0:14

Hi everyone, and welcome to a special bonus

0:16

episode of Dua Lipa at your service. You

0:19

can hear we're not in a studio. I'm at

0:21

the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts here

0:24

in Hay on Wye in Wales. This

0:26

is a massive event in a tiny town

0:28

which was once described as the Woodstock of

0:31

the mind. The weather's amazing,

0:33

the people are having a good time, the energy

0:35

is just bustling. It's just been so

0:38

much fun and I'm so happy to be here. And

0:40

being here, I can see why there's so

0:42

much creative energy here.

0:44

The guests, everyone from Margot Atwood

0:46

to Nick Cave are first rate.

0:49

It's my first time here and I have to say it's

0:51

not like any festival I've ever been to before.

0:54

So what am I doing here? Fair

0:56

question. I'm actually just about

0:59

to go on stage for my first ever live

1:01

podcast recording with the author Douglas Stewart,

1:04

whose incredible novel Shuggy Bane

1:06

is the first ever book of the month for our brand

1:08

new Service 95 book club.

1:10

Go to service95.com and our socials

1:13

for more information about book club, including

1:15

some really special contributions from Douglas

1:17

himself on his writing process

1:19

and the inspiration behind the book.

1:21

A bit about Douglas before I go on stage with him here

1:23

at Hay. He's a Scottish writer who pivoted

1:25

from a very successful career in fashion design

1:28

to become one of the most talked about authors

1:30

with the release of Shuggy Bane and its beloved

1:33

follow up Young Mungo.

1:34

Douglas grew up in a working class

1:36

household in Glasgow with a single mum who

1:39

struggled with addiction, themes which are

1:41

explored in an honest and compassionate way. Shuggy

1:44

Bane was his debut novel, a 10 year

1:46

labour of love that was awarded the Booker Prize when

1:48

it was released in 2020 and made its way

1:50

to countless best book of the year lists around

1:53

the world. For me, Shuggy

1:55

Bane is one of those books that finds pockets

1:57

of love and hope between the darkness.

1:59

particularly in the relationship between

2:02

young Shuggie and his mother Agnes. I've

2:05

loved living with this novel and all the characters

2:07

in it since I've read it and I've always wanted to meet the

2:09

man behind it and ask him all about it. So

2:11

I'm going to grab my notes and get ready to

2:13

go on stage to interview Douglas Stewart at

2:16

Hay Festival in front of a live

2:18

audience. No pressure. All

2:22

right. Hi, Hay Festival.

2:27

Thank

2:33

you to everybody here joining us. I've

2:36

been a little bit nervous and very excited to do

2:38

this and I just want to say a massive,

2:41

massive thank you to you, Douglas,

2:43

so much for joining me today and

2:46

for being such a wonderful partner

2:48

in helping me launch the Service 95 Book Club. Your

2:51

support and everything you've done has been so amazing

2:54

and I just couldn't be happier to have Shuggie

2:56

Bain as our first book

2:57

for Book Club. You've

2:59

just been so generous and gracious

3:02

with all your time and all the

3:04

exclusive content that you've done for

3:06

us, which everyone can find on service95.com

3:09

and also on our socials. So

3:12

yes, thank you so much. And

3:14

I'd like to start by talking a little

3:16

bit about why I love Shuggie

3:19

Bain so much and why it means

3:21

so much to me. It's obviously

3:23

a tough read and

3:26

I do have a bit

3:26

of a track record for liking quite

3:28

emotionally traumatic books. It explores

3:32

themes of alcohol abuse, toxic

3:34

masculinity, queer identity. And

3:38

I guess for me, the true anchor and the

3:40

thing that I was connected to the most was this

3:43

unconditional love between Agnes, Shuggie's

3:46

mother,

3:46

and Shuggie. And I

3:49

think there's just such a

3:51

beautiful through-line story

3:53

through everything that happens through all the darkness

3:55

it really kind of shines through.

3:59

a reviewer said about you, he

4:02

shows us a lot of monstrous behavior,

4:04

but not a single monster only damage.

4:07

And we'll come back to that, I'm sure. But

4:09

first I actually really wanted to start by setting

4:11

the scene of where you were when you first

4:14

started work on this book.

4:17

You grew up on a housing estate

4:19

similar to the one in the book.

4:21

But since leaving for New York in your early

4:23

20s, you've really

4:26

lived a life of contrast. You

4:29

had a very enviable and I imagine

4:31

pretty glamorous career in the fashion industry.

4:34

You were working as a senior designer for

4:36

Calvin Klein and Banana Republic. And

4:39

I guess you were doing that by day and then by night,

4:42

you were writing a story of deprivation in 1980s Glasgow. What

4:46

drew you back to that? Oh,

4:50

insanity, I think, first of all, yeah.

4:52

But actually before I answer that, let me please

4:55

just say thank you to you, Dua,

4:56

for just being such a champion of books

4:59

and of readers and of writers. Your

5:01

passion for books is so infectious

5:03

and I think all writers are so grateful

5:05

for what you do to bring more readers to our work.

