A A Gill

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2006

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the critic and columnist A A Gill. His witty, first-person articles have earned him a whole host of awards and a loyal following. But his life as a successful writer was preceded by more than a decade that was spent living in squalid squats, taking drugs and existing in an alcoholic haze. It was the unplanned intervention of a GP that made him face up to his alcoholism and seek treatment. It's now 21 years since he last had a drink and he has been given, he says, the chance to start again and live a second life.

He abandoned his early hopes of becoming an artist, for a while he ran cookery courses in his own home and, at the same time, he started writing. Despite suffering from dyslexia so severe that he has to dictate all his columns to copytakers he found his voice immediately - as soon as he began writing his articles, he says, he felt he had come home.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Love Song from Sanders of the River by Paul Robeson Book: Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor by Mervyn Peake Luxury: My children's pillows

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.
0:05.4	My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.
0:10.7	The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.
0:17.4	With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to
0:22.4	helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're
0:27.7	all put together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your
0:34.1	life, check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:41.3	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:44.3	The program was originally broadcast in 2006, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
0:50.3	Music My castaway this week is a writer. For the last 20 years or so, he's entertained the middle classes with his witty
1:11.4	newspaper columns on food, television, travel and many other things besides. Asurbic and astute,
1:17.8	he's also capable of turning his hand to serious stuff, and he's written a couple of novels, too.
1:22.8	Life before this award-winning career was a rather different story until the age of 30. He drifted around
1:28.5	London and sometimes America in an aimless alcoholic existence. But he turned all that around
1:34.2	to become the celebrated columnist he is today. There's a feeling, he says, that the rest of the
1:39.4	world has a script that I wasn't given, a way of behaving that I wasn't told about. He is A.A. Gill.
1:46.4	Is that, if you'll forgive me, Adrian, the sort of the words of a recovering alcoholic,
1:51.5	you're looking for another excuse? Well, I am a recovering alcoholic. Yes, I don't think I do
1:56.9	look for excuses. I'm not terribly interested in why I drank. I'm much more interested in how I avoid drinking again. I mean, I think what it is that makes drunks, drunks, is interesting in an academic sense. It's not terribly useful if that's your problem.
2:15.8	And the way you avoid drinking again is to remind yourself about how awful it was when you were drinking, is it?
2:22.2	Yes, but the further away you get from that, the harder it is. I mean, I can't conjure up as
2:28.7	graphically as I used to be able to. Oh, I don't know. You've written some strong things. We'll come to it anyway.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.