How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S4, Ep2 How to Fail: John Crace

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

My guest this week is John Crace, one of our foremost journalists and critics. Probably best known for his role at the Guardian as parliamentary sketch-writer (it was he who famously coined the term ���Maybot’ to describe our besieged Prime Minister’s rather…um…mechanical response to crisis) and as the author of the brilliant Digested Read column, which takes the book of the moment and distils it into a hysterically funny parody.John joins me to talk about being a heroin addict for 10 years. He describes the chaos and constant sense of failure that plagued him throughout his period of addiction with such candour and bravery that it moved me to tears halfway through the interview. There’s a school of thought that says interviewers shouldn’t show emotion, but I’m not sure this is always right.John spoke about heroin, about how he failed to have ‘any sort of career until my mid-30s’, about living his life on the verge of a panic attack and sometimes struggling to get out of bed in the mornings, about his tricky relationship with his father and about how he finally managed to speak to his children about his past. And, for light relief, John also discusses supporting a football team ‘whose most notable achievement has been disappointment’ (it’s Spurs, by the way).This is one of the most extraordinary interviews I’ve ever had the privilege of doing. Thank you, John, for your beautiful vulnerability. Listen and feel less alone. You can read the article I mention John writing for the Guardian about heroin addiction here How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Chris Sharp and sponsored by 4th Estate BooksThe book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day, is out nowand is available to pre-order here.*IMPORTANT NEWS KLAXON* I’m doing a live How To Fail With Elizabeth Day event on 5th May at The Bridge Theatre in London with ZAWE ASHTON (who is amazing). There are still some tickets available here.   Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayJohn Crace @johnjcraceChris Sharp @chrissharpaudio4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. John Crace is a journalist and critic. As well as being the Guardian's parliamentary sketchwriter, he also pens the paper's hilarious digested read column, in which he offers a satirical pracey of the book of the moment. My personal favourites include his description of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as Harry Potter and the end of the gravy train, and his skewering of Mary Berry's household tips and tricks, with handy advice such as, don't believe the old housewives tale that a watch saucepan never boils. Providing the gas is turned up high enough, a watch saucepan will boil. As a sketch writer, Grace coined the

term Maybot to describe Prime Minister Theresa May's attempts to remain strong and stable despite increasing malfunctions. His most recent book, I Maybot, is currently at number 36 in the Amazon charts for robotics, which seems pleasingly apt. Kreis is also the author of several other books, including Baby Alarm, A Neurotics Guide to Fatherhood, and Harry's Games, Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp. A committed Spurs supporter, he lives in South West London, but travels to N17 for every home game. John, welcome to the podcast. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure, Liz. It is so wonderful to have you on. If you can hear a meowing, that's because your lovely cat. Oh, it's the new cat. I haven't seen this cat. This is Jess. This is Jessie the cat, who is rather more vocal, but just as annoying.

is Jesse the cat who is rather more vocal but just as annoying Jesse is like a fur ball of loveliness yeah anyway so you're a committed Spurs supporter as a Spurs supporter is there any other kind other than the committed kind it's a sort of life sentence really it's one of those teams I mean I'm not pretending it's as bad as supporting uhchdale or something like that, that never wins anything, but it's always the hope that kills you with Spurs. You get sort of close to success, but then the inevitable sense of sort of disappointment and failure kicks in about halfway through the season. And by the end, you're just sort of hanging on, waiting for it to end. Do you think that that's part of the appeal in a curious way that self-flagellation is part of the appeal of being a football fan?

It certainly is for Spurs fans though I've often wondered whether actually it's not so much that you choose the club as the club chooses you. I mean, there will be some people who support clubs by birth or inheritance, you know, they've sort of lived next door to the ground, or their parents did. But I mean, I was a sort of free agent back in 1966, because my mum and dad had no interest in football whatsoever. I was living in the middle of nowhere in a vicarage where my dad was the vicar. During the 1966 World Cup, I became obsessed with football. And there was one footballer in particular, Jimmy Greaves. And he played for Spurs. And I just thought he was the coolest bloke alive. So I invented myself as a Spurs supporter then.

