want to meet nutters, lust after unobtainable Indian women and smoke hash. Any given class might have mothers who were doing a class as a hobby, vocational types doing it to get onto another course or mental cases who’d been made to do it to get their bursary. It was probably the only glimpse of anything approaching the real world I’ve ever had, and it was terrifying.
I got into the drama society and acted in a play. Dressed in shorts and a tank top, I played a 12-year-old boy and was several inches taller than the guy playing my dad. A lot of people who came said they thought that I was playing someone with a mental handicap. There were a couple of proper actors in it. I’ve always really appreciated acting as a talent. It’s taken for granted but when you see somebody who’s really good it’s so compelling. I found the proper actors there to be quite a bitchy bunch. Mind you, if I saw stand-up comics having exactly the same conversations they’d sound so positive I’d assume they were being sarcastic.
This was when I first started to put on weight. I’ve had to really battle with my weight ever since; it’s a real slog. In those days obesity wasn’t really an issue in the way it is now. I don’t think we really related the fact that we were all getting fatterbecause of all the beer we drank. Ever since college I’ve had to work at never really being slim but never quite reaching properly fat. I swim just enough for my weight to hover somewhere between compliments and abuse. Apparently scientists recommend 3,000 steps in half an hour for moderate exercise. Not only a good way to get fit but also a perfect way to develop obsessive compulsive disorder. One, two, three, feeling fit, one thousand and four…must keep going…two thousand and seventy nine…going absolutely mental. Light switch on. Light switch off.
They say fat people make better lovers. Who says this? Fat virgins. But of course, the debate about size zero models continues. Isn’t it about time that we insisted that all modelling campaigns should be done by models with normal measurements? And then pretend to find them attractive. I’m joking.
There’s a fallacy that men are attracted by advertising images of very thin women in underwear. Actually, we’re attracted by most women in their underwear. In fact, just show us the underwear lying over the back of a chair. We’ll buy your toothpaste.
At Langside I started hanging around with a guy called Joe who was about 22 and a complete basket-case. He’d been a full-on soccer casual and was a very bad guy. He ran a combat club somewhere in the East End. I went along to watch them one time. Always a bad sign to see everybody unpacking weapons in the changing room. The training seemed to involve them leapingfrom wall-bars onto the ground in a bid to strengthen their legs, followed by punching each other in the stomach while shouting. They had something that most properly trained fighters lack. Madness.
Joe was a dangerous nut but had a bright, plausible manner that generally got everybody onside. I remember once seeing him trying to get his girlfriend out of her physics class; he wandered right through the door with her arguing. When the teacher turned up and asked him what he was doing there he said he was going class to class raising money for the family of a murdered schoolgirl. The teacher gave him a fiver.
Along with another guy, we promoted a club night. We hired a nightclub in the town and sold tickets on campus and even made some money. Joe said we should use the profits to buy a gun, so that ‘nobody will fuck with us’. I spent my half on a Walkman.
One night we were coming home from town and some wee guys started shouting at us from halfway down Buchanan Street.
‘Take this,’ growled Joe, handing me a lump of metal on a length of cord. He pulled a bottle out of his jacket and charged downhill, unaware that I was legging it the other way.
Eventually, I found a taxi but as I
I got into the drama society and acted in a play. Dressed in shorts and a tank top, I played a 12-year-old boy and was several inches taller than the guy playing my dad. A lot of people who came said they thought that I was playing someone with a mental handicap. There were a couple of proper actors in it. I’ve always really appreciated acting as a talent. It’s taken for granted but when you see somebody who’s really good it’s so compelling. I found the proper actors there to be quite a bitchy bunch. Mind you, if I saw stand-up comics having exactly the same conversations they’d sound so positive I’d assume they were being sarcastic.
This was when I first started to put on weight. I’ve had to really battle with my weight ever since; it’s a real slog. In those days obesity wasn’t really an issue in the way it is now. I don’t think we really related the fact that we were all getting fatterbecause of all the beer we drank. Ever since college I’ve had to work at never really being slim but never quite reaching properly fat. I swim just enough for my weight to hover somewhere between compliments and abuse. Apparently scientists recommend 3,000 steps in half an hour for moderate exercise. Not only a good way to get fit but also a perfect way to develop obsessive compulsive disorder. One, two, three, feeling fit, one thousand and four…must keep going…two thousand and seventy nine…going absolutely mental. Light switch on. Light switch off.
They say fat people make better lovers. Who says this? Fat virgins. But of course, the debate about size zero models continues. Isn’t it about time that we insisted that all modelling campaigns should be done by models with normal measurements? And then pretend to find them attractive. I’m joking.
There’s a fallacy that men are attracted by advertising images of very thin women in underwear. Actually, we’re attracted by most women in their underwear. In fact, just show us the underwear lying over the back of a chair. We’ll buy your toothpaste.
At Langside I started hanging around with a guy called Joe who was about 22 and a complete basket-case. He’d been a full-on soccer casual and was a very bad guy. He ran a combat club somewhere in the East End. I went along to watch them one time. Always a bad sign to see everybody unpacking weapons in the changing room. The training seemed to involve them leapingfrom wall-bars onto the ground in a bid to strengthen their legs, followed by punching each other in the stomach while shouting. They had something that most properly trained fighters lack. Madness.
Joe was a dangerous nut but had a bright, plausible manner that generally got everybody onside. I remember once seeing him trying to get his girlfriend out of her physics class; he wandered right through the door with her arguing. When the teacher turned up and asked him what he was doing there he said he was going class to class raising money for the family of a murdered schoolgirl. The teacher gave him a fiver.
Along with another guy, we promoted a club night. We hired a nightclub in the town and sold tickets on campus and even made some money. Joe said we should use the profits to buy a gun, so that ‘nobody will fuck with us’. I spent my half on a Walkman.
One night we were coming home from town and some wee guys started shouting at us from halfway down Buchanan Street.
‘Take this,’ growled Joe, handing me a lump of metal on a length of cord. He pulled a bottle out of his jacket and charged downhill, unaware that I was legging it the other way.
Eventually, I found a taxi but as I
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