Paul Abbott

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the writer Paul Abbott. He is the defining T V dramatist of his generation, responsible for hits including Clocking Off, State of Play, and Shameless.

Presenter0:39

The quality of his output and his outstanding ear for dialogue have seen him credited with helping to make our T V the new national theatre.

Presenter0:47

They've also won him armfuls of awards.

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He lives a conventional, happy family life in a big house in Manchester with a wife and two children.

Presenter0:54

Which is remarkable considering where he came from.

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One of eight children, his mother walked out on the family when he was a young boy a short while later his father did the same, leaving Paul's pregnant teenage sister penniless and in charge.

Presenter1:07

His upbringing was chaotic, feral, and plagued by trauma.

Presenter1:12

The reason he became a writer was to deal with his past. I think everybody should write, he says. You can shout really effectively if you write. You're clearly then, Paul Abbott, very accomplished at shouting. What sort of sound is it you're trying to make on the screen?

Paul Abbott1:26

Well, I think it's the sound of your own voice quite often. What staggers me still, age forty six, is that, you know, I write things and I realize that my voice is coming back at me. I'm often surprised by things that I see coming back at me that are me and I didn't know I'd put them out for adjudication. It's a really weird thing and I see across five dramas I see things that are common that I didn't know I was doing. You know, it's not cerebral, it's totally emotional and you kind of dig it out your spleen from somewhere when you're writing it apart.

Presenter1:54

Do does the process then of writing change you? I mean, you said there you dig it out. So do you each time that you've finished a a big piece, are are you a slightly different, altered person for that?

Paul Abbott2:05

Well, you are and you c you couldn't not be. I think I learnt to be a more generous person, a more humanistic person through um becoming a writer, because you s you have to stand in the other person's shoes. And it's like a psych psychotic export of yourself. And learning that teaches you how they must feel. And I'm not it's not psychic or telepathic, but if you don't do it, you can't write well.

Presenter2:26

Inhabiting other people then must slightly take you to the edge of a kind of crazy place.

Paul Abbott2:31

Yeah, yeah, but it's it's colourful and chaotic in the average working day. You sit there with about 300 people in your head and then go downstairs and try to look calm. And it's, yeah, pretty psychiatric, really. Tell me about your first record. Yeah, Beach Boys, uh, good vibrations. My memory of my first engagement with a radio, we didn't we never had appliances or equipment much in the house. And I remember this radiogram and it was just such a really convincing kind of first encounter with a entertainment world, I think.

Presenter3:04

And why have you chosen this record in particular?

Paul Abbott3:06

Um, this one, it's a really strong memory of the family being whole and my younger brother was a toddler. He was just this, like, two years old. And everything looked right about the family. It was a tidy baby in a family, and we all cared for him. And it was that a really strong image of a family in full flow. And even though there must have been absolutely no money, we were never aware of that. You never knew what you looked like from the outside. And I think it's the only memory I've got of the whole family being together in one place.

Speaker 23:38

The in her arm.

Speaker 23:41

Cause we do a closing moon

Speaker 33:49

I'm picking up good vibrations She's giving me excitations I'm by my good vibrations She's by my exciting

Presenter4:01

The Beach Boys and Good Vibrations. Paul, your big hit, your big Channel four hit, Shameless, about this young family that fends for itself on a Manchester estate. It's it's usually billed in any publicity as being about your life. I mean, how much is it based on your early family life?

Paul Abbott4:16

Well, architecturally I it's quite close. You know, the two parents left my fifteen year old si well, I think she was approaching sixteen when she was nine months pregnant. And she took over the family and and she became, you know, the matriarch. And there the similarity ends. I'm not purging anything. What I'm doing is learning how to tell stories from the past that make television more appropriate, more real.

Presenter4:35

But the brutal um representation of that day to day existence, you know, the the pilfering, the the drunkenness, the cr well, for want of a better phrase, the crude behaviour because all there's a lot of sexuality in there. I mean, how close is that to the reality of what we live in?

Paul Abbott4:39

Distance

Paul Abbott4:42

Yeah.

Speaker 24:45

Yeah.

Paul Abbott4:45

There's a lot of sexuality in the

Paul Abbott4:49

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and uh, you know, because it was such a big family in a tiny house, you got everything really you know, the kind of hardcore side of life came at the same time as everything else. So, you know, it's kind of sex or violence or anything like that came at the same time as sweet things did and growth things did and and happy memories sit side by side with that stuff.