Because this is one of your failures, actually's the first football themed failure we've had which is supporting a football team whose most notable achievement has been disappointment what's been the high point of Spurs's career I'm a complete ignoramus in football terms so oh well I mean what's the best thing they've done the best oh the best thing they did was in 1960 it's 1960 season 1960 61 when they won the it was then the first division and the fa cup in the first season and they it was the before you supported them oh obviously hilariously yeah yeah most of their major successes have taken place before i became a spurs supporter i mean the thing is that they since then they have kind of done enough to keep you interested.

They've won a few FA Cups and a couple of UEFA Cups. But I mean, we've won nothing for the last sort of 11 years. And in the last 30 years, I think we've won two League Cups or something like that. And do you think that that makes you better at coping with disappointment and failure in your own life, like managing expectation? Oh, definitely. There is something about being a spur support. I mean, they fail so that I don't have to in a way. They kind of do my failures for me. One of the things that sort of makes sort of failure so poignant is that failure is nothing unless it comes with the odd success because you don't know you've failed until you've had a success

i think so spurs always do enough to keep you interested if you like if they were just sort of losing every game it would be just sort of like a sort of an oppressive jackboot of despair, really. Whereas there is this sort of tinge of hope that it might actually be different. I hadn't realised that you were a vicar's son. And how interesting, because Theresa May is a vicar's daughter. So do you feel a kinship with her psychology? Can you understand what she's driven by because of that shared experience, do you think? I certainly try and use it. I mean, I think she is, there is a

slight difference in that my dad, when I was born, was actually in the Navy. He'd been in the Navy during the war. He'd stayed in the Navy. I was born in 1956, and i scarcely saw him for the first seven years of my life and then he decided to leave the navy i mean he hadn't been a chaplain or anything in the navy he you know he'd been a sort of serving officer then he decided to be on a vicar i mean my mum was absolutely horrified i think of the idea she'd never dreamt of being a vicar's wife so suddenly I went from having a dad who was never there to a sort of dad who was always there but who was still a kind of sort of distant somehow kind of remote figure as well I mean he was badly damaged by the war and we never truly connected until really about the four years before he died, really.

I mean, we sort of kind of got back together and sort of created a relationship in the last four years of the 1990s. Wow. And did you feel able in those last four years to talk to him about the things that you'd wanted to talk to him about? Most of them. You kind of choose your battles, you know. You don't want to just sort of kind of splurge, really, because it also offers up so much room for disappointment, really. But to go back to Theresa May, in a way, I mean, she was always a vicar's daughter. She was also an only child as well.

I was the youngest of three. My eldest sister was five and a half years older, so she didn't really have anything to do with me. I was a sort of irrelevance to her. And my other sister, who was three years older than me, would sort of take some interest in me from time to time. I mean, but I just found the whole thing claustrophobic and oppressive. found the whole thing claustrophobic and oppressive. And was it one of those childhoods, I mean, you say he didn't become a vicar until you were seven, is that right? Yeah. But a lot of the time when I interview, it sounds like I do it all the time, when I interview the children of vicars, their memories of living in the vicarage are that it was constantly people knocking on the door with some terrible life trauma and that their parent felt like the parent of the congregation rather than their own parent. Was that your experience? Pretty much, yeah. There was a strange sense of being an open house in that, yes, people would sort of come along and, you know, sort of vicars tend to get involved at sort of moments of high drama in people's lives,

tend to get involved at sort of moments of high drama in people's lives, separations, divorce, argument, death, and also the happier things, sort of like marriage as well. But also there was a kind of sense of distance around the house. In the village, the vicarage felt like some place that was other, that was sort of remote and detached. So I never felt, you know, walking through the village, I was always very conscious that I was walking as the vicar's son and that various things were expected of that, even if I couldn't deliver them. You know, a vicar's son was supposed to be on show as a vicar's son. And I mean, I hated it.

