ORIGINS

I just couldn’t help moonlighting as this and that, outside of my work as a full-time illustrator. There was too much magic in creativity not to try mine in other areas. Feeling usually dictated where. I’d been moved by learning the horrific suicide figures in the UK and thrown myself in the deep end by pitching a voluntary awareness campaign to the Campagin Against Living Miserably. They fought hard to highlight and address these stats and focused on the arts and sport, which spoke to me. The necessity of self-expression was something they championed through their work. I wanted some of that, and saw the chance to share the emotional benefits my artistic expression brought me. It kept me sane on the bad days and illuminated my life on the good, and I’d dared to hope it also brought peace and purpose to many others who expressed themselves creatively.

Putting this to the test formed our campaign narrative, so with photographer Danny Allison, Dirty Freud, and designer/art director Sam Price, we got to work. Quite quickly we found the cause resonated, and Danny Dyer, Stephen Merchant, Ken Garln, Mick Foley, and Ian Stone agreed to exclusive interviews. But we had no budget to pay a journalist, so I stepped up. I trusted my hunch, and each person I talked to about their creativity confirmed my suspicion: it was everything to them and allowed them to own their lives.

I wondered why more people hadn’t tapped into theirs. I cared deeply about the people in pain, who hadn’t found the belonging creativity brought me and wanted to put it right. This campaign was just the beginning.

One week after a chat that was supposed to be 30-minutes long, but ran 1 hour 10 minutes, Danny Dyer’s manager called me to say it might be her favourite of all Danny’s interviews. I couldn’t believe it. How? This was only my 3rd interview and the 1st that wasn’t an afterthought. It didn’t make sense. But the more I reflected on this, the more I understood. I like people. I wasn’t out to get a headline. I wanted to know about the man beneath the caricature Danny has come to be considered. It wasn’t so much an interview, but heartfelt research into a topic that concerned every one of us. He must have felt this authenticity because he opened up, giving me something raw and real, a world away from Football Factory and ‘Britain’s hardest’.

This formed the basis of my interview style. Engage the human, seek to understand them, guide them but lure their truest self into the spotlight – however good, bad, or weird it may be – and be joyfully naive. It runs throughout my 300+ long-form conversations about creativity.

It also set in motion my formal exploration of human creativity. It hasn’t stopped rolling since.

It will continue for the rest of my life, and – I sincerely hope – far beyond.

Now it has a home: The Creative Condition, and I’m delighted to welcome you into it.