The Mystery Jets are a very exciting band indeed. They used to live on an island inside an island. They like glitter. They are lovely. Although they did blow all of their advance on jetpacks and all of the rainbows in the UK, in a similar way to how the Queen owns all of the swans. This incredible future was written in William's salad leaves. He still doesn't believe it.
If you could choose anybody, alive or dead, to be your pen-pal, who would you pick?
I think I’d pick you actually.
Me? Ok.
Yeah I think you’d be a really good pen-pal partner. You and maybe Ray Davies from the Kinks. So I could have two different ones.
I saw him at Isle of White Festival
Did he have a big band with him?
Nope. But it was really good. About two or three years ago.
I just love his songs.
If you could choose anybody, alive or dead, to be your pen-pal, who would you pick?
I think I’d pick you actually.
Me? Ok.
Yeah I think you’d be a really good pen-pal partner. You and maybe Ray Davies from the Kinks. So I could have two different ones.
I saw him at Isle of White Festival
Did he have a big band with him?
Nope. But it was really good. About two or three years ago.
I just love his songs.
I just read something about how you all used to write to each other as pen pals?
Yeah me and Blaine did- when he moved to France and I was at boarding school when we were about 7 or 8 and we used to write letters and draw pictures of what our band was going to be like when we grew up and were in a band, silly things like that.
You’re lucky…your childhood dream actually came true.
Yeah I suppose it is lucky. I don’t really think about that. I think it’s so easy to take a lot of things for granted. But yeah I guess it was lucky, so that’s good.
I suppose if you’re in the wrong family or something you don’t think about it.
Yeah, it’s so silly to compare circumstances with people. You can only really compare things with yourself. Did you have any childhood dreams? Probably hundreds.
I don’t know…I know I wanted to be a journalist, but that was from when I was about 10. Our nanny was from Australia, and we met her friend Arran in London, and he’d just got back from the set of Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, and was about to go to the Caribbean…and he was a freelance journalist. I wanted to travel! I wanted to be an archaeologist too at one point.
An archaeologist? Well I guess journalism’s quite like archaeology…
What, digging around? Haha. Ahh no, I hate the kind of journalism where people get their facts wrong or say things and it causes loads of offence and hurt…
When people get misquoted…
Yeah exactly. I don’t like doing that.
I think a lot of journalists like to get the wrong end of the stick in a way. I think part of the job of people in films or bands or whatever is that they are supposed to live other people’s dreams for them. So they’re meant to do things like drive their Rolls Royce’s. And I think that’s what a lot of journalists latch on to. Because really life is pretty normal for everyone.
Pretty mundane.
It can be, yeah.
Not in a pessimistic way, because life’s brilliant, but a lot of life is just filling time.
So much time is spent just wasting it.
It works out that I spend something ridiculous like 4 weeks of my life on the bus to and from college.
You spend like two thirds of your life asleep.
And on tour, you must spend so much time on the coach.
It’s terrible, it really frustrates me, but there’s not much you can do about it.
As long as you can find things to do, read lots of books.
I keep a diary.
(The pasta salad is good.
William: There are some great cheeses in there. Will this sober you up?
Me: I’m sober. But it is indeed good. As is the pizza here. I bet you’re glad you didn’t just get a salad now…
William: I am indeed.
Advert for Expresso finished. I said I’d write it in, but the general café noise is overwhelming on record, as is the accumulation of several months of life on my memory. Bah, I’m a half assed journalist.*)
So would you ever leave Norwich? Would you ever want to live anywhere else?
*I have a full ass really. It’s on YouTube, in gold. Har, har.
Oh yeah.
Is it like quite a small place?
Yes. In such a small place you can either feel really detached or really involved in what’s going on. But I’m glad it’s my hometown, my family will probably always be here.
Do you have brothers and sisters and stuff?
Yeah I have a brother and a sister.
Older or younger?
Little ones.
Oh little, really.
Well not that little. My sister’s fifteen and my brother’s twelve. Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Yeah I’ve got an older sister. She’s got her own family, in Bristol.
That’s good.
Yeah, it is really good.
Does she have babies? Kids.
Mmm. She’s got three boys. One’s eight, and the twins are like four or five.
Three boys…
Yeah, it’s a real handful I think. I didn’t really know her for a long time. She left home when she was sixteen, and I was only seven.
That’s just the time when you start to get to know each other.
Yeah, when you start to become mates. She buggered off for like seven years and then appeared out of the blue, with kids. We’re good mates now.
That’s good. I think it’s difficult with brothers and sisters. You’re either going to really get on with them, at some point, whether it’s at some point later…or you’re just never going to click.
Well, what’s quite nice about me and her is that we get on in a way that’s quite exclusive to us. We get on in a way that doesn’t involve our mum and dad. Like a little scene away from them, it’s quite cool.
I always think it’s odd how siblings can be like ready-made best friends that don’t have to be your family but will always be there in blood.
It runs deep I guess.
You’re lucky. I had a really good holiday to Egypt with my mum and brother and sister. We went diving. You should go if you ever get the chance.
Well my Dad was born in Alexandria, so I’d like to go there.
You should go to Dahab.
Is that near Cairo?
Not really, you have to get a plane. It’s a really great place though, although it’s getting quite developed it’s got a one storey rule and loads of the land is still owned by the Bedouins.
Have you read Hideous Kinky?
I’ve not read it, just seen the film.
I think that’s in Morocco. But the same sort of vibe.
I didn’t realise that was a book as well. We got it free in the newspaper.
A couple of years ago? Yeah, I got that too.
It’s such a hard choice… Would you take your kids if you went travelling. If the only thing that was going to make you happy was going to live somewhere else but your kids didn’t want to. What would you do?
I suppose you’d have to wait till they were adults. I don’t really want kids to be honest.
Really? I do like this freedom.
No. It’s really enjoyable, not being responsible. Well, only being responsible for yourself.
It’s just such a big thing, as soon as you have a kid that’s the rest of your life attached to someone else, or a family. What if you hated your child?
That would be awful. But I think there’s probably a part of all parents that hates their children.
Most likely. On a slightly different tact, if you had a zoo, which animals would you keep in it?
I’d have animals that were extinct in it. So it was exclusively an extinct zoo.
And then breed and rehabilitate them?
Yeah, to put them back. Dodos, Woolly Mammoths, Sabre Tooth Tigers…Umm, what else would I have? I don’t really know a lot about extinct animals, there’s only about three that I’ve ever heard of.
