How can crime be funny?

I'm Scottish so that's a slightly baffling question. I grew up in a culture where we always dealt with difficult or painful things by finding the black humour in them. Still do, for that matter. I know I sometimes respond to situations with comments that other people find in questionable taste, but it's the way my head works. I think it's a way of defusing a situation that we're struggling to cope with. It doesn't mean we're dismissing the seriousness; it just provides a release valve for complicated and overwhelming emotions.

 

What are your favourite comedies or comedians?

Sarah Millican, Susan Calman, Mark Steel, Victoria Wood, David Mitchell, Marcus Brigstock  -- can you tell I'm a Radio 4 listener? I love I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Outnumbered, The Thick of It, The League of Gentlemen, Dinnerladies, The Inbetweeners, Green Wing... I like stuff that takes observational detail then bounces it off the wall.

 

How does writing comedy compare with writing crime? - which is harder - more gruelling?

It's all hard! I don't think there's much difference. They both present challenges; they both make significant imaginative demands. It's very hard to sustain comedy, and I never know whether it's come off or not until I actually hear the actors doing the readthrough. Good actors find that seam of comedy that runs through the work and they push it to the surface, which is a joy for me to hear. With a novel, I also have to wait for the reaction of others, but I don't have that direct experience of what the reader brings to the book.

 

When you wrote Deadheading, what was your thinking behind using a Natural History doc style narration?

It came from my producer, who directed me towards a Radio 3 adaptation of Gogol's Dead Souls which incorporated a narrator into the drama itself. We thought it might be interesting to try something similar, and I reckoned the Natural History approach would offer me opportunities for humour as well as offering an insight into the structure of the storytelling. But because it's comedy, I was able to make fun of the convention itself and the sometimes grandiose nature of the commentary. So it added a whole new layer to the drama.

 

Have you ever come a-cropper on an allotment?  

I have friends who are serious allotment holders and I benefit both from their anecdotes and their seasonal gluts! I just hope none of them has a committee chairman who recognises their foibles in my characters!

Did you unearth any stories about criminal activities or love interest on allotments when you were plotting the drama/researching?

My lips are sealed... My favourite line, which I couldn't shoehorn in, was about an allotment society chairman who held the post for several years and always held the meetings at his substantial house. 'And do you know, in all those years, he never so much as offered us a cup of tea or a biscuit,' one outraged committee member said.

 

Are we likely to see more radio drama from you?

What are you working on next?I'm hoping that DCI Blair, DS Trotter and CSI Black will be back next year in another adventure, Dead Clever, set in a university. And in the meantime, I have this year's crime novel, The Skeleton Road, to finish...

 

Val McDermid was talking to Deadheading programme Producer Justine Potter

 

Hear Deadheading on Radio 4

Hear more programmes or clips from Val McDermid on Radio 4

 

I last saw John Cushnie in mid-December recording a special Christmas edition of Gardeners' Question Time (GQT) at The Museum of Gardening History in Lambeth Palace.

He was well - and in full flow. He was a handsome man and a very big presence. There was no sign at all of anything wrong - so his death on New Year's Eve comes as a very big and unwelcome shock.

GQT has an alchemy. It is not merely a programme of gardening experts about trees and plants. That is the core of the matter - but it is also about character and wit. And John Cushnie had those qualities in abundance. He did not do vanilla. His answers - delivered in that instantly recognisable Northern Ireland brogue - were, of course, always informed - but they were laced with acerbic wit and warmth. He spread joy during the programme recordings - a joy which was transmitted to the audience at home.

And thus it was during that particular recording. John was asked to sum up the 2009 gardening weather in Northern Ireland. He immediately went into a fluent riff about the unfortunate timing of the hot spells, wet spells and dry spells. Everything had come at precisely the wrong moment. Potatoes had been a calamity - but he had managed to grow a few things successfully even so. As per normal everyone was laughing.

Then someone from the audience produced a sample in a plastic bag of a plant that she wanted to preserve. John was apoplectic - about the state of the plant - and his advice was trenchant - along the lines of "Get rid of it - now. Entirely. Forever. Awful." This was a common Cushnie response to a plant specimen - or even genus - that aroused his ire. And there were quite a few of those...

All the banter ('crack' seems the right word for John) was never at the expense of the knowledge. He knew a tremendous amount about a tremendous amount of horticultural life and that showed too.

We will miss him a great deal.

Mark Damazer is Controller of BBC Radio 4

• John Cushnie's last appearance on Guardeners' Question Time was on the 27 December Christmas Special.
• John Cushnie's obituary on the BBC News web site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qp2f

I went to the Gardeners' Question Time annual Summer (sic) party over the weekend - at the Royal Horticultural Society Northern headquarters at Harlow Carr - just outside Harrogate. It was not Summery. The wind blew hard and it was cloudy - but it was fun - and the first time we've held the party away from the programme's Southern base at Sparsholt. We are establishing a GQT garden/plot at Harlow Carr in an attempt to find out more about differences in growing conditions between the North and South of England - and the experiments will provide useful editorial material for the programme - for instance, in measuring the impact of climate change.

Gardeners' Question Time is now made by the independent company Somethin' Else. (It had previously been made very well by Taylormade - who bowed out voluntarily in the summer after a long stint). We are not planning any upheaval to the programme - but some things have already changed. We are placing the features within the programme in a different way - and I think it makes for a better listen. The web site is improved and the programme is now also available as a podcast. Audience figures have held up well in recent years. The most recent RAJAR figures show that over the course of a typical week over 1.4 million people catch at least 5 minutes the programme - a figure that has remained essentially unchanged in the last 5 years.

Of course the questions and answers from the audience remain the central plank of Gardeners' Question Time and on a personal note I am perpetually amazed at how the panellists answer anything that's thrown at them without so much as a note or book in sight. And they have no advance notice of the questions at all. Amazing.

• Listen again to Gardeners Question Time and subscribe to the podcast.
• The BBC's press release about the choice of Somethin' Else for GQT.