5:08

So thank you and thank you for creating this space

5:10

for us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

5:12

you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Yeah,

5:17

you know, I grew up in Glasgow, as you said, and I grew

5:19

up on a couple of different housing

5:21

estates and I was so

5:24

proud to be working class as a kid, but I

5:26

was taught from the very early age to be ashamed

5:29

of being poor and of the addiction that

5:31

was at home with my family, also because

5:33

I was gay in a very patriarchal

5:36

place. And so there was just so much

5:38

silence in my life. There was not a

5:40

time between the ages of four and

5:43

maybe 26 where I felt

5:45

like I could reveal my whole entire self.

5:48

And so there was just so much silence there, even in

5:50

the community that knew me best of all. But by

5:52

the time I go to college and I study textiles,

5:55

which becomes fashion, which takes me to New

5:57

York, I found my entire self erased.

6:00

Everybody that ever met me thought I just had this really glamorous

6:02

life and that maybe I came from a background

6:05

of privilege or Or

6:07

that I was in the place that I was supposed to be and it'd always

6:09

been such a fight for me to be there And

6:12

so it was actually the height of my fashion career

6:14

that I sat down to write Shaggy Bane But

6:16

I think I wrote it as a manifesto for myself Just

6:19

to to be very clear even to my husband

6:21

even to very good friends of mine Who

6:24

had never had any other way

6:26

to tell them that I'd grown up and I'd lost my mother

6:28

to addiction when I was a kid or what it was like

6:30

to be bullied or what it was like not to have food in the

6:33

house and all these other things and And

6:35

I wanted to capture it as a way to

6:37

make sense of myself because I felt like a man Into

6:41

very broken parts and not a

6:43

whole person and and at the same time my family in

6:45

Glasgow Couldn't really understand my life in New

6:47

York because it was so far away from their

6:49

daily life And so I felt like

6:51

I was forever crossing borders And

6:54

and I didn't want to feel like I was hiding

6:57

parts of myself anymore

6:59

You've spoken about you

7:01

know the writing process for Shaggy Bane, and

7:03

I think if I remember correctly it took you 10

7:05

years to write it

7:08

and The manuscript originally ran

7:10

to 1,800 pages. Yeah

7:11

single

7:13

spaced and

7:17

There was also about 20 drafts. Yeah

7:20

of the book. I mean it probably went into the high 20s What

7:23

was it about this book that needed?

7:26

10 years like how did

7:28

you manage to maintain confidence? Over

7:30

such a long period of time that you you you

7:32

know you felt that you were actually gonna end up with something

7:35

that really Worked

7:36

yeah, you know I didn't have confidence I

7:38

lost confidence many times But

7:40

the book wouldn't let me give up on it because

7:43

it was so integral to me as a person and

7:45

in fact You know there were many times

7:47

where I would write something that was quite difficult And I had

7:49

to put the book away for a couple of months

7:52

What would happen is it would burn out of me this sort

7:54

of very honest or true scene or or? Something

7:57

that a character would do would come out of me very quickly

7:59

and I thought I can't face that again. And

8:01

I would put it away. And so it ebbed

8:04

and flowed over the 10 years. But I

8:06

was also a kid that grew up in

8:08

a neighborhood that, you know, nobody around

8:10

me would ever imagine that I would ever go

8:13

into books or to literature. There weren't any books

8:15

at home, which is why you and your

8:17

influence is so important to me. You know, we didn't grow

8:19

up reading. And I think young working class

8:22

men still have a tough time coming

8:24

to books in that way. And so

8:27

I didn't have confidence. And I was learning as I

8:29

went on and I was teaching myself how to write

8:31

and I was failing, but failing in private.

8:33

But I had this hugely creative job where

8:37

I felt very fulfilled, but I was so unhappy

8:40

because I wasn't doing what my soul wanted to be

8:42

doing. And it took a long time even just

8:44

to give myself permission. You know, Allie

8:46

Smith said to me recently, she made

8:48

it very clear to me. She said, I kept saying I was looking

8:51

for permission from other people, you know, would

8:53

other writers think I was a writer? Would the establishment

8:55

let me in? He said, no, you were looking for permission

8:57

from yourself. And I said, yeah, my God,

8:59

she saw me in a second. And but

9:02

the first draft of the book was 1800 pages. And

9:04

when I I had no one to read it and I gave it to my

9:06

husband and I said, please, will you

9:08

read this for me?

9:09

And he just went, oh, my God, no. And

9:13

he went, but OK. Yeah, OK, I will.

9:16

And he took it into the other room and it was these two

9:18

huge legal binders, do I? And

9:20

I was like in the other room and I was listening to every sigh

9:22

and every little bit of laughter and I thought, oh, he likes it. He

9:24

likes it. And I went

9:27

in after three hours and I said, are you finished? And he

9:29

said, no, I'm not finished. And

9:31

it took him eight months to read this. It was like

9:33

it was like war and peace. And anytime

9:35

he was doing any of the full time job, anytime

9:38

he was doing anything that wasn't reading my manuscript,

9:39

I'd be like, don't you have something you should

9:42

be doing? But he gave

9:44

it back to me after all that, after

9:46

I badgered him. And for the first, you

9:49

know, 200 pages, he paid such

9:51

attention to the line level, to the character development.