That's fascinating. the Vicar's son. And I mean, I hated it. That's fascinating. Do you think that you have sought to avoid moments of high drama in your life as a result of that? I don't know. I kind of feel like I sort of attract moments of high drama, really. So they sort of come along regardless, really. A game plan, as much as I had one, was to sort of mitigate the anxiety and the insecurity that sort of came from feeling out of place. Mm. One of the reasons I'm so delighted that you've come on the podcast is because I, along with many, many other people, read a phenomenal piece that you wrote for The Guardian last year, other people read a phenomenal piece that you wrote for The Guardian last year, 2018, having watched the TV adaptation of the Patrick Melrose novels. And there was a depiction in those programs

of heroin addiction. And you wrote about your own experiences being addicted to heroin and how you felt that that representation on screen was really very well done. and it was a searingly honest piece and it was very moving because it was completely unsparing and unsentimentally written and I'm very honoured that you've chosen to talk about being a heroin addict for 10 years as one of your failures. It is right up there isn't it? Let's face it I mean you'd be hard pushed to present that as a triumph but how i mean you talk there about a childhood where you felt out of place and it also sounds very lonely how did you get from your childhood to a place of heroin addiction in three words

in three words in three words. In three words. In three words, with remarkable ease. And that is why they pay you the big bucks. I mean, the weird thing about sort of addiction and heroin addiction in particular is that everybody's stories are both very different and very much the same. And that's why kind of self-help groups like Narcotics Anonymous work so well, really. Some people talk about, you know,

that sort of drug addiction as something that almost as though it sort of happened to them, it sort of crept up on them, they sort of smoked a bit of dope and then suddenly, you know, they were taking heroin and everything spiraled out of control. I see my own trajectory entirely differently. I feel it's something that I kind of embraced,

which isn't to say that I ever intended to become an addict. I mean, that would be wrong and also kind of idiotic. I did somehow believe that I would be able to stay in control of the drugs, really, you know, that I wouldn't become an addict and that I would be able to take them or leave them as I wanted to and that they wouldn't define me. But the fact of the truth of the matter is that I actively sought them out.

You know, like many, I smoked a lot of dope, not terribly early, from about the age of 17. I mean, mainly because I couldn't get hold of it any earlier. Back in then in the sort of mid 70s, you know, everybody smoked dope, or everybody I knew smoked dope. So there wasn't this sort of big taboo about it. But a lot of people just sort of knew that enough was enough, you know, they could sort of draw the line. But for me, I knew that I wanted to take heroin. I somehow knew that it was going to offer me something. From the moment I first took it, I almost felt like I'd come home.

There was a sense of, I don't know if you remember those adverts, I probably remember way before your time time called the Ready Break adverts. Yeah, with the glow. Yeah, with the glow. That's sort of what it felt like to be on smack in the early days because you were in this kind of protective cocoon where everything was safe. Nothing could get to you.

It was a sort of state of profound detachment, which I didn't have to feel anything. There was a sense of being in control at the same time. That's so interesting, because that's one of the things that's always put me off drugs, the idea of being out of control. But it sounds like that's not a valid fear. No, I mean, it is a valid fear because it's sort of completely illusory. But it was this sense of being, for the first time on heroin, I felt like I was enough as I was. I didn't need anyone else. I didn't need anything else. I was sufficient unto myself for the first time and the feelings of insecurity, anxiety and low self-esteem that had driven my entire life just sort of melted away at that point. And how old were you when you first took it?

20. And where were you when you first took it? I was in a grubby little flat in London. A dealer who, you know, I'd bought other drugs around, came round with a 10 quid bag and said, John, I've got your present. And I just sort of wolfed it down, spent the first couple of hours throwing up. And then the next sort of eight to ten hours lying on the floor, just thinking I'd gone to heaven. I mean, it's nuts, really, isn't it? Thank you for explaining it like that, though. It's astonishing and also really brave of you to talk about it.