Presenter5:07

So your mum left then when you were around about nine?

Paul Abbott5:10

Nine.

Presenter5:10

Did it happen out of the blue? Did you know she was going to be?

Paul Abbott5:12

It happened overnight and it was just well, dad's just bone idle and, you know, it's only when you realize later on that she was doing three jobs and doing everything in the house, and she disappeared overnight.

Presenter5:24

So what did did she say to you? I'm I mean'cause you were there were two the two youngest. You were the second youngest at this point.

Paul Abbott5:28

Yes. My younger brother was three at the time. No, she didn't. She just she wasn't there in the morning. And it was a devastating thing. And I think my younger brother still, every day, goes through a memory of that somehow. And it was such a shocking thing. I thought at first she must have died because there was a note that was left and she was going to come back on that day. The three youngest were going to be taken with her, but she never did.

Paul Abbott5:55

And she never came back and I thought, oh, that note was a lie. Somebody wrote that note. And I thought that for like six months.

Paul Abbott6:00

And I can't imagine what I looked like, but I remember having nightmares every single night about what might have happened to her.

Presenter6:07

Did you talk to anybody about it in the family?

Paul Abbott6:09

Uh well, it wasn't discussable really, because it was such a dad had been left by mum, was the way it was perceived. I'm being more generous to her now than I have been the whole of my life, but you weren't allowed to engage with concern for her because we'd been left in the shit. So, tacitly, you know, she was to blame for leaving us like this.

Presenter6:27

So under what circumstances did you see her the next time?

Paul Abbott6:29

Uh I well, I found out I personally found out well the address at which she was rumoured to be living. And I went and knocked on the door, and she answered it, and it was just absolutely shocking.

Paul Abbott6:41

And it was a really shocking revelation about her. I remember being angry at the same at exactly the same time as I was totally relieved that she wasn't dead. And she was living with a bloke with a son exactly my age. I think we were a day apart on birthdays. And so I was swapped. You know, it's a nine-year-old. You've been swapped. From that point on, we were then kind of really.

Paul Abbott7:04

Dangerously tolerated visitors. And she would send you a note reminding you that it was her birthday on the 7th of December and stuff like that. And you remember that now? And I tell my kids that, and they go, No. And this is the bit that I've been trying to accommodate since she died four years ago. I don't dwell on it. It's only when people ask me. And my kids ask me a lot about this now. And I was really shocked recently when my son said, But did you ever love her? I went, Oh my god, oh my god, I've forgotten to say that bit. Of course I did. She was absolute centre of our universe.

Presenter7:35

Let's take a break. What's your second piece of music?

Paul Abbott7:38

Um Bobby Gentry uh owed to Billy Joe. I can never hear lyrics, I've got a real dyslexia with lyrics. And so it wasn't about that, she's just so sultry and so careful and I think she she was such a a patient singer, and I just loved anybody who could sing like that with a husky voice as as tidy as this one.

Speaker 27:57

There's five more acres in the lower forty I got to plow

Speaker 28:04

And mama said it was a shame about Billy Joe anyhow

Speaker 28:12

Seems like nothing ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge

Speaker 28:20

Now Billy Joe McAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Presenter8:27

Bobby Gentry and Ode to Billy Joe. Um Shameless, the Channel Four hit. Although it has all this extreme behaviour and and it often is berated for for displaying the the soft underbelly of uh you know a class that we don't like to examine too much or behaviour that we don't like to examine too much, there is a warmth about Shameless.

Speaker 28:36

Yeah.

Paul Abbott8:42

Yeah.

Paul Abbott8:43

Delete.

Paul Abbott8:46

Absolutely there is. And it's a weird way of trying to demonstrate warmth. I knew what Frank looked like. Frank is the father. Frank is the father, and he's, you know, a drug addicted dipsomaniac who basically hits his children, takes their money and spends it on drugs. And everybody likes him.

Presenter8:52

Frank is the father.

Paul Abbott9:02

And I remember with Frank that there was no redemption for what he'd done, and he was just absolutely socially repulsive and didn't deserve the children he'd got. But when he's unconscious on the floor, you're in stained trousers, drunk on their money, um, Debbie kisses him on the forehead. She loves him, she absolutely adores him, and I think that's that's the way those families are structured.

Presenter9:25

And the great truth in that, the great honesty in that, is that it's not romantic, that in fact the children of drug addicts, of dipsomaniacs love them as much as any child loves any parent.

