Philippa Perry: “I could not wait to grow up.”

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. I was such an awful person that nobody would want to marry me. What do you mean by awful? I don't think they were interested in me as an individual. I could not wait to grow up. I felt like I was in prison. I had to break the ice on alcohol-based deodorant at my boarding school because it was so bloody cold. Good Lord. When you put your inchoate, miserable feelings into words, you can take ownership of the feelings. Hello and welcome to Full Disclosure, a podcast project conceived entirely to let me spend more time with interesting people than I would ever get on the radio show.

0:46That's almost an understatement in your case. Philippa Perry, welcome. Hello. Polyglot? Or not polyglot, polymath, I'm thinking. Just a drifter, just a chancer, really. And most recently, a novelist, a crime fiction novelist, which we will work our way towards. But we will begin as we always do at the beginning. And I had to double check. I mean, not because of any sort of confusion necessarily, but elements of your childhood sounded as though you'd been born much earlier than 1957. yes i think they do i agree with you my parents were both very old and their parents were very old i'm practically edwardian the the i didn't see charles dance was here not long ago and he he had a very old father who had fought in the burr war so we're not quite in that territory no second world war but they were very mature in the second world war um and by edwardian we mean And very much the sort of almost Victorian in seen and not heard, but also emotional regulation on a slightly terrifying level.

1:56Yes. I mean, there's only certain emotions that are allowed and crying or being unhappy when we're not of the allowed type. Speaking of anachronisms, when I read that your mother's family owned a cotton mill. Several, I think. Several customers, but presumably were nearing the end of their production life by the time you came along. Very, very luckily, way before I came along, they got bought out by Cortells, which was great because the cotton industry in the northwest of England did go down. So they got out in time and managed to salvage some money from it. So there's a sort of, I mean, I know that the family described themselves as upper middle class.

2:41If I've understood some of your story correctly, you sort of thought of yourself, particularly went to finishing school later, the manufacturing middle class was a slightly different categorisation. I think my parents thought they were upper middle class because people didn't move about so much. So in their milieu of, you know, just outside Warrington, they were quite posh. But all I had to do was go to Switzerland and meet some real aristocrats or come down south. And I find that, oh, no, I'm not posh at all. So they both inherited then. So mum's family had sold the business and your dad inherited a civil engineering company and a farm.

3:24Yes. So a comfortable childhood then, materially speaking. Materially, very comfortable, yeah. But because of the war, I think, they were not spenders. They were savers. And things like double cream was rationed. I mean, we didn't have rationing because I'm not that old. But things like, oh, cream's very special. We can only have that on Sundays. And always mindful of don't waste anything. And I think that's a leftover from the war. My father used to collect string that came off parcels. Really? and tie it up into into new balls so nothing was wasted you're always at pains to balance the sort of i'll use the word privations that might be a little bit unfair there's the sorts of emotional privations with the with the intent of your parents they weren't deliberately doing anything no cruel or no not at all they they did the best they could with what they knew and what they had which meant that we were somewhat you know inhibited when it came to maybe expressing ourselves or having opinions that differed from theirs right so I mean you wouldn't argue with your parents really it was a bit of a waste of time yeah my sister would argue right but I didn't bother because I'm the youngest so I saw where that got you like nowhere so I so if my mother wanted to you know dress me up like a princess or something I'd just let her buy the clothes but then I'd never wear them yeah oh okay so this is what you mean by being not seen for who you were when you were a child I don't think they were interested in me as an individual I think I It was just a matter of she is our daughter.

5:14And this would be quite normal. Yeah, absolutely normal. And I wouldn't know that it was not a good idea to be like that as parents at the time. And when did you become aware of what other people's families were like? Families that were perhaps a bit cosier or a bit warmer? It was amazing when I went round to other people's houses and I saw that children were allowed to disagree with their parents and that was fine. and there was more warmth and laughter and more touching going on in other people's houses. More sort of cuddling, more physical, more hugs and things. So I've got, or steer is a word that's in my mind.

