Earlier today, I was on Glenn Beck's show to promote The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, and, as he always is, Glenn was very kind and generous. I didn't have much I can offer in return, but I did say I'd do a duet of Glenn's all-inclusive holiday anthem "Have a Ramahanakwanzmas" with Tony Bennett. Glenn tends to lead the conversation in unexpected directions. Thus, we fell to talking about some correspondence between me and JRR Tolkien back when I was a wee slip of a lad:
GLENN: Do you still have the letter?
MARK: Yeah, I have it in the attic at my mum's house, but it's still there.
GLENN: Say it with me. Mom.
MARK: It creeps across the border.
GLENN: Don't worry. Don't worry. We've got everything creeping across our borders. We don't seem to care anymore. It's very hard for me to watch a James Bond with my son because he's like, is she his mom? Why does he keep calling her mum? I'm like, I don't know. Mum sometimes means mom. Sometimes it means ma'am. I don't know. They're English.
MARK: Yes, it's like the Queen you call 'ma'am'. Which rhymes with jam. And James Bond calls M halfway between — he calls Judi Dench halfway between 'ma'am' and 'mum'. So she's like a maternal queenly figure. Actually, in the book, there's a whole big chunk of stuff about James Bond...
Indeed there is. You can hear the full Beck/Steyn interview here.
Earlier in the morning, I was on with Riley & Scot at 1440 WROK in Rockford, Illinois. This was also a fun interview. Click below to listen:
~This afternoon is tomorrow morning Sydney time, so I'll be on the air with the great Alan Jones. After tomorrow morning, I'll zip back in time to this afternoon and swing by Mark Elfstrand in Chicago, Hugh Hewitt, Lars Larson and Larry Elder, before rounding out the day on TV with Ezra Levant on Canada's Sun News.
~The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, Mark's "great new book" (as Sean Hannity calls it), is available in hardcover from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and other US retailers, and in Canada from Indigo-Chapters, Amazon, McNally-Robinson and fine bookstores from Nanaimo to Nunavut. E-book-wise, it's in Kindle, Kobo, Nook and, for your iPhone et al, iBooks. It's already in the Politics Top Ten in both Canada and America.