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Episode details

Radio 4,15 Aug 2011,30 mins

Jonathan Lynn; Brendan Gleeson in The Guard; Andre Dubus

Front Row

Available for over a year

Jonathan Lynn has spent more than four decades as a director, screenwriter, producer and actor in television, films and theatre. He's best-known as the co-writer, with Antony Jay, of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. He's now written a memoir, Comedy Rules, and discusses some of the do's and don'ts with Mark Lawson. The Guard is a comedy thriller starring Brendan Gleeson as Sgt Gerry Boyle, one of Ireland's finest police officers. Boyle's also not averse to drink, drugs and Dublin prostitutes, but when he stumbles across a dead body with possible links to an international drugs ring, he has to team up with his polar opposite, a rule-abiding FBI agent, played by Don Cheadle. Antonia Quirke reviews. American author Andre Dubus III made his name with his 1999 novel House of Sand and Fog. Dubus discusses his latest book, Townie, a memoir about growing up in poverty with his struggling mother in the mill towns of Massachusetts, and becoming a street fighter, heavily influenced by alcohol and drugs. Producer Ella-mai Robey.

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