Oliver James: For those of you who haven't read the book, just
to very quickly explain what else is in there. So there's a good deal
of pretty detailed and very powerfully written and remarkably well-remembered
descriptions of Mark's relationship with his father and his brother and
the difficulties involving that. His various visits to various shrinks.
His move into football hooliganism via 'knicker sniffing' and general
interest in women's underclothing. On to Oxford, very oddly, so there's
a constant theme in a sense of belonging to things and not belonging to
things. And from there to becoming an opera singer! A very logical development.
Although perhaps it is more logical than we might first think. And, finally,
to cut a long story short, into taking on the Jewish faith in which he
had not been brought up.
Of course to me it's fascinating because we're the same vintage, so there
are many chimes for me. There are many things that bring back a lot of
memories for me. But also there are a number of ways in which we are really
quite similar, in that I was an extremely aggressive child and I too was
shunted off to see Donald Winicott, who was a famous psychoanalyst at
the time. My mother is Jewish but I wasn't brought up in the faith, and
both my parents were psychoanalysts so Freud playing an important part
in my upbringing.
But I suppose that the question that I thought we might start with was
the question of actually what motivated you to write this as non-fiction
rather than as fiction, because this is an incredibly honest book. I mean
it really is quite alarmingly honest at times. Very honest about your
sex life in a way that is not prurient or anything. It's simply an important
information for understanding why you became a hooligan and various other
things. But, in my book, I talked about Kathryn Flett who's a journalist
and that she seemed to be writing her book as non-fiction because it really
mattered to her for us to feel that this had actually happened to actually
her, not somebody who was really her but had a different name. In a sense,
that's what she was trying to do. Then there's Anne Robinson's quite horrifyingly
honest book, there's far more information than we need in Anne Robinson's
book. Trying to avoid the truth about yourself by telling it: it's a curious
paradox in those cases. Now I'm not saying that's true in your case.
Mark Glanville: Ok. I actually was going to ask you that. Because
I've read that passage in your book, and it's very, very interesting indeed.
And in fact that was one reason why incidentally you felt that I might
have done that: that I'd actually tried to deflect somehow people's views
away from the essential truth in appearing to be very, very honest. In
fact, what I say is honest. It's the truth. But there may be something
else going on there. I was quite interested to know actually whether you'd
thought I was trying to deflect people away from something.
Oliver James: I don't think people do it to deflect other people
away. For example, Kathryn Flett had a newspaper column in the Observer
in which she was writing about her marriage as it was falling apart, and
she was a member of a group therapy group which she wrote about. And everybody
got very annoyed with her for writing about this, but she couldn't understand
why! Now the question is, in a sense, I wondered if you thought that it
was being written in order to find something out for yourself, or could
it be that the need to write something in that way and to be so honest
was actually a desire to avoid experiencing the truth of what you were
saying? So that you could describe, for instance, the hateful things about
your relationship with your parents, or the embarrassing difficult re-living
of various aspects of your sex life. And that somehow if you put them
out there, and they're out of you, and in a sense got them into other
people, is what is certainly happening with Kathryn Flett I think. For
sure is that she is trying to just get rid of all this stuff and use other
people, in a sense, as a dustbin. I don't think that you are doing that
to the most, because the acid test is if we treat the book as a patient
and oneself as the analyst, and ask yourself how is the book making you
feel. You're not really shitting on us by writing the book. Whereas I
think to quite an extent Kathryn Flett, that's what she's doing. Certainly
Anne Robinson is.
Mark Glanville: Because I know that my wife certainly found a
lot of the book quite difficult to handle. She felt this rather …
obnoxious individual throughout a great part of it, and feels that in
fact that I might have toned that down a little bit in subsequent re-writes.
I wasn't actually trying to put myself in a better light but I think my
natural inclination was to be very tough on myself actually, very hard
on myself, very, very self-critical. Possibly I could say that I actually
usually like myself. Perhaps that's true. Certainly it's true of a lot
of the period that I was describing in the book when I really didn't think
I was. I don't think I was a particularly great guy in my sort of like
adolescence and early twenties. I did all sorts of pretty anti-social
and obnoxious things. I can look at that from this vantage point perhaps
and actually be quite frank about that. So I don't know whether it's more
a question of the fact that I didn't actually like myself particularly
at that time and I'm quite happy to say that I was a jerk.
