost as many book suggestions as Shearsmith – one of them is Dead Funny, the compendium of short chillers by comedians which he edited. One of the stories in the first volume (a new volume is hopefully in the pipeline) is by Shearsmith and he explains here that it was his first attempt at writing a story. Pretty amazing that someone as creative as he is has never attempted something like a short story before. It's called Dog. Give it a read, it’s both funny and creepy.
By the way, this review would have run earlier but I’ve just spent thirty fruitless minutes trying to find the haunting ident for Tyne Tees’ Fear on Friday series – if anyone else can find it Shearsmith is getting desperate to see it again as he hasn't seen it since he was a child. I momentarily thought I’d got close - someone online describes it as a cat walking along a stone wall in front of a creepy house but there are no pictures to back this up.
Listen to Book Shambles here.