9:54

And then about page 300, he just gave up the will

9:56

to live. And he just started to redact

9:58

it. And then when he gave me. me back the

10:00

thing I'd asked him to do, I didn't speak to him for

10:02

seven weeks. I was so offended

10:04

by it. And so I don't recommend doing

10:07

that again.

10:08

How did you know when the right

10:10

time was to let go of Sugi

10:12

Bane and put it out into the world? When was that

10:15

turning point for you? Yeah, it

10:17

stopped being a sort of creative joy for

10:19

me. It was a sale that really pulled me

10:21

through my life for 10 years. I couldn't wait to

10:24

get through the work week or to get to the

10:26

weekend or have a couple of days off at Christmas and

10:28

just do nothing else but write. And then

10:30

after a while I realized I emotionally

10:33

and creatively wasn't moving on. And

10:36

one thing that people don't know is that

10:39

I finished Sugi Bane and then I went

10:41

right into writing Young Mungo. Both

10:43

of these things before I was published, before I ever thought

10:45

anyone would ever read the books. And so

10:48

the night that I won the book or the very first thing that

10:50

journalists say to you is, congratulations,

10:52

but how about that really difficult next book?

10:55

You know, they're almost dying for you to fail

10:57

as soon as you've succeeded. And

10:59

I was like, well, too bad for you because I've already written my

11:01

next book. You know, get it up.

11:04

And so I was

11:08

just writing the whole time. And really by the

11:11

time

11:11

I came to be published, I've been writing for

11:13

about 14 years.

11:15

Yeah, it's really interesting. Like when I think about

11:17

it differently, obviously,

11:19

for me in music terms, when I think about writing

11:21

an album, for me, it takes me about

11:23

two or three years to kind of really get

11:25

it. But I have to write myself into

11:28

it. So I have to write a lot of bad

11:30

songs to get to the good ones and get to a place.

11:32

But

11:33

when I think about you writing for 10

11:36

years, I almost like imagine in my

11:38

head this like crime investigation board

11:40

of like all the different characters

11:41

and, you know, the stories and

11:43

the backstory and where they were before that

11:45

and how, you know, how they progress into the character

11:48

that they've become. And I really

11:50

feel like we can't go any further without talking about the

11:52

real hero of the story, which is Shuggie's

11:54

mum, Agnes.

11:56

And when we meet Agnes

11:58

while she's still a woman of immense

12:01

pride and enormous capacity for love and laughter.

12:04

She's already quite far along the

12:06

path of self-destruction through

12:08

drink. And we received a rather

12:10

wonderful question for you from the Service 95 book

12:13

club member, Maggie, who

12:15

asked, would you do a prequel of Shuggie

12:18

Bain by diving into Agnes'

12:20

backstory before her motherhood era?

12:23

With that in mind, I wonder if you could give us like

12:25

an insight into Agnes'

12:28

life before the drink? Yeah, that's

12:31

an amazing question. I've never actually been asked that before.

12:34

So thank you, Maggie, for that. Yeah,

12:36

you know, I think part of why I wrote the book was

12:38

as a love story to my own

12:40

mother. My mother is not Agnes Bain, but

12:43

I lost my mother to addiction. And I

12:45

always saw my mother, this woman that was so capable,

12:47

so loving, so generous, but was very

12:50

trapped by the circumstances

12:52

she found herself in, both because she was

12:54

an uneducated working class woman that

12:57

had never been taught to put herself

12:59

first before her husband or her kids. And

13:01

so when all that starts to peel away and to fall apart,

13:04

she really had nowhere to turn. There was no hope

13:07

within her. And when the city started

13:09

to come apart, when unemployment, when my father

13:12

ran out and left her one day, you know,

13:14

she kind of started to disintegrate inside herself.

13:17

But what I understood from an early age

13:19

was that that was not the whole of this woman.

13:22

This woman was the most wonderful iceberg.

13:24

And I only ever knew one facet of her. And

13:27

you're right. She was this wonderful young

13:29

woman who had so much hope and so

13:30

much

13:32

just had such a bright future and was well

13:34

loved. And I tried to show

13:37

that in the novel, but

13:39

I don't know that I could go back and show more of that.

13:41

I don't know if after 12 years I have more

13:43

in it to give. But

13:46

one thing I do sometimes regret is I

13:48

didn't call the book Agnes Bain, because I think

13:50

truly it is about the mother at the heart of it.

13:52

Was there any Agnes, young

13:55

Agnes in the earlier drafts? There was.

13:57

There was lots of young Agnes and

13:59

part of

13:59

the part of the joy of writing the book was

14:02

was finding out stories through my own

14:04

family and through, you know, friends of the family

14:06

to to allow me to understand this

14:08

woman because when your mother dies at 16, you

14:11

don't get to know her as an adult, as peers,

14:13

as friends, whatever you'd like to say, your relationship

14:16

is always as a child and a mother. And actually,

14:19

one of the wonderful things about addiction was that

14:21

it does tend to sort of break the walls

14:23

down. It's a very leveler.

14:26

It means someone who's suffering with addiction

14:28

treats you in a very direct way and tells you things actually

14:31

that perhaps mothers wouldn't ordinarily

14:33

tell children. And

14:35

so I did get to know some things. But yeah,

14:38

I mean, one of the interesting things

14:40

was is it's not my family, but you

14:43

know, there are siblings in it and I also have siblings.

