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hi come in [Music]
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Welcome to Fashion Neurosis Hanife Kureishi Thanks Bella It's a great pleasure Um I've been looking forward to doing this with you I'm so envious of all the other people you've been invited to have on So I'm glad finally I'm I'm here Me too Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing and
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why you chose these particular ones today i'm going to look down and see what I am wearing I think I've got a blue sweater on but I didn't choose my clothes I don't really choose my clothes anymore I've got two carers in the morning one who lives in and another one usually a stranger
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who pops in at 8:00 in the morning and they get me dressed When I was younger and before my accident I went to a lot of trouble or some trouble at least the with what I wore and I I I thought
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about it and changed my clothes during the day since my accident and since my body became so injured and different Um I've kind of given up thinking about really what what I wear or what
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I look like because when I see myself I'm so uh uh appalled and ashamed that I I I have to look away So I'm not really aware of what I'm wearing But Isabella chooses my clothes and I try and wear
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plain stuff because I I don't want to be looked at anymore to be honest to tell you the truth I mean you don't look like you haven't taken trouble So Isabella's doing a good job I feel like you're you're looking like you normally do You know you look like you care about how
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you're out and about And um I wondered if there's anything that you do like to wear that you feel represents you as you've always been I don't think about that anymore really Um because I don't care
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about it and I don't want to be looked at I don't want to be seen because when I see photographs of myself I see myself in a in a wheelchair The worst thing is being in Tesco's tell you
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the truth They've got these u huge screens Well Tesco's is one of my favourite places but they've got these huge screens Uh and when you're going up the aisle you see yourself in your wheelchair like a little beetle regressing up the up up the aisle And of course when you're in Tesco's and
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you're looking around you can only see you're a sort of dog's eye level of everything and you see yourself in a wheelchair going up the aisle It's a horrible thing to have to see Yeah But I can I still got my brain and my mind and I can think and write and and do [ __ ] that is useful that
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uh keeps me going Cuz you're one of our greatest contemporary British writers and you're a novelist a playwright You've written screen plays including the Oscar nominated My Beautiful Laundrette which is one of my favourite films And in December 2022 you fainted and woke up on the floor in a pool of
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blood paralysed from the neck downwards And almost immediately you started writing and dictated to your partner Isabella And writing you've said has kept you connected to wanting to stay alive is
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that yeah it's really important to me to write to do stuff every day I get up when I finally get my clothes on I I like to go to work and I like to work on my blog which I do every day with
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uh my now I do it with Carlo my second eldest son he comes to the house every day at 10:00 and we write the the blog and if we're not doing the blog I do the the the film we're doing a movie of shattered or I do something else It's really important to me to you know not to abandon the
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idea of myself as an artist as a writer which is what I am and I need to remain otherwise you know I'm just a broken body I mean most people who have had um spinal cord injuries they've fallen
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over or fallen out of bed or dived into an empty swimming pool or whatever and ruined their bodies They can't go back to work most of them Yeah If you're a truck driver you can't go back to work etc But I can work I need to work for my dignity for my uh sense of myself not being a a useless
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person that I that I've got some dignity which is my contribution which is what I can earn a living and support Isabella and do do something useful in the world It's really became much more important to me after the accident Yeah When I was in the Jamali hospital after the accident few days after
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the accident really Isabella would sit at the end of the bed and she would type the blogs into her phone Um and then we would start putting them on Substack and people would start reading them and it went round and it got bigger and bigger very quickly and that was very gratifying because
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you're you know you're lying alone in a hospital bed you've had this devastating accident You're completely traumatized You think you're going to die Um but at the same time you can communicate with a big audience Yeah At the same time I designed for myself a new way of writing which
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was the blog which I'd never written a blog before It's a kind of a mixture between a sort of mission statement and and a diary Um and so I just wrote down any [ __ ] that was happening to me memories
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things about my dad and my mom things about being in Brmley in the 60s and what was happening to me that day what was happening to my body what was happening with the physios with the nurses and so on So it it it was like discovering a new form of writing even as I was on the edge of death and
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it's incredible to be creative at a time like that But then you think if I can't be creative now when am I going to be creative you know you can't wait for ideal conditions Yeah I mean your writings just seems better than ever I I've been reading the blog ever since you started and I've
