A perfect Sunday with...Jamie West
Nailing a Sunday lunch, the Dennis the Menace Fan Club and Christmas Pudding!
Every week, a top writer, artist, actor or creator reveals how they’d fill their perfect Sunday, sharing their favourite comfort reads, movies, food… anything that would make their weekend great.
Today, it's the turn of Jamie West, author of Murder at the Matinee.
Jamie's perfect Sunday… brunch
As a Brit, you also can't beat a Sunday Roast – something that has taken a lot of perfecting over the years. I think I've very close to nailing it too. I've discovered roast potatoes require turmeric, roast carrots require fenugreek. It turns out that the trick to a great gravy is roughly a whole bottle of red wine and of course, everything requires quite a significant amount butter!
Jamie's perfect Sunday… read
Sundays are usually the one day where I don't do any reading. Instead I do a lot of my reading during the short gaps and breaks that I get at work. I'm the worst person to discuss books and book recommendations with, because I have a terrible memory! I've started keeping a note of every book I read during the course of a year, with a little sentence summing each one up.
I love any book which is laced with authenticity. It's why my own books draw on my own experience of working in the theatre and my love for theatre history. There is a touch of magic to these kinds of books that leaps off the page.
I just read A Trial In Three Acts by Guy Morpuss, which is out next year. It's a court room drama and the author draws on his experience as barrister. The trial revolves around a murder that took place during a theatrical production, so of course I loved it!
Jamie's perfect Sunday… comic
I'm not a big comic book reader, but when I was young, I read the Beano religiously. I was even a paid-up member of the Dennis The Menace Fan Clubit came with a special wallet and badges, which I fondly remember.
Jamie's perfect Sunday… movie
You can't beat an action film from the 90s. There's so many good ones to choose from, True Lies or Air Force One are two favourites of mine.
One of my favourite films of all time, though, has to be The Net starring Sandra Bullock. She orders a pizza over the internet, which blew my mind at the time! It's also entirely responsible for me wanting to own an Apple computer – I thought it was incredibly cool that the floppy disks ejected all by themselves. I bought my first Mac at drama school and have never looked back since.
For me, the perfect Sunday movie is whatever happens to be on. ITV usually show something from a franchise on the weekend. James Bond or maybe a Harry Potter. One of those films you wouldn't necessarily have dug out to put on yourself, but something that you're happy to watch drifting in and out of the room as you tend to the Sunday roast.
Jamie's perfect Sunday... TV binge
My binge watching TV show was always The West Wing, which I have probably watched a dozen times through. I used to pop in a DVD when I got back from work late at night and let all four episodes on the disk play back to back.
As a writer of golden-age style detective fiction, you won't be surprised to hear that Poirot, staring David Suchet, is my favourite series and on any given Sunday there will always an episode of Poirot airing on the TV. We haven't had to resort to digging out the box set for years (besides our DVD player broke years ago!). There really is an episode to fit every mood – the light-hearted early episodes or the darker feature length ones that come later in the series.
Considering the show premiered in the late 1980s, it's incredible how well it has aged. From the gorgeous art deco locations to the hair and costumes, this series hardly ever puts a foot wrong. It's almost certainly down to the aesthetics of this series that I chose this era for my own murder mystery series, which are set in the world of 1930s theatre. I will even admit that I Googled what year the producers set the bulk of the episodes in when trying to decide on the exact date!
If I have to pick a favourite episode, it is Five Little Pigs. This episode is a real masterclass from both Agatha Christie herself, for the original text, and Kevin Elyot for his brilliant adaptation.
Jamie's perfect Sunday… podcast
I'm a big podcast listener as I commute to and from the theatre each day. I've long been a listener of tech podcasts, even though my computer nerdiness has worn off in recent years – I much prefer a minimal tech lifestyle these days. I've never quite got into the true crime/documentary style podcasts, which are too "produced" in a way. I much prefer listening to people chat about things they are enthusiastic about.
Many of my favourite podcasts are ones that recap every episode of a TV show: The West Wing Weekly and Keeping Up Appearances (a 90s UK sitcom) are memorable podcasts which I have enjoyed, but have now run their course. My current favourite podcast follows this format and is The Labours of Hercule. Based on my favourite TV show, you won't be surprised to hear that this podcast recaps every episode of ITV's Poirot. Its two hosts, Adam and Frankie, are both brilliantly fun and enthusiastic about the series and it sparks a little bit of joy when an episode drops into my podcast player.
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Jamie's perfect Sunday… album
I'm not a huge listener of music these days. There was a time where I would listen to a lot of musical cast recordings, but once I've worked on a production, I tend not to revisit that particular soundtrack very often. After working steadily in the theatre for the past seventeen years or so, my choice is slowly becoming more and more limited!
I will, from time to time, listen to the odd track from a show I've worked on and I will be instantly transported back, standing to the side of the stage, reliving the joy, excitement and sometimes the stress of those moments.
When I need a boost, my go-to album has always been the soundtrack from the movie Chicken Run. It really is a masterpiece from Harry Gregson-Williams and, as far as I know, the only film score to incorporate kazoos into the orchestra!
Jamie's perfect Sunday… treat
As someone who works in the theatre – something that is a six-day-a-week job – Sundays are a treat in themselves! Spending time with my husband and our dog is always a joy. In recent years we've taken to doing a cryptic crossword while Huckleberry snoozes on the sofa between us.
As we're inching ever closer to Christmas, there is one special treat that is now back in the supermarkets and that's the wonderful Christmas Pudding! As I write this we're only in the middle of November and I think we've got through half a dozen of them already...
Murder at the Matinee is out now from Brabinger Publishing.
Renowned murder mystery playwright Bertie Carroll returns, this time in London's West End, to solve the mystery of an impossible murder and the newspaper advert that preceded it.
Following on from the success of Death on the Pier, Jamie West - the West End's resident murder mystery author - brings you the second book in this golden-age-style whodunnit series, set in the exciting world of theatreland in 1930s London.
The Gaiety Theatre.
London.
1934.
An unexpected phone call from a rival playwright puts Bertie centre stage in another mystery. Can he help unravel the motive behind a mysterious newspaper advert that boldly declares a murder will take place during a show's third act? There's only one problem, there is no murder in the third act of the play!
When a victim is discovered and the police are brought in, Bertie and Inspector Hugh Chapman get thrown awkwardly back together as they both work to find the killer. The spotlight falls on each suspect in turn and, this time, even Bertie is not above suspicion. But can rivalries and differences be put aside to solve this devious murder?
Jamie is the West End's resident murder mystery author.
He has worked backstage on countless shows in London's West End. His work covers a huge variety of shows including The Book of Mormon, Miss Saigon, Kinky Books, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton. There are plenty more shows that could be listed here, but there simply isn't room!
A love for both theatre history and a good murder mystery is what has inspired his Bertie Carroll series, set in 1930s theatre-land. His first novel, Death on the Pier, was published in October 2022, going on to become an Amazon Best Seller and Chat Magazine's Book of the Month.
He continues to split his time between writing and working in the theatre.