14:45

And my siblings, what is fascinating

14:48

is when a parent has three children, she

14:50

will allow that she will have three very different

14:52

children. But oftentimes we can have three different

14:54

mothers. And my siblings had really

14:56

happy childhoods. You know, my

14:59

grandparents were alive. There was four wages

15:01

in the house. They went to Italy once a year, Spain

15:03

another time. They were they

15:05

had really bright, positive childhoods.

15:08

And then I just intersected in a very

15:10

different part of my mother's life. She was in

15:12

her 40s when she had me. The city

15:15

was at 28% mass unemployment.

15:17

She'd already come to the end of a romantic life, I

15:19

think she felt. And so I just had a very different childhood.

15:22

So maybe my sister should write the story

15:24

of the story. Yeah, it's

15:26

really interesting. I recently

15:28

joined a reading group at the

15:31

Downview Women's Prison in Sutton as

15:33

a guest of the book's unlocked program,

15:36

which is in partnership between the Book Prize Foundation

15:39

and the National Literacy Trust. And

15:41

it gives people in prisons access to

15:43

high quality literature. And it was an

15:45

incredible experience. We discussed Chuggy Bane,

15:49

which they had actually previously chosen as the

15:51

LGBTQ Book of the Month. And

15:53

I promised the women that I would bring

15:56

in some of their

15:56

questions for you today. Amazing. And

15:58

one of the women drew

15:59

attention to a really remarkable scene

16:02

in the book where Agnes is about

16:04

to confront her slightly snitty

16:06

neighbor Colleen and tell her

16:08

that she had slept with her husband Jamesy in

16:11

return for her taking sugar fishing, which is a

16:13

promise that he actually never keeps What

16:16

follows is extraordinary And

16:19

I have a question for you, but but first I wonder

16:22

if you would read some of that text for

16:24

us Yeah, I absolutely will I've

16:26

actually never read this before so forgive me

16:28

if I stumble a little bit, but also there's

16:31

some There's some raw language

16:33

in it. So clutch your children clutch your pearls

16:37

clutch the hem of your skirt like Colleen's

16:39

about to do if that's we'd

16:41

like to do but yes Agnes and

16:43

Colleen are Elementally opposed

16:46

to each other their neighbors. They're absolutely identical

16:49

socioeconomically and Generationally

16:52

but Agnes has such ears and graces that

16:54

Colleen

16:54

the minute she sees her hates her

16:56

and so there's deep animosity Between these women

16:58

but in that animosity there is also

17:00

deep compassion

17:04

Agnes stumbled back to the curb clumsy

17:06

with drink Jamesy swear up deliberately

17:08

and narrowly miss clipping her with the back tire The

17:11

road filled with the usual cloud of suit Agnes

17:14

was blinking on the opposite curb But Colleen hadn't

17:16

the peace of mind to see her in her thin

17:18

face was a wildness and an emptiness alive and

17:20

dead at the same Time

17:22

she fell with a crack to the tarmac and lay

17:24

loose-legged and blank faced in the dust Agnes

17:27

looked up and down the street like a person who wanted

17:30

to stick the boot in or a person who wanted

17:32

to run Away from a car crash. She was

17:34

unsure which

17:35

There was a faint breeze fluttering all the curtains,

17:37

but no one came to help No cousins no other pit

17:39

women and silhouetted at the Mac of any

17:42

window stood the four remaining children Lined

17:45

up and descending Heights like little Russian dolls

17:48

all with the same sad beautiful face

17:50

One day Agnes would give them all a deep hot

17:53

bath to really stick it into Colleen

17:55

From the gutter there was the loud rip rip noise

17:58

of hair being pulled from a brush

17:59

a sticky tugging sound like an old

18:02

gummy linoleum being torn up. Agnes

18:04

stepped closer to the flailing woman. The

18:06

belly full of flat lager, the dust the tangle

18:08

of limbs made it hard for her to understand

18:11

what she was seeing. At

18:12

first she thought Colleen was ripping her football

18:14

top into shreds, but as she stepped closer

18:17

Agnes could see the clumps of matted hair the woman

18:19

was ripping free in each claw. Rip

18:22

rip.

18:22

It came out in wild handfuls. Agnes

18:25

flitted around the fallen woman. Before she knew

18:27

it she was kneeling in the dirt using her ringed fingers

18:29

to tame the furious talons. She

18:32

wrapped herself tightly around Colleen. Here

18:34

what's all this then?

18:36

She said in a voice so kind that it shocked even

18:38

her.

18:39

Colleen went limp in her arms and Agnes

18:41

gently lowered the woman's claws into her lap.

18:43

She prized open the fists which were still clutching

18:46

the ripped out hair and began pulling the

18:48

thick strands from between the thin fingers as

18:51

if she were cleaning an old comb.

18:53

Colleen's hollows eyes stared into the dirt for a

18:55

long time before she spoke.

18:57

I should have known. I should have left well alone

18:59

instead of getting on at him while he was down.

19:02

All I said was I didn't want any more mouse to feed.

