they will contact the police, the fraudsters would say, or seize their personal assets. and so they say, you can pay straightaway, if you go down to your retailer and by these itunes vouchers with your own money to your retailer and buy these itunes vouchers with your own money and then call out the 16 digit number on the back then call out the 16 digit number on the back of these cards over the phone to us. how does it work? well, that number can buy a lot of stuff on the itunes system, you could buy a lot of stuff on the itunes system, you could buy an iphone or whatever as well as songs. it has a cash value. so, the criminal could swap that number to someone else, who would give them cash. and this is why hmrc are acting now, urging a lot of retailers to do something about this, to watch out for elderly people coming in, demanding a lot of money worth of itunes vouchers, and this is what angela mcdonald was telling us earlier today. since 2016, about 1,500 people have fallen victim to this fraud,

mainly people who are over 65, and very sadly the loss for each customer has been about £1,150. and last week, we heard of an elderly gentlemen aged 81 who had fallen foul of this scam a couple of times and had lost £20,000 as a result. so if such a call comes through, hang up. the same applies to apple, they say you can only buy apple stuff on an itunes vouchers, you cannot pay a tax bill with it. and now the weather. things are looking quieter before more wild weather pushes in. low pressure will bring gale force winds to england and wales. 45 mph inland. plenty of

snow showers or even longer spells of snow across northern ireland in central and southern scotland in particular. further south, a bit drier, but very windy. a wild night to come. sunday will be very windy in the east to start. gaels will eventually clear and sunday looking better than saturday with central, southern and eastern parts will be dry with sunshine. blustery showers across western areas. falling as snow in parts especially over the hills of northern scotland. this is bbc news. the headlines. the haitian ambassador tells the bbc his government will summon the oxfam representative in haiti to explain how it dealt with allegations of aid workers paying for six following the earthquake in 2011. cross—border confrontations

between israeli warplanes and iranian—backed forces in syria have triggered concern in both moscow and washington. the foreign secretary, borisjohnson, is in bangladesh, where he's been meeting rohingya refugees, who've escaped violence in neighbouring myanmar. and north korea's leader kim jong—un has invited the south korean president for talks, at the "earliest date possible." for talks, at the "earliest the historic invitation was given by kim jong—un‘s sister, who's visiting the south for the winter olympics. now on bbc news, talking books. welcome to talking books here at the cheltenham literary festival. a celebration of more than 1000 of the world's finest writers, poets, performers and politicians. today i'm talking to the bestselling irish writer roddy doyle. he made his name 30 years ago

with his debut novel the commitments, which was later turned into a hugely successful film and then a stage show. since then he has gone on to write more than 20 books for adults and children, including paddy clarke ha ha ha, which won the booker prize in 1993. his latest novel is called smile, and in it, he says, he hopes to shock and surprise people. roddy doyle, you have been writing for three decades. so there is a lot to talk about. but i'd like to start bang up—to—date with your latest novel smile, which is about a middle—aged man, victor, looking back on his schooldays as dark and disturbing memories begin to emerge. what was the starting

point for the novel? i went to a christian brothers school in dublin, started in 1971, when i was 13. and that is a school run by the catholic church? yes, by the christian brothers, they are called. and a lot... for more than 100 years, a lot of working—class, lower—middle—class boys would have gone to these schools. it was a strange place to go into, having been to a state school at primary level, to go into this very violent, weird, eccentric environment. quite early on, a christian brother, probably in his late 30s, i don't really know, wearing the soutane, like a dress, at the front of the room. friday afternoon we were trying to persuade him not to give us homework. and he said to me, roddy doyle, i can never resist your smile. and the ground, after

a second or so, hoping he hadn't said that to me, the ground in front of me just opened and yawned. in a way, i hoped i could fall into it, because i knew there were consequences. he had said this to me in front of 33, 3a of the boys, and that i was going to be branded. and the word gay did not exist, really. it was not in the air in the way it is now in ireland in 1971, so i was the queer, i was the homo. and just to be clear, that man never touched me, never told me to stay back after class. there was nothing overtly sinister about it, but it was so inappropriate. i did not know the word back then, but it was so inappropriate. i made more of it, much more of it in the novel than actually occurred, but it is one of those memories. if a memory has a camera angle, it is the exact same memory for the last 50 years, or so, just less than 50 years.

