Matt Haig

My mum was at teacher trainers college and my dad... Yeah, my mum...

Well, they love... They are quite inspirational, but very active.

And they love going to the theatre.

So my mum...

My mum definitely loves going to the theatre.

My dad has slept in a lot of theatres.

So when I picture them together, it's probably my mum taking my dad to see a play.

Well, I've probably been involved with a lot of those.

Probably my... I mean, I cause them a lot of stress in my...

In the shoplifting years, which we'll come to.

Teenage years, yeah.

No, I don't think you are.

I mean, you know, it's beyond my memory anyway, but I don't think I would have been or ever really was until my mum talked about it to me.

Yeah, I do.

I think this has been, and I don't think it's totally tied to my mother, but I think I've always had a profound sense of having to justify or prove my worth or justify my existence.

And so that possible uncertainty at the start was probably always there.

Not that it was anyone's fault, it was just there.

And I think it's possibly passed down from my mother because of her insecurity over being herself abandoned.

So I think as her first child, that came with a lot of complicated issues because her mother abandoned her at that point.

So I was born and she loved me almost too much in a way, in the sense that she didn't feel she could be responsible for me because she'd never known family in that sense.