19:05

Since that mine shut he was coming at

19:07

me night and day like a teenager on the boil. He

19:09

was never any use at that pulling out nonsense.

19:12

Agnes was staring at the bald patches on

19:15

Colleen's head. There was dust on the blood

19:17

prick scabs.

19:18

Five wanes is enough for any woman.

19:21

Colleen snorted. He would have had a hundred

19:23

if he could but I just thought fuck you Mac if

19:25

any and despite them I shut the shop. Colleen

19:28

started to cry again. The tears came

19:30

along thick streams almost as if

19:32

she had a leak. They poured down her nose

19:35

dripping off her chin and she turned her eyes

19:37

towards Agnes and looked at her then as if for

19:39

the first time. That must have

19:41

been when he started fucking around. Agnes

19:44

was conflicted. She would have told any

19:46

other woman that it would get better in time even

19:49

though she knew it would sit on her chest for the rest of her

19:51

life but she offered no such salve

19:53

to Colleen. It occurred to her then that there

19:55

were equals now and she couldn't be ashamed

19:57

at how her insides lifted at the

19:59

thins.

19:59

women's bad news. Minor's

20:02

women were pacing in the street, cousins

20:05

and the wife's of cousins circling nervously

20:08

as if Colleen had turned into an animal they

20:10

were unsure of how to approach.

20:13

She walked up to me as nice as you like with these sunglasses,

20:16

big fancy ones and two shades of brown. She

20:18

said her name was Elaine, asked if she could have a word

20:20

in private. I thought she was from the catalogue,

20:23

thought she was trying to sell me some shite for the Wayne's Christmas.

20:26

Colleen let out a groan. She uncurled

20:28

her fingers and took the hem of her skirt with a

20:30

single tug. She split the thin fabric in two from

20:33

hem to belly then

20:34

she fell listlessly back onto the pavement.

20:37

For the love of God

20:38

Agnes grabbed at the shredded fabric. Colleen

20:41

had no underwear on. The frizzy hair

20:43

of her cunt was shocking against the sallow

20:45

smoothness of her belly. We've got to get

20:47

you in the house up up. Agnes tried

20:49

to lift her but she was too uncoordinated with

20:51

a drink. They toppled over into the stewer

20:54

and Agnes tore the skin off her knees. She

20:56

tried to drag Colleen inside but the wasted

20:58

woman nothing but a pile of bones slackened

21:01

all her muscles and slid back into the dirt like

21:03

an unruly child. Agnes stood

21:05

over her sweating and spitting. You

21:07

can't lie here like that.

21:08

With

21:09

her eyes closed Colleen moved her hand

21:11

across the dirty pavement like she was caressing

21:14

fine sheets. The words came out

21:16

slower and thicker now. I

21:18

don't care.

21:19

Let Jamesy McAvenny hear

21:21

that his wife died on the road

21:24

with her old cunt out. There

21:26

was nervous laughter for some children on bikes.

21:29

Agnes gave Colleen a hard shake. She

21:31

found she enjoyed it so she did it again.

21:33

Madam have you no pride?

21:35

Colleen's eyes opened wide and then closed.

21:38

Her breath grew lighter.

21:40

Here what's getting into you? What have you taken?

21:44

But the soft pile of bones did not answer.

21:46

The fences were hung full of women squawking like

21:49

big noisy crows. The news had spread

21:51

fast. Colleen's cousins were screaming

21:53

blue murder and Jamesy's sisters were throwing

21:55

their fists in defense of his good name.

21:58

Jamesy's mother, 80 if she was a

21:59

the day was spitting and swinging a balding

22:02

mop like it was a scythe.

22:04

Not knowing what else to do, Agnes drew

22:06

off her tights and then her own knickers. She

22:08

did it with a brass neck, stumbling half cut

22:10

right there in the street. She struggled to put

22:13

them on Colleen, and it was like dressing a life-size

22:15

dolly whose limbs instead of being stiff

22:17

and rigid were limp and heavy with slow

22:19

blood.

22:21

Colleen wasn't talking anymore.

22:23

Agnes sank to the dust beside her.

22:25

She regarded her expensive white underwear,

22:28

luminous with good bleach. They hung

22:30

on the thinner woman like a lacy nappy, and

22:32

they wear, Agnes thought, more kindness

22:34

than she deserved.

22:36

Thank you. Thank you so

22:45

much. Thank you so much, Douglas. Thank you. That's

22:48

a really powerful scene, and I wonder

22:50

if you can dig in a bit on what this scene

22:52

symbolizes for you about the relationship

22:54

between the two women and also about the status

22:57

in society

22:58

of women in this novel. That's right.

23:01

Yeah. You know, Shuggie comes in quite a long

23:03

literary tradition of looking at minor strikes

23:06

and mass unemployment, but I'd found

23:08

all the books that I loved had always focused on the

23:10

heterosexual male experience because it was

23:12

our dads and our brothers whose job defined

23:15

what it was we did, what kind of family were, and they were

23:17

the ones put out of work. I

23:19

was the son of a single mother, so I was living right

23:21

in the center of that, but my entire

23:23

world was feminine. It was my mother. We didn't

23:25

have a dad at home, and it also meant I

23:28

was part of a network of other mothers, other single

23:30

mothers, other women struggling with drink.