Oliver James: I wonder if your Jewish faith has helped you actually
to be able to relive this without it being actually a kick. For instance,
that if you'd tried to write this up, like there are all these football
hooligan books now, aren't there? Which are actually best-sellers. They're
all about 'boom' and 'dumb'.
Mark Glanville: That's right. Yeh. I mean my original book was
actually going to be a book about football hooliganism purely. I was going
to call it The Memoirs of a Failed Football Hooligan. And then an agent
got hold of it and said that this would be a much more interesting book
if you write about the fact that you're actually an opera singer who studied
classics at Oxford and you were involved with these people. He said, 'There's
the story'. He said, 'Rather than being another book on that football
hooligan shelf, you could actually write a book that's infinitely more
interesting than that.' And I hadn't even thought of it. So that in a
sense was the genesis of the book. It was the agent Mark Lucas. It wasn't
actually my idea to write it at all, and it took me a long time before
I was actually comfortable with the idea of writing the book.
For about a year I really wasn't getting very far beneath the surface
and wasn't achieving the sort of thing that he wanted at all. Eventually
I started to find these depths and levels, much much deeper than anything
I'd found before. Then the whole book became an infinitely more rewarding
experience. Writing it became cathartic.
Oliver James: Oh it did? Ok.
Mark Glanville: Yes, and hugely enjoyable. In fact, I least liked
writing about the football stuff in the end because I felt that that was
the stuff that perhaps was the most on the surface. And I most enjoyed
writing about the operatic stuff and Jewishness actually. I found that
in writing about that that I was able to reach greater depths.
Oliver James: I suppose that there is the possibility there, which
is that probably the main motive is not to protect yourself from knowing
uncomfortable truths about yourself. I am not sure whether that is the
reason. But I suppose a lot of the people here, when they read the book,
will be quite startled by your account of your father. Your mother isn't
here this evening either, nor is your father. So in a way we can speak
more freely.
Mark Glanville: They don't have internet either, so…
Oliver James: But in the excerpt that you read out, it gave us
some of the flavour of your father. By your account, you describe him
as 'an eternal Greta Garbo' at one point and he clearly quite has, what
shall we say? A flowery psycho-analyst would probably call him a narcissistic
personality by the sound of it, and a man who was also very competitive
with you, and there's a rather devastating description when you were aged
about eight and you're playing ping-pong with him, and he starts off pretending
not to play very well and letting you win. Then suddenly just takes huge
pleasure in not letting you get a single point, which is a very telling
anecdote, that any father would do that with his young son is interesting.
Then, I suppose his affairs which, presumably, he wouldn't have particularly
thanked you for telling the whole world about. So in your dealings with
your father, what do you think was the purpose of writing the book, in
that you were going to reveal quite a lot of things about him as a person
and in terms of his conduct?
Mark Glanville: Well, I found in the end that the only way I could
write the sort of book that I have written was to be very, very honest
about him, and about him and my mother really, and about the people that
I felt. Going back to your book, because I can basically completely agree
with your thesis that it was my interaction with them and the way that
they related to each other and to me that had the biggest influence on
what I became. So in order to be able to describe what I became I had
to really talk in a lot of depth and detail about my parents, and I was
very, very worried indeed about how they would react to it.
Oliver James: How did they react to it?
Mark Glanville: Amazingly, actually. Dad's possibly also..
Oliver James: Have you had that conversation with your Dad, where
you've said..
Mark Glanville: Yeh. I mean he's been, he's reacted actually,
I have to say, with tremendous generosity actually. Incredible generosity.
He's been an immense supporter of the book all the way along the line
and I thought, well as soon as he reads it he's going to stop supporting
it. But in fact that wasn't the case.
Oliver James: So he thinks it's a fair cop, in that sense maybe?
Mark Glanville: Yeh, I think he thinks it's a fair cop. The only
complaint that he had was when in fact I wrote one passage about him seducing,
well, in fact, failing to seduce, an au pair girl. And he said that that
wasn't what had happened at all. The implication being, and that was the
only thing that he was annoyed about! So quite, and that tells you a lot
actually.
Oliver James: I suppose to me as a psychologist, I suppose it
was very interesting the process whereby you did become a hooligan, and
well, the causes actually, the particular causes of your relationship
with both your parents. Take me through what you would say was your explanation
of why you became a hooligan?
