My favourite holiday: Stuart Maconie

WRITER, broadcaster and journalist Stuart Maconie is familiar to millions thanks to his work in print, on TV and on the radio.

As well as penning best-sellers like Pies and Prejudice, he currently hosts the afternoon show on BBC 6Music with Mark Radcliffe and the weekly show, The Freak Zone.

For his latest book, The Pie at Night (Ebury Press, £16.99), Stuart looked at how ordinary people spend their leisure time.

When he’s not on top of a Lake District fell, he says he likes nothing better than exploring Venice.

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I LOVE the Lake District, but since I’m lucky enough to have a place there, it feels more like home rather than going on holiday.

I could happily spend a week wandering round Venice though.

That would be my idea of how to spend a holiday wandering from caf to caf, reading a slim volume of poetry, having an espresso.

I’d watch the world go by, get on the odd water taxi and then go somewhere in the evening for wonderful food.

I think the Italians have got it sussed about how to do a lot of things.

The first time I went there someone I think it was Mark Radcliffe advised me not to get a water bus from the airport but to spend the extra money on getting my own water taxi, even though it costs about £100.

That’s what I did. You cross the lagoon and this city rises up out of the sea, which seems ridiculous.

The driver asked if it was our first time in Venice and when we said it was he went through some back alleys before emerging on the Grand Canal.

At that moment I felt the most like James Bond that I have done in my life.

It felt like ordinary life had stopped and I had been transported into the middle of a film set.

I think I was wearing a crumpled linen suit and a pair of sunglasses and it felt like all my life had been leading up to this moment of unbridled glamour!

It was just fantastic.

I’m not the first writer to fall in love with Venice and it’s such a clich but it is a slightly unreal place and that unreality is what appeals.

I go back a lot and at one point I thought about moving there for six months and writing a book about being a Mancunian in Venice.

It didn’t happen, but it has always been one of these outlandish dreams that a lot of people nurture.

I thought it might be quite funny writing about a Mancunian adapting to the Venetian lifestyle.

Besides Venice though, I do love the Lake District, especially the hills.

As a kid, the idea of tramping around the hills in a cagoule seemed ridiculous as I was very urban, but that’s exactly the kind of guy I have become.My Favourite Holiday: Michaela Strachan – click here