Casts, is enormous, but how do you maintain that once it moves on to the next city . How do you keep the good times going . That is future planning and the legacy programme. We have spent over a year not planning for this year but beyond 2021, because we are City Of Culture for four years, but we are determined never to look back, to look forward and look at opportunities, and we are going to do that and that is what you need to do. You certainly need the public behind you. We had 80 of the public when asked by the judges that they knew about the City Of Culture and that they wanted that title. Tomorrow we will have the first of the regular bbc News Channel Programme beaching the highlights of the year as britains City Of Culture. That at 8 30pm on friday and across the weekend. The top stories. Us Attorney General, Jeff Sessions is to respond to calls for his resignation over undisclosed meetings with the Russian Ambassador. Well bring you that News Conference live from 9. The Police Watchdog is warning that cutbacks to forces in england and wales are putting the public at risk, because services are having are having to be rationed. Snapchats been snapped up. Shares in the company that owns the Messaging Service have jumped by more than a0 , on its stock market debut. Now its time for meet the author. Howard jacobson is a master of the art of serious fiction that is also hilarious. He has won the Man Booker Prize and the everyman Pg Woodhouse Prize for Comic Fiction twice. No one else has done that. The dogs last walk and other pieces is a collection of his Newspaper Columns for the independent. They sparkle with wit, Plenty Of Erudition Edition and the wisdom of a writer who seems to get even more curious about life and about all of us as the years go by. Welcome. Lets do the sensible thing and begin and the beginning. The first story in this collection of columns is called the dogs last walk and you have chosen to give that title to the collection as a whole. Now, why . Ive had the good fortune to have read it and i think i know why. But what is it about this story that touches you so much . It touched other people too, people stopped me in the street and said, you just made me cry. So i thought, ahi, im not used to making people cry. I didnt used to have the confidence to make people cry. I thought myjob was to make people laugh. I never had the confidence to admit that i cried. I mean, ive been a blubberer all my life and ive denied it. You cry At The Movies . I cry everywhere and i pretend not to. Dont want to admit that i cry. Just now, and this grand old age, im prepared to admit that i cry and im prepared to write to make people cry. Not that i did that deliberately, i just saw a scene that upset me a great deal and i wanted to write about it. Well its a terribly touching story. You were with your wife Sitting On A Park Bench and what did you see . I saw an elegantly dressed lady leading a big, very tired black labrador. Labradors have wonderful, wonderful heads. Dogs altogether seem to have a gravity that human beings rarely manage. But labradors particularly. This was beyond the usual sadness of a big dog. This looked to me, and i said this to my wife, this is his last day on earth, you can feel it. And the way his owner was walking him around, being very patient with him when he had to stop, bending down to him and stroking his head, told me that this was the last day of his life. Whether she would take him to be shot or what, whether he would just expire at the end of the day, but you could just feel it, between them, in their relationship, you could feel this was the last day they would spend together and it was unbearably upsetting to see it. I thought, will he even die in front of me . And ijust wanted to describe his slow progress around the park. Its also a wonderful illustration of how a piece of writing and reflection, of Newspaper Column length in this case, can come from one little observation, one moment, you know, a flash on your eye of something and then everything begins to weave itself around that one sight. Absolutely. Thats always been my way of doing it, the only way i can do it. I couldnt come as a columnist, if there had been a war while i was writing, although there were some, i didnt know how to deal with them. I want to make something little big rather than, you know, leap on the back of something that is big. Thats the challenge for me, start with nothing and let the words do it, let ones observation do it, let the words do it, see where they take you. Its a wonderful skill to be able to fashion a column that is touching, funny, may be profound if youre lucky. But also has a kind of wordplay that gives it a simple aesthetic pleasure as a piece of writing, it has a beginning, middle and end, beautifully turned sentences. And thats what you really love, isnt it . The rhythm is everything, get the rhythm of a joke wrong, comedians know that. Ajoke, the timing and rhythm is everything and so it is in the writing Something Like a column. I can just start with very little and i the words do it. I am, if you like, a servant of the words. They are my words, but sometimes they dont feel like my words. Where do they come from . A mysterious feeling. Of course you feel that the world is a mystery, thats quite a good start, isnt it . Its much more fun than knowing everything. If youre going on an exploration, saying, how did that come about, why do we feel like that, why do people behave like that . And more important i think than ever at the moment because post the social media, and i cant stop banging on about it because i feel it will be the death of humanity in the end. Mark my words, if were around 100 years, i said it, it will be death of us. But social media thrives on assertion. I know this or even worse than that, i think this, i feel this, this is my opinion. I dont really have opinions. It may look like i have an opinion but first and foremost im a novelist. Lam ironical, elusive, equivocal, you cant find me, i dont want to be found because im not there. Me, me, is not there. Youre sometimes very irritated as well, particularly with social media in all its manifestations. There is a wonderful column in which you talk about being invited to join one of these networks and of course you dont want to