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read your book and Yeah And have you ever written with someone else before cuz I watched a little clip of you and Carlo Yeah And him arguing about a word and why you should use another one And it was so it was so exhilarating It was great It's a brand new thing for me Bella I It never occurred
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to me that you could write with anyone else before I mean me and Carlo we write the sentences together and then we argue about everything the paragraphs and so on But these are very productive conversations Yeah they're really good conflicts we have there So it was so interesting listening
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to that and it was clear what you were both going for and driving at and how Yeah everything that you both said to each other was making improving it and as a reader the it's so immediate the
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experience and it's so enjoyable and so revelatory It's well fantastic He's really tough Yeah he he does what he's horrible actually What what he does he does something called push back word I'd
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never previously come in contact with which means that he [ __ ] argues about everything And he says "Oh dad dad this is so disappointing You've said this before you know I can't I don't want to hear another word about Brmley in the 1960s." Stuff like that So he makes me do new stuff all the
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time And it it's really hard work But we have long conversations Conversations which we would never have had in normal circumstances about everything about sex about immigration about politics about Tesco about trivial stuff and and big stuff But it means that that I can write stuff that I haven't
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written before And I really like the idea of it being quite random what we're going to write M I mean I write might write about a trip to the shops or I might write a political piece about me becoming a fascist for instance which I wrote recently I read that So it's a great new form
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that I discovered after having my accident Yeah It's very exacting It's amazing to find a new way of writing at a certain point in your life when you're so established and people love your work
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and look forward to what you're doing and Yeah and it's like you've got this sudden new dimension this edge that goes along with having been in that worst accident You know you could never
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want this to happen Well you could say that trauma or or or or or what happened to me has created an opportunity for me to do something new I wouldn't have done this if I hadn't got smashed my head
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in on uh Isabella's floor in Rome Yeah But it creates an opportunity for you to do something new I mean I regret what happened and I wish it hadn't happened but it it it's given me a new lease of life with the writing uh um and the opportunity to write with Cara or to write with Isabella and to
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write stuff that I wouldn't have said previously So it's a it's a it's it's a late stage flowering you might say that's come out of this terrible occurrence But also I mean the ter terrible occurrence is is is where we're all going and the kindness of strangers of the carers and the nurses
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and the doctors we're all going going there So I feel I'm writing about a common experience one that most people have had in their families i.e you know most of us have had accidents in our families and people have died or where you're going yourself as well Yeah Yeah And how will
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you cope with your own deterioration and your own eventual death can I ask you about clothes and whether there was a piece of clothing you were obsessed with as a child that you felt that would somehow change your life oh yeah Have other people have that yeah I was very excited when I was uh
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I was I I used to do my uh paper round in Brmley get up at 6:30 go to the shop and haul these this big bag of [ __ ] papers around the streets And I got very excited cuz I used to read all the papers and I used to like reading newspapers and still do Anyway one of the reasons I was doing this
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um paper round was to buy clothes And what I really wanted uh was to buy a pair of Levi jeans Uh £4 I think they were at the time And I was saving up to get these Levi jeans And I was very
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excited when I got my Levi jeans because the boy that I was in love with guy called David Goatley who I still in contact with today in fact um he told me that I should wear Levis's jeans And so
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uh I got these Levi jeans and then I got I was a hippie Everyone in the school uh was in a gang M So you were either a a mod a rocker a skin head or a hippie And I was a hippie and I I wore jeans I
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wore a purple shirt Uh and my dad got me some kind of Indian waist coat with you know kind of glitter things on it I was very proud of this gear And I'd walk around Brmley High Street which is what you had to do Yeah walk around Brmley High Street on Saturday afternoon in your clobber And so I
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saved up to get this clobber and then after that we um we used to take the train up to the King's Road Oh god Um and we'd walk up and down the King's Road and Kings Road on the Saturdays You probably remember it It was incredible parade of people in their best clothes and there were these
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incredible boutiques in the Kings Road I remember thinking this is it This is London This is where I want to be You know it was fantastic parade of incredible people wearing beautiful clothes Yeah I used to get the bus up there cuz I lived in Sussex and I'd get the bus the number 11 bus to visit my
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friend who lived in Pton Square at the end near World's End But I became obsessed with what the bus conductors were wearing and these gray suits with a pale blue shirt This is what I remember whether it was actually and a tie Yeah And that was the sort of first bit of evolution of kind of
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my my look I think I I love I loved that journey down the King's Road and Yeah But you um did you really start your career your writing career in the 70s as a pornography writer cuz I started