5:51I think that's not fair though. Is that not steer? No, I mean, they were very nice and sociable people and they had a lot of people round them. Okay. And we were encouraged to drink alcohol and, you know, it was good in some respects. So you can't berate people for not having a vocabulary that they just don't have. Exactly. Right. Yeah, that was very well put. So when did you become you? I mean, did you show things at school that you hadn't shown at home? School was absolutely horrible for me because we didn't diagnose dyslexia in those days and I'm dyslexic. so I was just put in the you know the remedial stream and uh told that I was lazy did that annoy your parents were they aspirational in that way did they want you to well I think they thought because I was a girl it didn't really matter because I just marry someone yes and uh I was sent to Switzerland and my mother thought well maybe you'll meet someone with a brother and my father said it'd be nice if you if you married someone with a stately home so we could live in the lodge they said at the end of the drive i mean i don't know if he was joking he probably was but only half i mean only half joking yeah and then they thought for a dyslexia it's not a great idea but then they thought secretarial college might be the answer right because then i'd uh work for someone and have a boss and then i'd marry my boss they thought and this would be an explicit conversation as the expectations of you were to make a good match yes it's another i mean it's slightly anachronistic i mean because you should really have been of a generation who were being primed to break through all of these barriers and smash my contemporaries were yes like there was people at my school who were going to go to medical school we're going to become engineers we're going to be you know write books or something but um when I went for the careers talk they they looked at my record and thought maybe maybe you do well in retail maybe a job at Marks and Spencers did you know that you had dyslexia even though you didn't have a name for it did you see other people's relationship with words and and books no I didn't really I just thought I was pretty slow at learning how to spell and um so you would blame yourself for it yeah blame myself for it yeah um and then given what you've told us about your parents you wouldn't be expected to perform well academically so you sort of were able to just drift out of teachers consciousness yeah and uh I never really had any idea of what job or what career I would do at all so i did this secretarial course and i couldn't spell so i'd go for a job as a secretary and i wouldn't be able to keep it because you know we had no spell check in those days it was all just sort of type it's a bit of a bit of an obstacle yeah a bit of a sparkling career but i went to uh one job at a firm of solicitors in oxford and they said well you're a hopeless typist but you're you're quite good at um seeing what the work is about so would you like to be a solicitor's clerk and we've got these small debts that we'd like you to help us collect through the county court and that was easy because they gave me a typist so i was okay then and i think it's because i was quite jolly and i got on with everyone that they said oh we're not going to sack her okay so they saw something that other people hadn't bothered to try to find

9:43Hello from me, crime journalist Andy Hughes I'm one of the hosts of The Crime Agents This is true crime like you've never heard before And I'm the ex-cop Neil Basu Well ex-cop isn't really doing it justice, isn't Neil? I mean you did head up every major department of Europe's biggest police force The Mighty Met You're no slouch in the crime department yourself After 20 years as an investigative reporter And also as an undercover journalist On this podcast, we tackle the major crime stories in the news, like the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as well as delving into some of the most famous cases in criminal history, like the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

10:25Check out The Crime Agents on Global Player, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

10:34I keep trying to steer you back to childhood and you keep jumping. Yeah, let's not stay there. Well, that's not a coincidence then. Because I'm very conscious of not trying to frame any questions that make me sound like an argument to psychotherapists. I could not wait to grow up. Right, that's what I wanted. I could not wait to grow up because I felt the shackles and I felt like I was in prison. And I'm not saying I had a bad time. No, I get that. But I just wanted to escape. So where did the idea come from or the knowledge come from that there was a world out there that you would have a relationship with that bore very little relationship to the world that you knew?

11:14Even though I'm dyslexic, I can read. And I read by word recognition rather than by phonetics. And I've read a lot. And so I think I lived in books and I realized there was another world out there. and even if it was Barbara Pym's world, it was another world out there that I wanted to experience. And you would have a place in it. And I would have a place in it. And I felt like when I read things like Jane Austen, I learnt about people's inner lives and I recognised that I had an inner life and I could cling to this. And I used to write a lot. I used to write loads and loads of journals and diaries and this sort of kept me company.

12:01But not as a substitute for real life, just as a holding tactic before you started living real life. Yes, that's right. I won't stay here for too long, but there's a couple of other things. No, there's a couple of other things I think are really interesting and boarding school at 10, that's pretty brutal. It's very grim, yeah. But I had read Mallory Towers. That's a help. So I was looking forward to it and it wasn't like Mallory Towers. No, I don't think anything was like Mallory Towers. No, it wasn't like St. Clair's either. Well, my school was a bit like If, so some fictional representations are actually accurate.