Probably some sort of eagle?
Yeah, some kind of rare eagle.
Dinosaurs? You’d have to make sure you had a couple as well, in case something went wrong, or one died…
They’d have to reproduce.
Imagine if you were that animal, and you were put with the other animal, and you were the only two of that animal in the world, and you didn’t fancy her… I’m sure instinct would take over.
Yeah, I think animals probably don’t have the same level of like, “oo, I like her” sort of thing.
Maybe. There was this really interesting article in the National Geographic about animals showing intelligence. And there was this really sad story about a parrot. A woman taught a parrot to speak, not just in repetition, but actually knowing what the words meant. So it could do things like if you held up something it could say it’s name and what colour it was and things like that.
That’s a parrot?
Yeah.
Wow.
But one of the things it said which was just so horrible, was just “tree”. And when it said “tree” it meant it wanted to be carried out to the corridor in the lab so it could look out of the window at an elm tree, because it wanted to be free. It’s just like, you teach an animal how to communicate for the first time, the only speaking animal, and it just tells you it wants freedom.
Yeah yeah yeah, that’s bizarre. Humans are horrible.
Yeah. So a zoo for extinct animals would be really good for helping them out.
And you’re offering something that no one else is offering.
Exactly. God I hate that parrot story.
It’s quite sad isn’t it.
They didn’t even linger on it. There was a dog as well, when you showed it a photo of a toy it could go into the next room and pick out the real toy. And about how only a few animals could see in the mirror.
Really? And recognise their own reflection.
Yeah. We have a chaffinch at our house, and my dad’s kitchen windows are mirrored. And everyday it comes and sits at the window and pecks at the glass, because it thinks it’s found a mate. But it’s just its reflection. It’s so sad. And it’s not going to find another mate, because it’s fallen in love with its own self.
It’s just going to suffer.
Yep, a long lonely summer of being heartbroken…
By himself. That would make a great story.
Yeah, I wrote a poem about it.
Really? That’s quite bizarre, constantly breaking your own heart.
Monkeys can see their own reflection though. In the same article, they were saying how they put spots of red paint on the monkey’s head, and they wouldn’t try to take it off the monkey in the mirror, they’d took it off their own head. So they realised that they could recognise their own reflection. Quite clever…I wouldn’t have though of that myself…Yep. Poor parrot.
Yeah that’s tragic. And the chaffinch. Pathetic really.
It’s horrible. I tried to make my Dad un-mirror the windows but we don’t know how.
You could just smash them.
(Nice expresso man brings brownie.)
Ok, if you ran away from home, -the boy who ran away- where would you go?
Um, running away from home. I’d go to Brazil I think. I love Brazil. I recon that would be really exciting. It’s a big mixture of Japanese people, and Germans, and obviously Portuguese. So they’re all mixed together and they end up looking quite weird. People that you can’t quite place. I find that really interesting. It seems really lively and dangerous as well. I think in poorer places, and South America, people treat life differently, they value it in a different way.
I’d definitely like to live in Brazil. The whole atmosphere would be different.
I think if I did that I wouldn’t ever be able to come back. England is so kind of like…
Would you need to come back though?
Well maybe not.
I think life’s too short to call one place your home.
Mmm, I agree.
Well that’s kind of the point of running away.
Why come back.
Depends what your reasons were for leaving I guess.
I mean, I’ve got nothing to run away from really. Apart from sometimes you need to run away from yourself, when you’re really not happy. I dunno.
I heard that the name Mystery Jets came from a toy plane that flew into Henry’s room and it had a little note in it.
Yeah it had a scroll in it.
He never told you what the note said- what would you like to think was written on it?
I don’t know; I’d like to think that it said some bizarre riddle, which he’s still trying to work out to this day.
What would the answer hold?
I don’t think the answer is really what you need; it’s more the act of doing it.
Of solving the riddle.
Yeah.
Maybe, in effect, the riddle was the fact that you had to make the band. And you’re solving it everyday by writing songs.
Yeah, and kind of getting closer to the answer. It’s got to be something unobtainable, because you don’t really want the journey to end. I don’t think anyone’s just going to wake up one day and think ‘I’ve found the answer to life’. The riddle is just like progression really. Going onwards and just not stopping. Which I suppose is kind of obvious and boring.
No not really.
I think in that attitude lots of things get thrown to a place where they move by themselves.
Trying to solve things?
Yeah, just moving. If you move quickly, you’re going to hit things faster, and with much more of an explosion that you would if you sort of stroll. And because you move quicker, things happen quicker. Like if you ride around London on a bicycle, the streets actually look like things you’ve never seen before. Well, they did for me anyway. I was riding around Pimlico and Victoria, and just because I was that little bit higher up, and I was going quicker, I saw things that I’d never seen before. You notice things quicker, and you forget things quicker.
That reminds me a little bit of that scene from Amelie, where she takes the blind man by the arm and walks him down the street, describing everything she can see and smell, really really really quick. Literally just down the street and across the road, and then she just leaves him.
And he’s just had his mind blown.
Yeah. So. If you had to send your own message, in a plane or a bottle or whatever…what would it be?
If I was to send a message?
Yeah. If you’d been the person sending the plane. ‘Hi Henry!’
‘How are you doing?’. Hah. No. I might put something really meaningful, like ‘Stop Now’. I don’t know, I don’t think that whatever I put would have any effect.
It may do…
It may do…but you have to consider the consequences of what you write. I think I might just put something really mundane…or something Biblical like ‘thou shalt forgive’. I dunno.
That’s not really that mundane.
No, it’s not is it. (chortle)
Do you want some biscuit?
For inspiration?
Yes.
Eat more wafer biscuits. Maybe I could put that.
I’d say that’s pretty good.
It’s pretty incredible. That’s as good as it gets really.
Onto some more vaguely related questions…What do you think was the best invention of all time?
Human life, really.
Was that an invention?
It depends what an invention is. I mean, it’s something that was created- whether that was by a bunch of apes, or through evolution, or some sort of weird rock minerals in the ocean…I dunno, what’s an invention? Something happens, somewhere. The good thing about human life is that it’s the core to every other invention.
Yeah, that’s true.
I don’t know. I mean, the bicycle is pretty good as well. It’s a great experience to nip around town on one.
Which bicycle though? Penny farthing…
Yeah, I think the penny farthing. Or the Harley Davidson.
That’s not so much for nipping around town on though…
More for showing off, check me out, on my bike. But yeah, one of the two- human life or bicycles.