Mark Glanville: Well first of all, I think I sort of stumbled
across it accidentally in a way that I think a lot of people do, and I
write about it in the book, the experience that I had with your club,
Chelsea, in the Shed, and I found it a very exhilarating and exciting
experience. It was a big adrenalin rush and, not only that, but there
was this bizarre sense of being part of it all. And the sense of feeling
accepted, without actually anybody knowing that I was there at all. So
a complete paradox. But I felt, crucially, that I was accepted into this
group of real hard core hooligans, guys that were much, much harder than
the people that were beating me up at school at the time. And it was great
to be able to do that, test my masculinity and virility in a sense, in
that context. It made me feel more sort of confident as a male, I think,
in a very, very tough, aggressive environment which Pimlico was at that
time. So there was all that. And when I started testing myself more and
more..
Oliver James: And what do you think, I mean I had a very similar
trajectory to you until I was thirteen and a half, when you were all set
to go to Westminster and I can't quite remember why you didn't. But I
went off to a public school, and I punched somebody within a few days
of being there, and nobody said a word. There was just total silence,
and there was just embarrassment, because 'that's just not the way we
do things round here'. And I never punched anyone again. But had I not
gone there and had gone instead to Pimlico, I can easily imagine I would
have gone down that path. So maybe you could argue that your hooliganism
can actually be explained very sociologically. That in fact you'd had
a particular childhood which meant you were vulnerable to becoming potentially
a violent man, which is certainly violence, as explained in my book at
great length, as genes can account for some things but they don't account
for violence in terms of why one man is violent and not another. It's
very much to do with your early childhood. In your case, becoming part
of that peer group, having had the predisposing experiences in your family.
You would say that?
Mark Glanville: In a funny way, I sort of feel I'm more aggressive
than violent in a way. I actually very, very rarely have actually belted
somebody or hit anybody. Although I have to acknowledge the fact that
I give a quite honest description of what it felt like to hit this guy
who'd been bullying me at school, and this incredible sense of exhilaration
actually, and release, and which I also felt when I booted this anti-semite
in the back at Manchester United as well. So that I have to say, that's
maybe, that's not being totally honest.
Oliver James: Yes. But let's face, the thing that really fascinated
me, was the only football hooligan that I ever interviewed was in a prison,
and it was a guy called Archie who I do describe in my book actually.
And he was having a lot of trouble with sex, which you were. He felt very
much of an outsider. To a certain extent one could say your 'outsiderness'
came from that, you came from the top social class yet you were at a comprehensive.
You were Jewish, but yet you weren't Jewish, etc. You could look at it
in that way. But I wouldn't. I would look at it as going much further
back into, probably into your early relationship with your mother actually
as much as your father. But anyway, Archie, very like you, felt terribly
lonely, which Mark describes in the book rather well. How basically lonely
he was, and he felt pretty screwed up about sex. He couldn't really cope
with women and couldn't really cope with sex and Archie was exactly like
that. And Archie's profession was as an embalmer. He was a Millwall supporter.
Mark Glanville: That's who I follow these days.
Oliver James: And it was very interesting, because the main thing
that he got from it, actually, was that he felt, what goes back to very
early infancy, a very primitive sense of being alone. However much he
got along with people, he was fine, it sounds like you were perfectly
capable of rubbing along with people and having a drink with them and
having a laugh, but you didn't feel intimately linked to anyone.
Mark Glanville: No. I was interested also, you could talk about
Woody Allen and Zelig and I was interested in that. The man who so badly
wants to be liked that he tries to fit in everywhere. Contact with a black
musician turns him into a black musician. That's something I actually
really understood and identified with. I mean I actually quite subconsciously
start talking exactly like the people around me. And mimicry is something
that I've always been good at or whatever. But I'm always being accused
by my wife of talking to the plumber on the phone and saying, 'All right,
mate, yeh, well come round tomorrow, yeh.' And she said, 'What's that
about Mark? Where does that come from?' And I'm not even aware that I've
done it. So I do kind of fall into it. It's the weak identity. The weak
character that..
Oliver James: Weak sense of self.
Mark Glanville: Weak sense of self. I have to own up to that without
any question. That does explain a lot of where I'm coming from.
Oliver James: Or where you were coming from. Do you think you're
still there?
Mark Glanville: Even now I still find it, I desperately would
like to just sort of settle on one particular thing and be that thing.