23:33

So I knew when I was writing Shuggie Bay and I wanted

23:35

to write the same sort of landscape from

23:37

a very feminine perspective. You

23:40

know, there is some cruelty towards Agnes

23:42

from men in the book, but that's almost part of

23:44

the time. What I wanted to

23:47

show was how sometimes even

23:49

in communities where we can get into the cliche

23:51

that working class communities have so much solidarity

23:54

and we're all in it together, that solidarity

23:56

comes at the cost of conforming.

24:00

fitting in of being a good mother, of being a decent

24:02

woman, of going to chapel, of, you

24:04

know, always putting your kids first. And

24:07

if you were a woman that had

24:09

pride in yourself or had notions above

24:11

your station, or you thought the Scottish

24:13

word is gallus, then you could be,

24:16

you know, isolated and thought

24:19

of as terrible. And also,

24:21

to be honest, the reputation of women was the most

24:23

valuable currency there because

24:25

I knew it certainly as a young boy. The moment someone

24:28

said your mother was like this or your mother's that

24:30

kind of woman, it was terrible. It

24:32

was world ending and crushing. And

24:35

so Shuggie and Agnes are both in isolation.

24:37

Shuggie can't fit in with the boys because

24:39

he's too effeminate. And I wanted Agnes

24:41

not to be able to fit in with the women because

24:44

actually she has big ideas and big notions

24:46

and she doesn't talk in a regular Glaswegian

24:48

accent because she thinks of herself as slightly

24:51

better and the women can't bear it.

24:53

There's nothing wrong with

24:55

the Glaswegian accent, by the way. I

24:58

wish my English was thicker. The Glaswegian

25:01

dialect that actually goes through the whole book

25:03

is really amazing. I feel like while I was reading

25:06

it, I kept finding myself

25:07

speaking in a Glaswegian accent in

25:09

my head. And if I was reading alone in my room, then

25:11

I would just like quietly say it out loud.

25:13

Yeah. Are you going to give us that now? Quietly

25:16

say it out loud and I would see if I could get it. But

25:18

it's good. It's good for practicing a Glaswegian accent

25:21

for sure. I

25:23

have another question from Downview,

25:25

which is an observation

25:27

really from one of the women in the reading group who

25:30

found a lot of resonance between Agnes' experience

25:32

of alcoholics, anonymous, and that

25:34

of her own mother's.

25:36

And there's a period of hope in the novel when

25:38

Agnes maintains sobriety for a year. And

25:40

Shuggie says to his friend, Leanne, my

25:42

mommy had a good year once. It was lovely. During

25:45

this time, Agnes finds a community within

25:47

AA only to see it fall away when she relapses.

25:51

And in fact, the same thing happens with Eugene,

25:54

Agnes' boyfriend. And I wonder if

25:56

these scenes were informed by your own experience

25:59

growing up.

25:59

And what have you observed by

26:02

the way that we treat people with addiction?

26:03

Yeah, that's a brilliant question.

26:06

You know, the funny thing about addiction for me

26:08

is because it was a crisis in community, there

26:10

was so many people that were suffering. And I

26:13

was lonely because of my queerness and

26:15

other things, but I was never lonely within addiction.

26:18

We always had support of people around

26:20

us in a way because other mothers, other fathers

26:22

were suffering. And then both Alateen

26:25

and Al-Anon gave us a lot

26:27

of fellowship. And so in a

26:29

really strange way, we were never, I was never

26:31

quite alone in it. I think maybe had I been a middle

26:34

class family on a street that was flourishing, then

26:36

the addiction would have felt very, very lonely in that

26:38

way. But like I said, this is a community

26:41

as well that can't tell the difference sometimes between

26:43

a good time and a bad time. It's a very thin

26:45

line. But

26:48

my own experience with it

26:50

as a kid was just the terror

26:52

and the anxiety you would have when your parent

26:54

suffered with addiction. You know, it's

26:58

it was part of my life from when I was about three or four years

27:00

old. I was very aware. And in the time

27:02

we didn't have any language like mental health

27:05

or someone suffering or having other issues, it was

27:07

just they drank too much and

27:09

they were a terror. And I knew

27:11

from about the age of four that I was never

27:13

the most important person in the room, that

27:15

everything that affected my mother, this woman, would

27:18

set up everything for the day,

27:20

whether we had a good day or a bad day. And what

27:22

that does to a kid is it means you're always

27:25

compensating. You're always trying to give that person

27:27

what you perceive they lack. So you're trying

27:29

to be funny or you're quieter, you're neater

27:31

or you're better at school or you don't eat too

27:33

much or you know, you eat everything in front

27:35

of you, whatever you think it is. And

27:38

the anxiety in that is overwhelming because

27:41

you're always trying to manage an adult's behavior

27:43

even before you know really quite what you're doing.

27:46

But the thing about alcoholism for me as a

27:48

kid was the terror of it, because

27:50

also when people drink, you don't quite know what kind

27:52

of drunk they're going to be. Sometimes it can be a huge

27:55

amount of fun. You know, when I would go to school in

27:57

the morning, I'd come back for lunch and

27:58

the house would be full of women. And they were

28:00

having a wild party. And you'd be like,

28:02

it's half a living. And they were having

28:04

a blast. And so as a kid, you just never knew

28:07

if it was going to be really sad or really funny or

28:09

really desperate.

