Will Self

Yeah, I played.

My high point was being captain of the second 15 at rugby once.

Up until I was, my father left, yeah.

I think so, yeah.

I think in the sense that mother was histrionic.

She told me after my ninth birthday party,

on the day of your life for my birthday uh and she was devastated and just completely lost and and immediately you know i knew that i had to look after her before that and and now she was like a zombie in the house and the next few years were disastrous while he was gone there were money troubles it was the miners strikes do you remember the power cuts in the early 70s

And mum, to be histrionic, would light the whole house with oil lamps and say, we didn't have any money.

Turn the heating off.

Yeah, gradually.

I go wilder and wilder.

I run away from earliest childhood.

The first time I only get the other side of the Fallon Way in the Hamster Garden suburb.

Mum is gazetted by the fuzz and turns up and busts me and takes me home.

And that happens quite a bit.

And then once the family's disintegrated, I have the run of the city.

I used to come here to the Grosvenor House or the Dorchester.

I had a sports jacket.

Age 12, I'd sit in the lobby smoking Balkan Sobrani, hoping some woman who thinks she shat chocolate ice cream would pick me up.

No, sadly not.