The Great Lost Joke

I said on Twitter last week that The Saucy Episode of Warhorses would feature a special guest joke from Mark Evans, editorial decisions permitting. Well, the editorial decisions did not permit. Thus the special guest joke will only be available to book buyers and people who come to Tall Tales.

(It is not hard to work out what the joke is if you remember a) that Copenhagen and Marengo wanted to speak secretly and b) all the horse jokes from Mark’s brilliant Radio 4 series Bleak Expectations, which has just been– Adapted isn’t quite the word, but something with the same juice is going to be on the telly later at Christmas, called The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff.)

Interesting*

I’ve never thought overly much about catchphrases, for whatever weird reason, and we certainly didn’t think ‘catchphrase’ at any point when we were writing Warhorses of Letters. But we did think ‘I suppose “Kiss kiss hoofprint” might work on our picture’, probably because a couple of our original audience in Kilburn liked it. And it was nice when some people used it on Twitter when they were saying they liked the show. And the BBC has changed our picture to:

I like it.

 

* Probably only for a quite limited value of ‘interesting’.

Apology

UPDATE 2, RE: ALL OF THE BELOW: Apparently it’s a bug on the site. They are working on sorting it out, but for now, if you get charged too much, try updating your basket – it should then show the correct price.

 

Sorry to anyone who tried to buy a signed hardback and was charged £20 instead of £15. The problem has now been rectified. The Warhorses book (and print, mug, embroidered horse blanket, pony trekking trip etc) can be found here.

(I’m assuming none of you actually paid £20 for a £15 hardback (unless you’re outside the UK and paid £5 for postage) but if you did please let us know.)

UPDATE: It seems there are still a few issues. I’m very sorry and trying to get it sorted asap. If you’re having any problems, please drop us a comment, or an email to warhorses@unbound.co.uk.

pretty pictures

Someone pointed out that we haven’t put a picture up of the print you can buy alongside the book. This is the picture. Isn’t it great?

***NB*** It is, as the place you can buy it makes clear but we inexcusably did not until put right by various important artists who follow us, by the brilliant Tom Sears.

Someone else pointed out that we hadn’t clearly pointed out that we are publishing via the excellent crowdfunding site Unbound, and we therefore need people to sign up in advance. We have made an enticing video to entice you. And if you pledge, there is more video in the members’ area (‘shed’) and there will soon be even more video than that and a song. The best question so far is about the process whereby Copenhagen was prepared for military life.

No one has pointed out that if you enjoyed Warhorses of Letters and wanted to hear podcasts from the live show where it was born, you can do that by going to iTunes and searching for “listen and often” or by visiting this link. No, wait, somebody has pointed that out.

(Again, to repeat, if you have tweeted, we have read. It’s been lovely of you apart from that one guy, but who cares what he thinks? Thank you.)

Why don’t you?

Why don’t you switch off your computer and– No, wait. Everything I am going to mention is on your computer.

I want EVERYONE who has written anything on their blog or twitter about Warhorses of Letters to know that we appreciate it. You would have to have been spectacularly low-ranked by Google for us not to have found you. Does that make us narcissistic? Or does it mean we care what people think and are keen on making things better if we can? Who knows. We certainly liked someone getting the Flashman reference.

Anyway, episode two is tonight. We hope you like it. Before it airs, we are doing an interview with So So Gay. Horse and Hound? Are you out there?

Oh, one other thing: we’re on the recommended list for an Anthropomorphic Fiction award. Didn’t know there was such a list. Excellent.

Trot On

Incredibly, no one from Horse and Hound has interviewed us, even though literally a person on one of its forums knows about the show.

Anyway, who cares about Horse and Hound, just because it was on Notting Hill? This is the future, people, and we are into social networking, and what is the biggest social networking site for horse lovers? I am not sure, but the social networking site for horse lovers which says ‘Don’t miss Warhorses of Letters‘ is Trot On, and so, as far as we are concerned, that is the social networking site for horse lovers that Copenhagen and Marengo would recommend, and they can put that on a t-shirt.

Your Questions Answered

So, the first episode is out! Hopefully if you are here that means that you liked it, unless you are a vegan terrorist or horse homophobe on the rampage. Anyway, we thought this would be a good time to mention some fun you can have with the forthcoming Warhorses of Letters book. In the book, we’ll be publishing the uncut letters (they were trimmed a bit to fit the 15-minute radio slot so there are extra jokes you have not heard), as well as additional correspondence, learned hoofnotes and a Thrilling Bibliographical Essay. But because we’re being published by Unbound, who use an innovative pre-publication crowdsourcing model, the text of the book has not been finalised yet, which means you can still affect what goes in.

If you have any questions about the series, the story, the characters, what Marengo’s favourite cheese is*, if there is anything at all you want to know, you can email us at warhorses@unbound.co.uk. If we answer your question in the book, we will upgrade your purchase – so if you’ve ordered an ebook, we will send you the hardback, if you’ve ordered the hardback, we will send you a personalised signed copy, and so on.

All the details of the book and how to submit your question can be found here.