That’s variety. What do you think, or hope, will be the best invention of all time?
An instant songwriter. So basically you can have an idea, like, I want to write a tragic lovesong about blah blah blah, and you just put it into the instant song writing machine, plug it in for a minute, if you want like a three minute song, or a minute and a half if you want more of the resolute, ten minute, tribal stuff, and then ‘ding ding!’ it comes out on a CD. You learn it, and there’s chord progressions transcribed on manuscript paper, and then you’ve got your song. And there’s a hit button, and you’re only allowed to push it one or two times a year, and that’s when it gives you a pop gem. I recon that would be quite cool.
Does that not take out all the beauty of the creation of art?
Absolutely.
Who would make the machine?
That’s a point…it would have to be some mega-genius. Get Ray Davies to do it.
But then you’d have no variety.
That’s true. It would all come out sounding like Waterloo Sunset.
You could say that essentially, that machine is a symbol for all other life and music that’s already happened. Because if you have an idea of what you want to write a song about, you look subconsciously, or consciously, for inspiration from all around you anyway, so it’s not all coming from yourself in the first place. So essentially, everything around you is the machine already.
Yeah. I think the machine is kind of a full stop on everything as well. It’s the end of progression. It takes everything and can absorb everything up to that point, but it can’t go any further, it’s only us that can do that. That’s kind of a bad answer.
No, not really. Because you do then have to take the song that it gives you and make it your own. Because anyone could take that song and do something different with it, and it could be awful or it could be brilliant.
The machine is just basically our brain, really. Like our brains are just a store of everything you’ve ever seen or thought was beautiful. It just offers you an answer, a solution. It’s your subconscious. A feeling that kind of gets stuck in your head for a long time. I think it’s a good feeling. It attracts other things. So by the time a few weeks have past, it’s bigger than it was…it grows.
Or you share it with other people and they help you out.
I don’t like doing that, I think it’s too personal. It’s almost like the other things that come around it are armour, so when it does come out it’s got skin, it’s protected.
What, the other musical elements?
Yeah, the arrangements, how the drum beat could be…but the main thing is the melody.
And the idea, and the message.
What you want to say, yeah. Well it’s not necessarily true, it’s true to me. Everyone’s got their own way. Some people can just cast things off, really carelessly, it’s amazing. Just naturally.
Do you know the song, ‘Love is just a Four Lettered Word’, Joan Baez sings it but Bob Dylan originally wrote it…and he was just kind of messing around on the piano or the guitar or something with Joan Baez, he just wrote it whilst they were hanging out…and then she covered it, and he heard it on the radio and rang her up and was like ‘wow that’s a great song, congratulations!’ and she was like, ‘it’s your song, you wrote it’. And he didn’t remember.
He forgot.
He is just such a genius that he can spew out songs like that. Or just really forgetful.
Or both. I don’t know.
I’d like to be able to do that.
To be able to do that?
Yeah. It happened sometimes, like not with songs, but you write a poem or something, or do a piece of art, and forget that you’ve done it, and when you look back on it you don’t recognise it as your own. And that’s the best times, because you can look at it completely objectively.
That’s really nice. I guess it’s hard to do with songs, because you put so much into making them, that when it’s over you want to get as far away as possible.
Yeah, with a song it can’t really be like a piece or writing or a drawing or something, you can’t do it wherever you are…
Well you can,
If you have long enough. A few more mundane questions. What’s your favourite breakfast cereal?
I used to be a massive cereal fan. When I was younger it was kind of all I ever ate…like five or six bowls a day. Lucky charms were like my…I used to love lucky charms.
Oh yeah, they were quite chewy.
Yeah, they had those marshmallow bits and then bits that were more kind of like…
Cereal?
Like wheetos…
Cheerios?
Yeah, like cheerios. That’s the one. I used to love the leprechaun on the cover of the cereal box, the lucky charm guy. He was quite inspiring.
I don’t remember the cover so much as the sweetness of the cereal.
I just think it’s a really great idea….’Lucky Charms’ (said in Irish accent) this kind of Irish cereal…and you felt really lucky, with all this magic stuff. And grown-ups hated it, because it was too sweet and sugary. And it’s not healthy in the least.
What do you think needs to be done in the world to make it a happier place?
I think people need to start thinking more about what they do. I don’t know, just making sacrifices, and realising that what they want isn’t always best for the situation. I don’t know. I think some people are really stupid…to me; it just looks like that’s the only possible reason why certain things happen. And if someone’s stupid, then maybe there’s something you can do, maybe there’s not. And if people make mistakes by their own set of judgements or values…it’s like what I said earlier, it’s silly to compare people, which I’m sure most people know, but if someone goes out and does things the way they see is right, but the more you can try and jump out of your own box and into someone else’s shoes, the better really.
I had a life changing moment the other day…well, it’s not that significant. But do you like Regina Spektor?
Yeah
Have you heard her song the ghost of corporate future?
No
It’s all about this business man, and he goes out and starts jumping in all the puddles with his shoes off, and it’s because he’s had a visit from the ghost of corporate future, who told him ‘people are just people, they shouldn’t make you nervous’. And it’s so simple, but for some reason I’ve actually mentally changed since listening to it. You have to listen to the whole thing really…hah.
I’ll have to listen to it, yeah.
Well I’ve been trying to spread the word, and it actually has been having an effect on people. The magazine’s non-profit, and when I’m out I sell them to people…and people are like…I love the world a lot of the time, but sometimes people are just so dismissive. You must get it a lot with your music- before people even know what something is they’re ready to dismiss it. But recently when anyone has been like that, I’ve told them to listen to the song, and given them a magazine, and I’ve got emails back saying how it’s changed their perspective on things. Which is really good. So you should listen to it.
I will, I will. You should play it to me.
I will, I will.
(chortle)Like one guy who didn’t like Wolfmother…he then went and listened to them.
I’m not too keen on Wolfmother. Do you like them?
Yeah I do. But then again, I like everything. Hah.
I just find them too macho.
Andrew Stockdale was really nice. And, he has an amazing voice and stage presence.
I think that they’re good. I just don’t believe in it.
You don’t believe in it?
No. When I look at them…It just doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just such a parody.
I suppose with a lot of heavier rock and roll, the lyrics can’t ever…well, they can mean something, but they’re not going to be as personal because they’ve got to fit the genre.