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writing porn around um it was really around the after I'd left university I left Kings where I I read philosophy but it was year of punk was the year of the Sex Pistols and the Clash I think it
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was 76 or 77 I can't remember We'd left university and we were living in uh uh squats and these cold water flats and stuff around West Kensington and everybody was hustling you know Mhm Working as
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uh hookers stealing London was really rough in those days And I used to write for um magazines uh that had you know naked girls and but in those days they used to have writing in the magazines
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as well Unusual that people would actually want to read pornography It's completely absurd now and I used to write stories for them but I'd also write serious stuff like about the marquee dard I remember writing a long thing about Aubry Beardsley who I used to love So I started to make
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a living um doing the doing this stuff It was a good introduction but it's a stupid form poem because there's nothing you can do with it really that's interesting So then I stopped that and then I started to write like early drafts of the Buddha of suburbia I guess right which was a novel I been
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trying to write for years but I couldn't have been 76 So I started writing it really uh uh at the end of the end of the 80s when I wrote it properly cuz you mentioned and I think this was much later but
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you you knew JG Ballard would he writes very well about sex and I'm just reading Crash at the moment so Oh yeah that's a great book I didn't know him at all but I've just written a blog about um Shepherd's Bush and the Gold Hall Road and so on where I spend every day now roaming around
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in my wheelchair But I remember I used to see JG Bella walking around Shepherd's Bush and it used to freak me out completely I think there's the world's greatest writers and he's walking down my road Um and apparently he had a a a girlfriend or a lover who lived uh above McDonald's on Sheps
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Bush Green This was according to legend So uh I was very impressed by Bard and and and love still love his work Yes I've never read anything to I've seen films but I've I saw Crash and I and then
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uh I started re reading it now and it's I I wish I'd read it years ago cuz it's so interesting and um but you were at school in Brmley with Billy Idol and he gave you your first tab of acid and
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and you said that he made you throw the watch that your dad had bought for you age 16 out of the window on the train saying time doesn't matter Yeah I think I think he got that Bill Broad was his name then He used to wear little round glasses and a duffel coat God Um I think
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he got that from Easy Rider Oh actually But uh Brmlin was the most incredibly boring place and hell on earth on Sunday afternoons in the rain But actually it was really creative as well
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I mean a lot of the kids that I knew form bands A lot of punk came out of Brmley Yeah The Brmley Contingent That was a big punk thing Yeah I was at school with the Romney Contingent I knew all those boys I'm still in touch with some of them And then we came to London and started hanging around
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um Vivian Westwood's shop which was then called Sex Oh at the end of the King's Road and all the pubs and bars around there were full of punks on Fridays and Saturdays And so although Brmley was really dull there was a lot of opportunity to be creative And the Brmley contingent I
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mean those kids went into fashion They worked for uh Vivian Westwood photography They were in bands It was a very creative time despite the fact it was so deathly darling in Romney It was quite close to London so you could come up to London go up the Kings Row buy clothes and get
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involved in in what was happening really at the end of the 60s and then into punk in the mid '7s I wonder why it produced so many creative people because it really did like all the I mean obviously David Bowie as well and you and my friend Susie Cave and there's just a lot of
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very groundbreaking people that that came from Brmley and I remember seeing Billy Idol in there was used to be this punk club called the Vortex Did you ever go then he was so good looking that everyone slightly looked down on him cuz he was just like he looked like a film star He was it was
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just absurd how good-looking he was So everyone was a bit snoot sort of contemptuous Yeah Well it was a very creative time because of what happened earlier which was then called the 60s you know and
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this explosion of of of talent and and creativity in the 60s But it really began to expand by the 70s Everyone was doing it Everyone was dressing up You know David Bowie had been to the school that I went to any obviously 10 years He was 10 years older than us But he had been a huge influence
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Everybody thought if he can be in a band he can do it He's so unique and interesting We can start dressing up and doing stuff you know Yeah And in those days certainly in in in in uh in and around London there was much more social mobility than there is now You really felt that you know
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you could join a band or become a photographer or get into fashion and you could leave Brmley behind and become a new person Yeah And reinvent yourself and then get involved in the creative industries there was much more flux socially than than there probably is now I mean I was a
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um you know a mixed race kid from the suburbs and I thought "Fuck it I can be a writer I can be a great writer." Even though there have been never been any writers like like me before in the in in in the UK in Britain I thought I could have a go at that I can do that I didn't it didn't seem to
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me to be insurmountable that I could do that I could do that you know because Bowie wrote this the soundtrack for your first novel Buddha of suburbia He wrote the the music for the TV version the BBC version Yeah Of suburbia that was directed by um Roger Michelle with brilliant Naveen Andrews