*That was a joke for regulars at the Firestation Book Swap. The answer, obviously, is Manchego, only he can never reveal it, because it’s a Spanish cheese.

genesis

People say writers are lazy but today I have not only discovered the greatest website known to man, woman, SirValiant Brown or Spartacus Bernstein, but also taken a photograph of the Birth of Warhorses. This is from my notebook, from June 2009:

I had the idea at Kilburn tube, setting off for a writing meeting with Marie. The platform was sunny. I sat straight down and wrote this letter, sitting on a bench. As tonight’s listeners will hear, it changed a bit, but stayed on the same planet.

(I have stolen the idea of notebook pictures from John Finnemore over there on the right.)

Hello! Marie here. I just wrote a long post about Warhorses over at my blog and it occurred to me that it might be of interest here too. So voila. Or do I mean voici? I should know this. My mother is French.

At the end of 2009, I was severely ill, and ended up spending a month in hospital. I emerged in January 2010 skinny, frail and exhausted. The novel I’d been working on throughout 2009 seemed an impossible task. I didn’t have the stamina or the emotional strength to work on it, and in any case just looking at it was too painful a reminder of the time I’d spent sick. (I never did finish that book.) I felt like a failure. The future looked bleak. I couldn’t imagine ever writing anything again.

Around that time, my friend Robert Hudson set up a bi-monthly comedy storytelling night, Tall Tales, at the Good Ship in Kilburn. Robbie and I had written a sketch show together before I got ill, and we’d submitted a few of those sketches to Gareth Edwards at Radio 4. He didn’t buy any of them, but he did invite us to a particularly great meeting at which he let slip that he had a weakness for comedy involving talking animals. Right, we said. Talking animals. At some point after that, Robbie dreamed up the notion of a story in which Copenhagen, the Duke of Wellington’s horse, exchanged love letters with Marengo, Napoleon’s horse, but neither of us could figure out what to do with it.

When Robbie set up Tall Tales, he suggested that it might be a good place for me to start writing again, just short pieces which wouldn’t be as intimidating as attempting a novel. I remembered the story about the warhorses. Why don’t we do it as a series, I suggested.

There then followed the most fun and surprising period of writing in my life. Every other month Robbie and I would get together and plot out an episode of Warhorses of Letters, choosing a stretch of the history of the Napoleonic wars and dividing up the storytelling between the two horses. We’d also figure out which direction the equine romance would take. And then off we’d go, and a few days later an email would pop into my mailbox from “Copenhagen”, which I would reply to as “Marengo”. At the end of the two months, we’d meet up again, edit the letters together, and then Robbie and John Finnemore would perform that episode at Tall Tales, always with at least one extra joke that Robbie would put in just for me.

I still remember how nervous I was the first time we brought Warhorses of Letters to Tall Tales. I knew that Robbie and I found it funny – we’d frequently reduce ourselves to tears of laughter (at each others jokes) when we were writing it – but come on: it was letters between two horses. Two gay horses. During the Napoleonic wars. It was a bit of an odd topic to say the least. I had visions of the audience sitting in embarrassed silence, wondering what the hell this thing was. And my confidence as a writer was rock bottom. But the audience loved it, so much so that there was a loud collective sigh at the end when we broke off the correspondence, with a cliffhanger of course. We had a hit on our hands, in Kilburn at any rate.

After we’d written a couple of episodes, Robbie sent them off to Gareth Edwards, and about forty-five seconds later he replied with enthusiasm, saying he’d submit them for consideration to the commissioners at Radio 4. Months passed. We carried on writing and performing Warhorses, and I started to believe that I could actually be a writer again. When finally the commissioners gave the series the thumbs up, Gareth sent us an email titled ‘Hip Hip Hoofay!’ We love Gareth, basically.

The casting of Stephen Fry and Daniel Rigby as Marengo and Copenhagen, with Tamsin Greig as the narrator, was better than anything we could have dreamed of. On the day we recorded, Daniel and Stephen sat in the studio behind a glass wall, with Robbie and me, Steven Canny our brilliant director (Gareth alas had a long-standing prior commitment), and our production team Jill Abram, Toby Tilling and Lucy Meggeson on the other side. Steven assures me that recording radio can take forever, with take after take needed to get it right. Stephen and Daniel nailed it first time. In fact they were almost disappointingly good, as we had no excuse to do loads of retakes and so it was finished well ahead of schedule. I could have sat and listened to them for weeks.

And tonight it’s going to be broadcast. So much has changed for me in the last two years, not only Warhorses of Letters but the film of Gods Behaving Badly, a new novel I have tentatively started and a screenplay I’m developing with a friend. I often do short pieces at Tall Tales too, and Robbie and I have started plotting another talking animals-based series. And there’s going to be a book of Warhorses of Letters – have a look over here for details. Less than two years ago I would never have thought any of this was possible.

In a very real way, Warhorses of Letters saved my life, as did Robbie, not that I have ever thanked him, we wouldn’t want him getting big-headed. I hope you enjoy listening to it tonight and over the next four weeks.

 

Blogging on the Radio

It’s Warhorses of Letters transmission day! To celebrate, we wrote this blog for BBC Radio 4, which is, by amazing coincidence, the radio station which is transmitting Warhorses (at 11pm tonight, do join us, etc.) I’m particularly impressed that we wrote an entire blog about it without once mentioning what the project is. You can find the post at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2011/10/warhorses.html. There’s probably a way to embed that link. I do not know what that way is.*

* I know.