How much of you is in him or is he amalgamation

of lots of people? He is an amalgamation.

I think it's very tempting because he's larger than life.

He's quite loquacious.

He enjoys a good tasting note and some colourful descriptions.

He's always wafting about the bottle bank wine shop in his paisley silk dressing gown.

He's very jovial.

did you design the shop in your head or is it based on somewhere

It's a massive deal in the town, isn't it?

It's enormous.

I mean, it's a town that really prides itself on independent spirit, independent thinking.

There's lots of unique shops, lots of unique individuals there.

Tom Paine, one of the founding fathers of America, came from Lewes.

It's got a long tradition of kind of operating under the Sussex motto of, we want bedrove.

Nobody will tell us what to do.

Because it is also a great form of entertainment with the characters that you can draw upon and so forth, isn't it?

how did those dots, so what happened to turn you over to this different job? It was

a fellow screenwriter, Mark Huckabee, who...

Was he on Charlie and Lola? I can't remember what we were doing together.

We were doing something together.

But he said to me, look, Ollie, you're a good enough screenwriter, but you always talk about wine.

You always had it as your Saturday job growing up, and it was your holiday job, and you're a collector, and you really like it, and you don't believe in spending a fortune to enjoy good wine.

I am so bored of hearing about it.

So how did this come about? Was this something you'd thought of? Or did someone come to you and say, Ollie, you've got to write a murder mystery about wine?

It's a massive deal in the town, isn't it?

It's enormous.

I mean, it's a town that really prides itself on independent spirit, independent thinking.

There's lots of, uh, unique shops, lots of unique individuals there.

Tom Paine, the, one of the Founding Fathers of America, came from Lewes.

Uh, it's got a long tradition- Of, um, kind of operating under the Sussex motto of, "We want be druv." You know, nobody will tell us what to do.

Um, Sussex dialect is, is something that I've brought into the book as well.

Uh, described as a human volcano- Surely, although you say at the beginning that almost all of the characters are entirely fictional, surely he must be inspired by your great friend, Peter Hall, pioneering English winemaker, much loved, worshiped for his winemaking, but he also had a crotchety side.

was going to ask more about Barclay because how did you come to have that character and did he take a lot of work or was he just sort of fully formed? And also then have you been able to lock him in a wardrobe? Now you've stopped writing, although you mentioned book two.

Yes.

Well, it's a really interesting question.

The way the book came about, I wanted to write something joyful.

And I'd previously attempted to write a narrative centered around wine crime, which is kind of the genre I feel I've sort of invented here.

It's wine and it's crime.

And I feel like people like wine, they like reading, why not bring them together? The way it happened, I shelved the rather dark iteration, which was a completely different story, because I just felt it wasn't a representation of me.

Did you have to ask for a, dare I say it, an airplane sick bag or something if you could write your notes on hurriedly? That would have been

Yeah

...

I think, I mean, for me, that's what I found with the four characters who are central to The Bottle Bank, and that's what I fell in love with.

It's their kind of little peccadilloes.

It's the things that set them off.

It's the things that delight them.

But also a huge theme for me and an inspiration to write the book was the natural landscape and how if you're growing a monoculture like vines, you know, one thing is not massively great for insects, wildlife, and biodiversity a-as a whole.

Yeah.

I'm not entirely sure the audience-know that

I've felt for years that I don't think people really appreciate what a terrifically talented, hard-working chef he is, and the heritage of his training.

You know, he was trained under Marco Pierre White.

He does have the respect of his peers.

You know, I think of Bryn Williams and all these other wonderful chefs that have come up through the ranks with him.

His recipes, the ones I actually always cook at home are the ones in the middle of the show when he's interviewing the celeb and it takes about six minutes in real time.

They are so delicious, and his mind is like, to me, it's like wizardry.

But what is it about Matt do you think audiences connect with?

This is the Rolls-Royce of champagne, right?

It's...

Beyond the Rolls-Royce of champagne, it is a Rolls-Royce that's been plated in gold and had a diamond-encrusted steering wheel put in it.

And John Lennon is still driving it by a miracle.

It's an incredible glass of wine.

I mean, Salon is only made in really amazing years.

I think they've been going since 1905, I think their first vintage.

The White, a 2022 Domaine Le Fleuve, Bataard, Montrachet, Burgundy.