There aren't many authors who can say they write about crime and murder by day and make people laugh as a successful stand-up comedian by night. But that's exactly what Mark Billingham did for several years - and he thinks the two roles have definite similarities
"Whether you do stand-up comedy or write a story you have a duty to deliver," says the 50-year-old father of two teenagers, who lives with his wife Claire in North London.
"As a comedian you walk out on stage and you have a minute to hook them or they'll start booing. As a writer it's very similar. A reader doesn't have time to say, ‘I'll give him 50 pages as it's not very good yet, but I hope it'll get better'."
Mark Billingham is obviously doing something right - he is a hugely popular crime-fiction writer, growing in stature book by book, especially since his first two Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a TV series. Since his first novel Sleepyhead was published in 2001, Billingham has had nine more best-sellers featuring no-nonsense detective Tom Thorne as the main character.
His latest novel Good As Dead reached the number-one spot in The Sunday Times' best-seller list.
Turning to crime
A few years ago Billingham stopped doing stand-up comedy to write crime fiction full-time - apart from speaking at the occasional book event, when those in attendance see that, despite his claims of being a "very average comedian", he is actually an exceptionally funny man.
From an early age, Billingham says he can remember writing "funny" stories. As he grew older, he moved on to crime stories. Inspired by the comic-crime writing of American Carl Hiaasen, he attempted to combine his experience as a stand-up comedian and crime-novel fan to write a similar novel, set in his native Birmingham, UK. But he abandoned this unfinished project to focus on his other idea: the book that became Sleepyhead, where a case of ‘locked-in syndrome' - a condition in which someone is awake but cannot move or communicate due to complete paralysis - reveals the depths of a dark mind, as fond of toying with the novel's detective-inspector chief protagonist as with the victims.
Since that first novel his books have gone on to be translated into many languages and the first two have been made into a successful television drama series starring Natascha McElhone (of Californication fame), Sandra Oh (Grey's Anatomy), Aiden Gillen (The Wire), Eddie Marsan (Sherlock Holmes) and David Morrissey (Captain Corelli's Mandolin) starring as DI Tom Thorne.
Getting under Thorne's skin
It's the character of Thorne that's central to the appeal of the TV series and the books. "Thorne is stubborn and, as his name implies, can be prickly and tough to get rid of," Billingham says. "But if he doesn't know when he's not wanted, his tragedy is that he doesn't always know when he is.
"I have always wanted him to be a character who carries the events of his past with him; who's scarred, inside and out by the cases, and the people that have shaped him. Those of us who write crime fiction cannot put our characters through these dreadful ordeals without writing about how they are affected.
"Thorne is someone who deals with violent death, with terrible grief, and it would be ludicrous, inhuman, if he remained untouched by such things. I've often said the reader knows every bit as much about Thorne as I do. When I created him for Sleepyhead I was determined he should be a character who would develop, book by book, change and grow as we all do, and who - crucially - would be unpredictable.
"As I write each new Thorne novel, I'm determined that whatever is happening plot-wise, a new layer of the onion will be peeled away and reveal something about Thorne that is surprising to me as much as anyone else. If I can remain interested in the character, then hopefully the reader will stay interested too. The day a character becomes predictable is the day a writer should think about moving on - because the reader certainly will."
Basing fiction on fact
Not many of Billingham's readers know that Thorne has a bad back because Billingham used to suffer from one. "It started after one of my comedy appearances," he recalls. "I jumped off the stage, slipped and twisted my ankle. That probably got the biggest laugh of the night!"
But it was no joke for Billingham as he couldn't sit to write or even lie down without feeling excruciating back pain. Unable to sleep properly, he became irritable and found it more difficult to concentrate - a nightmare for his stand-up comedy and writing. In the end, after several painful months, an operation cured it.
"Until the operation the pain was always there, which is why I gave Thorne his own bad back, when I was writing my novel Buried. Writers are told to write about what they know and I certainly knew all about back pain. So I made sure that Thorne suffered with it as well!"
Literary Dubai
Now with both Billingham and Thorne very much up and running again, the author reflects on his recent return to Dubai to attend the literary festival, where he says he met a lot of interesting people - both writers and readers.
"This was my third visit to the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, although I also visited Dubai some years ago to perform as a stand-up comedian. I always get such a warm welcome and I love the place.
"For the third year I had an amazing time at the festival in March. It really is unique, not only in the emphasis it places on education and integration, or in its truly international scope, but in the way it fosters a wonderful bond between the many writers invited. How often can you watch a world-famous poet on the back of a camel or enjoy a night-time desert safari with acclaimed novelists and biographers? It's a festival that I would recommend unreservedly to anyone - reader or writer."