Well, I didn't talk about it for ages. There were sort of various reasons for that. I mean, there were two really compelling reasons. One was that, I mean, we should talk more about the actual nature of addiction, because it so rapidly turns sort of nasty. You end up becoming someone you don't want to be. You know you don't want to be that person, but you can't stop, you know, the drugs sort of dominate your life, really. you can't stop you know the drugs sort of dominate your life really and you spend a life of deceit a self-deceit deceiving others I mean yeah my sense of failure was really high I mean for the whole of my 20s while the rest of my friends who I'd sort of known from university were sort of going out and having lives and achieving, my life was kind of shrinking in on itself and I was sort of actively killing myself. And did you spend a lot of time hiding it from people?

Oh, yes. That was the main game, really. I did come out with it once in the early 80s. I sort of told my parents because I did try and give up once with that i you know i stayed off for about four weeks i mean only but but also then i mean i didn't know really what i was doing because i was still i mean i thought you just sort of okay heroin was the problem so you stop taking heroin you can go out carrying get on getting pissed dope. No one had told me the connection that actually, if you want to stay off drugs, the best way is to stay off all drugs. So I quickly became an

addict. And that sort of reinforced the sense of shame, because by then I'd tried to give up and failed. And I couldn't tell my parents, I couldn't tell my friends that I'd failed. couldn't tell my parents I couldn't tell my friends that I'd failed so the world became ever more seedy ever more secretive and also you start doing things that you didn't think you were ever going to do like when I initially started taking heroin I thought okay well it's okay to smoke it that's fine but real junkies inject and I'm not going to do that. But of course, I mean, I ended up injecting because that sense of just not being there, the draw not to exist was sort of overwhelming. I mean, it was only when I was 30.

I can remember my 30th birthday. My life had shrunk so much that I was in a sort of grubby flat in Clapham Clapham wasn't nearly as nice back then as it is now I had a dealer and about four friends round and a huge bag of smack and I'd never felt so miserable in my life I kind of felt like this is all going hideously wrong I you know didn't have a career. Most of my friends had sort of walked out on me by then. They'd given up.

What were you doing for money? I did a whole range of jobs that I got sacked from for being sort of useless. And I just bummed around, basically. I mean, this wasn't a glamorous existence. I mean, this is sort of where the sort of the Melrose comparison on the surface crumbles, because where you have the Patrick Melrose character sort of flying off to New York, five star hotel, buying sort of tons of drugs. My life was much smaller and seedier, just a sort of day-to-day existence of trying to get enough money together to buy enough heroin to get through the day so that I wouldn't go cold turkey and worry about where the next hit was going to come from after that. It was hour-to-hour, day- day to day stuff. It was pitiful. And what was the thing you mentioned there about ending up doing things you never thought that you

would? Is there an example of that that forced you to confront in a way how far down you had fallen, that you ended up doing something shameful or that you're still ashamed of, that you can't quite believe you did? I mean, the main stuff is just the constant level of deceit that was involved in just every day-to-day transaction. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognised for being very online. We'll see you next time. and a lover of pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess,

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There's actually a quote from that piece that I would love to read, if you don't mind, because I think it really expresses so much of what you've been saying in such an eloquent way. And you wrote, shame is the one that gets you every time, because deep down, you know how worthless you are. You know that every day is another testament to your failure. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. Your anger turns in on yourself as the days turn into weeks, turn into months, turn into years. The self-destruction gets steadily worse. You end up doing all sorts of things you'd promised yourself you would never do. And somehow you find a way to normalize them. So as you say, that was years worth of your life. But within that time, you met your wife. Yeah. And how did that

relationship survive? With a lot of hard work, actually. I mean, initially, Jill didn't actually know that. I mean, that was part of the deceit. I managed to sort of keep most of it from her. She knew that I took heroin from time to time, but she didn't know the scale and the extent and the sort of the nature of addiction. I mean, in a way, she was in a form of denial of her own. It was sort of horrible. I mean, when you talk about things that you wish that you could turn back clock and redo, then that is sort of one of them. I still feel guilty about what I put her through. But it sounds as if even within this morass of desolation,

