Andrew O'Hagan

It was always a book of laughter and tears for me.

that started from a very real incident, which was the death of my oldest friend.

And I realised that when I looked back at our lives as friends, that I'd always wanted to write a fully rounded book about a friendship.

And there was so much laughter in our childhoods, being in bands in Scotland and the West Coast during the 1980s, making life bigger and better than

Our parents' lives, we thought.

And then 30 years later, to get that call to say that he was terminally ill, I just wanted to connect a whole life's friendship up.

And so the laughter and tears were instant, I think.

Tully was that very charismatic person that I think so many of us have in our lives, especially in childhood.

He was the classic front man.

He was the funniest.

He was the best looking.

He had the best haircut.

He had the highest cheekbones in Scotland and the best record collection in Europe.

He was that guy that men and women, boys and girls, all admired him for different reasons.

And he was the hero of a very small town that I grew up in.

And the idea that this guy becomes your best friend, you know, that in itself was a kind of operatic achievement.

I wanted the book to encompass all that innocence and all that self-seeking that exists for you when you're young, you know?

I mean, we all have a childhood, and often at the centre of it was this person.

And that was a 40-year friendship between myself and the person who the character was modelled on.

So Tully in the book, you know,