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playing me So was very keen to do it He asked me if he could do it Wow How did that happen he said to me he said "I thought you'd never ask." I said "Ask what that I can do the music for the Buddha
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of suburbia?" I said "I didn't think you'd want to do it." He said "I've never done it before." He said he was going to do the music for the man who fell to Earth but he was too tired at the end to do it So he he offered to do it and he was very keen to do it and he worked really hard
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on it actually and his album the Burus suburbia is a really good album One of his best albums I I actually think he made an album at the end of all the bits of music that he had composed for the soundtrack God it's amazing I must get that Yeah Yeah It's fantastic record cuz I remember once you
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saying that you'd written a song for him but he's I wrote you asked me to write the lyrics for um there's a song on the album called The Buddha of Suburbia And I said "How do you want to do this?" He said "Oh well I do the cutups." So he said "Write all the words down." So I went home went
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through the Buddha of suburbia and wrote wrote all the wrote phrases and words and bits of dialogue and all the stuff Then I took it back to him and he got his scissors out and he did the cutting up And then um he wrote the song around the the the words that I presented to him and he he he got
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this cut up method from Burrows and Brian Yeah Which was that you cut it up and move around and you create sentences It's very effective way of creating new sentences new ideas Is that why the
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songs they have this kind of you unexpected well they're just so brilliant The unexpected phrases or things people are doing Yeah You can create new ideas and new stuff out of the the random
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mixture of different words that you then you know move around and cut up and put in a line together Uh I used to do it with Kia my my my son used to write poems like that It's really effective actually I must try Yeah Such a good idea Yeah And growing up you received a lot of you've written
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about receiving a lot of racist abuse being of Pakistani origin And I wondered if you dressed to be anonymous or to to attract attention as a way of dealing with it and maintaining your identity Well in Brmley at that time at the end of the 60s7s it was quite violent There were a
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lot of skins around and I knew all the skin I've been to school with them and I knew their families and so on And I was a hippie So you're in double trouble Not only were you a py but you're a hippie as well you know had long hair and and wore you know loom pants and all that stuff So you're in
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double danger of being chased around It was quite hair raising Yeah I mean it really was It was quite rough down in Brmley particularly in the 70s when um the the National Front were down there you know and the BMP were marching and around all the time gangs of of skins and so on But I knew a lot
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of those boys as I said and my beautiful linger you know he's in love with her skin played by uh Daniel de Lewis and it kind of represents a a good friend of mine I was at school with who who later
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on became a skinnad and uh uh you know wore a Ben Sherman and Levis's and the big boots and you know the ambi and all that stuff and about how you know we were really close friends We were really close
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to each other Um and how awkward it was when he became a skin head and discovered that I was in fact you know a a Paky Um and that was the basis of of that movie Really it was so romantic how
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how you showed the change you know it just I it's just so brilliantly done I love it It's incredibly moving and convincing you know Well I wrote it originally as just a friendship I remember I was
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in Pakistan I was I was writing it It was about two mates one who's a Pakistani one who's a a skin and they were were running a longer etc But when I made it romantic when when they uh had a kiss it
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really the the film really kicked off It really came alive in some way And the dancing is so so magical and poetic Incredible Yeah that's that was Steven Fris's idea Beautiful It's so good Yeah
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You've written about gay and bisexual characters at a time when it was taboo but there's a lack of shame in in your writing and it I wondered how you'd managed to avoid this cursed condition
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Well when I wrote my be beautiful which was around um uh I was going to say the early to mid80s there was a lot of [ __ ] gay [ __ ] going on in London at that time You'll remember it particularly what
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Derek Jamal was doing Um and also then there were the Merchant Ivory films quite soon after that which was posh gay buming Yes Um they were really good But I wanted to do the you know a bit of rough gay buming and the big gay sweat shop There being a lot Simon uh uh call and what they
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were doing So there's a lot of gay stuff going on all the time in in in London And when we were puns we used to go to all the gay clubs I used remember the sombrero Yeah And Ken High Street We used to go there and to Louis's Club which was a Louis was great lesbian club So the gay scene
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and the punk scene were quite adjacent to one another So it wasn't such a big step to write a gay relationship but in My Beautiful Landre but as you say it hadn't really been done in the cinema
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Um it would have been quite difficult to do in America for instance No studio would have ever made a film about a gay skinned for instance but you could do it in those days You could do it on Channel 4 cuz Channel 4 was new It just started and you could do innovative and weird [ __ ] on