So many of the songs are just about sex. They’re basically just doing what Led Zeppelin did, but without the art of the skill. And even Led Zeppelin weren’t particularly masochistic.
They were extremely cultured.
Yeah, they had songs that were extremely sexy, but a lot of their stuff was based on J.R. Tolkien, and Lord of the Rings, fantastical stuff. And Robert Plant is as much of a woman as a man, you know…just the way he moves. There’s a lot of it in Australia, like The Datsuns or whatever, Jet.
Oh dear, The Datsuns were in issue one. Hahaha.
I just don’t like it. Cowboy boots and jeans so tight you can see their fucking bollocks coming out. I just find it so typical, like Man…Woman. You know. Is it really that simple? No, it’s not that simple. There’s a whole fucking spectrum in between that which is far more interesting.
Sometimes it is.
Yeah, sometimes it is, when you’ve had a few drinks or whatever.
You should read that. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense…
I’m just being assumptive about a band I know nothing about.
No, no. During the interview we were talking about how people compare them to the old rock greats, and kind of saying why not do it, if you can. But at the same time I agree with what you’re saying. It’s such a cliché.
You’ve got a platform.
The good thing about it is that it means that you can hear the music live, because those bands are doing it, and you don’t just have to get your Led Zep CDs out.
It’s definitely powerful, I mean, they’re popular, they sell records. It’s obviously got something. But I think if people are going to listen to you, then you should say something worth saying.
What else have we got…do you like the Black Keys?
I don’t’ know anything about them. I like The Mules. I know Ed, the drummer. He’s nice.
He’s playing at Reepham Festival. Would you like to play? Haha.
When is that?
26th July.
I’d love to.
(Sorry, small plug for Reepham Fest. Followed by much Travel travel talkyspeak. )
Do you know the WOOFF organic farms? You subscribe to the organisation and they give you the contact details for these farms all over the world, you go work on them for board and lodge.
I think my sister did something like that. It sounds good.
Well I think that’s kind of how we want to run our farm in New Zealand (life plan).
It’s a good idea.
I’m looking forward to it. (hah) Would you ever do that?
No. I don’t ever want to settle anywhere. I mean, the thought of it actually really makes me feel pretty sad.
What about less settling, more setting up a community base somewhere. I wouldn’t ever let something hold me back from moving on. I think until you’ve travelled and seen a lot of places you can’t ever decide where you want to be.
Yeah, that’s true. I quite like being alone. You get a lot done. I just think…I like company, but having that responsibility for other people.
I’m just so looking forward to travelling and having time for yourself. You don’t get it in everyday life. You probably don’t get it at all?
What, time on my own?
Yeah.
Sometimes. I went to Istanbul on my own, a couple of years ago. It was good.
What did you do?
I did a lot of drawing, a lot of writing, and just walked around and got a suntan…met some nice people. I ended up getting a bus through the night to a little town on the Dead Sea called Mazarin. I met some people and we stayed together, then I got the bus back, left, and that was it. It was good. But you can do that.
YOU can do that!
I suppose. But I’m responsible for the people in our band and our manager, who I really like.
It doesn’t have to be forever though.
No, I don’t think it will be.
(I meant the travel)
I’d like it to be. But not in the conventional touring, album, touring, album, kind of sense.
Once you have a bond like that with people it wont ever go.
Well things will come and go, and different points in our lives will require us to be different things, I don’t really know. Anything could happen at any point.
Maybe things would be a lot better if you got some time alone. It sounds so cliché, finding yourself…but when you come back together it would be stronger I think. Have you heard, in Bhutan, they don’t measure Gross National Produce, they measure Gross National Happiness.
Where’s Bhutan?
No idea. (chuckle)
In Indonesia or something? How do you measure someone’s happiness?
Well, I thought it was a lovely idea until I read how they do it. They just send out a questionnaire asking, ’How happy are you?’. On a scale of 1 -100 I think. And then they ask how happy you think your friends are, and your family. But what if you’ve just had a good or bad day?
Or it was your birthday.
It’s a flaw in the plan.
It’s a sweet idea isn’t it.
It’s the kind of thing you’d do if you were in a fantasy of if you had your own country… with a zoo full of extinct people…ah bugger…people. I mean animals.
I think people would have been better actually.
It would be huge.
That’s sort of what a prison is, isn’t it. Extinct people.
Yeah. That’s deep. How are they extinct though- are they dead to themselves?
Well probably most of them are. Well I mean, they’re not dead to the outside world, but…
They’re trying to make them extinct.
A place we just brush all the bad things away too.
Maybe that’s our new kind of evolution. Like people with a disability…I guess they would have died out, but now we put them in a mental asylum or whatever…trying to make a ‘purer’ society.
I think it’s just the way humans are. Like, you find someone who you think is incredibly beautiful, you fall in love with them, you have children. That’s making a purer society. You learn from the mistakes of your parents. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing actually. Well, it obviously depends on how you go about it, like Hitler…was wrong.
I watched this really interesting documentary once about how he sent teams of people out to Africa to take measurements of the local people, because he thought they were the origins of the Arian race. Even though they were dark skinned and dark haired. And he got them all measured up and tested, looking for some god like ancient roots…I can’t really remember the details. And did you know as well, it was said he was the greatest actor in all of Germany.
Actor?
Yes. His photographer, Leni Reisenthal said it. She did that legendary Olympics film in the 60s.
Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah.
And she did all of the Nazi propaganda. And basically, every bit of Hitler that anyone ever saw was him acting, and her directing. And he admitted it, he knew he was doing it. I found it bizarre. He could consciously act as a great speaker and dictator…but in real life…I watched this documentary on it and they showed the bits she cut out of the films, and he’s just crazy. That might have been the documentary trying to sway it, I don’t know.
What was he doing?
Just generally freaking out at people, acting really schizophrenically. Just generally acting like a mad dictator crazy….how you expect that he should have been acting, instead of the very controlled exterior that we are presented with, that he was acting.
That’s a bit bizarre.
Oh bollocks. We’ve only got three minutes left. What’s your most treasured childhood memory?