12:32I remember If. I can remember watching If. You went to Ampleforth, didn't you? I did, yes. You've done your research. So, no, that was austere and fairly grim. But I suppose... I had to break the ice on alcohol-based deodorant at my boarding school because it was so bloody cold. Good Lord. The dorms were unheated. but I don't again I'm conscious of not sounding like an amateur psychotherapist but it would be less traumatic for you because you hadn't been ripped from a warm cuddly home or not I think it might not have been a warm cuddly home but it was what I knew as home and it was safer than than the you know the the groups of girls that you try and get into and can't and all that and then In Switzerland.

13:22And then we'll arrive at when your life actually began. And Switzerland was weird. That sounds like a novel. I wasn't as posh as the other girls. No. So they were talking a different language to me, and I hadn't got a copy of that script. So I found that quite hard. So the answer to any question in the first 22, 23 years of your life was that you were being primed to find a husband. I did find one when I was 20, actually. Well done, ahead of schedule.

13:48But he didn't last. No. and you were probably conforming were you by doing just sort of thinking well this is what I'm supposed to do I thought I was such an awful person that nobody would want to marry me so I think the first person that showed any interest I thought well this is my only chance what do you mean by awful well I didn't have that many friends right and um I didn't I felt on the outskirts of my family so if i'm trying to make sense of this it's because i'm not very nice it's your fault yes it is okay you're a very good psychotherapist and well and then the final piece of the jigsaw is when you were asked i think by a family friend and and then by your father whether you were whether you were having a happy childhood i read that twice because the question would normally be did you have a happy childhood but you were asked mid mid mid childhood yeah when When I was about 12 or something, I was handing around the canopies at one of their parties.

14:47And, you know, a gentleman said, are you having a happy childhood? And I went, no, not particularly. It's not a question you're supposed to answer, honestly. It's like saying, how are you? Yeah, well, I didn't know that. No, I know you didn't. Didn't pick up the signals, I'm afraid. And then your father asked you the same question. You gave him the same answer. He overheard it. Right. And then I got a real big telling off. Of course you're having a happy childhood. How dare you? That's extraordinary. Well, you know, he went through hideous boarding school. He must have had to desensitise himself to manage that.

15:23He went through the war. He went through rationing. He was in Italy in the war. And so my life must have seemed idyllic to him. And, I mean, a bit of subconscious envy probably as well that things were so easy for you compared to what he was doing. Oh, I don't think he'd ever want to be a girl. No, but just in terms of, you know, not having to go through a lot of the things that he had gone through. Yeah. I mean, I find that fascinating, that kind of stiff upper lip is the lazy way. Yeah. But it's also the accurate way of describing it. And I don't think a stiff upper lip is all bad. I was just about to say that.

16:02It saves some people in some environments. It makes you keep it all together. I mean, when you hold your feelings prisoner, the danger is that they might riot and rebel. But on the other hand, sometimes they don't. And sometimes that does keep everything in a nice, neat package. It doesn't mean you're living life or feeling life to the full, but you're getting by and you're making jokes and you're having some sort of life. you know it might be better than falling apart and of course everybody's different so some people that might sound like repression but for other people they may only have three gears three or four emotional they don't have gear five that they're denying the existence exactly they're happy in yeah gear three and gear four yeah when did the first inklings of of your fascination with things like that begin to appear when did you feel like how well i've read a lot yeah and when you read a lot you see life from other people's point of view even if they are just fictional characters and so I was very interested in the idea of inner life and then as soon as I could I started reading Freud and um books on psychology was this when you got to Middlesex or was this before oh um this would be before that just reading for fun yeah just reading curiosity Yeah, yeah, for fun.

17:31When I came to London, I discovered the St. John's Wood Library, which has got a huge psychology section, and I sort of worked my way through that. In search of what, Philippa? Just to find out, just to find out how human beings work, just to find out how I work. I don't think anyone becomes a psychotherapist because they've had an easy time of it. you know they're they're we're interested in psychology because we're trying to work out our own the wounded healer i think it's called but is it also a search for forgiveness are you also looking to find grounds to forgive yourself and understand that you weren't the reason why no that was that would be far too advanced for me subconsciously then um it was just why would you want to work all this stuff out because it's interesting it's just grabbing my interest Well, what grabbed my interest was that brief career in sort of debt collection, it sounds about.