Paul Abbott9:35

Loves any parent. Yeah, my parents are so well loved by my siblings, and I I think I'm the only one who's, you know, so.

Paul Abbott9:41

They're kind of rampant about it, but um

Presenter9:43

And what about that? What about that honesty? I mean, how did your family react to being immortalized on screen?

Paul Abbott9:43

And what a

Paul Abbott9:49

Um, well, they kind of refer to themselves as as seen on T V, but it's not ironic.

Presenter9:54

What about your father?

Paul Abbott9:54

What about your

Paul Abbott9:56

Uh my dad I'd gone to great lengths in broad uh broadsheet interviews uh that I I sent him copies of all of these things to show that Frank wasn't based on my dad. But my dad was livid about shameless. And what if that's what if people thought that was me? What if people thought I did that kind of thing? And of course he didn't, my dad wasn't a big drinker, certainly never ever ever engaged with drugs, and in fact never moved.

Paul Abbott10:19

But his biggest complaint was when did I have long hair? And he was livid about it. To this day I think he most resents what Frank looks like, not what Frank is.

Presenter10:30

Your father left, too, as I said in the introduction. You would would have been how old then when he decided to go.

Paul Abbott10:36

I was eleven when Dad left.

Paul Abbott10:38

And there was no distress that he'd left with his girlfriend. It's a bit of a sigh of relief that there was more room in the house. I think that's how we noticed that suddenly you somebody had a chair. You know, you got a chair to watch television or read a book or whatever. No, actually we did neither of those things. I've just made that up. We didn't have a television. And when uh you know, you didn't read books, not not at home. But um there was no we couldn't claim benefits. We weren't allowed to claim benefits because she shouldn't have been looking after us. She was still under eighteen.

Presenter11:05

Your sister then should not legally, technically, have been looking after this this brood of children. And if then she had tried to get assistance from the social services, you would have been broken up, you'd be put into foster homes, you'd put into cancer homes.

Paul Abbott11:08

No no

Paul Abbott11:11

Thanks for watching.

Paul Abbott11:14

And we were we were like rats. We had to be invisible to the authorities, so you couldn't collect benefits. So we all kind of did small jobs or worked in the corner shop and you chipped it into a bottle for the rubber.

Presenter11:27

But if we were child benefit, would you not if they were all those?

Paul Abbott11:29

So dad dad took that. He he said any statutory benefits, he kept the book. Uh and so no, she had no money. No money. I had three jobs. I worked in a a barber's uh and uh I did a news round and I worked in a corner shop. At what age? Um thirteen, fourteen, round then. It was just the way it was.

Presenter11:50

Tell me about your next jerk or Dempo.

Paul Abbott11:52

Um Arth Connolly and Sweet Soul music I think was the you know the big anthem of Wigan Casino when you went out because you partied all night, you danced all night. You basically went to Wigan and scrambled off to lift back to Burnley the following morning so you could spend your train fare or your bus fare.

Speaker 212:10

Do you like good music?

Speaker 212:13

Oh yeah! Oh yeah Spotlight on all the spreading now.

Speaker 212:19

Then you bow!

Speaker 212:20

Bam bam ba-

Speaker 212:22

Yeah.

Speaker 212:23

Yeah.

Speaker 212:25

Oh yeah! Oh yeah.

Presenter12:33

Arthur Connolly and Sweet Soul Music and memories there, Paul Abbott, of being around about thirteen at those all nighters at Wigan Casino. Um where was school in all of this?

Paul Abbott12:43

School, I was a good attender at that point. By the time I was about 13, I started to drift off, peeling away from school. I just couldn't deal with people and I wasn't aware that I was ill. The year dad left was I got quite brutally raped. And that was another type of thing that you weren't allowed to deal with. Because if the police became involved, I mean, there was just no way of even telling my sister what had happened, because then she would have created a fuss, she would have done it for me, and then the police would have been called in, and the whole thing would have totally fallen apart. And so you had to sit on so much stuff. I think everybody was popping left, right, and centre, or needing to pop. What do you mean by popping? You know, I think everybody had difficulties like that, you know, say private ones. You just couldn't share them because if they became public, they became.

Presenter13:27

What do you mean by

Paul Abbott13:38

At lethal to the whole family.

Presenter13:40

Did you tell anyone about that?

Paul Abbott13:42

Yeah.