and it did not haunt me. i got a bit of slagging about it, as we say in ireland. and now and again somebody would say smile at him, smile at him. and i would be telling them no in words to that effect. but the memory was there. i think because of all the stories that had been in the air in ireland over the past couple of decades about abuse and the catholic church. i thought i will somehow or other take that little moment in my life and somehow fashion a story. i was hoping i could surprise or maybe shock people by telling this particular story. i wonder if you mightjust read a short extract that does involve the incident you have been talking about. and this violent man with the desperate dan hair liked me. i knew this. everybody knew this, because something he said more than two years before, when i was 13. victor ford, i can never

resist your smile. it was like a line from a film in a very wrong place. i knew i was doomed. it had been one of murphy's happy days and we were at him to let us off homework for the weekend. it was friday afternoon and the sun was heating the room, spreading the smile. —— smell. the school was right beside the sea and we could hear the tide behind the yard wall. go on, brother, s'il vous plait, brother, we'll pray for you on sunday, brother. he listened to us and grinned. it was a grin, not a smile. the word inappropriate did not appear until years later, but the grin was inappropriate. it was all inappropriate. he was being taunted and teased by a room of boys and he was loving it. then he said it. victor ford, i can never resist your smile. there was silence. as you said, you were never abused but do you think any of your friends were? i have asked several people i would have met over the years, do you think anything happened?

and they were, oh, yes. you were beaten, weren't you? i was yes. but i was one of many. yes, i was. corporal punishment was legal back then. it was here, too. it was made illegal i think in 1981, when ijust started my own career as a teacher. so in primary school, i would have been slapped occasionally, but everybody was slapped. when i went to this place there was a level of violence that was extraordinary. it was unpredictable. a teacher could explode at any moment. and it would involve... a lot of the teachers had leather straps. three on each hand would leave you shaking for a day, at least. i recall one teacher who was not even a teacher of mine came into the room and i can't even remember what we were doing. something utterly harmless. none of his business. as a teacher myself years later, none of his business, hauled out four of us and i was cute enough to get to the back of the queue, thinking he would be exhausted by the time he came to me,

but he was not. i will never forget the pain. never, everforget the pain. the desk had metal legs and i remember putting my hands on the legs to cool the hands down. it worked to a degree, but my hands were still sweating. later on in the day, you know. i did nothing to deserve it. i feel bad saying this because there were terrific teachers there as well. you are almost 60. smile is your 11th novel. why write about it now? i really don't know is the honest answer, it is an honest answer. i don't know. when i started the book, i think it is memory. i suppose as we get older we gather more memories. our children get older and memories become vital and it is a strange moment when you realise a memory you think you share with someone is not a shared memory.

it is also fascinating. i listen to people i know who were in the room at the same time something occurred and i am sitting back listening to a different version, but it is their version. so memory and its fragility has always interested me and i think more so as i get older. there is that. also the notion of friendship among men, which to me is one of the great sources of joy. when i started writing about schooldays i knew at least a big chunk of the book was here. has it been cathartic? no, not at all. that is an easy answer! i don't believe in that stuff! there has been, and you mentioned it earlier, there has been talking recent yea rs about institutionalised child abuse in ireland and i wondered, as an irish writer, did you feel a duty

or responsibility to address the issue? not at all. i do not think in those terms and if i had a list of social issues i now must address, i would be... 0h, way off the track that i should be on when i am writing a novel. no. i don't feel any responsibility whatsoever. but having decided to write a book that included this subject, for example, or dealt with this subject matter, my responsibility was to do it as well as i possibly could and also to do it in a way as a novelist that could still surprise. i had just written a film script recently about a homeless woman, but she is a woman who happens to be homeless, if that makes sense, and that is the plot. but without the woman, you know, she is at the core of the story. but she is much more important than the adjective that describes her currently. ireland seems to be a constant source of inspiration for you. roddy doyle books don't tend to travel much beyond ireland.

why is that? well, pg wodehouse's novels do not stray much beyond his back garden, really, do they? i have written one novel that was set in america, because it had to be because the protagonist got out of ireland, so in a way it is about him getting his way back into ireland. it is a small country, but, there is more than enough to write about. the commitments, a story about a bunch of young kids forming a band, it is a universal story, itjust happens to be set in dublin. that is where the ice is nice and thick for me. if i'm walking across the lake, i'm not going to fall in, because i know the accent. i know the corner they are on. i know what shop they go in to buy something. i know that shop. and that is my research. i have always lived in dublin and i have always lived in a certain corner of dublin. the north—east of dublin. even though i might not mention it,

i know the sea is very close to where all the characters are. and i know the seagulls can be heard in the morning and in the evening. and i sometimes mention them. and i not the geese coming at this time of year and they leave in april. we love seeing them going over our heads. you mention your first novel the commitments, which you wrote while you were teaching. you taught english and geography in a secondary school for 1h years. am i right your pupils nicknamed you punk doyle? yes. why was that? i had an earring and i wore doc martens and it was 1979, that kind of era, so punk was big. i got my own classroom and there was a poster of the clash. and i added the smiths. and i had a friend who promoted gigs and he gave me a poster so i thought it was a good alternative to jane austen or somebody like that. or the map of ireland.

