Denise Mina

Published Nov 12, 2024, 11:00 AM

Meet Denise Mina, a very close friend of mine and an absolute genius Scottish crime writer and playwright. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including but not limited to the John Creasey Dagger for Best First Crime Novel, The Martin Beck Award, and Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. We reminisce on fond memories and discuss why you should never sit in the sleepy chair. I laughed my ass almost completely off and also learned stuff. Win win. EnJOY!

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Ah.

Yes, My guest today is one of my oldest friends. When I say one of my oldest friends, she's younger than me, but I've known her for.

A very long time.

She gets very uncomfortable when I say how clever she is. But she's very clever. She's a great writer, and she's a great person. And her name is Please Minor.

Hello, Hello darling.

How are you doing? You know, I'm okay. How are you doing?

Yeah? I'm not bad at all. Yeah, not bad. I've got massive gosses on and I don't know what you're I'm just going to be like Deardrey barlowing it the whole time.

Well, I think for American listeners we have to explain who Deardrey Parlow is before we go any further.

She was a soap star in Britain in the seventies. He was famous for wearing gigantic eye obscuring glasses, so she looked like a serial killer. But she did She didn't kill anybody.

I don't think, well, I would say, I think the show she was on was Coronation Street, right, and Coronation Street is the longest running soap opera I think in the world.

Yeah, I think. I think you're right.

Yeah, And I think that by now they've probably had at least one My guess is they've had at least one.

Serial killer storyline by now.

No, no, you don't understand. Nope, you're wrong, or you have to stay on brand, you see. So it's like certain certain magazines will only have people falling over. They won't have they won't have violence, they won't have So maybe someone fell over, or maybe several people fell over in the vicinity of the same person, but I very much doubt they had a serial killer. It's so off brand.

Well, but I see, I think that if someone falls over and dies, maybe towards the end of a season, and that happens a few times, we've got to think we might have a serial killer on our hands, a serial toppler.

Pushing people over.

Look, I'm not trying to steer your career anywhere, but I think an idea for a book next book could be the pushing people over, making it look like they fell serial.

Killer in real life. There probably has.

Actually one of the things that I really can't because you and I have known each other since I think even before you wrote your first book.

Actual, yes, that's.

Well, so, I mean there have been times when you know, I've thought, because I've known you for such a long time that you I read everything you do because I like it, and it's it's tricky because sometimes when you have a friend who writes and you're like, oh, yeah, that was good, but it wasn't that good. But I have read everything you've done, and I.

My whole career.

It's like your whole career. This is the opposite of that. What I'm saying as I've read it all, and what I was trying to get to is was the the you are. I always think of someone who's very positive and cheerful, and you kind of you head towards positivity all the time, and you've always done that and all the time I've known you, And yeah, some of your work is the darkest I've ever read, as part of the reason why I love it so much.

And I wonder if what do you think that is?

Do you think you get out all your dark shit when you're writing?

Is that what it is?

I don't think so. I think we tend to think of light and darkest binaries, and actually there's a lot more mix. And I see that in your comedy all the time. Thank you, and you really really really funny, are very very dark. Like I mean, I remember you being unable to stop laughing because you were describing yourself sitting on the end of the pit in Yours pants happing the breakdown. Yeah, you know what I mean? I think, actually, what does what does? What does lightness do? Do you know what I mean? It makes the dark bearable? And actually it's kind of like it's like only eating salt or only eating meat. I mean, you really want them together, do you know what I mean? And I think people people always say that to crime writers, you're also jolly, do you get all your darkness out of the page? And it's like, no, we're really kind of thick fox.

Or very well adjusted in the fact that you understand because what you what you described the idea of being able to keep light and darkness and you know, and it's all you know, it's a spectrum or a or a flavor and a recipe. I think that's a very healthy, well adjusted way of looking at things. But but I think that there's a couple of times. There's a couple of instances I can't remember. Oh god, there was one of the books. I can't remember the exact book, but it was about a horrible kelly person that was going into a room to and he didn't know what he was going to in, but he was going to fuck it when he got in there. That was the phrase, and that said, do you remember that that book? That's that's about as as twisted and hard as anything I've ever read.

And the knowledge of that.

See, I think I try and keep darkness away by what I do, and I think you're quite brave.

I think you just like let it roll in.

I don't think you are keeping I mean in front.

I'm just saying that that is what I'm trying.

I don't know. I mean, I think I think if you really of the world, and you really love life and you really love people, you have to be able to see both sides, do you know what I mean? And everything gets heightened if you go through if you have a very kind of you know, boring narrative and it's you know, the steaks are low and do you know what I mean, It's like everything's very heightened if you I mean, that's one of the reasons I love horror so much is because everything very things are funnier, you know. I mean, I don't think you really do you know yourself any favors by trying to sanitize everything. Life isn't vanilla, you know. Yeah, I mean, I know I can't think of anything darker than standing up in front of an audience fill of people and trying to make them laugh.

Well, certainly it has. Have you never tried it?