Paul Abbott13:43

Uh I didn't tell anybody until I told my wife, uh, when I was twenty eight. Saskia, my wife now. I told Saskia she was the first person I'd ever told.

Presenter13:54

You said when you were thirteen you started peeling off from school. Impossible then not to draw a conclusion that that was to do with mother leaving, father leaving and then this brutal rape. At thirteen then, the beginnings of starting to unravel. How how did that unraveling manifest itself?

Paul Abbott13:56

Yeah.

Paul Abbott14:04

Yeah.

Paul Abbott14:10

Where did that

Paul Abbott14:13

Well, I'd I'd Skye school, play trump from school, and spend the whole day on my own. And not

Paul Abbott14:19

Lonely, I mean, on my own, because I just couldn't bear noise. I couldn't bear people because the house, it was virtually 16 hours a day, was absolutely screaming with noise. I mean, there's one point at which I actually wrote to social services and asked to be taken into care because it wasn't that I didn't want to be in the family, I knew that life was damaging me. I think that was the first time I realized I wasn't very well. So, what did Social Services do? They acknowledged the letter and took me to see a doctor to see if I could get a tonic, which and I got a vitamin C whatever and dumped me back in the house. It was too big to get hold of. It was a massive family with a big track record, and I think we were just too much baggage for any individual to choose to engage with. So, I think the next two years I just progressed into a really foul, foul depression.

Paul Abbott15:07

and attempted suicide. But that took from thirteen to fifteen. I held on for two two for two more years.

Presenter15:15

It's extraordinary what happened to you with social services and and almost beyond belief, but as you describe it, entirely believable. It is extraordinary that no teacher in school, no head teacher, nobody there took this bright, damaged boy or boy who things were going wrong with to one side and tried to to somehow help you out.

Paul Abbott15:17

Yeah.

Paul Abbott15:20

Uh

Speaker 215:20

I live.

Paul Abbott15:26

Two plus.

Paul Abbott15:33

Yeah, but I mean of course in that school it took a while for the teachers type knowledge at all, um because I'd I'd had five brothers go through the school before me.

Paul Abbott15:42

And they'd all been

Paul Abbott15:44

Remedial.

Paul Abbott15:46

But there was a teacher at school, and he was a Canadian English teacher called Bill Bradley. And he made me write. I thought he was really punishing me because I was good at English. I was always writing stories. I always say I learnt to write as a means of talking without being contradicted. And, you know, because in a family with that much noise, you're just look, I'm not even arguing with you.

Presenter16:06

This Canadian teacher then, did did he foster your writing?

Paul Abbott16:08

Yeah, and he well, well, he ra I thought he was giving me too much homework. I thought it's real unfair'cause he knows I can't you know, have to do homework at school. I only realized what he'd done when one of the stories I got, he delivered a cheque for ten pounds, and he sent it off and sold it to the

Paul Abbott16:23

Titbits magazine and he gave me a ten pound cheque and it was in my name and and it was brilliant.

Presenter16:28

A check with your name on it. What did you do with that?

Paul Abbott16:29

What did you do?

Paul Abbott16:30

Oh, we cashed it through the uh there's a bloke called Checkbook Fred. He was the only person we knew with a bank account.

Presenter16:36

Not surprisingly, then, the the the attentions of this teacher were not enough. You said at at fifteen you attempted suicide.

Paul Abbott16:42

You attend

Paul Abbott16:43

And the first time I attempted it I jumped off a car park roof and I landed three floors down and cracked my leg. So nobody ever knew. And so for the next year I was just absolutely blind with rage and fury and fear. And I was trying to hold on to all that stuff. And I just attempted suicide again with kind of knives and barbiturates. And so I got sectioned and taken into the bin in the lock up. And it was it was just the rudest, most alarming thing that had ever happened to me.

Presenter17:22

We're going to take a pause just now. We're going to talk about it after your next record. What's your fourth record?

Paul Abbott17:27

It's John Lennon, and I think this connects with what I've just said, because I think the imaginary was.

Paul Abbott17:33

My anthem for realizing there was no God because I wanted to know that.

Paul Abbott17:39

I had something to believe in. And when I realized you didn't have to believe in anything but yourself, I was fine. I think once you know you can fix things for yourself, I became fine. And imagine even though I couldn't stand the stand the Beatles, I think John Lennon's work I thought was uh tolerable, but this one was just special for that reason.

Speaker 217:58

Imagine there's no heaven.