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Channel 4 because nobody ever watched Channel 4 Yeah they were fantastic They It was a very good period in in British cinema Yeah Because Channel 4 invested a lot of money in films that Derek Jman made Neil Jordan made Steven Friers obviously made uh several films for them Ken Lurch of course etc
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It was a very lively period in British cinema actually funded by television Yeah it was wonderful And who did you look up to style-wise at that time in the in the in the ' 70s Well you know it was a big dressing up period you know because after uh uh uh punk everyone got got
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bored with wearing safety pins and black black leather Everybody started dressing up and and was the club we used to go to called the Blitz which was in Hoben which was a big dressing up place where boy George ran the cloak room but I really stopped dressing up then I wasn't going
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to wear all that gear that new romantic stuff Yeah Yeah I was not going to wear that stuff and I wasn't going to walk around you know in full face makeup and and all of that because you know I was becoming a serious writer then Writers don't need to wear makeup cuz nobody nobody ever sees a
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[ __ ] writer You sit you know your desk in your pants Yeah And that's your your your job So by then I started to lose interest in in clothes And then it was the 80s which was really good
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fun you know and Soho started uh lots of more uh restaurants in Soho clubs in Soho there's a lot of television money advertising money so the whole scene changed really between the end of the 70s and and the 80s but by the 80s I'd really kind of lost interest in in in what I was wearing was much
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more interested in in other people and being with creative people and starting to become a serious uh uh uh writer That was much more important to me then than you know parading around in gear And if
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you fancy someone and you don't like something they're wearing does it kill your attraction to them that's a very interesting question because obviously because you as you suggest you're looking at people all the time You are looking at them What you're looking at is their
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face their gestures their eyes their mouth and so on But you're looking at their clothes And every day every single person in the world chooses their clothes don't they And make a choice They're going to be looked at and they must think what are people going to think when they when they look at
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me so yeah you would choose a a person a lover a friend I mean if they wore hideous clothes would you would you dislike them but you don't do you some people I think are more allergic to certain
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things than others But it's such an interesting thing how even if it does put you off whether you decide to override that or not With my girlfriends whoever they were over the years I wouldn't want
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them to look a mess a woman to look what I would think of as being good that they would care for how they looked would think about it That would be important I guess for a man I don't know whether it matters so much for a woman whether she would care what you wore or what you looked at
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but I think for a man it would be quite important that the woman had thought about how she looked I think for a woman it it's important but not for that reason And it's more like having a kind of almost physical response of with withdrawing or embarrassment I suppose in the end it's always
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dependent on the person because someone you like can wear these terrible things even really quite sort of violently off-putting and you just think oh oh well you know and if you don't like them
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you just think I must never see that person again I guess in the 1950s everybody wore the the same thing All the all the mothers on my street where my where we lived in Brmley they would all wear the same clothes They'd usually wear a penny as well I remember my mom always wore a a penny But
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by the 60s clothes were cheap then by the 60s And by the 60s people used to choose their clothes and throw them away I mean in the ' 50s you wore the same pair of trousers for 10 years And you'd mend stuff You'd even mend your socks you know I remember mom sewing up your socks and stuff So we
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lived we were really at the beginning of a kind of the consumerous age when it came to clothes of just buying stuff cheaply and chucking it away and then buying something the week after and the week after that But that was a totally new thing You know my grandparents would wear the same shoes
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and get them mended and mended and mended for for 25 years You know the same pair of boots So it was a new era for us And Bowie was a great example of that you know that he would change his look all the time and you think I can change my look I can go to a shop and come out looking completely
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different become somebody else But I don't think that had ever really happened before for for ordinary people in British fashion I hadn't thought about that But the idea that you could transform yourself and become somebody else for other people it's quite a a new thing Yeah it's
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really interesting thinking of it like that Yeah I remember hearing about you and Steven meeting up every Friday since you'd made my beautiful lingerette and having I heard that you had a salon and that you met and talked about ideas and I thought "Oh my god I've got to go." And and then
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I heard about where it was and I appeared and you and Steven had just had this amazing conversation you were talking about what was going on inside the mind of of David Blancet's dog
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um his guide dog and uh and I I wrote some I interviewed you both for something I was doing for another magazine It was just so inventive and exciting and I wondered how did you meet