take part in it and you imagine the person whose name has popped up saying you are invited to join the network waiting. Has he not responded yet . This whole idea of a world of emotion that is out there but completely beyond you. Beyond me and expressive of views i cant bear, and certainties that i cant. There is this or there is that. You and i know that everything interesting is not a thumbs up or thumbs down, its everything in between that. All the great writing that you love is writing about that middle ground, the lack of certainty, the difference between good and evil that is often not as big a difference as you think. You know, the ambiguities that are in every human being. Absolutely, and the other thing thats started to crop up quite recently i think is this idea of the importance of sincerity. Weve had it with several of our recently elected leaders. At least he tells what he believes. No virtue in saying what you believe if what you believe is trash. Writers arent sincere, they are never simply only themselves, they have to find other ways of being all the time. Well, that brings us conveniently to another project which is nearfruition, a novel, a story coming out in april, inspired, provoked, whatever the appropriate word is, by the election of donald trump, an event that clearly moved you to do something. What did you want to do in this story, which is called pussy . The day that trump won the election, that astonishing night, i went to sleep thinking hed lost, as ive done on several other occasions that year. I woke up in the middle of the night with a goblin sitting on my chest, unable to breathe and i realised what had happened. The following Morning Ijust began a fairy story. You can only tell it as a fairy story. To my mind, you cant do this as real. A traditional fairy story . A kind of grimms fairy story, a ferocious fairy story about this character called fracassus and about his birth and how he is destined to run the free world. What is fascinating about him is that he has no words, this is a person with no words. Thats the phenomena that were seeing over there at the moment. How can a person thrive, how can a person be listened to, believe he has the right to govern, but worst of all, how can he be elected when he has no language . Language is what we know, we who read and write, language is the way you think, the way you think yourself out of prejudice, the way you think yourself to enlightenment. Without language, youre locked in. Did you feel better when you finished it . I felt a lot better, partly because i was excited that id written something at this speed. The columns had helped me, all those years writing columns had helped me to write. Normally id take two years to write a novel. Here was a novel written, it isnt a full length novel, its a novella, but its 50,000 words, written in a few weeks. The columns helped me to do that. Well, people can read pussy next month and for the moment they can enjoy your columns under the heading of that melancholy little story that opens the collection of columns, writing, the dogs last walk. Howard jacobson, thanks very much. Thank you, its been lovely. Good evening. Cloud amounts have been increasing over the last few hours with some rain on the way but a few breaks and the cloud around about sunset. Captured nicely by one of our weather watchers. Increasing amounts of cloud recently, some rain until snow into southern scotland. A mixture of rain, sleet and snow. Northern scotland seeing one or two showers but generally speaking the sky is thin than the lowest temperature with A Touch Of Frost but further south, more rains spreading up from the south and that will keep the temperature up at around 7 8. In the south western corner it will be quite wet and quite windy. Not a great commute for the south of whales and southern portions of england with a fair bit of spray and surface water. Bear that in mind if you are heading out early. It may well be a dry start but rain will be moving northwards and still some patchy rain in parts of Northern Ireland through the morning but in scotland, a bright but chilly start particularly the further north you are and northern scotla nd further north you are and Northern Scotland as a favourite spot for the best of the sunny spells through tomorrow because elsewhere theres a lot of cloud forecast. Rain moving northwards into the afternoon was something that ive time but in the south east corner, for the showers down the south west. Double figures for cardiff and london but most places in Single Digits. Into the weekend, keep the umbrella is handy because there will be some rain around but maybe not a complete wash out, some dry weather on both days but quite a bit of rain across most of Western Europe and some heavy snow for the alps, up to a metre of snow. Good for some spring skiing. Back on our shores, some wet weather across scotland and Northern Ireland. Some rain around her and eastern parts of england for wales and the south west, a scattering of showers coming in on the breeze. The top temperature into double figures, chilly field to things, Single Digits further north. Sunday looks like Heaviest Rain Across Wales and southern counties, breezy to go with that and further north, Driver Scotla Nd that and further north, Driver Scotland and Northern Ireland. Mixed Fortu Nes Scotland and Northern Ireland. Mixed fortunes this week. Keep up to date with the forecast by going online. Hello, im ros atkins, welcome to outside source. Pressure mounting on us Attorney GeneralJeff Sessions. Donald trump was asked about his position not long ago, this was the reply. Do you still have confidence in your Attorney General . Total. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you guard. |j do. This is the issue. That was Jeff Sessions in january speaking do. This is the issue. That was Jeff Sessions injanuary speaking under oath at a senate hearing. Sessions injanuary speaking under oath at a senate hearinglj Sessions Injanuary speaking under oath at a senate hearing. I did not have communications with the russians. The problem is, he had met the Russian Ambassador twice. Mr sessions is about to hold a Press Conference in washington, dc. The moment it begins at the Department Ofjustice youll see it here live an outside source. We