you knew that Jill was good for you. Like, you knew that it was important enough to keep working at it. Yes. She was the sort of one good point in my life really and she you know probably still is to be honest she's wonderful yeah eventually the scales dripped from her eyes and she said you're killing yourself this has got to stop that was actually the sort of the moment when sort of things began to change because it was at that moment that I kind of realized that I wanted to live more than I wanted to die because in the last six months of my addiction I had taken to sort of overdosing

once sometimes twice a week not as a sort of act of bravado or even as a state of or act of stupidity really it was more of an act of just sort of not caring of wanting this state of nothingness really to nullify my life completely i mean it's weird because it's all well over 30 years ago and yet sort of talking about it really kind of brings it home and I can sort of feel the sadness inside, you know, at the moment. I still feel quite tearful. I'm sorry for making you talk about it. It's all right.

When you spoke earlier about reconciling with your father and having conversations with him, did he ever understand why you had spent those 10 years taking heroin? In a way, he did, I think. It was hard for him, and it was indeed hard for my mother. But in a way, I think my dad got it more than my mum did. I think he was sort of more willing to accept that my earlier relationships with him had not been particularly strong. I mean, this isn't to sort of blame him for my addiction, but to kind of help explain in that my ability to attach to people and trust people was fragile. I mean, he did always love me, but he didn't find it easy to demonstrate it or to say it. And well, until sort of much later,

and in a way, part of the reconciliation that sort of came with him was because we were both able to admit our own failures in our relationship. The blame had gone. I wasn't blaming him for what had happened, and he wasn't blaming me either. There was enough taking responsibility on both sides for that shit had happened, and we'd got lucky in a way that we'd had a moment to reconcile.

Do you tell your kids that you love them all the time? Yeah. I mean, I was talking about why I hadn't mentioned addiction. I mean, I'd never kept it a big secret from sort of friends. I mean, it's hard to keep that 10 years of your life completely secret. But one was because of my children. I mean, I've been in therapy for years and years, 30 years now. My children were born when I was in recovery. They've never known me as a heroin addict, or indeed they've never seen me drunk or stoned or anything. That I am proud of.

But I was always acutely aware of the fact that at some time there would need to be a kind of explanation for them to get to know me and I talked about it with my therapist for years about what is the best way of doing and she gave me some fantastic advice and she said don't splurge on them there is no point saying to your kids you know when they're 8, 10, 14, however old, now we need to sit down and I need to tell you that I was a heroin addict and this is that. She said, they will come to assimilate it and they will ask you the questions when they are ready to ask them. They will take in as much knowledge as they want at any given time in their life.

So I always sort of use that, which is so I never wanted to go public by it because I didn't want to do a big splurge. And then sort of, you know, Anna and Robbie sort of going, what the hell's all this about? And my therapist absolutely nailed it. I kind of thank her for it weekly I mean daily sounds a bit sort of over the top doesn't it but because they did gradually pick up on things and they did come to a sort of understand they first of all noticed that I didn't drink when a lot of other parents drink and then gradually the picture began to sort of fall into place. So I was never going to write that piece until such time as they knew the story already.

There was something quite raw about the piece that did sort of touch them quite viscerally because there's a difference between knowing and seeing it in black and white in print. You know, there was nothing there that they didn't know so that was one reason and the other reason had always been that i've made a career out of writing but i didn't want to be a writer who was defined by their addiction if you like there are some writers who've made a kind of career really out of having been an addict and that's sort of informal you know and fair enough if you want to

do that but i didn't want to be known as john crace the heroin addict writer i also kind of felt like i was going to wait until i had a kind of body of work and a career that stood up on its own before then, then it could just become another part of me, if you like. I didn't want it to be the whole me. That makes total sense. You mentioned therapy there, and you talk about being in recovery, and it's an astonishing achievement that you should be incredibly proud of. And I can only imagine how hard that single word recovery, the myriad things that that must encompass and how hard it was. Was it hell getting off heroin? Sort of yes and no. I mean, yes, going through cold turkey, I went to rehab and I said, I think I went for sort of three weeks really without sleeping.

