no one can tell how someone will play in a debut. he has been playing on the challenger tour. if he needs some reference point of how far he can go, he got it this weekend. the only way is up. speed skater elise christie gets her short—track schedule under way in the 500 metres qualifiers on friday at the winter olympics. she's been testing out the track in pyeonchang on sunday. it's been four years since she was controversially disqualified from all three of her events in sochi. that left her tormented by cyber bullying and death threats. but the scot is determined to ignore all the haters and is a strong medal hope for great britain. think it's chilly in england? 7 well, tonight's super bowl in minneapolis is forecast to be the coldest on record as the new england patriots face the philadelphia eagles. the game is indoors, but officials are still sending a warning to those attending in minnesota, especially as the tightened security measures could lead to longer waits to get inside.

on the field, the patriots are looking for a record—equalling sixth super bowl title, which will give their star tom brady more wins than any other player. the eagles have only appeared in the super bowl twice, losing on both occasions. the super bowl is live on the bbc tonight, on bbc one from 23:15pm, straight after match of the day two. that's all from sportsday. we will see you later in the evening. we all watch other people, but most of us feel uncomfortable when we become too curious about them. why they're doing this or that, what they're thinking. consent by leo benedictus is a novel that describes the nightmare of a curiosity that becomes an obsession. cruel and destructive, it takes us into the mind of a stalker whose life is shaped by his targets, his victims.

quite simply, it is a contemporary horror story. welcome. the central figure in this book has got a mind which is clearly disturbed. and you had to get inside it. because you're telling the story from his point of view for most of the book. how difficult was it to do that? i suppose the honest answer is it maybe wasn't as difficult as i'd like it to have been. what does that say about you? well, i know, i mean, i think for me... in a way the primary aspect of the book was the way that i am going to talk to readers, and the way that he is going to talk to readers.

and i found that by talking in that intimate, deeply present way, that i think he feels in relation to the people that he stalks, i found myself quite naturally talking like him. i mean i spent a long time writing the book, about five years, and i think it probably grew over time. but by the end of it i could talk like him at the drop of a hat, a bit too easily. we're talking about a man who is a stalker, who stalks dozens and dozens and dozens of people, remembers the first one and so on. it then becomes a violent obsession late in the book. but what fascinates me, as we were saying at the beginning there, is that we are all, to some extent, curious in that way. you can sit opposite somebody in the train and you think, why are they reading that, where are they going, what are they doing? but we all know there is a point beyond which you don't go. and imagining what happens when you don't have that control mechanism is really quite terrifying, isn't it? i think so.

i certainly felt that way. do you know, i'd be interested to know how many other novelists feel this way, because being a novelist especially, i've found, after my first book, i was looking at people all the time, and making little mental notes all the time about details of behaviour and... someone would say something in a conversation and secretly i'd be at work thinking, that would be good, i can use that. i think all of us are stalkers in that way. in one sense, this character does some dreadful things in the second half of the book, he is just doing that, it's just that it becomes a habit and he thinks it's quite normal. yeah, he clearly never notices a moment when he goes off the rails, and i think really struggles with the idea that maybe he has gone off the rails, but he can't put his finger on exactly when it happened. and i do like that idea as well of how blurred the line is between being interested in someone, maybe fancying someone, maybe wanting to talk to someone, maybe finding out a little bit more about them before you do.

and before you know it you're standing outside their house. yeah, exactly. i mean, i think that's how it works for him, yeah. do you have an attraction to horror? bedrooms, inside their heads, watching their most intimate behaviour, you know, their conversation with a lover, for example. it's terrifying stuff. i suppose i must do, yeah. i don't know exactly why. i know that for a long time i felt when writing novels actually a sense of guilt about what i'm doing, because i know that i'm not doing it in the interest of readers, i'm not trying to bring them something generous and mind expanding, i'm just writing because i need to and i'm writing about what interests me. i'm hoping that i can grip their attention for long enough to make them interested. so he's just a writer who's gone a little bit further. well, yes, he is, though i don't think i'm likely

to go that far myself. but it's a way, certainly, of exploring those feelings i've always had about writing. when you began the story with the idea of getting inside the head of a man who is behaving in this very odd way, did you always know that it was going to end with some scenes that are difficult to read and must have been difficult to write? igot... i can't say i always knew, no. i think i knew he was going to lose control of himself, and i think probably if i'd analysed that i would have known, but in a way maybe i didn't want to know, just like he doesn't. well, i think to the reader, when you open this book, you do sense that it is going to end rather badly. i mean, you don't think he's going to stop doing it. no, i wouldn't have thought so, and i don't think he has the ability to control himself, and i think he makes it clear from the beginning that he is trying to justify his own behaviour, trying to understand what he's done, hopefully make people understand him.