I couldn't do it because if the audience hate me, I just I don't care. I've died really talking oh so badly. I was in front of five hundred people. There's a whole lot going on. I gave an after dinner speech and everyone hated me. I mean, I mean it was tangible. You could feel the hate, and I insulted everybody, and then I doubled down on it by saying, I don't care what you think. And then I said thank you for giving me this appalling experience. To tell on another account.

Thats like a lot of stand up comedy performances, particularly in the early years, that when you start to love it, so when you start to look for that failure, I think that that's that's what it is.

That's when you know you are.

I don't know. I wouldn't give up on your stand up career.

Just yeah, I think I think it might be one.

But it's part of life now for authors, isn't it that you have to do all that you have to be much more social.

Much more social. And I've got a bit two in a quarter hours of social in me, and then I start to actually kind of see things or epic to go to the toilet because I'm really introversive. There's a thing at London Book Club and it was a post on the back of the wall from the Finnish Book Society and it was a picture of a woman with her kN knickers around her ankle, sitting on the toilet and it said, thank God, I'm finally alone.

I understand it, I understand why. Why is what?

Do you think the thing is that people have to have a connection par certainly with crime writers. I think that although I feel like, and I mean this is one hundred percent as a compliment, I feel you've kind of transcended that a wee bit. You you've kind of brished out a little bit from only writing about you know, you never really only wrote about crime anyway, because it was always at of psychological and a and a personal kind of depth to it. It wasn't kind of like just procedural. But with crime writers, if you're perceived to be a crime writer, you have to go to these conventions and and and people need a connection with you.

Do you think that's about.

I have no idea because these audiences are not really our readers. It's all women who look a bit like me. So I'm just in a room full of women of my age who look a bit like me. That's not who reads my books. And and I'm not that interesting on stage. You're listening right now. It's quite banale. Do you know what I mean? I don't have the answers to anything. Yeah, I don't really don't know what it's about it. There's a lot of.

Collectors, does that And do you think maybe that it's aspirational if you're talking about there's a lot of women who look like you and the audience, but they don't buy your book.

Do they want to be writing your book? Do you think that's what it is?

There's a lot of questions about how do you do you write with the pen or a pencil? Do you where you get your ideas from?

You know?

All that stuff to my next question. I remember one hundred years ago you said to mate for did you get your ideas for your feminism from? After somebody been No? I say that, say that you know you're confused mabe somebody else.

I feel like I know where you get.

I feel you've never been kind of reticent about telling me where you get your ideas for your feminism.

Bro, I don't think I need to push you for it.

Funny though, I mean, it's such a strange thing though, because I was thinking today before we started talking about when you and I met, like, which is you know it's about thirty something years ago now, like it's really a long time.

Yeah, and that strang we're so old.

Well yeah, but we look fantastic, So I think it's okay.

We kept her here, croik.

We kept her hair and we both moisturize, and I think that's that's the key.

And we can't take the sound. I had to move from La it was too much.

I've had that. You ever had things that toffee? I've got age spots that I've had to have taken.

Off from being in l A.

Yeah, yeah, as well from driving.

Wow, you sill like that and your knuckles got all age spots on them.

Wow. I live where the sun don't shine, so you do?

You live in Glasgow, which I'm always I've always been very envious that you. I like, I love Glasgow but I always have a complicated relationship with it.

You seem to be very at home there, like you, you know.

I mean I've seen you ride about your bike and you wave to people and you're kind of quite you see, you're not social, but I feel like you're very social in Glasgow.

I feel you're very much part of the community.

Well, yeah, it's so. I mean, I didn't drow up here. So my dad is an engineer, and I grew up in Paris and Norway and London and Amsterdam because he was a draftman. So Glasgow sort of where I chose because I grew up in South London as well. So like you probably feel the way I feel the way about Glasgow that you do a bit of places that you choose to stage, you know what I mean, it's a different relationship.

That's funny because you've got a very Parisian and Norwegian accent.

I think, do you speak Norwegian?

Yeah? The Janahan snickers.

That was is that true?

That is true? That's me asking for snickersners.

That's that's the extent of my Norwegian.

But that's as much as you get out. Because if you even get on the bus and say in a barn, they say, oh, English speaker, because they know your accents rubbish and everyone's everyone's fluent, you know.

I know Mexican people do that to me and Los Angeles. I try and speak Spanish and they just they smile indulgently and then just speak English to me, which is kind of embarrassing, but also there's a kindness to it as well.

But why did you choose Glasgow? Then?

If you went because your because your family was from there, as that one, well.

To be honest, I took a lot of drugs and I kind of black shout and woke up here. That is essentially what happened. And my mom was here because my parents had just split up, and she said you can sleep on my couch. So it's a very thought out life plan. I mean, I had yacht.

I've taken a lot of drugs and woken up places and thought I don't want to live here.

I want to live somewhere else but Glasgow.

