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Doing it by the book
By Ed Harris, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 08.04.03
Jerry Hall's book of choice is Proust's Remembrance of Things Past
Improved security measures are in place at the BBC to prevent accusations of vote-rigging as the search for the nation's best-loved book gets under way.
Viewers are being asked to choose their favourite work of fiction, and can vote by telephone or internet. The search got under way with The Big Read on BBC2 on Saturday night, when celebrities revealed their favourites.
The Corporation is keen to avoid a repeat of the controversy that surrounded its Great Britons programme last year, when viewers chose Winston Churchill as the greatest-ever Briton.
The Churchill bandwagon beat off a well-orchestrated campaign for Isambard Kingdom Brunel, headed by students at Brunel University, who voted en-masse on the internet for the man who gave their institution its name.
Bookmakers were so convinced the students' campaign would work that they stopped taking bets, and the episode led to allegations that the BBC had fixed the poll by deliberately placing the Churchill documentary last in the series so he would be freshest in the viewers' memory.
But the BBC is confident there will be no repeat of that embarrassment when the name of the nation's favourite book is revealed. "We have learnt a lot from Great Britons," a spokeswoman said. "This time there are really stringent security arrangements in place, both on-line and on the phones. We hope we have thought of everything."
The BBC is using technology which will spot unusual patterns in voting, allowing it to identify campaigning which might skew the final result. "We have everything in place, and we can pick up anything that looks like an anomaly," the spokeswoman said.
The BBC will be hoping The Big Read will emulate the success of Great Britons, which saw three million viewers tune in to the debate.
Saturday's programme featured celebrities talking about their favourite books. There were some predictable choices: the historian Simon Schama, for example, chose Tolstoy's War And Peace. But there were also some surprises, with Jerry Hall choosing Proust's epic Remembrance Of Things Past.
Sophie Dahl chose a book by her grandfather, Roald Dahl. She said of The BFG (the Big Friendly Giant), a story the writer read to her as a child: "I cannot wait, naff as it sounds, to read it to my own children."
Martine McCutcheon chose Perfume by Patrick Suskind. She said: "I read it when I was too young. I borrowed it off my mum and was terrified. I could not sleep for two weeks, but it has stayed with me always, and that's the mark of a good book."
Author Will Self, said: "I chose Gulliver's Travels because, as a professional writer who is influenced by satire, it seems obvious to turn to perhaps the father of satire in English literature, namely Swift."
The top 100 books will be revealed at the end of this month on BBC4. The top 10 will be named on BBC2 this autumn, with a documentary on each book following on the same channel.