Speaker 218:04

See if you try.

Speaker 218:10

No hell.

Speaker 218:12

Me the words

Speaker 218:17

Bubba's only sky

Speaker 218:23

Imagine all the people

Presenter18:28

John Lennon and Imagine. You seem, Paul Abbott, very open to the possibility of of talking about your past incredibly honestly, I mean, untypically honestly. Is that a product of being a writer?

Paul Abbott18:36

Tim McClintock

Paul Abbott18:40

Well, I think that's a product of having having a a history of psychiatry from the age of 15. And I started I remember when I went into the it was called Ward Nine in Berlin. It was the most shocking thing that had ever happened to me. But on day two, I mean literally day two, I remember sitting there going, Oh my god, I'm in the right place. I know I'm in the right place and I'll get fixed.

Presenter19:04

But you were you weren't in a a child psychiatric ward, you were in an adult psychiatrist.

Paul Abbott19:08

Well this was like the shameless pub.

Paul Abbott19:10

And it was a a lock-up. It was 28-day section, so it's you're you're imprisoned. And it was just extraordinary, except that I just knew I was going to get repaired. And the whole criminal thing was standing having to stand back and look at my family from the outside, looking at me and them and us. And I think I've got a picture of what we looked like, and that was a really terrifying thing. And I knew I was on my own. I knew I was.

Paul Abbott19:38

I had to be independent. The word independent was a real word for me at that point.

Presenter19:39

Duh.

Presenter19:44

When you were discharged, you didn't go back to the family then?

Paul Abbott19:47

No, and I stayed a patient, a voluntary inpatient, to do group therapy and stuff like that. And uh so I went to live with foster parents after that, who were kind of working class foster parents, not

Paul Abbott19:59

Except they were loaded. You know, it was two people in one house worked, and I'd never seen that in my life before.

Presenter20:05

When you say loaded, go and put that into a condolence then.

Paul Abbott20:05

When you

Paul Abbott20:06

Well, they had a car, they had a television, a television that stayed where it was put. It was like Penelope Keith for me, and they rescued me in a really uh casual way, and so it was a lot more peaceable than being hijacked by the state. I wanted to go, I knew I couldn't go back.

Paul Abbott20:27

And I stayed there till I was eighteen.

Presenter20:29

Were you writing there?

Paul Abbott20:30

Yeah. But I started writing behind my back. I didn't want to do that. I certainly didn't want to look like somebody was going to be a writer. But I knew it was creeping up on me. Um I I didn't I didn't give my consent for that to happen. It just happened.

Presenter20:43

What's your next record?

Paul Abbott20:44

Uh the next uh track is uh T-Rex Children of the Revolution, which is still you know, it's just every time I hear it it it makes my heart sing because it's about standing on your own, knowing you can engage with a crowd. And I'd learnt how to be sociable, I'd learnt how not to look like a patient, and and I've been taught how to do that. And I think T-Rex and Mark Boland, you know, he was one of those singers that was one of those bands that were just renegade.

Speaker 221:09

Aeroplane.

Speaker 221:12

In the falling rain I drive a rose roar

Speaker 221:20

Of course it's good for my boys but you won't fool The children of the Revolution Now you won't fool The children of the Revolution

Presenter21:38

T-Rex and Children of the Revolution. You wrote for magazines then, Paul Abbott, and and you wrote radio plays too?

Speaker 221:45

Mm.

Presenter21:45

He went as a a young man, an untypical young man, to work on the team at Coronation Street as a writer.

Paul Abbott21:51

Mm-hmm.

Presenter21:52

At what age were you when that happened?

Paul Abbott21:53

Oh, it was twenty three and

Presenter21:55

And you went for an interview?

Paul Abbott21:56

I went for an interview. I was writing radio plays, and the first radio play I ever wrote was for the Radio Times. And I think they still have it, the Radio Times drama competition. And in order to enter your play, you had to be professionally sponsored. And of course, where I lived, that just wasn't a possibility. And I wrote to Alan Bennett and just somebody knew where he lived. And I just kind of took a punt on it and send him a letter. The next day, I get one back. He says, yes, of course, you've done it the right way. Never send a script first, always a letter. And yeah, I'd be glad to read it. And then two days later, he sent the script back going, look, it's nowhere near the masterpiece you're going to think it is, but it's really very good. And I will put my name to it. So he went in the competition and never got anywhere in the awards in the competition, but it got made very quickly. And from that day on, the second radio play was commissioned on the back of that, the third on the back of that, and then I was put up for a job at Coronation Street. It all happened in what seemed like a two-year cycle. What's your six?

