lot of support and he's quite painfully fairly unelectable, you would imagine, but if marine le pen is the one who gets into the final run—off and is against emmanuel macron, it is likely that even conservative voters would vote with the blairite in order to vote against her. you vote against the person you don't want to get the job, fundamentally, in france, so the conservatives are pushing francois fillon to go through because they don't want macron to go through. it is a long game of chess. our politics is a bit mild, i suppose, but the daily telegraph has a story aboutjeremy corbyn, under attack from his own side, but this is about his tax returns. reportedly he released his tax returns to put pressure on the government when it comes to the issue of tax, but it is suggested not all of his income has been declared on his tax returns. it looks as though his income as an mp has been and his pensions and everything else but not his income

as leader of the labour party which is entitled to. this is probably a clerical error. how much does he get? £40,000, and that should be declared. no one is suggesting he is dodging anything, but this is a political case of shooting yourself in the foot. it was a stunt too embarrassed the government but instead it has embarrassed him. people sayjeremy corbyn is always attacked by the media, and maybe they have a good point, but when they have a good point, but when they said that he has not declared his own income properly in this tax return, that is outrageous. it is notjust a piece of paper where he has missed something off, this is his actual tax return. 0h right, has missed something off, this is his actualtax return. 0h right, we get into trouble if we do that. exactly. he has been taxed at source for that money and he did take it, but he did not put that on his declaration. that is an oversight, but someone should have checked his

tax return before it went out. there has been incompetence, but aside from all that, his income includes £77,000 basic mp salary and also £36,000 in pensions income. he is entitled because he is over 65 to draw a pension for that job, entitled because he is over 65 to draw a pension for thatjob, but entitled because he is over 65 to draw a pension for that job, but as leader of the opposition and someone who is talking about wealthy members of society who should be maybe not ta ke of society who should be maybe not take the benefits they are entitled to, like free tv licences, winter fuel payments, why is he taking the £36,000 pension? it is not like he isa £36,000 pension? it is not like he is a poor man, he already has £118,000 income without it. is that not enough for him? what is he spending his money on? drink? we will leave it there. thanks for now. you will both be back for another look at the front pages at 1130.

coming up next it's time for meet the author. howard jacobson is a master of the art of serious fiction that is also hilarious. he has won the man booker prize and the everyman pg woodhouse prize for comic fiction twice. no—one else has done that. the dog's last walk and other pieces is a collection of his newspaper columns for the independent. they sparkle with wit, plenty of erudition edition and the wisdom of a writer who seems to get even more curious about life and about all of us as the years go by. let's do the sensible thing and begin at the beginning.

the first story in this collection of columns is called the dog's last walk and you have chosen to give that title to the collection as a whole. now, why? i've had the good fortune to have read it and i think i know why. but what is it about this story that touches you so much? it touched other people too, people stopped me in the street and said, you just made me cry. so i thought, "ahi", i'm not used to making people cry. i didn't used to have the confidence to make people cry. i thought myjob was to make people laugh. i never had the confidence to admit that i cried. i mean, i've been a blubberer all my life and i've denied it. you cry at the movies? i cry everywhere and i pretend not to. don't want to admit that i cry. just now, at this grand old age, i'm prepared to admit that i cry and i'm prepared to write to make people cry. not that i did that deliberately, i just saw a scene that upset me a great deal and i wanted to write about it. well it's a terribly touching story. you were with your wife sitting on a park bench and what did you see?

i saw an elegantly dressed lady leading a big, very tired black labrador. labradors have wonderful, wonderful heads. dogs altogether seem to have a gravity that human beings rarely manage. but labradors particularly. this was beyond the usual sadness of a big dog. this looked to me, and i said this to my wife, this is his last day on earth, you can feel it. and the way his owner was walking him around, being very patient with him when he had to stop, bending down to him and stroking his head, told me that this was the last day of his life. whether she would take him to be shot or what, whether he would just expire at the end of the day, but you could just feel it, between them, in their relationship, you could feel this was the last day they would spend together and it was unbearably upsetting to see it. i thought, will he even die in front of me? and ijust wanted to describe his slow progress around the park. it's also a wonderful

illustration of how a piece of writing and reflection, of newspaper column length in this case, can come from one little observation, one moment, you know, a flash on your eye of something and then everything begins to weave itself around that one sight. absolutely. that's always been my way of doing it, the only way i can do it. i couldn't come as a columnist... if there had been a war while i was writing, although there were some, i didn't know how to deal with them. i want to make something little big rather than, you know, leap on the back of something that is big. that's the challenge for me, start with nothing and let the words do it, let one's observation do it, let the words do it, see where they take you. it's a wonderful skill to be able to fashion a column that is touching, funny, may be profound if you're lucky. but also has a kind of wordplay that gives it a simple aesthetic pleasure as a piece of writing,

it has a beginning, middle and end, beautifully turned sentences. and that's what you really love, isn't it? the rhythm is everything, get the rhythm of a joke wrong, comedians know that. ajoke, the timing and rhythm is everything and so it is in the writing of something like a column. i can just start with very little and i let the words do it. i am, if you like, a servant of the words. they are my words, but sometimes they don't feel like my words. where do they come from? a mysterious feeling. of course you feel that the world is a mystery, that's quite a good start, isn't it? it's much more fun than knowing everything. if you're going on an exploration, saying, how did that come about, why do we feel like that, why do people behave like that? and more important i think than ever at the moment because post the social media, and i can't stop banging on about it because i feel it will be the death of humanity in the end.