28:10

Yeah. There's something also really

28:12

interesting about Alcoholics Anonymous and

28:14

the whole idea of a

28:17

person finds a community with an AA, and then it

28:19

falls away once a person

28:22

relapses. And I guess that's also

28:24

because it's a peer-led community group. And although

28:26

it's really an amazing program, it's also

28:29

only really there for people that actually want

28:31

the help. And so I think

28:33

a lot of people can see similarities,

28:36

at least this woman at Downview saw

28:38

a lot of similarities between Agnes and her

28:40

mother and people walking away when

28:43

there was substance abuse. And I think sometimes

28:45

for some people, it's almost easier to

28:47

let go

28:49

or not be there, because it's harder

28:53

to be there in a way. I don't know. It's quite

28:55

an. Like

28:59

a double-edged sword almost.

29:00

That's right. And that's the structure of the book,

29:02

Dua. I started the story with Agnes

29:05

surrounded by people that loved her. She's

29:07

in that flat, and all of her childhood friends are

29:09

there. And she's the belle of the ball. She's the most loved

29:11

woman. And by the end of the novel, everyone

29:13

peels away, because other people's addiction

29:16

is really hard for us to cope with. And

29:19

it's hard to witness. It's

29:21

hard when you cannot help someone you love very

29:23

deeply get better. And

29:26

everybody really reaches a point where they have to save

29:28

themselves. And that's the central question,

29:30

I think, for Shuggy. How

29:33

far will he go to save his mother before he has to save

29:35

himself?

29:35

Yeah. I'd

29:38

be very remiss of

29:40

us to not talk about the men in

29:42

Shuggy Bank. Do we have to? Yes, we

29:44

have to. We have to. And I think we

29:47

should start with Shuggy's own father, Shug. Does

29:50

he have any redeemable qualities? No. Do

29:53

you have any sympathy for him? No.

29:58

Yeah. It's a-

30:00

You know, when you think about that time, 1980s

30:02

Glasgow, the time of deindustrialization,

30:05

like everything that was happening, it must have been

30:07

quite difficult for the men, of

30:10

course, too. And then

30:12

I think about everything that Agnes went through. And

30:14

I keep, you know, questions that

30:16

go around in my head is Agnes

30:18

maybe a hard woman to love,

30:21

or does she become so as a result of the pain

30:24

that has happened

30:26

in her marriage?

30:27

Yeah, I think it's the chicken and the egg.

30:29

And I didn't want to answer that, because

30:31

I felt like they both

30:33

happen at the same time. And who knows where

30:36

it begins. In the very first draft of the novel,

30:38

I'd set the character up that something shawg

30:40

abandons Agnes. And I'd set that up as a break

30:42

line, where when he walks out, she turns

30:44

to drink. But as I did more research,

30:47

and as I spoke to people who really suffered with addiction,

30:49

I realized that things are never as clean cut

30:51

as that it can be a slow ebbing

30:53

out of hope, or you can feel very lost over

30:56

a long period of time. And also, you can be in

30:58

denial for many years. And

31:00

people can see it before you can see it yourself. But,

31:03

you know, I didn't have an awful lot

31:06

of sympathy for shawg at the beginning of the book.

31:08

And he's addicted in a way to his addiction

31:10

is he takes an awful lot of his own self

31:13

worth from how women adore him. And

31:15

he's a man who's losing all of his looks. And he probably

31:18

isn't naturally very charming anyway. But

31:20

he has a limited power over women. And

31:22

he treats them appallingly for that. And I

31:25

couldn't find a point of sympathy for that.

31:27

But I knew I had to write about it, because it was such an

31:29

ugly and true thing. But

31:32

as I was writing the novel, part of the reason

31:34

why it took 10 years is because I had to mature.

31:36

I was only 30 when I began, and I was 40

31:38

when I finished. And, and

31:40

that feels ancient now. But like, I

31:42

was trying to come to a point

31:44

where I had empathy for everybody in the

31:47

book so that the pain wasn't

31:49

shawgy and agnuses, but trying to trace

31:51

it through all the characters to see how they were

31:53

also hurting. And when I got there, I

31:55

found I could write the novel with less judgment.

31:57

I could just write it as it had to be written.

32:00

It's interesting to kind of have a non-biased opinion,

32:02

even though maybe some things have connections

32:05

to your personal life, even though the book's

32:07

not directly linked to things

32:10

that have happened to you. At

32:12

Service95, we asked you for your recommended

32:15

reading list, and you've very generously

32:18

provided us with two, one

32:20

for gay classics and one for working class

32:23

classics. And you explained that there

32:25

are very few writers who straddle both

32:28

genres.

32:29

And as an adult gay male

32:32

writer from a working class background, did

32:34

you feel a sense of responsibility to

32:36

fill that gap, and how important

32:38

is it to you to tell these stories?

32:41

Yeah, I think there's always the burden of the underrepresented.

