Thanks for the memoirs

Never let it be said that here at Inside TV we don’t sometimes try to inject a little bit of arts and culture into our weekly dose of shock confessions, steamy affairs and screaming matches down the local boozer. So when we were offered a chat with Mary Beard about the latest series of BBC2’S Friday-night arts show Front Row Late, we popped on our best black polo neck with matching beret and headed off to find out what she’ll be covering in this run. The first episode will look at memoirs and autobiographies, and Mary had some interesting insights to share…

“We’re keen on people writing about themselves,” Mary tells us. “What that’s for, whether we ever believe them, and what do we think about that self-justification? And there’s a historical bottom to it, because we’ve done it forever. I go to my university library sometimes, and there are parts where there’s shelf after shelf of 19th-century memoirs that no one has looked at in a long time, so it’s a strange genre!”

And, of course, it’s not always the person who’s lived the life who actually gets to tell the story, which is something else that the programme will be addressing.

“One of our panellists is Germaine Greer,” shares Mary. “We’re interested to hear what happens when someone writes a biography of you that you don’t authorise. What does it feel like to read a book about you, from cradle to old age, when you had nothing to do with it?”

It’s certainly an interesting topic, but don’t expect Mary to be releasing an autobiography of her own any time soon…

“How do you do it?” she wonders aloud. “Either they have kept a diary, which is quite possible, or it’s very interestingly invented memory. Because I don’t keep a diary, my memoirs would be fiction. If I had to write about what I did last year, it would be fantasy!”

Mary has been the regular host of the show since the start of its second series in April 2018, and she admits that presenting a live debate was “a bit of a departure” from the sort of TV projects she’d done before.

“It’s very interesting, the show being live,” says Mary. “For better or worse, you get a discussion happening really as-it-happens, and that is hugely nerve-wracking, but it gives an edge to it. And if you ask people to join in on social media, they’re participating in a conversation that’s going on in real time. Doing live telly,

I’ve learned a huge amount.

I’m still not perfect, I’ll never be a pro by any means, but

I’m a hell of a lot better than I was! And if you make a mess of it, you have a few glasses of wine, go home, and think, ‘Do better next time!’”