At that time it was the eighties, right, So everyone with any ambition left and they all went to where I'd been living because I'd been living in South London, which was a thatcher, you know, And then it was like you know, capitalism on steroids. And I came to Golasgow and it was there were all these beautiful buildings. You couldn't get anywhere to live in London as well. We were all swating and you came to go Husgo and it was like you know these you could get these rooms that were like ballrooms and you could rent them for twenty quite a week, and it was like West Berlin. It was like an abandoned city that nobody wanted to live in. And you know, there's a lot of freedom in that, you know, and I just completely fell in love with it. And also people were quite kind to each other. You know, they would chat to each other and they would, you know, ask how you were and then they would listen to how you went. I mean, it was just a really odd place. You know it still does it still have that? Because it's funny, I don't. It's my hometown, but I don't feel that way about it at all. I mean, and it's does it still have that? You think it really has that? But I have to say, you are from Cumbernauld, which is like.

Well, I know, I'm from springber but I grew up in Cumbernauld, which is it's not not good.

No, I'm from easco Bride, right, very similar. I didn't move back too right. I think he's scow Bride was a Catholic version of Cumbernauld. I think there are.

Catholics in Cumbernall that would be outraged by that statement.

But I think a lot of the Catholics moved to go Broad and a lot of it. And these are new towns. These are like seventies towns that were built. He's the housing sortage, and they're quite far away from the city and they're very different than the actual city. The actual city feels very glamorous in comparison.

I always thought that. I always thought like the West End of Glasgow. To me, it still kind of does. Actually when I go there, I feel like it has a kind of it feels like Paris, or or or the Upper West Side of New York or something like that.

It's got sort of glamor about.

It, which is strange, but it's true. And you and I both worked in the ubiquitous chip Bar as well, which seems and Kelly McDonald worked there as well. And I think I think if you were, if you were an artist of a particular type, you had to spend it at least a year working as a waiter.

And the Ubiquitous Chip.

Everyone I know works in the Chip. Everyone I know works in the Chip. For people who don't know that, it's a restaurant, and it was named after a line in a play about Scottish cuisine, and the line was, you know, over boiled potatoes, ruined vegetables, and of course the ubiquitous Chip. So it's a fine dining restaurant called after that. It's called the Ubiquitous Chip. So it's quite pretentious. And it was full of pretentious whankers like us. They had aspirations, do you know what I mean? We had aspiration.

But you were sober when you worked there. I wasn't.

I was.

I was still drinking when I was working there, because I remember how much I it was a real illustration because I would work in the bar.

I wouldn't be able to drink that much while I was working the bar.

And I would see people drink that first and for lagger, and it was like people that would come win normal and go fucking crazy after like four pints. And and I kind of think there was some information about me about this is what you are like Craig when you start drinking it. I think it began to kind of sink in a bit because there's a lot of back and alien behavior in that. I don't know if there still is, but there certainly was in the eighties. There is it still there?

Oh yeah, it's still mental. And there's a roof garden now where everyone goes up and smoked hash and pretend they're not smoking hash. But there used to be a spiral staircase down to the toilets, and we installed a video camera. I'm sure you remember. I'm sure your face remembers it. Video camera, that's all. And at the end of the night you used to say time, gentlemen place and the bar would empty, and then we'd all stand and watch the video monitor and killer still lot.

I remember working there.

You would get an extra four pounds on your shift, an extra four quid if you cleaned up, if you took the bucket and cleaned up any sick so if there was any lying around, you would get an extra four quada on the top of yourself.

I always would do it. Oh yeah, oh yeah, sometimes it was my sick.

Well. Just to give you some idea of the management of that place. They adored you, right because you weren't even famous when I worked there. I worked there after you. I was not drinking. They hated me. They could never remember. They did not like me. Thought it was a torn face bitch. Every time they had a parsy, they'd get you all presents and everybody would get whiskey and I would get a bottle of blank de blanc because they couldn't remember that I didn't drink. I mean, it was just like you just we're very suspicious of me.

You have just described my exact experience of twenty three years in Hollywood.

Oh really yeah, yeah.

I felt like like it was there and they kind of tolerated me, but it was like, no, you are not part of this.

We are a different gang to you.

And and it's but I wonder if that's if you choose that a little bit, because you and I are quite similarly.

You and I could be brothers and sister. Really, I think people have said that.

I think it might be some way back, which is.

Great because I'm glad that we never like kissed her anything.

When we were drinking.

That that would have been bad.

Although I would have done it, but I don't think you would have done it. I don't think I remember.

Because you and I didn't even know this until years later, that you interviewed me for boyfriend job.

And I've failed terribly.

Because yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, I remember, like when we went to Saint Andrews, remember, and we had a drag.

We drove up to St.

Andrews and walked around the graveyard, and I thought we were on a day out. And then you told me when you were on the late night show that you had interviewed me. You may have just been kidding, may though I think now is I think about it. I think it was just fucking with me. You said that I was interviewing you for the job of boyfriend, but you just talked about yourself the whole time, and I got bored. So I do sound true what I could think about it at the time.

I mean, I struggle with it now.

But did all the way to s I think we did because I remember I remember specifically. It was we remember that big old Mercedes that I had. It looked like I was an African ambassador or something.

That was a lovely car.

That great car, and I we drove it up to Saint Andrews, and we were walking around the graveyard, because I think that's we were both.