Presenter22:55

Yeah. The

Paul Abbott22:55

Six record is Town Called Manis by Paul Weller, The Jam. And it just remains one of my all-time favourites because this taught me how to shout. I remember hearing it, and I'd become a writer by then. I'd been writing for Jackie magazine as well, writing photo love stories and stuff like that. When I heard Paul Weller, he talked like an intelligent person who'd learnt to rail against the world. And this song was so powerful, powerful an example of that. It was a turning point in my life when I learnt how to become more powerful in terms of what I felt about myself. I felt well calibrated by then, but I was still I still am really angry, but now I know how to use it.

Presenter24:06

The jam and a town called Malice, you were diagnosed then as being bipolar.

Paul Abbott24:11

Yeah.

Presenter24:11

Um

Presenter24:12

Your bipolarity, do you think that in a way almost allows you to write? Is it that part of you?

Paul Abbott24:19

But I think it forced me to write. I think that was the emotional immune system kicking in, where I think that's how I became a writer.

Presenter24:20

I think that's

Paul Abbott24:26

I you know, learning how to talk on paper without being contradicted is one thing, and I think, you know, everybody should learn how to do that for themselves. But my uh, the extremity of my uh mood swings became really rapidly productive and became

Paul Abbott24:41

plays, films and things like that.

Presenter24:43

But is th the the extreme that you live at, Paul Abbott, of extremely productive as a writer and that you said that you often when you're writing there are a lot of people in the room with you, there are people in your head, and you're getting them on the page. You know, are you tilting towards towards the edge of something constantly that will be dangerous to you?

Paul Abbott24:53

Yeah.

Paul Abbott24:56

Are you till

Paul Abbott24:57

Yeah.

Paul Abbott25:00

Yeah.

Paul Abbott25:01

Yeah, I do you go you go to the flame. I don't want to get scorched. I'm I'm not a self flagellator and I'm not you know, th self inflicted wounding is you know, that's that's a pass thing. But I'm really careful to go close to it. Yeah, I love bolting off left or right and I've I've taught myself how to, but do it safely and for money.

Presenter25:20

Do you take medication for bipolarity?

Paul Abbott25:22

Uh yeah, uh l well lithium and antidepressants when uh not always and I'm really looking I because I can burn it off so I don't get the down.

Presenter25:30

So you can write when you're taking this case.

Paul Abbott25:32

Oh god, yeah, yeah, I can't not write. Yeah, I write every day. And I can't remember things very well, so I have to write. Um, yeah, no, I write every day.

Presenter25:40

What would happen to you if you couldn't write?

Paul Abbott25:42

Um

Paul Abbott25:43

I think I'd die, I'd die.

Paul Abbott25:46

And it does sound psychiatric put like that, but it's a really powerful thing to learn to do properly and truthfully. And I think a lot of people just

Paul Abbott25:55

Mess about with it.

Presenter25:56

What's your next piece of music?

Paul Abbott25:58

My next piece of music is a track from my son's band, kid 4 or 7, 7, they're 14 years old, and the reason I love this track, I love any track that they write, is when I first had kids, I was terrified that I would be expected to know what to be as a father, because my dad taught me nothing good to use. And so I was terrified of what kind of a job I'd make as a dad. And it was when Tom got to about Tom's fourteen now and Annie's twelve, and when they were both about seven and five, I realised I'm not bad, but it's the point at which you realize Margaret Mead says your kids can be two and a half times what you are, for the better or worse, and the worse terrified me. And I love it that they are so different from me, but they contain bits of me that I would hate about myself, and they've converted them into kind of respectable molecules. And Tom is now a very expertly obsessive drummer. And this is a track from his band I'm just proud of. It's two and a half times better than me. I love it.

Speaker 227:03

So things instead of me.

Speaker 227:10

Song is a long as long

Speaker 227:17

Time besides all I know, that's how it goes.

Speaker 227:24

Really

Speaker 227:28

See the video

Presenter27:31

My Castaway Paul Abbott's son Tom with his group Kids 4077 and Video Lullaby. Um it's fascinating to hear you talk about the fear of becoming uh a father, the fear that you were entirely unsure whether you could actually do it at all. How did you begin to have confidence as a father?

