Paul Clayton- "Fermenting Gases"

Would you believe it? This week’s guest President is the wonderful actor, director and writer Paul Clayton, and the enchanted bingo machine has once again decided that our ramble should take us somewhere we really weren’t expecting.

Paul joins us in the great outdoors, where our first destination is 396 — formerly used classifications relating to women’s position and treatment, now part of the great Dewey wilderness of customs and etiquette. And this turns out to be rather a good place to begin, because Paul has some very definite thoughts about manners, politeness and the little customs that help us navigate the world. From the wonderfully theatrical tradition of hearing “Mr Clayton, standby” over the tannoy, to the lost art of saying thank you without immediately being asked to complete twenty-seven boxes about your customer experience, we find ourselves considering whether modern life has given us rather too much access to one another.

And then Paul reveals that his own childhood was rather extraordinary. He was adopted as a baby, and grew up in a family-run village shop in Thrybergh, South Yorkshire. His memories of life behind the counter are wonderfully vivid: miners arriving after the night shift, customers sitting down for a chat, his father becoming mortified when women asked for sanitary products, and Paul himself hiding in the shop window to be admired by passing customers. It seems that a lifelong fascination with people, characters and human behaviour may have begun right there.

Next, the bingo machine transports us to 355 — Military Science, specifically siege warfare. Cue battering rams, trebuchets, petards and exploding livestock, before we discover that Paul’s remarkably detailed knowledge of siege engines comes largely from playing Worms on the PlayStation. Which is as good a reason as any to discuss one of the most important theatrical connections in Paul’s life: Tony Slattery.

Paul directed Tony in Privates on Parade, having first encountered the play as an actor himself. He tells us about Tony becoming Carmen Miranda for the publicity photographs, the chaos and joy of rehearsals, Tony’s return to the stage after the Olivier Awards controversy, touring with the production — and the extraordinary generosity he showed towards the young actors around him. It is a particularly lovely recollection of Tony: mischievous, funny, occasionally difficult, but fundamentally generous.

Finally, the machine produces 024 — general reference works, l