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The author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, which is now ajoins Sian and Richard to talk about his work.

Southend schoolgirls Olla and Lila wish they’d been born in the 1980’s.Ìý As part of the , they talk to Richard about his time in the Communards and the music of the decade.

I've been thinking about endurance. I was on a training run - the London marathon is soon - so I've been running five times a week. Everyone you see who's pounding the pavements, with a look of fatigue and grim determination, is probably doing the same. They've also been training for four months, not drinking, not having much of a social life, boring their partners with talk of energy gels and electrolyte drinks and getting up at six o'clock on Sunday morning, for their long run.

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Still, I thought this morning as I headed out, putting on my trainers and my rictus smile, we're all on the home straight. And then ping went my calf muscle at mile two. So I write this on the sofa, with a bag of frozen peas under my leg and a feeling of extreme frustration. Marathons and me are cursed. During my first one, in New York, I drank too much water, collapsed and was in hospital for two days. The second was due to be held in the same city last November, but as we got over there, Hurricane Sandy intervened. The third is in four weeks time and I'm limping.

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Just a few days ago, I was running twenty miles in horizontal rain, in Ruislip thinking, it's all for charity, keep going, you have to complete the task and now, I'm not so sure.

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Our studio guest on Saturday is made of stronger stuff. He would have been one of those runners who surges past you, with a beautific look on his face, embracing whatever the elements throw at him. Mark Haddon, the writer, is a runner and he adores the loneliness and the rain. I suppose it helps him concentrate and focus - there's an extraordinary amount going on in that man's head.Ìý I've just seen the stage production of his novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time, about a boy who describes himself as a 'mathematician with some behavioural difficulties', and the life and energy shoot out of the play, ideas fizzing and popping and making the audience gasp. The lead actor, Luke Treadaway, throws himself into the part so physically, he's sweating through it. He says it's so demanding, "it's like playing rugby for two and a half hours every night". That is real endurance and commitment.Ìý

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He is very convincing too, anyone who has or knows someone with Asperger's or Autism may recognise the character, finding other people confusing and safety in detail. Will Haddon has Asperger's, he'll join us to explain what it means to him.

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Also on the programme, we talk to a couple who remarried after fifty years, a different form of endurance, I suppose. We head to Dunfermline to see the sights and we embrace the 1980s, with a couple of Southend schoolgirls who wish they'd lived through it (and have a slight crush on Richard) and we hear the Inheritance Tracks of John Taylor from Duran Duran, who was also livin' the eighties dream.Ìý

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The peas are giving me frostbite but the show will be warm and lovely.

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Saturday Live, tomorrow, at nine.