Do you don't remember any of this. I remember being stuck on the wall and thinking I should have thought this when I got on the wall. I was freezing on a wall. It's too high. We were fish and chips, and I remember saying, so, that's kind of but I do remember that car.

It was lovely and well.

I remember walking around the graveyard and you saying, look at all these poor bastards. They all thought it was so important and I and I thought, God that it really stuck with me. It's one of those things because I was I was still vibrating. You had been you had cleaned up your life a couple of years ahead of me, and I was still vibrating from like coming off the alcohol and drugs and thinking trying to figure out how how you could possibly live a life and be creative and all that old shit that people believe about alcohol and drugs.

You know that, you know. I love the fact that your.

Output certainly mine, but yours it seems to be all post sobriety, all your like the real surge of of what you do is after you go sober.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I just wasn't capable before. I find it hard enough sober to be honest with you because it's do you know what I mean? It is like you're going to face to face with your own limitations, and if you're drinking on top of that, you just quite have an affair, do you know what? You just find some other way to distract yourself or getting bold in a fight. Well, yeah, we can do both in the same night.

It's funny though, because I think of you as being someone who is like your output is prolific and has never I mean, I know it makes you uncomfortable when I say how much I enjoy your work, And that's pretty much.

That's one of the reasons why I bring.

It up so often, because I enjoy.

I just think you're lying.

Just you're not lying right here, I'm right here.

Yeah, I'm not going to say that.

I remember because and it's an interesting thing because I had to train myself and stop doing something similar. Like if somebody came to see me in a show and then they came backstage afterwards and they if they said something like that was a great show, I would tell them why it wasn't a great show.

I would say, no, it wasn't a good one tonight.

Should have been here last night or and I had to stop doing that because you take people's enjoyment away a wee bit from it. And I wonder, it's quite an interesting thing because with the writing Seve writting a wee bit bit, but the writing that you do is so I can imagine it like, and maybe I'm wrong, you tell me, but it seems like it would take over a your every thought process you had going. It'd be very kind of insular, and then it belongs to everybody else and they have to tell you what they think about it and how, and they're part of it now, but they weren't really part of it. They're just going to consume it. It's a different it's a weird thing. I think it must be strange to discuss your work with people who have different opinions about your work than you do.

Do you know, even if it's the same opinion, it is like, I mean, I can see goodwards kind of it is like something appearing at your house to discuss your masturbatory style. It's kind of like, how the fuck is this anything? Do you which leads me to my next question. But do you know what I mean? It's like, you know, you work on something really intensely for a year and a half, your research, and you go in that world, you create a world, you know all the people in it, you're really, really involved, and then a journalist writes two paragraphs telling you what they think of it, and you're kind of like, fuck are you to me? I don't know? You off? And then you meet them and they're lovely and you have to say, oh, answer, the great review you past, remarkable, bastard.

I know it's a very it's a conflicting opinion.

You know.

What I hate is the tendency now to the top ten list of everything, like so the I mean, it's really bad. I think in the world of books, where it's you know, the best sellers. So if a book sells more than another book, it's a better book than the other book, which I think is beyond fucking ludicrous. But it's with everything. Everything has that, And.

That's just saying that the market is the measure of everything. That Like, you must see stand ups who are terrible and they're just doing a small echo brilliant work and they're copying other people. Sometimes they're lifting jokes and they're storming, and everyone thinks they're a genius. And you know, I think there are comedians who are they really there for people who don't have a sense of humor?

Oh, that's mostly what it is.

But they like laughing, do you know what I mean? Yeah, So they're kind of doing us performance of stuff other people do. And that's the last market, you know.

Right, does that happen? Does that happen? And well, I guess that does happen in crime books for sure. I've read crime books and I've been like, wait a minute, this is you know, I've come across this style of this, even this story before you get do you get antsy about about people necking your stuff?

Stand ups are paranoid about it all the time.

Yeah, now you can't, you'd go mad. Yeah, I mean sometimes I do actually take photographs of massive best sellers, paragraphs on them, and and I read them over to give myself a good laugh, because it's like if pharaoah that I'd be too embarrassed. Quite the house. You know, we're trying to do different things. You must get, you must get, like you know, those those best seller a lot of those are manipulated. It's about the number they produce, it's about the number, you know who they buy them. New York Times Bestseller, the actual bestseller thing. I think it's heavily manipulated.

Oh sure, yeah, yeah, I've been on the receiving end of it both times. I mean, you know, where when my book wasn't being so in the right place and when it was.

Yeah, and you know, I mean I see a lot of books on that that you don't see anywhere in anyone's house. No one's reading them, you know what I mean. So you don't want to worry about the market, because it's a one to one relationship. If you're writing books, it's you and the reader. And I always kind of imagine they're reading in a really comfy chair and I'm sort of leaning over their shoulder and whispering the story in their ear.

Okay, that's quite creepy, especially with some of the stuff that you write that's very bad.

When you're writing something scary, yeah I do, yeah, yeah, I do, yeah, really scared. And then I think that I think that's brilliant. I think I might have done something really clever there. And then I go to bed and I get on the next morning, read it, and it's usually absolutely.

I think that, Yeah, it's anything written after sundown is and I've written after sundown.

