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Special traits

Kate Chisholm

Wednesday, 6th August 2008

Leonard and Marianne (BBC Radio 4); The Novel that Changed by Life (BBC Radio 2)

This week Vic Reeves talks about Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which he attempted to recreate, aged 19, by hitching down the A1 from Darlington to Grantham and sleeping in a field of corn stubble. Fortunately, he didn’t spend too much time on his own free-wheeling experiments but instead took us back to the source: Kerouac, Carolyn Cassady and co. in 1950s America. Reeves spoke not just to Kerouac’s biographer but also to Cassady and Joyce Pinchbeck, who were there, and could verify that Kerouac really did write the book, all 180,000 words of it, in just 21 days fuelled not by classified drugs but by caffeine, potloads of it.

As for those Grundy boys. As I write, we’re still on tenterhooks as to Will’s whereabouts. I’m not sure I can take any more dramas like these in Ambridge, and may have to give it up, as I did for years after John Archer was killed by a tractor.

James Delingpole is away.

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