R and J. One of the great forces for the good of books in the past few years. Good for writers, readers, bookshops - the entire trade. I have the greatest respect for Amanda Ross, Head of Cactus TV, whose brain child it was though I wonder if she ever guessed how it would take off and affect sales in the way it has ?

Never mind. Ignore the sneers and jeers of those who believe the only choices were either bland middlebrow reads or chiclit. They were neither. Not every choice was as good as every other, how could it have been, but there was no dross in there and an awful lot of first rate contemporary literature. I`m only sorry they chose so little good non-fiction. Perhaps that will happen in future. Because there will be a future after all. Doom mongers say that they have gone into the outer darkness of some small, virtually unobtainable cable channel - and they`re right, they have. I have no idea how I would ever see their programme now - the nearest cables for tv are a good many miles away. But the programme is not the point. The R and J Book Club, which is the only part of the programme which had a massive effect on sales, will choose titles and announce them as before and there will be bookseller displays and stickered piles everywhere, along with card cut outs of our Doughty HubbyandWife team. No one actually needs to watch the show at all. This is a brand now. They could carry on even if they never appeared on TV ever again and still affect sales just as much.

No, publishers do not need to despair, I`d bet sponduliks on it. But I do think they have to take off their blinkers marked R and J and see another world out there. I have recently been sent two review copies with accompanying blads and advance publicity bumph. One says 'An obvious choice for Richard and Judy.' The other says 'Has huge Richard and Judy potential.'

Excuse me ? I wouldn`t want to second guess what   Amanda Ross - for she does the choosing of course - will select next. I certainly would not pick a book to publish because I thought it had  'R and J potential '. I know a number of publishers who got their   fingers burned by overprinting, over-hyping books they were quietly pretty sure would be R AND J choices- and they weren`t. No one knows why they weren`t. No one knows why I didn`t win the lottery last week and nor, probably, did you, though I have to say I thought my numbers had a lot of potential.

I have only ever sent one of the Long Barn titles in for consideration and that was for the Christmas programme, not the Book Club. They didn`t choose it but it was a long shot. I think it always is. I will send in one soon though because it is a fantastic book and it won our first novel competition. But that is only a minute part of the publicity campaign and I won`t hold my breath though of course I`ll hope against hope. As I do every Saturday the lottery numbers tumble round the drum.

I remember reviewing a novel last year which came with 'Has strong Booker shortlist appeal' on the publicity sheet.  I wonder who writes this stuff ? They might just as well have said 'The author`s good looks have strong colour supplement appeal,'  which indeed they did.

Didn`t get him anywhere much, as I recall.

I hope Amanda Ross and R and J stay one step ahead of the lot of us for years. I hope they continue to choose the most unlikely titles, which no one, least of all the publisher, has spotted, I hope they choose books that come in from left field and surprise us all. I bet they will too.