there is an intriguing note on the dust cover of the book where you say, this book is an experiment. what exactly do you mean by that? well, to my mind it's an experiment between me and the reader. he is conducting experiments of various kinds on the people that he stalks, but it's also an experiment i think i'm making really to see how people will respond to this book. i won't necessarily know, of course, but i want to take people to the point, this involves stuff towards the very end of the book, where they've had a creepy and maybe horrifying experience. maybe they discover that it's been creepy and horrifying in a way they hadn't realised all along, and that is where it comes into the relationship with me writing a book. it's fascinating, i said at the beginning, that it was a contemporary horror story. and really, what you're talking about here, is a world in which, you know, individuals are moving in different ways,

apart, being quite lonely, even in the context of, you know, their social lives. and this guy is somehow exploiting that. the solitary nature of contemporary life. were you very conscious of that? well, i was, i think particularly... the book is really, we talked all about him and it's a book split into two halves, really, between him and her. frances, the woman that he stalks in particular. she is, i think, quite a lonely person. i think a lot of people are quite lonely. we indeed have a lot of research on how widespread loneliness is. and that's her vulnerability, really. yeah, absolutely. i mean i think he wants to connect with people just as i do by writing novels, just as she does by making friendships and forming relationships. so there's a desperation about his position. yeah, very much. i think lonely people are always desperate to make that kind

of connection and sometimes something goes wrong, as it does with him. he can't do it and he tries these terrible ways to feed this craving. he is unusual because by accident, completely unexpectedly, he becomes, suddenly, very rich. he doesn't have to work, he doesn't have to worry about money. the world is his oyster. in a way that releases him to be the man he really is underneath. in that sense we are not all like him. no, we're lucky because we don't suddenly inherit millions of pounds. i think for him it is a tragedy that he becomes as rich as he does. for a lot of people that are extremely rich, it is a severe problem. i know that sounds ridiculous. it's many of our greatest dreams to become as wealthy as he is. but i think when suddenly you don't have to work you do have to think about how to spend your life, and that's a hard question to answer. and he doesn't know the nature of his tragedy, but we do. yeah, exactly. i hope... you know, i do, in spite of everything he does, feel a lot of sympathy for him. i sometimes feel a little awkward about how sympathetic

towards him i feel. not obviously for the things he does, but for how he feels, yeah. we're talking about the main character in consent, who talks to us about his awful life. leo benedictus, thank you very much. thank you. let me send another chill down your spine. we have got some cold weather on the way this week, certainly cold and snow, and the weekend ended on a final note, with sunshine around as well. this is the headline for this week, not everyone will get snow, most of us will not. some areas of the country will get wintry showers this and overnight. there have been snowfla kes this and overnight. there have been snowflakes in some areas in nice, but for many, it is clear skies tonight. temperatures dropping, not terribly cold, but if frost on the way. we are watching east anglia and

the south—east, in the early hours, 80 north—easterly wind will drag in snow showers. do not be surprised if this was covering around suffolk, essex, kent is specially. possibly the greater london area. you know what happens when we get snow on busy motorways. there could be delays. the rest of the country looking fine, some snow affecting easter nears, and a couple of degrees above freezing in belfast. chile and partly cloudy sky. that is monday morning's rush hour. how about the afternoon? the wintry showers will continue across this corner the country. across the north west it will be bright, and in the north—east, it will be sunny, newcastle, edinburgh. around three degrees, so certainly on the chilly side. london getting up to about five. a chance of some flakes of snow moving through the capital.

watch what happens on monday night into tuesday. a weather front moves to end potentially bring snow across northern and western areas. probably not a lot, it will snow itself out by the time the weather front is across the midlands. but northern ireland, scotland, the north west on into wales, they could get a covering into towns and cities. maybe the centimetres across the pennines. on wednesday, we are between systems so the weather is looking decent. cold after a frosty start. on thursday the temperatures will pick up. we will see cloud and rain coming in. beyond that, it will turn colder again. this is the summary turn colder again. this is the summary for the week. cold, widespread frosts around, and it will be cold enough for some snow in some areas. i know i am hedging my bets, but you know what forecasting is like in the uk! this is bbc news. i'm rachel schofield.

the headlines at 8pm. the cabinet is more united than the brexiteers think, says amber rudd, ahead of a crucial few days for the negotiations. we meet in the committee, we meet privately for discussions and i think we will arrive at something which suits us all. two people have been killed and more than 100 injured, after two trains collided with each other in the united states. south africa's president, jacob zuma, is being urged to step down as leader of the anc, during a meeting with top party officials. political limbo continues in germany, as angela merkel‘s party fails to form a coalition government. talks continue tomorrow. also this hour, england get their six nations campaign off to a winning start. their italian hosts had their moments, but eddiejones‘ side scored seven tries to run out easy victors in rome.