Um…building a tree house in…no, I never built a tree house. I always wanted to build a tree house. My most treasured childhood memory…I don’t know, there’s too many and not enough. I can’t really say. I’ve got the images but they’re not….Oh I know. I was in our living room, I was like seven years old, and there was like this bit of cardboard leaning up against the radiator, and I used to piss on this bit of cardboard, just because I could. And it would go down into the carpet and dry off or whatever.(I laugh here, a lot.) And I’d done it about ten times and then one day I was like dancing around in the living room and I went over to piss on the bit of cardboard and I didn’t see my dad at the other end of the living room, reading, and he looked down over his newspaper and was like ‘What are you doing!’ and spanked me over his knee. And that’s probably my favourite memory. I mean, it was really scary at the time. I mean, I’ve got sweeter memories, obviously, that’s just one I can never forget. Like there’s one of my parents room was kind of blue, like being on the water in a swimming pool. I don’t know, there are loads. But that’s one I can’t forget.
Yeah me and Blaine did- when he moved to France and I was at boarding school when we were about 7 or 8 and we used to write letters and draw pictures of what our band was going to be like when we grew up and were in a band, silly things like that.
You’re lucky…your childhood dream actually came true.
Yeah I suppose it is lucky. I don’t really think about that. I think it’s so easy to take a lot of things for granted. But yeah I guess it was lucky, so that’s good.
I suppose if you’re in the wrong family or something you don’t think about it.
Yeah, it’s so silly to compare circumstances with people. You can only really compare things with yourself. Did you have any childhood dreams? Probably hundreds.
I don’t know…I know I wanted to be a journalist, but that was from when I was about 10. Our nanny was from Australia, and we met her friend Arran in London, and he’d just got back from the set of Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, and was about to go to the Caribbean…and he was a freelance journalist. I wanted to travel! I wanted to be an archaeologist too at one point.
An archaeologist? Well I guess journalism’s quite like archaeology…
What, digging around? Haha. Ahh no, I hate the kind of journalism where people get their facts wrong or say things and it causes loads of offence and hurt…
When people get misquoted…
Yeah exactly. I don’t like doing that.
I think a lot of journalists like to get the wrong end of the stick in a way. I think part of the job of people in films or bands or whatever is that they are supposed to live other people’s dreams for them. So they’re meant to do things like drive their Rolls Royce’s. And I think that’s what a lot of journalists latch on to. Because really life is pretty normal for everyone.
Pretty mundane.
It can be, yeah.
Not in a pessimistic way, because life’s brilliant, but a lot of life is just filling time.
So much time is spent just wasting it.
It works out that I spend something ridiculous like 4 weeks of my life on the bus to and from college.
You spend like two thirds of your life asleep.
And on tour, you must spend so much time on the coach.
It’s terrible, it really frustrates me, but there’s not much you can do about it.
As long as you can find things to do, read lots of books.
I keep a diary.
(The pasta salad is good.
William: There are some great cheeses in there. Will this sober you up?
Me: I’m sober. But it is indeed good. As is the pizza here. I bet you’re glad you didn’t just get a salad now…
William: I am indeed.
Advert for Expresso finished. I said I’d write it in, but the general café noise is overwhelming on record, as is the accumulation of several months of life on my memory. Bah, I’m a half assed journalist.*)
So would you ever leave Norwich? Would you ever want to live anywhere else?
*I have a full ass really. It’s on YouTube, in gold. Har, har.
Oh yeah.
Is it like quite a small place?
Yes. In such a small place you can either feel really detached or really involved in what’s going on. But I’m glad it’s my hometown, my family will probably always be here.
Do you have brothers and sisters and stuff?
Yeah I have a brother and a sister.
Older or younger?
Little ones.
Oh little, really.
Well not that little. My sister’s fifteen and my brother’s twelve. Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Yeah I’ve got an older sister. She’s got her own family, in Bristol.
That’s good.
Yeah, it is really good.
Does she have babies? Kids.
Mmm. She’s got three boys. One’s eight, and the twins are like four or five.
Three boys…
Yeah, it’s a real handful I think. I didn’t really know her for a long time. She left home when she was sixteen, and I was only seven.
That’s just the time when you start to get to know each other.
Yeah, when you start to become mates. She buggered off for like seven years and then appeared out of the blue, with kids. We’re good mates now.
That’s good. I think it’s difficult with brothers and sisters. You’re either going to really get on with them, at some point, whether it’s at some point later…or you’re just never going to click.
Well, what’s quite nice about me and her is that we get on in a way that’s quite exclusive to us. We get on in a way that doesn’t involve our mum and dad. Like a little scene away from them, it’s quite cool.
I always think it’s odd how siblings can be like ready-made best friends that don’t have to be your family but will always be there in blood.
It runs deep I guess.
You’re lucky. I had a really good holiday to Egypt with my mum and brother and sister. We went diving. You should go if you ever get the chance.
Well my Dad was born in Alexandria, so I’d like to go there.
You should go to Dahab.
Is that near Cairo?
Not really, you have to get a plane. It’s a really great place though, although it’s getting quite developed it’s got a one storey rule and loads of the land is still owned by the Bedouins.
Have you read Hideous Kinky?
I’ve not read it, just seen the film.
I think that’s in Morocco. But the same sort of vibe.
I didn’t realise that was a book as well. We got it free in the newspaper.
A couple of years ago? Yeah, I got that too.
It’s such a hard choice… Would you take your kids if you went travelling. If the only thing that was going to make you happy was going to live somewhere else but your kids didn’t want to. What would you do?
I suppose you’d have to wait till they were adults. I don’t really want kids to be honest.
Really? I do like this freedom.
No. It’s really enjoyable, not being responsible. Well, only being responsible for yourself.
It’s just such a big thing, as soon as you have a kid that’s the rest of your life attached to someone else, or a family. What if you hated your child?
That would be awful. But I think there’s probably a part of all parents that hates their children.
Most likely. On a slightly different tact, if you had a zoo, which animals would you keep in it?
I’d have animals that were extinct in it. So it was exclusively an extinct zoo.
And then breed and rehabilitate them?
Yeah, to put them back. Dodos, Woolly Mammoths, Sabre Tooth Tigers…Umm, what else would I have? I don’t really know a lot about extinct animals, there’s only about three that I’ve ever heard of.
Probably some sort of eagle?
Yeah, some kind of rare eagle.
Dinosaurs? You’d have to make sure you had a couple as well, in case something went wrong, or one died…
They’d have to reproduce.
Imagine if you were that animal, and you were put with the other animal, and you were the only two of that animal in the world, and you didn’t fancy her… I’m sure instinct would take over.
Yeah, I think animals probably don’t have the same level of like, “oo, I like her” sort of thing.