18:32Oh, yeah. I worked at the solicitors. And then because I was collecting small debts through the county. Don't just say that. What did you mean? Did you bang on their door in hobnail boots and things like that or put the frighteners on them? Well, I'll tell you what happened. I had to use someone to try and find missing debtors. And they were pretty useless. Right. So I thought I'd be better at this. so I go round to people's houses and I go is Tom in oh he's moved where's he gone to it's Nan's of course he's Nan's just remind me of Nan's address you go into full character yeah and then I'd find Tom at Nan's or whatever and I'd go Tom Tom Tom this 49 pounds 50 you owe the co-op what we're going to do about it and he said I could pay 4 pounds a week I said Tom you can't I know what your income is.

19:25Should we just have it at 50p a week? And, you know, it might go on for years, but we won't go after you at court if this money keeps coming in. And so I was doing much better as a sort of debt collector than I would be if I was getting court judgments and going through the county court. And so I just thought, well, I can do this. Like an empathic detective is what I'm hearing. This is fantastic. Yeah, I can do this without working for solicitors. They can employ me. I can be freelance. And because I collected debts through the county court, I knew all the solicitors in Oxford and they knew me because, you know, all the junior people that were doing this junior work would sort of hang about in the waiting room.

20:09So I knew them. So it was easy to get work. and so I set up what we call an inquiry agency which is mostly tracing missing debtors a bit of marital work a lot of serving of court process right and it was quite easy because it was before the internet so it wasn't complicated by you know well I suppose a lot of things are a lot easier now there's the internet but I'm quite glad I did it IRL and you sound confident now for the first time yeah because i've got my own business yeah and and you're good at it as well i'm good at it i'm making money yes i've uh saved some money i've uh i've got married in the meantime and we've managed to buy a house with a mortgage um just from because he came in with me in the business i employed him oh okay and uh then we got married he was a graduate of university college Oxford and that's what your parents wanted when they yeah they must be so happy so competent confident and competent then yeah which is yeah quite a big moment I presume it's yeah and this is we're talking in a way without being pat life has begun finally sort of has begun but I'm still very much conforming okay and I'm very much my father's daughter doing what he'd approve of he really liked the enterprise i was showing and you liked that he liked it yeah okay yeah very much so and because of the enterprise he wanted me to be a non-exec director on um the company firm the building and civil engineering firm so i did that as well how did that make you feel because that's almost well approved of by my father exactly but then i found that i really didn't like the work but i sort of stuck it out for about 20 years being a non-exec director of this company.

22:08Even while you were doing lots of other things? Yeah I was doing lots of other things I mean it wasn't full time. Sure but it But it didn't thrill me. But did it bring you closer to him at all? I think it got his approval yeah. Is that the same thing? His approval isn't him getting to know me is it? Well it's not. It's me conforming to him. So I would get lost in that. Yes. Yes. um why did you run out of enthusiasm for the business what what what what broke what changed when i'd been a inquiry agent for one year that was very exciting when i'd been inquiry agent for two years that was like the first year all over again so i didn't feel i was having two years of experience so much as one year again and again because that you know it didn't get more exciting or anything um and um i was still in oxford and i sort of felt the pull to london i wanted to be in london where it happens and i'm not ambitious you know i happen to have a job and i'm making money and that's good but i'm not ambitious and i thought what would it be like you know to work for a new company and uh you know meet new people and do new things and so i got a job at mcdonald's to work in London.

23:33How? Did you just apply? Yeah, I applied because I saw an advert, not an advert, I saw an article about them in a Sunday paper magazine about this new company that didn't have knives and forks. You ate, because Wimpy had knives and forks, remember? This was a new company coming over from America, didn't have knives and forks, go ahead company. They'll be, and I thought, well, they'll be looking for management material and I went in on a trainee manager scheme. Did you sell the business in Oxford or did it just peter out? So you had some money in the bank. No, I did really well. Did you? Yeah, because I used to share an office with this guy who sold car accessories.

24:15And this is before the internet. So he was selling them in the back of papers. And I got far more mail than he did. And he was saying, what are you doing? And I told him about the business. I told him how it worked. And I sold it for£7 ,000. Good Lord. Which was a lot of money. Yes. Yeah. And gives you a freedom as well. I'll jump ahead a bit now. When you were studying at university, you got quite frustrated with the lackadaisical approach of the young people and the lack of routine and getting up in the morning. So you liked... I've got a bit of a work ethic. So even with seven grand in the bank, you weren't going to go to Goa?

