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Authors needing to be aware of the desirability of looking after their characters should listen to the exchange between Victor Hugo and Quasimodo on Radio 4’s John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, episode 2, 11 minutes in on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lss87 It lasts just over 3 minutes.
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Will never feel the same about The Hunchback of Notre Dame again!
Also enjoyed the skit about the oil tanker. It reminded me of an old tale, probably untrue, about an American aircraft carrier communicating with an object on their radar:
This is the USS Lexington. Alter course to port.
Suggest YOU alter course.
Repeat, this is the USS Lexington. Alter course to port immediately.
We are a lighthouse.
The joke about good fiction coming out of Belgium refers back to one earlier in the programme. Unkind remarks about Belgium at the beginning had led, we are told, to a complaint from the Belgian Ambassador. This was resolved by the promise that two nice things will be said about Belgium later in the programme. So we keep waiting for these and so, when they come in the Quasimodo section, we laugh heartily. Hence the perhaps greater audience response than you might have expected to the statement that some of the best fiction is coming from that country nowadays. Ed