Richard and Judy, for the benefit of those cursed by having to live outside England, are a TV husband and wife act, and they now have an afternoon chat spot on Channel 4, which I often watch. Today, I caught them interviewing David Baddiel, who is better known as Frank Skinner's comic other half.

I sort of knew that Baddiel is some sort of book writer, but I didn't know that he is actually quite a noted novelist. Today, he was plugging – very interestingly – his latest novel, The Secret Purposes, which is about the many thousands of Germans, almost all of them Jews taking refuge in Britain from the Nazis, who were interned during the Second World War on the Isle of Man. All this was entirely new to me, I can tell you. Baddiel made it clear that the conditions they lived in were very benign, and in no way to be compared with the horrors of camps and ghettoes on the Continent. Indeed, he recounted that his German Jewish Grandfather, who was one of these internees and whose recollections got Baddiel started towards writing a story based in these events, was actually quite nostalgic for the time he spent there.

But the other interesting thing about all this is the way that Richard and Judy are doing an Oprah, and plugging books with their TV show. They were enthusiastic about this book, and this is bound to boost its sales.