Maybe. There was this really interesting article in the National Geographic about animals showing intelligence. And there was this really sad story about a parrot. A woman taught a parrot to speak, not just in repetition, but actually knowing what the words meant. So it could do things like if you held up something it could say it’s name and what colour it was and things like that.
That’s a parrot?
Yeah.
Wow.
But one of the things it said which was just so horrible, was just “tree”. And when it said “tree” it meant it wanted to be carried out to the corridor in the lab so it could look out of the window at an elm tree, because it wanted to be free. It’s just like, you teach an animal how to communicate for the first time, the only speaking animal, and it just tells you it wants freedom.
Yeah yeah yeah, that’s bizarre. Humans are horrible.
Yeah. So a zoo for extinct animals would be really good for helping them out.
And you’re offering something that no one else is offering.
Exactly. God I hate that parrot story.
It’s quite sad isn’t it.
They didn’t even linger on it. There was a dog as well, when you showed it a photo of a toy it could go into the next room and pick out the real toy. And about how only a few animals could see in the mirror.
Really? And recognise their own reflection.
Yeah. We have a chaffinch at our house, and my dad’s kitchen windows are mirrored. And everyday it comes and sits at the window and pecks at the glass, because it thinks it’s found a mate. But it’s just its reflection. It’s so sad. And it’s not going to find another mate, because it’s fallen in love with its own self.
It’s just going to suffer.
Yep, a long lonely summer of being heartbroken…
By himself. That would make a great story.
Yeah, I wrote a poem about it.
Really? That’s quite bizarre, constantly breaking your own heart.
Monkeys can see their own reflection though. In the same article, they were saying how they put spots of red paint on the monkey’s head, and they wouldn’t try to take it off the monkey in the mirror, they’d took it off their own head. So they realised that they could recognise their own reflection. Quite clever…I wouldn’t have though of that myself…Yep. Poor parrot.
Yeah that’s tragic. And the chaffinch. Pathetic really.
It’s horrible. I tried to make my Dad un-mirror the windows but we don’t know how.
You could just smash them.
(Nice expresso man brings brownie.)
Ok, if you ran away from home, -the boy who ran away- where would you go?
Um, running away from home. I’d go to Brazil I think. I love Brazil. I recon that would be really exciting. It’s a big mixture of Japanese people, and Germans, and obviously Portuguese. So they’re all mixed together and they end up looking quite weird. People that you can’t quite place. I find that really interesting. It seems really lively and dangerous as well. I think in poorer places, and South America, people treat life differently, they value it in a different way.
I’d definitely like to live in Brazil. The whole atmosphere would be different.
I think if I did that I wouldn’t ever be able to come back. England is so kind of like…
Would you need to come back though?
Well maybe not.
I think life’s too short to call one place your home.
Mmm, I agree.
Well that’s kind of the point of running away.
Why come back.
Depends what your reasons were for leaving I guess.
I mean, I’ve got nothing to run away from really. Apart from sometimes you need to run away from yourself, when you’re really not happy. I dunno.
I heard that the name Mystery Jets came from a toy plane that flew into Henry’s room and it had a little note in it.
Yeah it had a scroll in it.
He never told you what the note said- what would you like to think was written on it?
I don’t know; I’d like to think that it said some bizarre riddle, which he’s still trying to work out to this day.
What would the answer hold?
I don’t think the answer is really what you need; it’s more the act of doing it.
Of solving the riddle.
Yeah.
Maybe, in effect, the riddle was the fact that you had to make the band. And you’re solving it everyday by writing songs.
Yeah, and kind of getting closer to the answer. It’s got to be something unobtainable, because you don’t really want the journey to end. I don’t think anyone’s just going to wake up one day and think ‘I’ve found the answer to life’. The riddle is just like progression really. Going onwards and just not stopping. Which I suppose is kind of obvious and boring.
No not really.
I think in that attitude lots of things get thrown to a place where they move by themselves.
Trying to solve things?
Yeah, just moving. If you move quickly, you’re going to hit things faster, and with much more of an explosion that you would if you sort of stroll. And because you move quicker, things happen quicker. Like if you ride around London on a bicycle, the streets actually look like things you’ve never seen before. Well, they did for me anyway. I was riding around Pimlico and Victoria, and just because I was that little bit higher up, and I was going quicker, I saw things that I’d never seen before. You notice things quicker, and you forget things quicker.
That reminds me a little bit of that scene from Amelie, where she takes the blind man by the arm and walks him down the street, describing everything she can see and smell, really really really quick. Literally just down the street and across the road, and then she just leaves him.
And he’s just had his mind blown.
Yeah. So. If you had to send your own message, in a plane or a bottle or whatever…what would it be?
If I was to send a message?
Yeah. If you’d been the person sending the plane. ‘Hi Henry!’
‘How are you doing?’. Hah. No. I might put something really meaningful, like ‘Stop Now’. I don’t know, I don’t think that whatever I put would have any effect.
It may do…
It may do…but you have to consider the consequences of what you write. I think I might just put something really mundane…or something Biblical like ‘thou shalt forgive’. I dunno.
That’s not really that mundane.
No, it’s not is it. (chortle)
Do you want some biscuit?
For inspiration?
Yes.
Eat more wafer biscuits. Maybe I could put that.
I’d say that’s pretty good.
It’s pretty incredible. That’s as good as it gets really.
Onto some more vaguely related questions…What do you think was the best invention of all time?
Human life, really.
Was that an invention?
It depends what an invention is. I mean, it’s something that was created- whether that was by a bunch of apes, or through evolution, or some sort of weird rock minerals in the ocean…I dunno, what’s an invention? Something happens, somewhere. The good thing about human life is that it’s the core to every other invention.
Yeah, that’s true.
I don’t know. I mean, the bicycle is pretty good as well. It’s a great experience to nip around town on one.
Which bicycle though? Penny farthing…
Yeah, I think the penny farthing. Or the Harley Davidson.
That’s not so much for nipping around town on though…
More for showing off, check me out, on my bike. But yeah, one of the two- human life or bicycles.
That’s variety. What do you think, or hope, will be the best invention of all time?
An instant songwriter. So basically you can have an idea, like, I want to write a tragic lovesong about blah blah blah, and you just put it into the instant song writing machine, plug it in for a minute, if you want like a three minute song, or a minute and a half if you want more of the resolute, ten minute, tribal stuff, and then ‘ding ding!’ it comes out on a CD. You learn it, and there’s chord progressions transcribed on manuscript paper, and then you’ve got your song. And there’s a hit button, and you’re only allowed to push it one or two times a year, and that’s when it gives you a pop gem. I recon that would be quite cool.