It's shy. Really Yeah, if I write, in fact, I won't.

I'll never send a text to an email after it gets dark because I'll probably regret it.

What a module.

I never read any claim.

And in the thirty plus years and years have known you, I've never said at any point I'm a fucking barometer for mental health.

I've never said that.

I never said that to anyone.

You know.

That. You never text someone to say, are you watching Bakoff?

For no? No? You? You and Meghan do that?

You like?

You?

You have that kind of you talk to each Meghan of course being my wife.

You guys talk to each other in a way that I don't.

I don't do that, maybe with Meghan, like because I'll text it if I'm on the road, I'll talk to her in the text and stuff like that.

But that's that's about it.

How do you know who to hate on Bakoff then atract?

I can't.

I don't hate the Bacoff is one of the few things that I can watch without any negative feeling at all other than sadness for the people who are leaving. It's a it's a fucking national world treasure, the Great British Bakeoff.

I'm worried about the waste. It's so wasteful. They're always saying I need this corn ucopia of short bread yesterday, and I'm like, what what happened to that one?

Well, they give it to the crew. Do you know that?

Because I thought about that, did you? Yeah, the crew gets it.

The people who work on the bake off that they're all like, you know, five hundred pounds.

You've made that so much better for me, un delightned.

No, no, no they don't. They don't throw it out. People eat it and stuff like that.

Or I think they give it to needy, you know, people in society.

Homeless people that need a cake that's homeless people need a gasso in the shape of anywhere.

They are lovely though, I think that do you bake?

I used to bake, but I'm so compulsive. I would like make a tree bacon. Then I would eat the treat back and then I would be sick and of a bitch of mother.

Very much ident with that. But I think because every time, like in the last I don't know, four or five years of or more. Every time I've seen Most of the time i've seen you is in your kitchen.

You know, Parliament, the parliament of the.

House, it really is.

I mean your kitchen in particularly have a giant teapot and usually good cakes and then you know, very deep because it's a salon environment. They do you have Do you have other writers in there for like Dorothy Parker type round table shit?

Well, you know, because I mean I'm quite dull because I don't drink. So we do have soup Sunday, So we do have like once a year, we'll have a lot of risers around and we'll all eat super complain about our income and u and tip. Actually it's weird because you would think that we would be making statements about the nature of life for talking about literally are mostly what we're talking about is times we made fools of ourselves over the course of the year. So the winning prize this year was Louise Well. She's a fantastic Scottish writer. He was telling the story about being She was being translated during a tour of Germany by someone who was also a clown. But in the old tradition.

That's so.

It's fantastic. But he didn't. He didn't clown up until the very last and then on the very last event, which is a big deal in Berlin, he said, I want to do my act before you come on and talk about literature. So he clowned up, died because the audience went there to see a clown, and then it shifted on remaining in his clown outfit. To translate what we've Oh geez, that seems waiting make it about you.

I think if you're the translator, you shouldn't really be trying to make it about I want to be a clown.

I mean, it's not your day.

But as Louise says, we're all quite mild people adventures, you know what I mean.

So mostly it's like one of us falling over and someone coming over and kicking in, and a dog humping your leg, and then people que up and buy your book, and then the conclusion, oh, do you know what I mean?

The clown thing is great? Did you ever write about it? I feel like clowns are I'm one of the people that believes that clowns are intrinsically you know, it's an evil thing.

It's a way to hide maybe even stand up.

Do you think have you written yet the serial Killer clown book or are you working on it right now?

I'm working on it right now. Obviously this is my that's my next pitch. No, I'm not, are you?

Because I really liked the book you wrote about Mary Queen of Scott's pal Rizzio, right, Razio, Yeah, Razio, Yeah, and that was I really love that And you actually turned a corner for me because through that, because it was your as far as I know, that was your first historical fiction. The Long Drop was sort of set in a period in time, but that was the nineteen sixties, so it's kind of, you know, sort of in living memory sort of thing. But Razio was Mary, Queen of Scott's. And because I love that so much, you know, what I started doing is reading Gorvi Dall's historical novels.

Fantastic.

He's such a great writer.

Yeah, yeah, I mean amazing. I'm reading right now.

Creation. Have you read Creation? No, It's set during the Persian Greek Wars five hundred years BC. It's fucking amazing, Dan, I mean, because you're right, it's not in it, you know, it in the sense of like the other Billin girl and oh, I mean it's really it feels I mean, there's a bit of that, but it's more kind of it's so vivid and contemporary.

That you really believe the people.

And that's why I wanted That's why I wanted to because I feel like it's part of my job as your friend to push you and annoy you into directions so that you actually think about doing work that I've enjoyed before. And I think that I'd like to push you into more historical work because you have that excuse me, you have that gift of making people who have been dead for hundreds and hundreds of years like they're in the next room with a fucking iPhone.

And that's great.