But I can't, even now. It's very, very difficult. I still couldn't tell
you exactly. I mean, probably I know the truth, that is that I know I
describe myself at one point of the book as 'like a hermit crab' finding
a shell to cover itself, to protect itself. And I used aggression, a machismo,
to do that. And I have no doubt that I did that. But underneath all of
that, if I actually peel away the layers whatever and break the shell,
there's actually something that's very, very sensitive and very, very
vulnerable. At the core of it all, there is actually my real core that
I spent years and years covering up. In a sense, I wish I had the absolute
courage to return to that core. If I were able to fully realise that ambition,
then I think that I would fully realise all my artistic and creative potential,
and be the best. I mean, I want to basically write now. I could then be,
I think, perhaps the best writer that I could be. But I'm just acknowledging
that that's what I am. And then sometimes I think, but am I? Is that hard
shell that's grown over me really me? Is that actually something that
I'm trying to, that I don't want to acknowledge, but it is actually still
me?
Oliver James: Well, because you describe, very movingly really,
how much your father, I think the quote was something about that 'achievement
was [your] father's way of defining me'.
Mark Glanville: Absolutely.
Oliver James: And that's the description, the dominant goal, depression,
and so on, that.. In my book I describe how this continuous bombardment
and being faced up with, 'How did you do?' You're being judged by your
results. It's all clichés but it's not being loved for who you
really are. It's only being judged by whether you've got good results.
Mark Glanville: Exactly. Yeh.
Oliver James: And the result of that, of course, is a lack of
sense of self, certainly. I mean it goes back earlier too, but that is
very bad for your sense of self.
Mark Glanville: Absolutely. Absolutely. There was actually something
that I, and I've read the interview that you gave to the JC where there
was the one quote where you talked about the impossibility of happiness,
or whatever. And that's another issue. But I actually think that it's
a question of perhaps definition of terms. But one thing that I've always
felt was that you're never going to achieve happiness as long as you're
constantly goal-orientated, as long as you are constantly struggling to
achieve some target -
Oliver James: And to please an outside -
Mark Glanville: Yeh. I mean, so, in my father's case, quantifying
what I did, success being the way of quantifying your activity. And something
that was immensely helpful to me, that actually I felt at the time helped
me more than any kind of psychoanalysis that I might have had, was in
fact that the first book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which I studied
at Oxford, where he describes oedimonia, which is translated loosely as
'happiness' but it actually means 'a state of spiritual wellbeing, and
oedimonia is something that you achieve for your energia which is your
activity. And as long as you are being active in the field that you are
best suited to, then you should actually have the capacity for happiness.
But as soon as you strive towards the ergon, the work or the goal, you
lose that sense of happiness. The whole thing then is that if you actually
stop to analyse whether or not you are happy, almost by definition you
won't be.
Then there's this wonderful line from Eliot's Four Quartets, 'to be conscious
is not to be in time'. And as soon as you're conscious and you make yourself
conscious of whether or not you're happy, you lose that possibility. So
I think that the whole idea of being goal-orientated and wanting to achieve
all the time is the surefire way of making sure that you're never happy.
Oliver James: It's poison.
Mark Glanville: Yeh. But it interested me in terms of that, the
happiness thing. As I say, partly it's a question of definition of terms.
Oliver James: Well there's a whole scientific literature, which
is under the heading of 'The Dark Side of the American Way of Life', which
is a whole literature that shows that people who are principally guided
in their careers by the pursuit of power, status or wealth are considerably
more likely to be mentally ill, unhappy in all sorts of ways, and people
whose work consists of a joy in the process itself, of the work itself…
So obviously writing is potentially an activity in which you could…
I don't know enough about opera singing, but I'm sure everybody would
be fascinated to hear how you see the parallels between football hooliganism
and being an opera singer, because to me reading the book you get this
feeling of a massive theatre, 'The Theatre of Dreams', as one football
stadium is called. That it is theatrical, going to a live football match
is an amazing powerful collective experience, and I presume, obviously
going to the opera is if you are sitting in the audience, but I dread
to think how powerful it must be if you're up there on the stage.
Mark Glanville: Yeh. In a funny old way, it wasn't really until
I started singing in synagogue actually and Jewish music and Yiddish music,
that I got the maximum benefit and pleasure from singing.