There was no methadone or any medication to treat the cold turkey. They kind of make you sweat it, presumably to remind you that it is kind of really shit. But part of me was just ready for it as well. I had had enough. I think, as I said said earlier a surprising bit of me realized that I did actually want to live more than I wanted to die and I wanted to have a go at it and there was also a real sense of surprise and fellowship in going you know I'd never heard of Narcotics Anonymous back then it was actually quite small in London. I think it had

only been going for about seven years. I mean, there were more than a handful of meetings, but you know, there weren't that many. I mean, it was just about possible at that time in London in 1987 to know almost everyone in NA in London. I mean, you couldn't hope to do that now. It's expanded so much. But I'd never been around addicts who had got clean. It had never been my experience. Everyone I'd known had always stayed on drugs or died. I mean, that has also been one of the humbling things about recovery as well, is that it's not straightforward the death count is still attritional i mean when i went into rehab one of the things the counsellors said so take a look around the room there was about 12 of us and she said statistically half of you will be dead in 10

years time and i just thought yeah you're just scare tactics but that has been pretty much true i didn't keep in contact with everyone from the loads did go out and several did go out and relapse and die i mean in the early days quite a lot of people died from aids now they're dying from hep c there's a surprising amount of people couldn't stay clean, went out and relapsed and overdosed and died. Suicide rate very high amongst recovering addicts. And also sort of the cancer rates and heart failure deaths seem to be higher in recovery.

There is no free ride as a heroin addict. You can clean up, but there is no guarantee ride as a heroin addict you can clean up but there is no guarantee that you're starting again from scratch you're kind of living with the damage and also there is the sense that you know your life doesn't automatically change once you stop once i'd stopped taking heroin there was the momentary sort of excitement of not it's still a good feeling a feeling of wow I'm not being dictated to by the drugs I'm not spending most of my life looking over my shoulder wondering where the money's coming from or whether I'm going to be arrested but you're still the John thought you were beforehand I'm still deeply insecure and sort of anxious. And in recovery, I've ended up in a

mental hospital with acute depression and sort of anxiety. I've been on antidepressants for the last 20 years or so. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. As I said, there's no free ride. as I said, there's no free ride. Day to day, how do you live with addiction? What are the choices that you make? And are they active choices every day? I mean, not that I take anything for granted. I can't say that I give taking drugs or having a drink, give them thought these days. I suppose it's become a sort of learned memory that I don't. I don't miss the drugs and I don't miss the alcohol anymore. I mean, occasionally I sort of joke, well, if I get cancer, at least the upside of that is that I'll be on morphine legitimately or something. You know, can't try and make some kind of macabre benefit from getting a fatal illness. But the main thing is that I feel constantly aware

of my own fragility, I think. I don't take anything really for granted, which isn't to say that I don't enjoy my life. I mean, a lot of my life is kind of fantastic. I've got great colleagues, I'm doing my dream job, but I'm aware that it comes at a kind of mental cost. Each day is often a challenge. Recently there's been many days when I've had to really kind of psych myself up, literally lie in bed for an hour sort of on the verge of a panic attack thinking can I actually get out of bed, can I get out of bed, I've got to get out of bed. And just sort of not being able to kind of engage with the world. It's a sort of retreat inwards to the place where the sort of bed felt like the only safe place left. Even going downstairs felt like a huge ask.

But then you kind of force yourself to do it. And then so you engage with the day and it becomes okay. Oh, John, I'm in tears because I just think you're such a lovely man and such a beautiful soul. And I know we haven't met that many times in person, but I've always felt such a wonderful connection with you and now it makes so much sense because when I joined The Observer as a 29 year old you were this kind of journalistic god in my eyes. You're kidding. No I'm totally serious. I've always felt less than. No well this is why it's so moving to talk like this because your writing is phenomenal and extremely funny and I can't imagine for you to be lying in bed on the

verge of a panic attack and then having to get up and write something so funny but I remember joining the Observer and reading Digested Reads and I remember vividly we had some cause for interaction I think I emailed you about something and you sent such a lovely email back and I was so thrilled and you completely made my year. But it makes so much sense now that you would be the kind of person who would do that, who is not an arrogant figure, even though you have every right to be because you're incredibly successful in the writing you do as magic. So that was a very confused way of saying something I wanted to get across. I mean, I'm really touched by that. But part of me just doesn't recognise the John that you're talking about, that kind of success, because I've always felt only moments away from failure. The reason I became a writer was literally because two years after I sort of got clean, I'd gone to share a flat with another person in recovery who was a journalist.