That's a rare talent and you should do more of it. Okay, that's great to talk tip, very good. So that's really and also put in so I tell you the truth about that, tell the truth about it, right, Yeah, you can't really make a living doing that, right, So publishers and readers who read crime fiction, we are really greedy readers, right, So that's a living. Okay, So, but rising kind of you know, very formed historical fiction. I wrote a book called Three Fires, which was about Savonarola and Florence. Those books are really precious and I really love doing them, but you can't make a living doing that. So if you want to make a living and actually you want to talk about big themes, the vehicle for that is crime fiction. And I think crime fiction because it's so familiar, we take it so for granted, but actually there is it is a very very very difficult thing to do. So for example, what I'm writing at the moment is a book about a forensic scientist too discovers that her discipline is built it and which is quite this is happening. I mean, science changes all the time, but what we're discovering now is that law is staffic. Science changes, and you couldn't do that in any other context, you know what I mean. You're right, yeah, But I mean I love doing I mean, for me, writing historical fiction or historical non fiction fiction is as just as delicious as writing crime fiction. But they just aren't the sales in it. You might get one big book, but you don't get you don't get like a readership or a dialogue.

I get, yeah, I do, and I think it's an interesting thing because I think that, and I'm certainly guilty of it right right now in this conversation.

You forget that people have to make a living, you know.

Particularly the artistic endeavors you You forget about that like there are bills to pay.

It's a job, it's your life.

And you know we I think because of Byron if you I read a brilliant biography of Byron, and he came from money and refused to take money from his books being published, and that is the model we all act as if no one's from a blue collar background. We've all got a trust fund as you and I both have nature scum, big old Irish based Obviously we don't come from money, do you know what I mean? I mean, I think you know what.

Because I remember, even like when I was a kid, people saying, you know, like you would get asked in the interviews, why did you take the part? And I would always like make up things like oh I really liked the script.

I never read the fucking script. Read my lines?

How much I would have to do because what you're really doing is money, is to.

Make a living.

Yeah, it's that, but you your degree is in criminal A lot of though, isn't it.

Yeah, it's criminal lot and friends. So I did forensic science as honors. Yeah, and I won the prize. Actually I won the Gilbert port. Actually the door was knock after I graduated, and it was the posty, and I thought we were getting evicted from the dirty flat I used to live in.

I wanted to talk to you about the sleepy chair in that flat because a lot of people don't know about the sleepy chair, and I think for I think the statute of limitations is up. You can talk about that flat. But tell me what happened the door. The door get knocked and what knocked?

And it was a it was I had to sign for a parcel and it was I had won the prize for forensic Science, the Gilbert Board's Gold Medal, and I was like, they'd forgotten to give it to me a graduation so I still know that I've got it my my medicine cabinet.

Yeah, that's but that's fabulous. Congratulations. I didn't know you'd won that prize, and I feel like.

I believed I wink the wrong eye there.

A wink in a salute is always a way of proving your cooler than any one else in the room. M let's talk about the sleepy chair in your flat, because I think it's a story that have you written that in a book yet?

And I've only just told you.

Oh really, I think it's such a great thing. So there was a chair in your flat and.

I was so I was living in a flat that was basically falling apart, and you were up in it, and it was we were so poor. It was me and like four guys. We were so per We had done some decoration that we used knitting patterns for in the ship across the toilet, but anyway, it was, you know, we were all I think we were all like kind of depressed and we're kind of like watching TV. And you know, we had this chair and we called it the sloopy chair because every time anyone sat in it they fell asleep. And we were like, yeah, that's the sloopy chair, and don't sit in the sleepy chair. And then my partner and I bought that flat, did it up, and when they when they came up to look at it the place where the sleepy chair was, they discovered there was a massive Catholic.

You're so lucky nobody died in that chain.

The hope that could have blown up because I know we didn't have any heating in Scotland. So what we were doing was we were taking We thought we were being very modern and we were taking the doors off the oven and just lighting it into the room and we were warming ourselves right next to the sleepy chair smoking. Of course we were all smoking. Yeah.

I miss smoking, I really do.

I don't miss alcohol at all, and I don't miss drugs, well maybe drugs a little bit, but fucking smoking.

Oh miss it every day every day. At some point, I think I love a cigarette right now.

Yeah, it's weird as I haven't so how long since you smoked a cigarette?

Oh decades? Yeah, me too, And I'm still I'm still on the patches. Yeah, still messing about trying to find a way to keep nicotine. I actually got so addicted to nicotine chewing and I ended up buying out of date nicotine chewing. I'm from a dodgy chemist because it was and it was usingly three times as it's as you're legally supposed to.

But that's okay because it's probably if it's out a day, it's half life is diminished, which means that you're probably just taking the regular amount.

You and I should never enable each.

Other that.

It's like cheers. And then two minutes last to a robbing a post office. But I was on. I was telling somebody once about being on this TV show and I said she wasn't very nice to me. It was a producer. I said, it was, you know, it was a live TV show. It was going at eleven o'clock on a Friday. And then I sort of told the story, and I sort of realized that I was really really at fault because I've been on with this Icelandic band and they they were very clearly fans of substances. So they sort of said johantson of johants some of that, and then they said, did anyone want some snuff? And a roller decks through what I was allowed, and I was like, I'm allowed snuff. Give me too much, give me so much that I'm vomiting at the side of the sound stage and I've been two minutes before we go out lotch.