you know, jane austen on one side and the map of ireland. there is a vision of hell! it was just an alternative. doyle is a common name in ireland, the sixth most common name and there were four doyles on the staff. one of the others was called dozy. so i think i got away quite well there. i would rather be called punk doyle. while you were teaching you were writing. had you always wanted to be a writer? the itch was there and i did a little bit of writing when i was a student but teaching was the great opportunity. i did not have a family at the time, so as a secondary teacher in ireland i had june, july and august off, so that is a quarter of the year. and you are never more than seven weeks away from the mid—term break. so there was plenty of time, leaving aside evening time. so a greatjob to start off with. the first four novels were written while i was a teacher. the commitments was self—published in 1987, about this group of young dubliners who form a soul band. it became something of a cult classic.

in no part due to the musician elvis costello. what was that about? well, if i remember right, there was a very good music magazine called hot press. and they weren't impressed with the book. a bad review, an interview that was a bit of a disaster, as well. and that was a disappointment, because i liked hot press. i can't remember, some anniversary edition of hot press, they asked elvis costello to write, because he was living in dublin at the time and they asked him to write something about his early years. in the article, i cannot remember the words, he said if you want to know what it was like read the commitments. and that was a great endorsement. and of course the film, which came out in 1991, gave it even extra life. it was this tremendous success. what was it like for you? it was marvellous, but also overpowering. to go from being a teacher who has

written books and, now and again, might be in a newspaper being interviewed, to being a very reluctant celebrity, for example, or a household name. i didn't like it. it was a little overpowering and i was worried at that stage i might be defined by this for the rest of my life, the man who wrote the commitments. it is not a healthy way to be, at that stage of your life, to be almost consigned to it — the past before you begin. i felt a little bit that way when i won the booker prize. in 1993 you won the booker prize with paddy clarke ha ha ha. suddenly you are the literary equivalent of u2 in ireland. for while, yes. i'm delighted that i won it and still am. a brilliant compliment to get. i thought i will never escape from this bloody thing, either. it seems mean—spirited.

aren't you lucky to be trying to escape from those two huge successes? i know i am lucky, but when i finish a book i almost throw it over my shoulder and get going on another one. i've relaxed a bit now in recent years, but at the time... i've written for children, too. the last few years, i go into a cafe in dublin buying a coffee and a tall lad behind the counter with a big beard says, are you roddy doyle? i say, i am. he says, i loved the giggler treatment when i was a kid. a big adult, six foot seven. tattooed. covered. and he is telling me it is one of his favourite books. it is really lovely. i think that made me feel a bit gentler towards everything i have done. i suppose i am at that stage of my life or career where i don't feel i have to escape from the past.

if somebody says i really like the commitments, i will accept the compliment, rather than bat it away. one of the things that seems to me to define embodied to me to define a roddy doyle novel is the dialogue, which is so realistic. i'm thinking of your second novel, the snapper, which is about a young woman who gets pregnant outside of wedlock. you are there with her in the kitchen when she tells her parents. you are with her in the pub when she tells her friends. you make it seem and sound effortless. how much work really goes into it? a lot. it takes a lot of work to make something seem effortless. there is trial and error, stopping, starting. taking out a word because it seems like you are tripping over it rather than reciting it. i take out a word and see if i can replace it, or rewrite the sentence completely. are you always listening to people? not professionally. in dublin, often you do not have a choice. it is not an option. silence as an entity is quite rare.

people talk to each other all the time. the ones i love are upstairs on the bus when you hear half—conversations. people talking to somebody else on the phone, i love those ones. because i fill in the gaps. yes, i can't think of... i've heard things that struck me as being funny and bizarre. i might come home and tell the family but i can't think once of hearing somebody say something that i jotted down and say, i'll use that. because it would end up being a punch line in a way that a situation comedy might. that you're dragging the audience towards that line. so if it does not serve a purpose in the story, i would not bother saving it. they are always talking in the snapper. they are also always laughing. it struck me as a very happy book. yes, i think it was colm toibin who said it was the first and only example of a happy family in irish literature! that was deliberate. this is a family that

