Bill Hicks Still Haunts

The sky is the grey of old skin. I walk the Regent to Camden accompanied by bootleg Black Box Recorder. London offers the usual blessing of indifference. Even with an eyepatch and a growling black coat, I am rendered anonymous, all but invisible. Only children seem to notice me, an appropriate canalside figure for those enjoying the Pirate Castle.

At Jongleurs I am interviewed as a talking head for a DVD extra on a forthcoming Bill Hicks documentary. I am not at my best. Paid in trinkets and Tiger beer, I ramble without any of the coherence and insight Bill deserves.

I want to explain how he was an inspiration, how beyond the laughter they evoked, his words did more than make me think. Explain how after listening to Bill, being a hypocrite is near impossible. Explain how he gave voice to my anger at the illusions of the Black Iron Prison. How the truths he told were so deep and universal they will keep resonating no matter how many times the heads on the statues are changed.

Of course, I fail. I do not even explain that I would probably have never written a conspiracy book without him. I do not even begin to convey how Bill Hicks still haunts me. Nudges me to scrape the black spray paint of the lens, reminds me to laugh, to be angry and yet approach the madness of the world with a loving spirit.

Drinking afterwards with fellow fans and interviewees, there is an immediate bond. If you get Bill, you tend to have something in common aside from a passion for a man who referred to himself as ‘Chomsky with dick jokes’. I hold one of the trinkets, a memorial card made up by Bill’s mother Mary Hicks. I turn its words over and over: ‘I left in love, laughter, and in truth, and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.’ Their power makes me feel even worse over the hash I have made of the interview.

The rest of the night is spent with Surreal Girl, something always guaranteed to raise my spirits. We drink champagne while eating popcorn, see an unfinished edit of an upcoming movie. It is a strange experience. Not only do I have to contend with hearing the voice of Doctor Who say ‘fuck’, I am front row with 11 lesbian vampires. This results in a lot of unavoidable actress leg and cleavage. Somehow I suspect Bill would have liked that.

A Journalist Wanting Words

In my career I have interviewed Oscar winners and 15-minute pop stars, political heavyweights and hip comedians. Down the wire and in smoke-choked bars, I have filled notebooks with scratchy field recordings. From heroes like Bill Hicks to Serbian warlord villains, I have asked questions, stolen quotes.

More than 20 years of interrogating have given me good technique. I research. I charm. Give me 30 minutes and a couple of drinks and I will always get more than the usual tired procession of recycled anecdotes.

However, I am not used to being the interviewee. Hundreds of hours of professional questioning make it feel uncomfortable when it is time for role reversal. Being grilled on the BBC One O’ Clock News holds none of the terror of meeting an unknown journalist for beers and a personal probing.

Beyond contractual obligations, I do not turn down today’s interview because all that experience means there is too much empathy for a journalist wanting words. Given our career trajectories, Matt and I run deep with respect for regional media, the hard slog of provincial press. Having been there and dealt with too many no-listers with egos the size of planets makes you want to be better.

Come lunch, I stop work. Take a break from writing tomorrow’s speech, walk along the canal to my primary local. Buy a strawberry beer, sit in the pub’s library corner and wait on the journo. The strangeness of speaking to inland Oz via a meeting a hundred yards from my home is not lost on me.

The editor of You Magazine is funny and clever, good at what she does. Almost instantly she has me talking about curries with Matt, the black humour of newsrooms and invocating the Cosmic Joker. Both of us ruminate on God’s penchant for fatal punchlines. She offers up the comforting thought that by writing 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die, instead of dying in some absurd accident, I have probably guaranteed a death 50 years in the future: “Grandchildren around the hospice bed.”

Bonding over Underbelly leads to questions on canalside life and the Lady Love. They do not get dodged. I bore on the spatial shock and casual splendour of Australia. Drift from stories of my lifelong llama curse to views on religious hubris and the evil of hippos. We discuss the interconnectedness of all action, the loneliness of solo authoring and what Matt and I might write next. The paranoiac bible gets a big thumbs up. I just hope when it gets written up, she uses my words on mayfly days and eating the extra chocolate biscuit.

One of the marks of a good interview is it feels like this one – conversation, not interrogation. At the end of it, I come out respecting and liking my questioner. I am even sufficiently charmed to agree to being photographed on the blue bridge. With my narrowboat neighbours behind me, I look into the massive lens and surprise myself with a smile.