There's no reason to be rude to someone.

If they did, Yeah, Jesus.

Stuff tobacco.

I don't think I've had snuff don't take snuff. I'm not going number one. Don't take nothing difficult to get hold of. And it makes your hair fallout, it makes your hair thin, it makes you put on a lot of weight as well.

That does not sound like anything I'm interested in.

You wouldn't like that.

I'm looking for a cross between rogaine and cocaine. That's what I want, and that is the opposite of It's funny, though, I do you still get snobby about drugs because I do like when people are like, because everybody smokes weed on the street in America now, and everybody's you know, it's it's everybody. The smell of weed is everywhere in New York City, and I think, you know, get yourself a proper drug. I find myself like that. I know it's very pathological and like, that's not a proper drug. Take a proper drug cocaine or heroin or something. But I suppose that's not a healthy attitude.

It's not a healthy attitude.

I aware that.

Do you know, we're so vanilla. We don't really know what drugs are now. Drugs are very different, really bad ones, you know what I mean. We would not be alive now all these young ones. Do you know what I mean. I mean, it's so it's it's a serious business. The minute to start taking it. We thought it was serious, but it was a moral panic. It wasn't really a physically dangerous thing. Every time you took something in us.

Now that's true with the Fennel thing, you could just like the first time done.

Kids, you know, And so we got off lucky. I mean, I think the reason we're both here is probably because, you know, because I mean, who a party back in our day, somebody handed you something and you took it, you didn't know what it was.

I mean, it terrifies me now because we both you know, have young adults, and it's it's terrifying. It's terrifying that it's out there like that. And I think the drugs are so good now as well in terms of like potency and uh, you know, like people will say things like strains of marijuana.

It doesn't make any sense to me, you know.

It's like you know, they'll say, because I remember, like the when I took marijuana, the hash was hashed.

Marijuana was grass was grass, hash was hashed. That was it.

And I remember once having a my one of my few homosexual encounters when I was a young man and I said to a gay friend later, it's not really for me, and he said it was probably the wrong one, and I said, no, I don't think there are a strains sufficient. Look, I tried it and it's not for me. But but hash now you can. There are so many different strains about it that the people will say, oh, because I got psychotic from marijuana, like crazy, really, but apparently that's certain strains do that to people, and other strains don't.

It's too late for me now, and I'm glad of it. But gone on the days of you know, going up to the Trossus and sitting looking over the city and taking what turned out to be half an Afroy quick Ford again.

Now, do you remember Dodo tablets? Do you ever take Dodo tablets? We used to take Dodo tablets where I think we're a bronchial thing that they were in Scotland.

There was some kind of bronchial thing.

But if you took Doro tablets and drank cheap wine and then sat on the train in Springburn, the vibrations felt really fabulous. Yeah, I mean, it's such a mess, but it's funny I think of like those days because you and I never really we never crossed paths until we got sober. But the darkness in that you described the kind of comic darkness of drinking and using in those times.

I think we both ended up where we were because of.

That influence of that kind of hilarious despair of the kind of the mid eighties.

If you were like in Scotland, it was terrible but awesome.

Yeah, I mean it's awesome because of the past.

Yeah, I think that's it.

Yeah, it was grim and we were very depressed. Let's remember that. Yeah, it was a sure, I'm sure there were people. I mean, you know, young people now dress as if they're in the eighties. Sometimes I get, you know, it gives me the hey gbs paste pink lemon yellow. If I see someone in lemon yellow, I feel like I'm about to get the sack for being cheeky. You know, wedge wedge cut, you know. Yeah, our shoulder pads back, shoulder pads aren't back. They shoulder pads. They came back very briefly here about a year ago. I quite like a shoulder pad.

I don't mind that I've reached the point in my life now where it's actually I'm kind of thinking about putting them in my shirt like Larry King used to do.

So what's happening with you and now? And then what you're doing?

Are you?

Are you off on because you still travel so much? Yeah, you still do that.

I'm just about to I'm just finishing a book first week and then we're going to the q E two. Are having a festival.

On it in Los Angeles?

No, No, We're going from Southampton to New York. We get get it free. We give a couple of workshops, and I'm saying we I'm not using the Royal way. It's like me and Christopher and Mark Billingham, me and Stevie are getting the yeah right, and then they fly you back business class. So we're saying we're going to do that. That'll be lovely. And then yeah, so we're just traveling around a lot.

Wait. Wait, so you cross the Atlantic on the q E two.

Yeah, in November?

And where do you end up New York when.

On the twenty third of November a year round.

I fly from I'm going from Atlanta to Paris on the twenty fourth.

Are you doing Paris?

I'm meeting Meghan because I'm doing I'm doing stand ups.

Do you want to come to you Stevie County, Paris and we'll go out and eat. Well, we're staying in the Chelsea for a few nights and then we're going to fly back via Iceland and then I think we're all going to go to.

Iceland.

Oh it's great.

It's good, isn't it.

It's great. Yeah, it's great, but like all Scandinavian board countries, ultimately really boring.

