Nigel Planer has been writing poetry for over fifty years. Now he has corralled many of his poems into one volume, Making Other Plans – as in ‘poetry is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ This collection forms a poetic memoir, richly articulating humorous and serious observations on life, love, ageing, society and the human condition, recounted with emotional tenderness and warranted vexation.

Entire third series of the historic sitcom, which finds a Regency Edmund Blackadder employed as butler to the Prince Regent (Hugh Laurie), who is thicker than a whale omelette. In 'Dish and Dishonesty', Blackadder enters the world of politics while his master teeters on the brink of bankrupcy. 'Ink and Incapability' sees the rubber-faced one in a bit of a fix when his odorous manservant Baldrick (Tony Robinson) burns the only existing copy of Doctor Johnson's brand new dictionary. In 'Nob and Nobility', Edmund reluctantly turns adventurer when he agrees to rescue a French aristo in return for a huge wodge of cash. 'Sense and Senility' finds Edmund ousted from the Prince's favour when the latter takes elocution lessons from a pair of overly mannered thespians. In 'Amy and Amiability', the Prince finds true love and Blackadder finds that the lif eof a highwayman is not all it is cracked up to be. Finally, in 'Duel and Duality', the Prince puts hi sfoot in it when he soils a couple of Wellingtons, and Blackadder is forced to take his place in a duel to the death with a large-nosed Duke.

Two great artists - Robert Louis Stevenson and Paul Gauguin - confront their own mortality in the strange and supernatural Polynesian islands they made their home. 'Long pig: A white man to be eaten' Deep in the Polynesian islands of the Pacific Ocean, hungry spirits circle the homes of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and artist Paul Gaugin, who lived and died on the islands only a few years apart. Stevenson has spent thirty years in rigorous combat with the Grim Reaper, but is he finally ready to concede defeat? Gauguin has bought rum, arsenic and morphine for his suicide cocktail and is certain he's not long for this world, but he'll be damned if they give him a Catholic burial in consecrated ground. As their final hours approach, they face the eternal question: is it how we prepare for death that really governs the way we live? Nigel Planer's play Death of Long Pig was first staged at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 2009.