24:49No! Going to McDonald's for a year is better than going to Goa. And I'll tell you why. Because you meet people from all around the world that come and work in McDonald's and they were all very interesting and this is a terrible thing to say but I hadn't met very many working class people before and I learnt something that shamed me which was, oh my God, they're intelligent and I had assumed they weren't and I was deeply ashamed of that assumption and that assumption came from the way I'd been educated by my parents, I think. We have what we have because we jolly well deserve it. We work bloody hard and it's a meritocracy that we inhabit.

25:36And lo and behold, we've come out near the top of it. Yeah, never mind what they each inherited, which we've touched on. Yes, the Americans say born on third base and think they've scored a triple, which I suppose you have to tell yourself, otherwise you might be broken by the injustice of it all. Or you might be humbled, which I don't think is any bad thing. Which is worse. Anyway, I was fully humbled. And I think that did me a lot of good. So humbling aside, were you liking yourself more by now? Would you have stopped thinking of yourself as being awful? No, not yet. Really? Didn't really like myself yet.

26:10You were successful? I was working at McDonald's. But did you not feel? No, I was enjoying it. I enjoyed it a lot. Okay, so this was your real finishing school? Yeah. Not the actual Swiss finishing school? No, I learnt to ski and speak French. but Oxford Circus McDonald's was amazing and it was a great year but we were worked hard like sometimes I'd be I'd work nine days straight without a day off sometimes I'd be supervising the night cleaning you know really? so I mean covering all the bases you went to Hamburger University yes I did I've got a degree in Hamburgerology Thank you very much. Actually, that degree was not a bad degree.

26:59I mean, it only took me two weeks to get. Okay. You know, as far as qualifications go, it doesn't sound very impressive. But actually, they gave us the basics of psychology. They gave us how to motivate staff. They gave us things like, you know, if someone's doing well, praise them. If someone's playing up, ignore them. You know, things like that that I found really interesting. and it was the first time I heard the phrase assume ass of you and ass of me which you know being a wordy person I liked very much indeed it is a nice word play um what was the difference between you and the working class people that you met not as much as I thought no what I really liked about them is that they weren't so held in by societal rules and they seem to be more themselves they knew how to be themselves middle class people are told how to behave very upper class people aren't and very working class people aren't and they've got more of a sort of freedom and i picked up on that and i liked it a lot because middle class people are always trying to fit a template that they're not entirely clear they're not very sure of their position so they're a bit insecure so you have to hold your knife like this and uh and it's a polarity isn't it if you're at the top or the bottom there's no confusion yeah exactly it's and and And there's less security somehow in the middle.

28:43You can go up and down. Whereas if you're up or you're down, you know where you are. I love the idea of some of the McDonald's stuff being psychological fieldwork in disguise. Really? Well, what we had there, because I thought they were so bright, I sort of said, God, you're much cleverer than me. You should go to university. And some of them did. Gosh. Because I was quite encouraging. Were you becoming better at making friends? Yeah, I made friends much more easily there. For the first time? More than anywhere else? Yeah, it felt a bit. I mean, I did have some good friends in Oxford. Sure. But I felt I was getting more.

29:18I was stopping being who I thought I ought to be. And I was becoming more of who I was. What a lovely thing. And so, of course, there was more of me then available to make friends with, wasn't there? Right. Yes, of course there was. And you were liking what you found. Yeah, I was enjoying myself, yeah. Good.

29:43so ambition i appreciate you didn't have any in a conventional sense but did you ever have ideas of where you would want to be in 10 years or no not at all no not at all careering through life but one thing i did learn at mcdonald's was how computers worked because they were just coming in you know we sort of they use computers to sort of decide how much stock we needed all we had to to count how many cups we used then we knew how much coffee we used and i i just love that all that all that stuff and then price water house were looking for people to um they were computerizing so they were looking for people with some experience in commute computers and i saw an advert or i went through a recruitment thing i can't remember what it was and um and you're off again I'm off again and I was working in these refrigerated rooms in Pricewaterhouse with these massive great computers that look like huge old reel-to-reels.