How dare you?

I like messy places. I like Nepal and you know, Milwaukee and places that have got a bit of mess about them.

Yeah, I've never I've never been in the poll, but I've been in Milwaukee a couple of times. But now if it's like, if Nepole is like Milwaukee, I I don't need to go.

It's not like, No, it's not like there's a lot more decapitated animals in the street from my.

I've never seen that. I'm not saying it's not there. But are you following? You following the political climate in the United States right now?

I do believe there is an election.

Actually by the time this goes out.

I love going on Oh really, Okay, I think, yeah, so, and how are you feeling about that? Because you're actually there, I kind of it's funny.

I I steer away from publicly I mean, you you know how I feel about politics and stuff, but I stay away from publicly discussing it because it's such a divisive tool, you know. I mean, it seems like the only thing that anyone agrees on is that you can use someone's political opinion to shame them. But I think that what I've taken some solace from funny enough, it goes back around to that resio thing of yours, because because I get into these historical novels of Gourvi Dal, I read the Narratives of Empire. You wrote seven historical books about the United States from seventeen seventy sixty nineteen fifty four. Yeah, And what was fascinating about it is that there's nothing fucking new about this.

Yeah. Nothing. I think that America to me is.

One of the things about America is it is a national expression of Youngian duality.

It's always been at war with itself. It's always had this fucking you know.

Pushball, and I think it's I think it's no different but it's it's it's kind of.

Frightening, though it kain of it gets your attention.

Because there's a lot of hyperbole in fear and you don't know how much of it is real, you know.

Yeah, I mean I think if you look at it in historical context very importantly, people are much easier to control if they're very frightened. Yes, and that's both sides of doing that hyping people up. Totally obsessed with the Civil War? Are you interested in the Civil War? Yes? I am.

Actually I became fascinated by it through the I mean, I'm actually right now, I'm still kind of stuck on the Revolutionary War, the first one. But yeah, but have you been around the Civil War battle sites or all like that?

You know, But me and my cousin are going to do it may my cousin are.

Yeah, amazing.

It's a weird thing that you get so interested in the Civil War at age fifty two and a half. I think that's right, isn't it. But you can see the whole world in that, You can see the whole you know, the impossibility of victory and suddenly victory because a drunk guy just sit far to everything, because the drunk guy started fight, and you know, and how spoiled that became afterwards. And it's funny because I was trying to write something for an Alista Greyson about Contraband camp. Do you know Contraband camp is?

I don't know where that is.

Slaves that ran away during the Civil War were called contraband because they were a contra band of war. So they sent up camps everywhere, and all these incredibly well meaning white women like me went to work in contraband camps to teach people to read, and they had all these really sort of idealistic ideas about how they were going to save everybody, and then they got there and they just realized how grim it was and how it was systematic, and you know, it didn't matter what people saved or if they got jobs or anything like that. They just looked all the whole system was up against them. But I mean, I thought, you know, I can't even identify the language to use about people of color in that context, or I don't even know how you could speak about that. But yeah, but yeah, but I mean, there's nothing new, and you know, just be kind of the people you meet, even if you don't agree with them. I think there's maybe like three or four percent of people who really are trouble and mental and you know, really do want war, and the rest of us are just trying to look after our mum and keep the house tidy.

It seems to be my experience because I go to like I do, stand up in you know, very different you know, you know, kind of political environments in the United States, like geographically, and you know, my rule and my my deal with the audience that I've had since about twenty sixteen is for the hour and a half i'm on stage, We're going to forget about it.

I'm going to do something else.

So all the shit that you're angry about, I'll still be there when you leave the theater, but we're going to take a break. I need a fucking break, and you know, and so I'm not going to do it because I'm I'm even at the stage now where I'm sick of the people I agree with.

I'm like, you know, when they talk, I'm like fucking shop, you know what I mean.

Even if I agree with what they're saying, I'm like sake. And it is it is an odds it's an odd time. But when it's fucking odd time nobody.

I have to say. Politicians of this generation are crap at their job because they have a job to do, and your job is to run things. Shut up, stay over face and let us make films, write books. Why are we talking about you doing your job all the time? Do your job? You know what I mean?

I feel the same way as like, shut the fuck up and get the bills paid, keep the lights on.

You know you're you're an administrator, your nuts and do your job.

Well, we got that, And.

I feel like I've spent half an hour in your kitchen and I feel I always feel the better for that.

Thanks very much.

And you look amazing, by the way, have you been are you using collagen or something?

You look Yeah, this is actually the back of my head. I just shaved my head.

All right, it's lovely.

So you give my best day to Stevie and in a way, and I'll Megan, I know, wants to talk to you, but she can't do it in the podcast, so I think she is.

Tell her to get me a wrong. Well, let me see you were Christmas pals.

Definitely all right, Yeah, yeah, I have a lovely time on the boat.

I'm sorry, I'm going to miss you in New York.

I think we might be just be being stickle the time.

All right, it's lovely to see you.

Take care, Okayrryn, Bye bye bye bye bye ye

Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson

Storied late-night talk host Craig Ferguson brings his interview talents and singular world view to  
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