Bill Nighy

And I'm often accused or complimented by the word dapper, but it always makes me kind of squirm a bit.

This episode's book is Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead.

The New York Times describes it as a rich, wild book.

It's about Harlem in the 1960s and about a man who owns a furniture store, and it's a kind of thriller.

I'll just read you a section just to...

Just to get you excited.

At 3.32pm, two white men strolled up to the front door.

Customers turned around on seeing the closed sign, but these two cupped their eyes and pressed their faces to the glass to see inside.

They were clean-cut young men in gas company uniforms that were not theirs.

they weren't meatheads like a lot of muscle panting after a few punches these dudes were fit and clean like astronauts that new generation half his age pepper grabbed a spot in his belly where the knife had gone deep it already hurt from the fighting he was going to do

They split up.

One astronaut, the redhead, walked to the corner and looked up Morningside to the side door of the office.

The blonde astronaut walked the other way, to the wall between the store and the bar next door.

They returned to the front door, conferred, and left.

Five minutes later they were back.

The red-headed astronaut bent down to pick or pop the lock on the grate and rolled it up, while the other pretended to consult a clipboard.

On a job, wearing the clothes of a waiter or porter gave Pepper free passage among white people.

Same way a white man in an official-looking uniform in a Negro neighbourhood can get into a lot of places, no sweat.

A cop uniform sends one message, a utility man's another.

Long as they're not there to turn off the electricity.