Why My Dentist Thinks I Should Write a Memoir

As we inch towards the end of the year — the time when we realise the bathroom scales aren’t faulty after all — we tend to look back. Lately, several people have suggested I should write my autobiography. This has come from a surprising range of sources: readers of my new novel My Lie, Your Lie, friends, colleagues, and — more worryingly — my retired dentist and a Canadian skateboarder. When those two align, one must take notice. Part of me winces at the thought: am I really that man at the dinner party? The one dispensing anecdotes while everyone else eyes the vol-au-vents? But perhaps they have a point. I’ve now written 15000 of my South Yorkshire childhood: adopted, realising I was gay, wrestling with school, and balancing intellectual curiosity with a burgeoning sexual desire — all while my parents ran a bustling village shop full of characters who would give Alan Bennett palpitations. I’m hoping it might be a decent read. It’s now out with agents (if you know a good one, do shout). But looking back isn’t just nostalgia; it’s noticing what we’ve learnt. Someone once said history exists to teach us from our mistakes. Most of my learning these days comes from younger people — a surprising admission from someone who was actually given Victor Meldrew’s catchphrase on national television. the only actor besides the great Richard Wilson to utter “I don’t believe it” on BBC1. Thanks to my wonderful partner, I’ve accumulated friends in their twenties and thirties. From them, I’m constantly discovering new ways of seeing the world. When young people enter a business, they bring ideas not yet forced into a mould. New actors bring new interpretations; new adaptations bring revelations we didn’t know we needed. Perhaps those of us with experience — those life has politely weathered — shouldn’t be so quick to dole out our polished wisdom like Werther’s Originals at a bus stop. Perhaps the greatest gift we can give is to listen. Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson — writers of the excellent Kyoto and founders of Good Chance Theatre — wrote a line I adore. A woman grieving her husband says he had realised it was no longer his world. I’m not planning to leave this one just yet; I’m enjoying it far too much. But to keep doing so, I need guides — younger, brighter, more imaginative, less apologetic, and able to see through lenses I’ve never tried on. And when they wobble, I can still offer a steadying hand. When I chaired the Actors Centre, I mentored winners of the Alan Bates Award. It’s a joy watching them now: defusing bombs on ITV, treading the boards, some creating mayhem in the video games world in Prague, others raising families in deepest Hertfordshire. They’re making their own paths, and I’m learning from all of them. So perhaps that’s the real trick at this time of year: look back with fondness, look forward with curiosity, and learn — enthusiastically — from the people already building the future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Birthday Homily by Me, for Me

Image
Well, here we are. Sixty-eight. Not one of your grandstanding ages. Not a nice, neat multiple of ten, not a coming-of-age, not an “over-the-hill”—though, let’s be honest, the hill is well and truly behind me now, and I’ve been strolling down the other side for a good while. But sixty-eight, I think, is a respectable sort of age. It’s solid. It’s lived-in. It’s like a comfortable old armchair—the stuffing’s gone a bit, but it still holds together, and when you sit in it, it feels like home. The thing about birthdays is that people expect you to look back. To tot it all up, weigh your successes against your failures, and see if you come out ahead. And I suppose at sixty-eight, I’m happy to say I do. Just about. There have been some personal lows—times when life gave me a bit of a kicking and didn’t even have the decency to let me get my breath back before the next one came along. But there have also been highs, and I find those tend to linger longer in the memory. At sixty-eight, the...
Read more

Finding Lomax (Or, Love in the Sainsbury’s Car Park)

Image
For the second time in my life, I have bought a new car. I say that with the kind of pride usually reserved for first-time parents or those who manage to grow tomatoes in hanging baskets. Most of my twenties were spent driving my dad’s cast-offs — including a white Ford Escort estate, which felt less like a car and more like a penance. I ask you: a white Ford Escort estate. It was less “motor vehicle” and more “mobile filing cabinet.” Then came a series of small, second-hand affairs: a green 2CV that got me through a year in Stratford — though the first time I pressed the accelerator, it went through the floor like a cartoon. That was followed by a bright orange Mini called Sebastian who gamely carried me through late-night rehearsals and even later-night chips in Soho. After Sebastian, there was Tristram Polo — a tank by comparison. Tristram was the scene of a minor disagreement with the law over the alcohol content of a bottle of Pinot Grigio. He was sold off quietly and cheaply, li...
Read more

To Read to Sleep

Image
I’ve always read in bed. Always. For as long as I can remember, really—since before the age when memories begin to settle into things you could recount. It’s never felt like a habit. More like an instinct. A deeply ingrained, highly enjoyable ritual, as natural as brushing your teeth, only infinitely more rewarding. In the little back bedroom of my parents’ house—next to their shops in the Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire—my first lamp stood on a marble-topped wash-hand stand. The only other furniture was my bed and a chest of drawers that looked like it had given up trying. The lamp itself was a silver lady, balancing on one leg, arm raised to the heavens, in the manner of the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy, only this one had a perforated purple lampshade and an air of resignation. It was by her light that I discovered my first loves: Enid Blyton, the Fife-Finder Outers, the Seven Seeker Uppers, and Alfred Hitchcock Investigates—anything in a series. I was mad for a serie...
Read more