Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Columnist and author, a committed nonconformist who wrote for NME, The Times, The Guardian, and The Daily Mail.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:52What work are you proudest of?
The book of essays I wrote called Sex and Sensibility, I love that book. It's got my best work in it … I also love the book I wrote for teenagers called Sugar Rush that was made into a T V show that won an International Emmy Award.
Presenter asks
5:36Do you particularly enjoy being vitriolic?
It comes naturally to me … When I'm getting into a fight or a feud, I feel a mild parasexual thrill when I'm starting a new feud. It's not extremely sexual,'cause that would be kinky, and I cannot lie about it. It feels nice.
Presenter asks
8:19Tell me about your parents.
My parents were really lovely. They were very plain working class people. My dad worked in a distillery and my mum was variously a cleaner, worked in shops and also worked in factories. But they were very unusual people. My dad was a communist and very intelligent. And my mum my mum was a diva. She was like Mariah Carey stuck behind a bacon slicer.
Presenter asks
Gary Mulholland
I would like to choose a book by my good friend Gary Moorholland called This Is Uncool 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco. It's the most amazing book and even though I only had a small number of records with me, I could read about these 500 brilliant records and I feel like I was actually listening to them.
The luxury
I'd like to take a alcohol [still], 'cause on the island there would be pineapples and cocoanuts, and if I had a [still] to make alcohol, I could make a cocoanut pineapple cocktail and be really happy.
And this idea of being in a house in which you didn't quite belong, explore that a bit for me.
Well, like, by the time I was twelve, I was reading Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker, and my mother would yell at me up the stairs, when are you going to get a Saturday job? like the rest of your friends and I'd go I have another chapter of the portrait of Dorian Gray to finish today mother and tomorrow I shall be starting Against Nature by Hussmans and my mother would just start crying'cause she didn't know what the hell was going on … I thought they were they were both amazing people.
Presenter asks
19:20You left both marriages and you left both children. Why did you do that?
When people talk about it, like the newspapers, the Daily Mail called me the worst mother in Britain … the first time I left my marriage and my son, I could have done it much better … I was young, I was going off with my lover … I could have done that a lot better. With my second son, I have to say I I fought very hard to get custody of him … I saw Jack constantly.
Presenter asks
26:21If I was to force you to say what class you were, what class would you say?
Rich working class. I'm like a pools winner.
“Is your mummy in? and I go, No, there's two reasons why my mummy's not in. One, she's been dead for ten years, and the other is, I'm fifty three years old, you clown.”
“The one great lie I taught in my life was that I liked punk, and when I used to go to punk clubs I used to come back and put on the Isley Brothers and dance around the room, throwing off my punk clothes.”
“I find myself endlessly fascinating. And part of that is a is my hostility and my my aggression. If I was a peaceful person, I don't think I'd find myself very interesting for some reason.”
“I think I was born without something. It's not a thing I put on hand on my heart, it's a thing that I actually feel. Maybe I was born with something missing, but if I was, I'm glad I was, because I don't want to be one of those people who creep around trying to get people's approval. I think they're pathetic.”