Does that not take out all the beauty of the creation of art?
Absolutely.
Who would make the machine?
That’s a point…it would have to be some mega-genius. Get Ray Davies to do it.
But then you’d have no variety.
That’s true. It would all come out sounding like Waterloo Sunset.
You could say that essentially, that machine is a symbol for all other life and music that’s already happened. Because if you have an idea of what you want to write a song about, you look subconsciously, or consciously, for inspiration from all around you anyway, so it’s not all coming from yourself in the first place. So essentially, everything around you is the machine already.
Yeah. I think the machine is kind of a full stop on everything as well. It’s the end of progression. It takes everything and can absorb everything up to that point, but it can’t go any further, it’s only us that can do that. That’s kind of a bad answer.
No, not really. Because you do then have to take the song that it gives you and make it your own. Because anyone could take that song and do something different with it, and it could be awful or it could be brilliant.
The machine is just basically our brain, really. Like our brains are just a store of everything you’ve ever seen or thought was beautiful. It just offers you an answer, a solution. It’s your subconscious. A feeling that kind of gets stuck in your head for a long time. I think it’s a good feeling. It attracts other things. So by the time a few weeks have past, it’s bigger than it was…it grows.
Or you share it with other people and they help you out.
I don’t like doing that, I think it’s too personal. It’s almost like the other things that come around it are armour, so when it does come out it’s got skin, it’s protected.
What, the other musical elements?
Yeah, the arrangements, how the drum beat could be…but the main thing is the melody.
And the idea, and the message.
What you want to say, yeah. Well it’s not necessarily true, it’s true to me. Everyone’s got their own way. Some people can just cast things off, really carelessly, it’s amazing. Just naturally.
Do you know the song, ‘Love is just a Four Lettered Word’, Joan Baez sings it but Bob Dylan originally wrote it…and he was just kind of messing around on the piano or the guitar or something with Joan Baez, he just wrote it whilst they were hanging out…and then she covered it, and he heard it on the radio and rang her up and was like ‘wow that’s a great song, congratulations!’ and she was like, ‘it’s your song, you wrote it’. And he didn’t remember.
He forgot.
He is just such a genius that he can spew out songs like that. Or just really forgetful.
Or both. I don’t know.
I’d like to be able to do that.
To be able to do that?
Yeah. It happened sometimes, like not with songs, but you write a poem or something, or do a piece of art, and forget that you’ve done it, and when you look back on it you don’t recognise it as your own. And that’s the best times, because you can look at it completely objectively.
That’s really nice. I guess it’s hard to do with songs, because you put so much into making them, that when it’s over you want to get as far away as possible.
Yeah, with a song it can’t really be like a piece or writing or a drawing or something, you can’t do it wherever you are…
Well you can,
If you have long enough. A few more mundane questions. What’s your favourite breakfast cereal?
I used to be a massive cereal fan. When I was younger it was kind of all I ever ate…like five or six bowls a day. Lucky charms were like my…I used to love lucky charms.
Oh yeah, they were quite chewy.
Yeah, they had those marshmallow bits and then bits that were more kind of like…
Cereal?
Like wheetos…
Cheerios?
Yeah, like cheerios. That’s the one. I used to love the leprechaun on the cover of the cereal box, the lucky charm guy. He was quite inspiring.
I don’t remember the cover so much as the sweetness of the cereal.
I just think it’s a really great idea….’Lucky Charms’ (said in Irish accent) this kind of Irish cereal…and you felt really lucky, with all this magic stuff. And grown-ups hated it, because it was too sweet and sugary. And it’s not healthy in the least.
What do you think needs to be done in the world to make it a happier place?
I think people need to start thinking more about what they do. I don’t know, just making sacrifices, and realising that what they want isn’t always best for the situation. I don’t know. I think some people are really stupid…to me; it just looks like that’s the only possible reason why certain things happen. And if someone’s stupid, then maybe there’s something you can do, maybe there’s not. And if people make mistakes by their own set of judgements or values…it’s like what I said earlier, it’s silly to compare people, which I’m sure most people know, but if someone goes out and does things the way they see is right, but the more you can try and jump out of your own box and into someone else’s shoes, the better really.
I had a life changing moment the other day…well, it’s not that significant. But do you like Regina Spektor?
Yeah
Have you heard her song the ghost of corporate future?
No
It’s all about this business man, and he goes out and starts jumping in all the puddles with his shoes off, and it’s because he’s had a visit from the ghost of corporate future, who told him ‘people are just people, they shouldn’t make you nervous’. And it’s so simple, but for some reason I’ve actually mentally changed since listening to it. You have to listen to the whole thing really…hah.
I’ll have to listen to it, yeah.
Well I’ve been trying to spread the word, and it actually has been having an effect on people. The magazine’s non-profit, and when I’m out I sell them to people…and people are like…I love the world a lot of the time, but sometimes people are just so dismissive. You must get it a lot with your music- before people even know what something is they’re ready to dismiss it. But recently when anyone has been like that, I’ve told them to listen to the song, and given them a magazine, and I’ve got emails back saying how it’s changed their perspective on things. Which is really good. So you should listen to it.
I will, I will. You should play it to me.
I will, I will.
(chortle)Like one guy who didn’t like Wolfmother…he then went and listened to them.
I’m not too keen on Wolfmother. Do you like them?
Yeah I do. But then again, I like everything. Hah.
I just find them too macho.
Andrew Stockdale was really nice. And, he has an amazing voice and stage presence.
I think that they’re good. I just don’t believe in it.
You don’t believe in it?
No. When I look at them…It just doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just such a parody.
I suppose with a lot of heavier rock and roll, the lyrics can’t ever…well, they can mean something, but they’re not going to be as personal because they’ve got to fit the genre.
So many of the songs are just about sex. They’re basically just doing what Led Zeppelin did, but without the art of the skill. And even Led Zeppelin weren’t particularly masochistic.
They were extremely cultured.
Yeah, they had songs that were extremely sexy, but a lot of their stuff was based on J.R. Tolkien, and Lord of the Rings, fantastical stuff. And Robert Plant is as much of a woman as a man, you know…just the way he moves. There’s a lot of it in Australia, like The Datsuns or whatever, Jet.
Oh dear, The Datsuns were in issue one. Hahaha.