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Steven Friers well I met because I went around his house I found out where he lived on Torbert Road in those days and I got his address and so I went round there and I um gave him the script of my beautiful lingerette So he ran me up and told me to come round and I and I went round and then
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later when we were working together I used to see my analyst every Friday at 10:00 So I used to meet Steven every Friday at 9:00 just off the Portoella road and we used to sit together and gossip and
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have coffee and then we'd see other friends walking up and down the Portoella road So we then started what you call this salon which basically just a bunch of mates having um breakfast together Uh and it's th this was this has carried on for 20 years or 25 years and there's usually about
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you know 7 8 nine people 10 people and some people come regularly some people come every few months people get really pissed off with each other because there are a lot of arguments and lots lots of disputes particularly among the women they they take against each other or someone ring me
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up and say I can't stand If so and so says there I'm not coming back They can [ __ ] off Yeah And there are a lot of big disputes particularly about Israel and and Gaza and so on and people try and ban each other from coming and so on I said you can't [ __ ] ban someone from coming to a cafe
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and sitting down and having a cup of coffee and so it does get a bit hair raising at times But other times it's really peaceful and everybody sits down they gossip for an hour they have coffee they eat a quas they talk It's really fun and beautiful and people have become quite devoted to each other
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They're used to seeing each other Every Friday morning for 25 years you see the same people bits of conversation and people drop out and new people come along It's a really beautiful thing But it happens spontaneously We never try to set it up or organize it People just just just come and you
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realize you've been sitting with these people for 20 years and you know them so well after such a long time You should come back It was great when you used to come back in the day I know I I work so hard It's hard to get there but um I will come back It I'll go when you go next If you do Um
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yeah it's difficult for me because uh they don't I don't get up till it takes 2 hours for me and the carers to to get me dressed and get me ready to to get up So I can't get there at 9:00 in the morning
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But I we could start doing it a bit later Yeah let's do that Cuz we both go to the same analyst too And uh you've been going for longer than me And I remember you saying once he's hot and he is And I know you speak on the phone now but I wondered did you ever think about what you were
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going to wear when you went to see him cuz I when I first started seeing him I used to spend ages composing my outfit even my underwear preparing myself to for this visit this precious visit Well
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I'm quite shocked to hear that Bella And I'm sure uh analysts might also be shocked to hear that you're thinking about your pants when you get around to to to to well you're undressing really in terms of your unconscious You're you are naked You're showing him everything that you that that
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you are So I can see that what you wear could be a a metaphor But I lie on the couch I don't I don't look at him I don't even remember what he looks like to be honest I just go in or used to before my accident lie down on the couch start [ __ ] chattering on about whatever is on my mind my
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dreams and beefs with people etc etc I don't think what I'm going to wear when I go to buy analyst but I I think about what I'm going to say and what I want to talk about And I have to say talking to
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my analysts on the phone on Mondays which is what I do now um once a week I find it really creative I don't know if you do Barry Yeah I find it very creative in terms of what I'm writing you know and I I I don't know what I'm going to do next week in terms of my blog but when I have a conversation
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with him I often get ideas about what I will then write about the next week or the week after terms of the blog So just hearing his voice and talking to him on the phone and during the silences that there are in analysis as you know I find that really creative and I he's always helped me with
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my writing and I know he's got a lot of writers as as as as patients you know he's he's known as the the the writing whisperer you know because he really helps us yeah with our creativity Yeah you
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can think during a a session with Adam and I I find that very uh really helpful actually and a kind of collaboration that I have with him I know other writers feel the same He's brilliant at that because I remember the first when I first went to see him and I part of my motivation it was about
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two or three years before my dad died and I said I don't want to fall apart when he dies cuz I'm so attached to him and he's such a big prism for how I think about life and feel about life and I
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remember what I was wearing as well I was wearing this Tom Ford like a cowhide coat chocolate brown Oh yeah And I remember or I sort of made some sort of apology about my coat and he went I think it's fantastic Great I'm in And uh I also remember that he I said I I feel like I have some sort of fear
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of failure And he said I actually think you have fear of success And anyway that was about 14 or 15 years ago now But he helps me I don't know He he he's so intelligent I feel as though he makes
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me more intelligent and have more confidence in my ideas That's great That's the whole point Yeah Of him existing really to make you feel like that And I think he does that for anyone he comes into contact with And I think there's a good reason that many of his patients and and