mark my words, if we're around 100 years, i said it, it will be the death of us. but social media thrives on assertion. i know this or even worse than that, i think this, i feel this, this is my opinion. i don't really have opinions. it may look like i have an opinion but first and foremost i'm a novelist. lam ironical, elusive, equivocal, you can't find me, i don't want to be found because i'm not there. me, me, is not there. you're sometimes very irritated as well, particularly with social media in all its manifestations. there is a wonderful column in which you talk about being invited to join one of these networks and of course you don't want to take part in it and you imagine the person whose name has popped up saying you are invited to join the network waiting. "has he not responded yet?" this whole idea of a world of emotion that is out there but completely beyond you. beyond me and expressive of views i can't bear,

and certainties that i can't. there is this or there is that. you and i know that everything interesting is not a thumbs up or thumbs down, it's everything in between that. all the great writing that you love is writing about that middle ground, the lack of certainty, the difference between good and evil that is often not as big a difference as you think. you know, the ambiguities that i win every human being. absolutely, and the other thing that's started to crop up quite recently i think is this idea of the importance of sincerity. we've had it with several of our recently elected leaders. at least he tells what he believes. no virtue in saying what you believe if what you believe is trash. writers aren't sincere, they are never simply only

themselves, they have to find other ways of being all the time. well that brings us conveniently to another project which is nearfruition, a novel, a story coming out in april, inspired, provoked, whatever the appropriate word is, by the election of donald trump, an event that clearly moved you to do something. what did you want to do in this story, which is called pussy? the day that trump won the election, that astonishing night, i went to sleep thinking he'd lost, as i'd done on several other occasions that year. i woke up in the middle of the night with a goblin sitting on my chest, unable to breathe and i realised what had happened. the following morning ijust began a fairy story. you can only tell it as a fairy story. to my mind, you can't do this as real. a traditional fairy story? a kind of grimm's fairy story, a ferocious fairy story about this character called fracassus and about his birth and how he is destined to run the free world. what is fascinating about him is that he has no words, this is a person with no words. that's the phenomena that we're seeing over there at the moment.

how can a person thrive, how can a person be listened to, believe he has the right to govern, but worst of all, how can he be elected when he has no language? language is what we know, we who read and write, language is the way you think, the way you think yourself out of prejudice, the way you think yourself to enlightenment. without language, you're locked in. did you feel better when you finished it? i felt a lot better, partly because i was excited that i'd written something at this speed. the columns had helped me, all those years writing columns had helped me to write. normally i'd take two years to write a novel. here was a novel written, it isn't a full—length novel, it's a novella, but its 50,000 words, written in a few weeks. the columns helped me to do that. well people can read pussy next month and for the moment they can enjoy your columns under the heading of that melancholy little story that opens the collection of columns, writing, the dog's last walk. howard jacobson, thanks very much. thank you, it's been lovely.

good evening. very mixed bag of weather across the uk for the second part of the weekend. scotland and northern ireland fared well with good spells of sunshine. a lot of cloud across england and wales with persistent rain. a and wales with persistent rain. bit of sunshine in b showers. gusty showers drifting eastwards. another area of rain getting into the far south and west. scattered showers in the north and west overnight. it will turn cold in parts of scotland overnight. a touch of frost. quite chilly and also wet across the south—west of england. some rain fringing into the south of wales and it gets across

to the isle of wight. but the rain mainly in the south—east, and it is a reasonable start to the day in wales. eastern counties of england have outbreaks of rain. much brighter in the north—west of england and a bright start to the day in northern ireland. more cloud for large parts of scotland. other places will be dry. rain to be had in the north and west and into the northern isles as well, where it will be breezy. things will improve in the south—west of england. rain will fragment in the latter part of the morning. a few showers but they will be few and far between. the wetter weather in the eastern pa rt the wetter weather in the eastern part of england. we will see a scattering of showers developing. sunshine and showers into the afternoon but lengthy spells of sunshine for many especially to the west. things quieten down monday evening and overnight as this ridge of high pressure builds in. we are looking towards the west for this next spell of wind

and rain to move in. it'll be a chilly start for many but brighter on tuesday. clouds and the rain moving into northern ireland and things going downhill here and it will be windy and it makes its way across the irish sea in the afternoon. then to the evening, it looks like the rain will cross pretty much all parts. i think we will all see some rain on tuesday. but it is on the move heading towards the near continent. by the middle of the week, that is out of the way but we stay unsettled. showers around but temperatures doing well. 12 to 14 for cardiff and london. this is bbc news.

i'm nicholas owen. the headlines at 11:00 — chancellor phillip hammond rejects calls for huge spending sprees in his first budget on wednesday. as we embark on the journey that we will be taking over the next couple of years we are confident that we have enough gas in the tank to see us through thatjourney. the white house asks congress to investigate allegations barack obama ordered wire—taps on president trump during the election. the director of national intelligence at the time denies the claims. there was no wiretap activity mounted against the president elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign. french centre—right presidential candidate, francois fillon says he won't withdraw from the race, but admits to misjudgements in dealing with corruption allegations. also in the next hour we'll take a look at tomorrow's front pages