And he sort of took me under his wing. And I read something that he wrote. And I thought, well, maybe I could do that. And suddenly that was literally the spur to be a writer. I'd never had a thought about being a writer before i was 32 and so the other thing that i sort of thought which was sort of typical of you know sort of shortcut john was that hey a freelance journalist does not have to explain a 10-year gap in his cv do you know what i mean yeah i mean the idea of you know there were so many jobs you

know that you could think about yeah okay well how do you go along to an interview and say well look john what are all these gaps doing in your cv why did you leave that job after three months well how come you know etc etc this is all just pure luck really because in the end i sort of thought okay i'm going to write something and i got hold of the old independent on sunday features desk and i must have chosen wrong at exactly the right time of day and i managed to get through to the features editor because in those days you know there was no email or anything like that. So editors actually answered the phone rather than just sort of ignored emails. I rang up and said, I want to do this piece on...

There'd been a Radio 4 documentary on a self-help group for families of violent criminals, which I'd found really kind of interesting because we always kind of think about the person inside for murder. But what's it like to be the mother of a murderer or the brother of a murderer or a rapist? How do you kind of live with that?

How do you carry on loving that person when you know that they have done something so terrible? So I said, are you interested in that piece? And she basically just said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fine. Just send it in on spec. I don't know who you are. Put the phone down. And so I took that as a commission.

So I went off and sort of wrote this piece. I faxed it in to her. Three days later, I got this phone call. And she said, I love this piece. I want to run it. I want to run it. I want to run it. And it was only halfway through the conversation that I realised that she actually thought that I was Jim Crace, the writer.

And who would be... Harvest and things. Yeah, yeah. And Continent, I think, had won the whip bread or something like that. So she couldn't believe her luck that she'd got some sort of award winning writer to write this kind of piece for her. And she said, John, how does 400 quid sound for this? And I said, it sounds fine. I had no idea. And the piece sort of ran. So my first ever piece ran.

And then I had a relationship. But I realized that that she realized that she'd made a hideous mistake because when I pitched my next piece she said yeah it's 200 quid from now on John so you know I think I owe my writing career to Jim Crace in more ways than one in fact because my capacity for rejection was and still is very low I'm not a writer who kind of rolls with the punches because basically the piece I'd written was fine but it was one of those pieces that could easily just as well have not been commissioned as commissioned I mean there's a lot of okay pieces of journalism. And for a first piece, there was no reason for her to have run it. And if she'd said, actually, you know, it's okay, but it's not for us, I think there's a fair chance I'd have said, okay,

this is another career I failed at that I, you know, I'm no good at. I'm going to have to find something else. And it was just so pure luck that she confused me with Jim Crace and said, yeah, okay. And from then on, the career sort of built, really. Because that is actually your final failure was failing to have any sort of career until your mid-30s. Yeah. But it's a failure that turns into a stonking success. When did you start writing satire?

When did you discover that capacity? Because that is a rare talent. Actually, fairly early on. I think years of addiction does sort of inform your life in some kind of way. And you've sort of known a darkness that it's not hard to sort of give a kind of comic twist to. In one incarnation of a career, for four months, I was the world's worst insurance salesman. I literally was truly, truly hopeless. And I would just go around getting stoned in the car and go around trying to sell insurance. But I managed to missell my own wife a policy.