I just don’t like it. Cowboy boots and jeans so tight you can see their fucking bollocks coming out. I just find it so typical, like Man…Woman. You know. Is it really that simple? No, it’s not that simple. There’s a whole fucking spectrum in between that which is far more interesting.
Sometimes it is.
Yeah, sometimes it is, when you’ve had a few drinks or whatever.
You should read that. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense…
I’m just being assumptive about a band I know nothing about.
No, no. During the interview we were talking about how people compare them to the old rock greats, and kind of saying why not do it, if you can. But at the same time I agree with what you’re saying. It’s such a cliché.
You’ve got a platform.
The good thing about it is that it means that you can hear the music live, because those bands are doing it, and you don’t just have to get your Led Zep CDs out.
It’s definitely powerful, I mean, they’re popular, they sell records. It’s obviously got something. But I think if people are going to listen to you, then you should say something worth saying.
What else have we got…do you like the Black Keys?
I don’t’ know anything about them. I like The Mules. I know Ed, the drummer. He’s nice.
He’s playing at Reepham Festival. Would you like to play? Haha.
When is that?
26th July.
I’d love to.
(Sorry, small plug for Reepham Fest. Followed by much Travel travel talkyspeak. )
Do you know the WOOFF organic farms? You subscribe to the organisation and they give you the contact details for these farms all over the world, you go work on them for board and lodge.
I think my sister did something like that. It sounds good.
Well I think that’s kind of how we want to run our farm in New Zealand (life plan).
It’s a good idea.
I’m looking forward to it. (hah) Would you ever do that?
No. I don’t ever want to settle anywhere. I mean, the thought of it actually really makes me feel pretty sad.
What about less settling, more setting up a community base somewhere. I wouldn’t ever let something hold me back from moving on. I think until you’ve travelled and seen a lot of places you can’t ever decide where you want to be.
Yeah, that’s true. I quite like being alone. You get a lot done. I just think…I like company, but having that responsibility for other people.
I’m just so looking forward to travelling and having time for yourself. You don’t get it in everyday life. You probably don’t get it at all?
What, time on my own?
Yeah.
Sometimes. I went to Istanbul on my own, a couple of years ago. It was good.
What did you do?
I did a lot of drawing, a lot of writing, and just walked around and got a suntan…met some nice people. I ended up getting a bus through the night to a little town on the Dead Sea called Mazarin. I met some people and we stayed together, then I got the bus back, left, and that was it. It was good. But you can do that.
YOU can do that!
I suppose. But I’m responsible for the people in our band and our manager, who I really like.
It doesn’t have to be forever though.
No, I don’t think it will be.
(I meant the travel)
I’d like it to be. But not in the conventional touring, album, touring, album, kind of sense.
Once you have a bond like that with people it wont ever go.
Well things will come and go, and different points in our lives will require us to be different things, I don’t really know. Anything could happen at any point.
Maybe things would be a lot better if you got some time alone. It sounds so cliché, finding yourself…but when you come back together it would be stronger I think. Have you heard, in Bhutan, they don’t measure Gross National Produce, they measure Gross National Happiness.
Where’s Bhutan?
No idea. (chuckle)
In Indonesia or something? How do you measure someone’s happiness?
Well, I thought it was a lovely idea until I read how they do it. They just send out a questionnaire asking, ’How happy are you?’. On a scale of 1 -100 I think. And then they ask how happy you think your friends are, and your family. But what if you’ve just had a good or bad day?
Or it was your birthday.
It’s a flaw in the plan.
It’s a sweet idea isn’t it.
It’s the kind of thing you’d do if you were in a fantasy of if you had your own country… with a zoo full of extinct people…ah bugger…people. I mean animals.
I think people would have been better actually.
It would be huge.
That’s sort of what a prison is, isn’t it. Extinct people.
Yeah. That’s deep. How are they extinct though- are they dead to themselves?
Well probably most of them are. Well I mean, they’re not dead to the outside world, but…
They’re trying to make them extinct.
A place we just brush all the bad things away too.
Maybe that’s our new kind of evolution. Like people with a disability…I guess they would have died out, but now we put them in a mental asylum or whatever…trying to make a ‘purer’ society.
I think it’s just the way humans are. Like, you find someone who you think is incredibly beautiful, you fall in love with them, you have children. That’s making a purer society. You learn from the mistakes of your parents. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing actually. Well, it obviously depends on how you go about it, like Hitler…was wrong.
I watched this really interesting documentary once about how he sent teams of people out to Africa to take measurements of the local people, because he thought they were the origins of the Arian race. Even though they were dark skinned and dark haired. And he got them all measured up and tested, looking for some god like ancient roots…I can’t really remember the details. And did you know as well, it was said he was the greatest actor in all of Germany.
Actor?
Yes. His photographer, Leni Reisenthal said it. She did that legendary Olympics film in the 60s.
Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah.
And she did all of the Nazi propaganda. And basically, every bit of Hitler that anyone ever saw was him acting, and her directing. And he admitted it, he knew he was doing it. I found it bizarre. He could consciously act as a great speaker and dictator…but in real life…I watched this documentary on it and they showed the bits she cut out of the films, and he’s just crazy. That might have been the documentary trying to sway it, I don’t know.
What was he doing?
Just generally freaking out at people, acting really schizophrenically. Just generally acting like a mad dictator crazy….how you expect that he should have been acting, instead of the very controlled exterior that we are presented with, that he was acting.
That’s a bit bizarre.
Oh bollocks. We’ve only got three minutes left. What’s your most treasured childhood memory?
Um…building a tree house in…no, I never built a tree house. I always wanted to build a tree house. My most treasured childhood memory…I don’t know, there’s too many and not enough. I can’t really say. I’ve got the images but they’re not….Oh I know. I was in our living room, I was like seven years old, and there was like this bit of cardboard leaning up against the radiator, and I used to piss on this bit of cardboard, just because I could. And it would go down into the carpet and dry off or whatever.(I laugh here, a lot.) And I’d done it about ten times and then one day I was like dancing around in the living room and I went over to piss on the bit of cardboard and I didn’t see my dad at the other end of the living room, reading, and he looked down over his newspaper and was like ‘What are you doing!’ and spanked me over his knee. And that’s probably my favourite memory. I mean, it was really scary at the time. I mean, I’ve got sweeter memories, obviously, that’s just one I can never forget. Like there’s one of my parents room was kind of blue, like being on the water in a swimming pool. I don’t know, there are loads. But that’s one I can’t forget.
Interview & Words- Ali Hewson
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