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of course several of whom are our friends many of his patients they just keep on going I think I'm the longest I've been going for I think about 31 years Really God I'm not even cured yet I said to
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him the other day I [ __ ] cured you How long does it take for me to be cured you seem to think that I wouldn't ever be cured I don't want to be cured No of loving him and going to him and finding him useful Freud would have been appalled Freud didn't think that you would go to an analyst for 31 years
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You know with Freud you'd be in and out after 6 months or maybe a year or you'd go for a few months and then uh you go back later 3 years later for a few months so on But you wouldn't go for 31 years It it would have been a madness to think about that because he would have thought I'm sure
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Freud would have thought that would become like a kind of excessive dependence you know or a kind of addiction I mean what are you what the [ __ ] are you going to talk about for 31 years but actually I can tell you from experience there's plenty to say Yeah I'm glad he's not a Freudian in
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that sense there's always something to say and he seems to it's that odd that relationship of you're paying to see somebody but I feel very loved by him and I love him So um yeah he's a very loving
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man In your book Shattered which was published last October you end up analyzing the dreams of your psychiatrist Can you describe what his dreams i I remember they were something to do with Trump
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When I was in um the rehab at the end at Stanmore uh there was a psychiatrist there and I was really angry He came to see me and I was really angry I've been in hospital for nearly a year and I was
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in a bad way and I was very very grumpy Anyway this psychiatrist came to see me I thought I might as well meet him anyway despite the fact I've spent much of my life in therapy But of course psychiatrists are not therapists They don't really not really interested in listening to you
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This psychiatrist I I really liked him but he only had two basically had two drugs you know He either gives you anti-depressants or if you're crazy he gives you antiscychotics God Um otherwise there's nothing he he can do with you Uh and he kept saying to me "You're clinically depressed
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aren't you?" I'd say you'd be [ __ ] clinically depressed if you were paralyzed you know and lost the use of your arms and legs and were basically a talking vegetable which is what I've I've become He said "Fair enough." All he wanted to do was to up my dose of anti-depressants So I said "Listen
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you can keep on coming to see me Um but you know we've got to have a proper conversation Why don't you tell me your dreams and then he so good So he used to tell me his dreams All of his
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all of his dreams were about Donald Trump Uh and I said "You love Donald Trump don't you you love Donald Trump And you want to be Donald Trump I bet millions of people want to be Donald Trump because he's a complete [ __ ] He does whatever he wants He says whatever he wants and he's the
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most powerful person uh almost in the world And so we started to have long conversations with the psychiatrist about how inhibited he was how straight he was and how he hated it and wanted to be more Trumplike i.e more more crazy And so we had these quite fun conversations in my room in in
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in the hospital It passed it passed the time But uh uh um it was a very odd situation where I I I in fact I was treating him for depression rather rather than the other way around So good Yeah
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that was that was the situation with me and the psychiatrist It's just wonderful I mean the way you write about the situation you're in and you're never sentimental or self-pitious and you're very matter of fact even when you're describing how bad you feel and this part of yourself seems stronger
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than ever and you seem more loving than you I've ever known you to seem And uh I wondered if it was harder to show love before the accident Well I was a much more private person before the accident and
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I had friends and I saw friends and so on but I wasn't so dependent on other people as I as I am now Um because I can't do anything now really I can't use my hands So I can't uh I can't you know fiddle around with the computer I I don't really listen to music Um I've just got a lot of spare
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time So and I've made lots of new friends in the last few months with people who I knew vaguely before but I've become really close to because I have much much longer conversations with people for hours and hours now than I did before when you'd meet someone you know in the pub and have a
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beer and that would be that So my life has changed in terms of my relationships with other people which are much more intense because I'm so needy now You know people would come to my hospital mostly women actually and they would spend the day there and then bring me food and then they'd
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read me the newspapers and then they give me a head massage and their generosity and kindness was so impressive But I was so needy I needed it I was desperate sitting in a [ __ ] hospital room on your own for hours and hours alone literally staring at the wall It was the most horrific
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situation The despair the sense that your body was destroyed that your life had been ruined you know and you felt absolutely like [ __ ] So you really needed people to gather around you and show love their love for you really And people were incredibly loving and still are towards me in a
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way that obviously you never saw before didn't need before So it's been a complete switch in in that sense in terms of my relationships with other people In January you wrote in your blog to be motivated there must be an imagining a store of images that you that nurture our desire And I