And obviously, you know, there's a level of shame attached to that. But in the sort of greater kind of echelons of shame, that is a fairly kind of minor one in my list. I mean, it might be higher up some people. So you kind of see a sense of humor. I had a sort of dual career going on in a way i mean again for the independent on sunday i did do the odd sort of satirical column you know just or i mean not very sad not great satire but maybe kind of wry or funny i mean my main gig soon became a writer on the guardian education supplement back then because i also took a very kind of pragmatic approach to career I was kind of thought I'm really lucky to have found something that I can actually make money on

and I'm and I made a vow never to be too precious about anything I did and I was sort of more interested in having work getting work rather than sort of saying no no no I can't do anything unless it's a g2 cover story or something like that so I ended up sort of doing a whole load of things I mean that in the end became quite interesting but you know I'd never thought about writing about education and all that but I mean that was sort of my main gig at the time, because I was still freelance at the Guardian then, even though they gave me a desk. I would occasionally write for the Independent and the Evening Standard, doing sort of funnier stuff. At the time, Alan Rusbridger liked to sort of almost open a new section every week, really.

It was in the days of the mass expansion. The internet hadn't really picked off. And sort of Guardian was actually making a lot of money from its print editions. So he was expanding things. And he started up a weekly magazine called The Editor, which was meant to be a kind of roundup of the week. And he appointed this woman who I'd sat close to at The Guardian called Felicity Lawrence as editor of The Editor. And we'd always had a laugh together. And on the back of that, she said, there's this column that's been running in The editor called The Digested Read. I want you to take it on.

Can you still read for pleasure or are you always making jokes in your own head? I'm always making jokes in my own head. I wish I could. I sometimes try. I sometimes try to read for pleasure. pleasure but uh i think the sort of the downside of the digested read is that it has sort of in a way kind of made me an unduly harsh critic of other people and indeed myself really i'm just laughing as you're talking because i'm remembering lots of my digested read favorites and there was one which was a piss take of Katie Hopkins's memoir, Rude.

The line that you wrote was, are you reading this book? Don't. Get off your fat arse. I can't bear people who just sit around all day doing nothing with their lives. I know. I mean, celebrities are always good game, really. I mean, especially someone like Katie Hopkins, who's just sort of made a life as a sort of professional contrarian gobshite. I mean, I don't even know if she

actually believes any of that stuff. And have any authors got in touch saying that they either liked or were very hurt by their digested read? How can I be polite about this? Yes. I mean, various writers, writers i mean have said that they have enjoyed it i think slightly through gritted teeth i think writers on the whole enjoy the digested read of their books about a year after it's come out i mean the writers are a sort of an odd bunch, really. We are kind of thin-skinned, and I've written quite a few books now, and I kind of know that I've written some duffers as well now. The narrative of a writer's career, and is, you know, with the kind of PR path that always comes with it, is that the next book that you do is always better than the last one

the new bestseller from etc etc and the reality is that nobody works like that sometimes in a course of a career you know a writer will write something that's really terrific a really book and then might write two books that are sort of mediocre. But in a way, they kind of need to be written because then you get to the next great one. I mean, publishers can't say for a writer's new book, we know you enjoyed their last book. We know that this one isn't that great.

But please, please do stick with us because probably the one after next is going to be fantastic and we want to carry on publishing this person because we know that he or she has got some great novels left in them. I mean, the digested read was always as much about the disparity in the hype surrounding a book as about the book itself. I'm going to ask you an impossible question now, but I feel like you'll be able to answer it. So at the end of each digested read, there's the digested read digested,

which is one sentence, the book in a sort of jokey single sentence. Could you do a digested read digested of your own life? God, it's tough, isn't it it that's a good one yeah still hanging in there i suppose god i don't know so it would be sort of a samuel beckett wouldn't it fail fail better perfect not only brilliant answer, but you're so on brand with the podcast. John Crace, I just cannot thank you enough, not just for today, not just for opening up your soul, but just for being such a lovely man. Thank you for agreeing to do this. It was one of the most moving interviews I think I've ever done. Oh, thank you, Liz. It's a pleasure. And I can't wait to read the book. Please don't ever read the book and don't ever digest it.

I won't digest it. I can promise you. Okay. Thank you.