In Depth:  Niv Lobo

Niv Lobo

Near the start of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens describes Scrooge as ‘a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone’. When a pair of portly philanthropists assail Scrooge on Christmas Eve, looking for a charitable donation, he says something that proves the description accurate. On being told some would rather die than go to the workhouse, Scrooge says, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population’.

It is a moment of heart-stopping heartlessness. In the peerless Muppet adaptation, Beaker and Doctor Bunsen Honeydew shake their heads in disbelief and consternation. This moment has signalled Scrooge’s unmistakeable depravity to generations of readers, staking out just how far his inhumanity goes — and therefore just how drastic his redemption will need to be.

Niv Lobo

There’s a beautifully written, perfectly acted scene in an old TV show: two characters, husband and wife, have been in a heated argument. As they’re beginning to see one another’s point of view, and the heat is about to seep out of the argument, one admits that they were in the wrong.

Just as they add, ‘however’ - about to defend their corner - the other jumps in immediately: 'No. No "however". Just be wrong. Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it!'