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Countdown with ...

Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh and read Law at university, where he developed a fascination for German history. Following university he worked as a copywriter at a number of advertising agencies, including Saatchi & Saatchi, during which time he wrote no advertising slogans of any note! He is the author of more than 20 books, including the Bernie Gunther novels, several standalone thrillers, the Scott Manson football series, and the young adult series Children of the Lamp under the pen name of PB Kerr. In 2009, he won the British Crime Writers' Association Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award and Spain's RBA International Prize for Crime Writing for his Bernie Gunther series.

Website: http://www.philipkerr.org/

Interviewed 16 January 2016

Ten words to sum up your working life to date ...

Artificial existence in bubble nothing to do with real life.

Nine things you can see from where you're sitting ...

Mostly book and more books. Computer. See what I mean about the bubble?

Eight minutes to prepare a meal. What's it going to be ?

Boiled egg. Six minutes for a soft one, plus toast.

Seven people you'd like to go for a drink with ...

I am temped to say Doc, Happy, Sneezy, etc. But probably all samurai warriors, or perhaps Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen et al. I would take them to the Bull in the Archers on BBC Radio and hope they might pick a fight.

Six things you can't live without ...

Top Gear (Clarkson only please); wife and three kids – not necessarily in that order; gimlets.

Five favourite words ...

Let me pay for lunch.

Four places you'd run away to ...

Paros, Rome, Nice, Venice.

Three books you've bought recently ...

1984 (again); Clive James’ translation of Dante’s Inferno; Clive James poems.

Two things that make you rant ...

BBC1 and BBC2.

One thing you'd tell your teenage self ...

Be nice to that girl …