Paul Abbott27:49

Well, I think it was when I knew that I unconditionally love them. And when that happens and you get a child and you realise that you have no choice in this, because it's bipolar, suicide is a constant presence in your life. And it's not that you actually feel suicidal, but you don't stop thinking about it. It's just there isn't a day goes by. It crosses your mind every day. And it's not. I was plagued by it for a long time. And then you go, I'll have to be. But now, the contradiction was when my children were, say, five and three, and you're walking down the street, and of course you would die for them. You'd do anything to save their lives. And you look at a bridge and think, oh god, that's high enough. I could get on that. And it's just a thing that you can't get rid of. And when you're weak, that's when it gets you. Except, you know, because the love for my family and children is so powerful and so much greater than anything that could make me damage them in that way.

Paul Abbott28:38

They were my immunity.

Presenter28:40

You also said fascinatingly just before that last record that your children made your molecules respectable.

Speaker 228:46

Uh

Presenter28:47

Yeah.

Paul Abbott28:47

Yeah.

Presenter28:47

I mean, there we are with that shame thing again, that sense that you

Presenter28:51

Can't quite be proud of yourself.

Paul Abbott28:53

I'm I'm ashamed of the way I've screamed at the children for things that they don't know they've done. And it's because I've seen elements of myself in them. You know, if I b my dad is bone idle and you know, that's the politest thing I can say about him at the moment. And uh and if I see them being lazy

Paul Abbott29:10

I just scream so violently and only go, Oh my god, it's not their fault that I've been running, I've been the opposite of lazy for a reason. But yeah, they've converted so many things with me that I didn't like at all. And Saskia and I have put a lot of work into being good parents and and they know I'm flaky and unreliable, but they know I'm totally reliable and so not flaky if they need me not to be.

Presenter29:36

Zaskia is your third wife. Your first two marriages were relatively short, and this one has been a long and happy one and has produced two children. Is is it a surprise to you that you're capable of sustaining that?

Paul Abbott29:38

Do you guys

Paul Abbott29:39

Yeah.

Paul Abbott29:43

His b

Paul Abbott29:46

Yeah, I well I love Saskia now more than ever. I might cry No, no, I I love Sasi I love Saskia more every day. It really surprises me that you love somebody m this much more than when the last time you thought you loved them as much as you could. And Saskia's got a lot to cope with with me. And it's it's great, I love it. And we've just got it we're in a really good groove.

Presenter30:09

Tell me then about your last record form Abbott.

Paul Abbott30:12

Well it's Roberta Flack. Roberta Flack singing First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and it's just one of those songs that actually it relates to Saskia, it relates to my children, people I trust and people who respect me. And yeah, I love it for that.

Speaker 230:28

The first

Speaker 230:34

Ever I saw your face.

Speaker 230:44

Thought the sun.

Speaker 230:50

Rose in your eyes

Presenter30:57

Roberta Flack, and the first time ever I saw your face. We do, of course, give you the complete works of Shakespeare, Paul, and the Bible. One more book. What would you like?

Paul Abbott31:08

Um I kind of saved the Bible for someone else, I'd leave it behind it.

Paul Abbott31:12

I'd leave that. I think the Shakespeare I'd take because I'm a writer. Whether I understand it or not, I love trying to understand it, but I don't quite.

Paul Abbott31:19

And I think the book I would take would be

Paul Abbott31:23

Complete works of Arthur Miller, because I think he's one of the most fantastic men who teaches men how to write women and women to write men. It's just he's a beautiful, kind of androgynous, passionate writer who teaches people how to be how to how to basically shout beautifully. I love it.

Presenter31:40

So, of course, you can have that. And we do allow you a luxury to make life a bit more bearable. What would yours be?

Paul Abbott31:46

Um well this is going to sound really cheap. I just I'd love a pad with pencils.

Presenter31:52

And if the waves were to threaten to wash away your disks, then, what's the one that you would run through the sand to save?

Paul Abbott31:59

It's really hard to work this one out, but I would have to go for Paul Weller, uh, Tancor Mouse, because it sets your heart on fire and makes you rage uh productively. I love it. Uh that's that's an anthem for me.

Presenter32:11

Paul Abbott, you've spoken a lot about shouting, about hearing your voice heard. It has been fascinating to hear you shout and speak today. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert time on this.

Paul Abbott32:20

Thanks for having me. It's been great.

Presenter32:28

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.