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wondered which of those desires motivated you to be so connected to life as it is now That's a very good question It's really the desire to to to keep living You know it's the the the will to
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to to life You know when I go to bed at the end of the end end of the day and I start to go to sleep I want to go through in my mind what I've done during the day who I've seen who I've talked to what I've done with them what I've written you know what progress I've made Because when you've
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been so close to death and when I had my accident and was sitting upside my head in in Isabella's apartment in Rome and I thought this I really thought this is it I'm going to die mate I'd lost contact with my body There was blood on the floor around me This increasing puddle of blood that
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was coming out of my forehead God And I thought this is it This is and this is a terrible way to die Falling flat on your face You know it's a bit embarrassing I wanted to you know be at least shot by terrorists or something a bit more exciting And I thought it was a bit wretched but
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I thought there are still things I want to do Um books I want to write conversations I want to have that I that I'm still engaged in So the will to live has hasn't left me I it's stronger in me now
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I think than ever I mean you've got this ability to make people feel filled with hope about their own lives through what you're doing with your life and this urgency and this incredible output and the way your writing is so brilliant and involving and engaging And you have a lot of writer friends
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who visit you regularly Zadei Smith and I think Salman Rushy calls you most days And uh do you find the effect that you're having on us your friend is flowing back to you and you're enjoying
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the feeling of I'm not I'm not aware of of what I can do for other people but I'm certainly aware of how they can lift me up and how dependent you are on on on other people for inspiration and you that I really need to plug into their energy because after what happened to me it's so easy to
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fall into despair It's so easy to give up you know and I don't want to give up I I'm not depressed I said to this psychiatrist used to say to me all the time "Oh you're clinically depressed." I said "I'm not really actually I'm depressed about what's happened to me but in my spirit I'm still
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going you know and I still have the desire to live which is as you read from that passage from from shatter which is to do with an image of having good conversations or an image of eating well or an image of enjoying a book or watching a movie These things still fill me with with
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pleasure and and with desire when I when I was really low I would talk to um my analyst and he and he he he kept me going during that period as well Even though I only spoke to him once a week or sometimes I speak to him for just 10 minutes at a time he he managed to keep me going without
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any factuous stuff about you know uh uh hope or encouragement or uplift What kind of things did he say cuz that's such an interesting point It's you know without these cliches of hope and you
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know all the sort of platitudes he never does that and you don't do that either and you give so much energetic force to your friends through what you do and how how you write and how well you write
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and how how kind of um I think it weller I think it's to do with remaining um are curious about things and wanting to know things and wanting to see things and wanting to talk to people about things being fascinated by other people and still having a libido for life you know to know other
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people to listen to them I really look forward to uh visits from people who come around my house and we sit and we have tea and and we talk and I really look forward to hearing them and and and engage with them And people come around they tell you such weird [ __ ] I mean mad crazy stuff they
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tell you all the time A woman came around my house the other day who I hadn't seen for about 5 years Uh and she was married to a Russian guy who tried to murder her I said "How's the Russian guy?" She said to me he said "Oh he's in prison He murdered both his parents He slashed their throats." I said
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"Uh why did he slash the throat of his mother?" And she said "Because the mother left the window open." And I thought "That's a great story I wouldn't have heard that normally." God And so you hear some mad mad stuff out there which I really love because I can't go very far in the
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wheelchair You know I go up the Gold Hawk Road I go around the neighborhood and and stuff but I can't go very far But I can go very far in terms of people's psyches in terms of getting to know people Oh you're brilliant at it Haneie And thank you so much for being on Fashion Neurosis It's
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just been a total joy to Well we haven't talked much about fashion Actually I forgot I thought we You'd be asking me about my trousers Well I did but we did talk about fashion but a bit Yeah In a way it's like the whole thing about fashion is it's just a means to be the best of yourself if
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you get it If you if you can enjoy fashion and use it as a a kind of as a tool really you know for anything even writing it's like I find if I'm writing I mean obviously I'm not a writer but I
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don't want to be too comfortable or too much of a slob or the rest of my personality will start evaporating So I have to have some tension I saw an interview with you and you were wearing a shirt and it was a bit like a kind of pale shirt with stripes in It looked really good and I thought
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you know when you described how you see yourself in the Tesco's screen and how you actually look is very different and you look just 100% vitality which is incredible Well thanks Bella That's cheer
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me up I really enjoyed um our our conversation I hope other people enjoy it as well [Music]