works, with their flaws. i read it recently because i have done a stage adaptation that is going on in dublin next year. i was quite shocked in many ways. there is a level of violence in it i did not know was there. it was not in my memory. but things that were acceptable 30 years ago when i started the book would be utterly unacceptable now. really quite a shock. some of the attitudes have shifted and changed. there are things in it that are rooted to its time. but it is a happy family. and yet some of your novels seem to have this bleak streak. i am thinking about paddy clarke, this ten—year—old boy, whose verve for life seems to crumble as his parents' marriage disintegrates. i wondered where that pessimism comes from. i don't know. i'd find if i was in the company of a 50—year—old man

who is utterly optimistic, i would find it completely unbearable. give me pessimism everyday! give me pessimism every day! it's part of the package, isn't it? we all know we die. we are mortal. therefore there has to be pessimism. unless you are looking forward with giddy delight to what might be coming. to me this is it. it was like the official picture is every house had mammy, daddy, in the irish situation in the ‘60s, 6.2 children, or 11.2 children. there were four children in my house. there would have been five except one of the children died. that was not a big family by any means. i remember there were houses where there was a father by himself, a lot of women by themselves. the father was away working in south america. that was the official story. so the notion of that

family's structure, while it was the standard one, was not universal. i was just working with that when i started paddy clarke. the book ends with the break—up of the parents' marriage. we don't know what happens after that. how is he? i have not a clue. because he is a fictional character. would you ever write about him in adulthood? no. i would not have the remotest interest. it is one of the few stand—alone books i've written. i think it is a much better book left alone. you touched on your own family and you did capture your parents' memories in a memoir rory and ita. why did you want to do that? well, my children were very young and i thought if the worst happened and my parents died while they were very young they would be left not knowing much

about their grandparents. my mother for a example was born in 1925. her mother died in 1928, when my mother was three. she knew virtually nothing about her. she didn't know her surname. i don't think there was a photograph. did not know where she came from. did not know where her family were. i witnessed my mother discovering that side of her family when she was in her 50s. she found out she had a whole family living in long island in new york. did you ever wonder whether the general public would actually be interested in reading about them? i don't know what the general public is. i never thought it was going to be angela's ashes. it wasn't going to be a global phenomenon by any means. but i thought it would have a validity. they were great storytellers and very descriptive. my mother's memory is very precise. my father's is more general and he embellishes. so he had vivid memories of his birth.

whereas my mother would limit herself to what actually happened. they worked well as a team. i was enjoying it and i sent early chapters to my publisher and he loved them, so that was enough for me. as i said at the beginning, you have been writing for 30 years. does it get easier? no. that is good. no, it is never habitual. it is always work, work i love. 11 novels in and working on the 12th, and that is hard, coming up with something again fresh. i have always accepted the fact i am getting older, therefore the camera angle is different and there is material to write about i would never have anticipated before. we shall look forward to your 12th novel. roddy doyle, it has been so good to talk to you. thanks very much. pa rt

part one of the weekend of disappointing —— was disappointing with rain spreading west to east and dire conditions on the roads. things will quieten down for a while this evening and night. it will be wild with gale force winds particularly in england and wales and snow in the forecast particularly in the northern half of the country. the rain moved eastwards during the day. heavy rain now in northern ireland and a developing area of low pressure pushing eastwards and tightening isobars. winds picking up

across england and wales and overnight. gales developing up to 45 mph inland, up to 60 mph near the coast. strong winds across north wales in north—west england. maybe gusts up to 70 mph. rain to the south, snow to the north. there could be heavy snow in scotland on higher ground. as we head to sunday morning, it will be windy across the east and south east of the country. the gales will ease down and the winds generally during the day and looking better than saturday with central southern and eastern parts seeing plenty of sunshine. further west, blustery showers and wintry in nature because of the temperatures. more snow in western scotland. 3—7,

the temperatures. feeling cooler in the temperatures. feeling cooler in the breeze that sunshine to compensate. on monday, it stays cold. winds coming in from the west. always off the atlantic, weather fronts bringing showers. mainly across the north—west of the uk but for much of the country it should be a decent day. many areas staying dry. it will be cool. behind me a weather front will move through the country on tuesday to bring wet and fairly breezy weather. the drier interlude for another spell of rain on wednesday. this is bbc news. the headlines at 9.00pm. the haitian ambassador tells the bbc his government wants oxfam to explain how it dealt with allegations of aid workers paying for sex. the worst part is when they say if those crimes where reported to the haitian authorities no action would have been taken —

it's really an insult. israel asserts that it will defend itself against attack, after one of its f16 jets crashes after coming under syrian anti—aircraft fire — the us is "deeply concerned". the foreign secretary borisjohnson is in bangladesh where he's been meeting rohingya refugees, who've escaped violence in neighbouring myanmar. also in the next hour, britain's bid for an olympic title at the 2018 winter olympics.