32:45

And because we don't hear enough stories like that, sometimes

32:47

when you have one, it's meant to speak for everyone.

32:50

And of course it can't, right? No book can really do

32:52

that. We're all living such nuanced

32:55

lives with different experiences. But

32:58

like I said, I didn't read books until I was

33:00

about 17 or 18, because they were actually quite dangerous.

33:03

They felt, first of all, like they belonged to

33:06

a society that was down south and middle class.

33:08

But then they also seemed really feminine, and

33:11

I was a bit worried that I'd be out to if I said,

33:13

I love books, the boys around me would be like,

33:15

yeah, faggot. They'd

33:17

be really terrible about it. And so I kind

33:20

of stayed away, and I only really started to

33:23

read them when I was 17 or 18. And

33:25

then I go on this huge discovery to get

33:28

beyond the classics and figure out

33:30

working class voices and then queer voices. And

33:33

I found often that queer voices were also

33:35

incredibly upper class or middle class.

33:38

And they were writing about issues about mobility

33:41

or about communities

33:44

that still had the ability to go and

33:46

find a tribe in capital cities or to be

33:48

in a boarding school or to be in the army

33:50

or to up and leave whatever situation

33:53

they were in. And as a working class

33:55

person, I didn't have any of that ability. The

33:57

only universe I knew was the streets that

33:59

I lived on. really the only part

34:01

of the world that I saw Dua. And so

34:03

if there was any problems with that, I still had to confront

34:06

it because that was the only place I knew. And

34:08

I wanted to write with both Shuggie and Mungo, a

34:10

queer person who was coming to terms

34:13

with their queerness in a community

34:16

that's the only community they know.

34:17

It's really interesting to hear you

34:19

say about books being dangerous.

34:23

I mean, especially now with everything that's

34:25

happening, there's lots of bands on books that

34:27

have been happening, lots of writers being

34:30

censored. I think it's really

34:32

interesting. I was having a conversation actually with Min

34:34

Jin Lee on my podcast

34:36

before, on the last season. And

34:39

she was saying how books are dangerous because the words

34:41

that we say can actually do something, can actually

34:43

change the world. And

34:45

I think that's also incredibly powerful as

34:47

well. So I'm glad

34:50

that you've come to a place to

34:52

write this incredible story and really

34:55

give a lot of nuance and tell a different story

34:57

as well in your own story, in your own way. Yeah,

35:00

Shuggie might have taken you 10 years

35:02

to write.

35:04

But I guess in the three years since publication,

35:07

like you said, you wrote another bestselling

35:09

novel, Young Mungo, which

35:12

is just equally wonderful. I absolutely,

35:15

absolutely loved that. And there are gonna be

35:17

TV adaptations for both

35:19

novels. We hope. Well, I

35:21

think that's looking good, which

35:24

I know that you're currently writing the scripts for. How

35:27

does writing for TV differ? Like

35:29

I wonder what you gain and you lose in the process

35:31

of doing that. Yeah, it's

35:33

been so wildly different. And at

35:36

first when they approached me to do it, I said no, because

35:38

I felt like I'd given so much of my life to these characters

35:41

in these books. But then I grew up

35:43

without books, but we loved stories.

35:45

We loved telly. You know, we were

35:48

curious and we were compassionate and

35:51

we turned to these sort of film and cinema

35:53

and that was how we connected with one another. And

35:56

so I felt like I had a responsibility to tell

35:58

these stories on screen and to make sure. They

36:00

were told in a way, even if I fail and

36:02

the fear of failure is always with you, but even

36:04

if I fail, at least I've done it myself,

36:07

you know, I failed myself.

36:09

And so it's been such

36:12

a journey because the story, the novel has to change

36:14

entirely because the medium changes.

36:16

You can't, you know, take the viewer

36:18

anywhere you want to go. You have to really build

36:20

the world and show the world. And there's

36:23

the line that says, if you show a gun, someone has to use

36:25

a gun. And that's very anti novelistic

36:27

because we just love color. We just love to tell you

36:29

things for the sake of, you know, telling you things.

36:32

And so it's been great. And the team at

36:34

age 24 have really helped me to hone

36:36

my skill and given me a lot of feedback

36:38

and, and a lot of space as well to tell the

36:40

story as it, as it should be told. But

36:43

I'm hoping one day we can cast you in one of these adaptations.

36:46

Oh gosh,

36:46

I gotta brush up on my Glaswegian accent.

36:48

Well that's what you're doing. Yeah. Douglas,

36:52

thank you so much.

36:59

Well, I am still

37:01

buzzing after that chat and I hope you all

37:03

enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. That

37:06

was amazing and scary and exciting

37:08

all at once. And I kind of want to

37:11

do it again sometime. But thank

37:13

you so much to Douglas for joining me and

37:15

for all he's done to make the launch of the Service 95 book

37:17

club so special. Shuggy

37:19

Bane is one of those books that stuck with me since first

37:22

reading it. I'm so thrilled it was our

37:24

first book of the month. Keep checking

37:26

service95.com throughout the rest of the month

37:28

for more Shuggy

37:29

Bane content and stay tuned for our next

37:31

title as there's so much more to come from

37:33

the Service 95 book club.