30:44And they were setting up word processing systems and we were all on floppy disks and you put the floppy disks onto a hard disk. And I was, believe it or not, I was sort of IT backup. I don't believe it. I mean, I believe it because you're telling me and I've got no reason to doubt you. But I don't quite understand. There's a strong sense of propulsion through your 20s. You're like a shark. You're constantly moving forward, but with no ambition. No, no ambition. I read the manual. Makes things a lot easier. Most people don't read the manuals. So they could come to you and say... I think I might have invented the phrase, have you tried turning it off and on again?

31:25But I imagine, because it's becoming a recurring theme already, that you get bored. I do get bored. Yeah. And I'd been there. Oh, God, I don't know if I managed a whole year, but I'd been there quite a while. And I asked for a day off to move house. And because I was, I wasn't professional staff, I was backup staff. And the, my boss was also sort of head of the typing pool sort of thing. and she said what sort of house are you moving to I said a terraced house in Leytonstone she said terraced I know your sort you'll be semi-detached and you'll end up detached and I just thought this is not the belief system I want to be part of she meant it kindly yes she did you'll be detached I don't want to be detached thank you very much I still live in a terraced house sorry to disappoint you Angela, whatever your name was yeah Your mum spoke that language I think a bit more than you did I think my mum was slightly posher than that No, but she would have recognised the milestones of social advancement Maybe, yeah I've never heard that metric I mean it's a well established one but I'd never thought of it it sounds like a kinks lyric almost that you aspire to being detached and you knew you didn't I knew I didn't.

32:54How did you know that? If you didn't have ambition. Oh, I was being a bit snobby then. Well, inverse snobbery. I was a bit inverse snobbery. Yeah, sort of like. So you wanted a more bohemian lifestyle? It was not a value system I wanted to attach myself to. No. So what did you want to attach yourself to? Well, I got another job in just sort of. I got a job at Linklaters and Pains. and I got a temporary job to help organise the annual Christmas bash to help the office manager with the extra work that we bring in. So this is an era where you could just open the Evening Standard or go to an agency.

33:36Go to Brook Street Bureau. Yes, and you'd think, well, that sounds interesting. Yeah, it wasn't LinkedIn. Oh, go and do it. No, okay. Yeah, okay. And so I thought, yeah, I can organise a party. I can do that. And then the office manager had a heart attack. And so I took on the whole of organising this party. It was in the Dorchester.

34:01And, you know, I did a pretty good job. But after I'd sort of finished, after the party, and I'd finished paying off all the invoices and everything, I thought, nobody's here to sack me. And they just got rid of the tea ladies because they're having automatic coffee machines and stuff. But the trolleys and stuff were still there and I've got nothing to do. So I pushed a trolley up and down and I gave people tea and I chatted to people. And then I pushed it into a partner's office and he said, hang on, I thought we got rid of the tea ladies. I went, ah, yeah, and I confessed to all. And he said, do you want a job?

34:39I said, yeah, that would be good. And he gave me a job as, I think I was called a litigation clerk. Okay. And I had to do things like do all the admin and logistics for organizing arbitrations in Geneva. And the dyslexia wasn't a problem here? No, because A, spellcheck was coming in. Yeah, okay. And B, I was doing more admin than typing out of documents. So there's a thing here. And maybe it's another difference between you and some of the people you encountered for the first time when you worked at McDonald's. in that you weren't daunted by any of this. What's that you say? I have to organise a party at the Dorchester for everybody.

35:22Yes, I can do that. So there's three Cs. There's competence, confidence, but also class. Your background probably giving you an air that... Probably giving me the confidence. Yes. Yeah, I think so. I can do this. Whereas some of the people you worked with in McDonald's might have been equally competent. But not as confident. Because they were from a different class. Because they weren't brought up to be confident. So it gives you wings in a way, doesn't it? It does. Some of that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So how long before you got bored of being a paralegal? Well, my Auntie Joan was very good at the stock market.

35:58And she made a killing on Glaxo shares. And she gave all her nephews and nieces£50 ,000. Jesus. So that meant I'm not going to work anymore. So that meant I went to art school. Ah, so before we get to art school, you did kind of put the 80s in a semi-embrace. I mean, I can imagine that you had shoulder pads, perhaps. Oh, superb shoulder pads. Yes, I would have hoped so. And huge glasses. Marvellous. And sort of brooches that look like streets of lightning. And an American Express card. No, I never had an American Express card. So I think your biographical details somewhere on the internet are false.