Full transcript of David Hoyle interviewed by Matt Lippiatt at the Tate Modern gallery in London, 2006.

 

Matt Lippiatt: I was reading transcripts of your speeches on the PrettyLady website, talking about the “sex zombies” of the gay scene. It’s kind of depressing that, six years later, you could pick up these themes and very little has changed.

David Hoyle: Yeah, I know. It’s wonderful really. But it’s the way it is, I mean, there’s so much comes out of the gay scene that is apologetic and about fitting in – fitting in with what? Fitting in with... it’s an (inaudible) situation isn’t it, really? (looking over the balcony of the Tate Modern) Let’s watch the school children being formed into an orderly cue and taught to go forward. Is it a coincidence? Do they all want to come into an art gallery?

M: If you talk to the artists, they don’t like it though.

D: They don’t like what?

M: I interviewed the Chapman brothers. They said they disagree with the idea that art is good for you and we should all go to galleries.

D: Oh, exactly. Yeah. The idea that every single one of those children wants to come into this building is offensive.

M: There’s that, and then there’s the matter of where does the art come from? They were pointing out that the YBA’s were kind of detached, cynical, ironic people in college –

D: Yeah, they were individualistic, strong in what they were doing. They had a lot of self-belief, those YBA people.

M: But what Dinos Chapman seemed to be saying was that there is not inherent value in this work. It is mostly nihilistic. It isn’t going to make your life better, or make for a better country.

D: Yeah. Let’s get things in perspective. Let’s get real. What would make the world a better place would be to stop manufacturing guns and bombs, because we obviously can’t be trusted with them so they should be taken away. We’ll have to go away and grow up. Learn how to be human beings. Otherwise we might as well blow up the world, get rid.

M: You use that term alot. What does it mean to you to be a human being?

D: To be a human being means that if you have got psychotic impulses to acknowledge them and deal with them, and to find out democratically what is your right to exert your psychosis on to other people, and do you have that right? Are we social animals or are we potential H-Bombs, I suppose, to paraphrase a song. What are we here for? Are we here to support and love each other? And I’m not frightened of using the word love atall. There’s a playwrite in Manchester called Sonia Hughes and we were having a debate at the Manchester University a couple of weeks ago, a few of us called (inaudible) to get involved in this discussion, and I liked what she was saying about using love as a component within all discussion, any problem solving, to always bring it in, and hopefully that could become part of the answer. She didn’t mean in a sort of wishy-washy, let’s whatever, but as a proper, sensible, sane –

M: Well, it is there, isn’t it.

D: Yeah. I mean, what makes a person authentic? Their ability to love and get on with people, or the reverse.

M: There is this moralist dimension to what you do on stage –

D: Mm.

M: But because of the way humour works, I think humour is a lot like music in that it’s powerful, but it’s totally unstable in terms of morality.

D: Yeah, and there can be ambiguity.

M: It can be mobilised for good and bad.

D: It creates a sort of contrapuntal... (laughter)

M: But when you’re using it, does it feel like – well it’s a tool isn’t it?

D: Definitely. It’s what life’s given me, a sense of humour, and it’s as well really. It’s everything to me. At the end of the day, you’ve got to have a laugh. It’s essential. You’re acknowledging something. You’re confronting something, even if the reaction is laughter, it’s still in your consciousness. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re being callous, or that you don’t care, I mean that you’re not connected with it. The thing is that it’s being brought out into the open and it’s in the forum and share it with the group. I mean, we’re all in it together, aren’t we. For as long as it lasts, I mean obviously in the history of the planet and all the rest of it, we’re just here. And that sort of thing frees you from being bogged down with it all. I’m quite happy to think that in the history of the planet and the universe I’m only here for like a nano-second or whatever. I think that’s very freeing, it helps to stop taking yourself too seriously. I mean, I’m not particularly academically gifted, I don’t have any particular qualifications. I think the last qualification I had was, I’ve got A-Level Art, A-Level English, I can’t even remember if it was literature or language –

M: Reading.

D: Reading, yeah. I think I’ve got a certificate in higher education, and I did two years of a degree course, but I didn’t finish my degree. I was quite involved in student politics at the time and that sort of took over.

M: I can see that these pieces of paper are very important to you.

D: I don’t know where they are.

M: They are worlds within themselves, educational institutions.

D: Yeah, and I was just doing my own things. That’s how I’ve learnt anything is just sort of learning in your own time. For some of us it’s very hard to be institutionalised, it doesn’t work for everybody.

M: No, there’s people who start at St Martin’s and it’s totally impossible to intigrate their way of thinking so they leave in half a year, and often they end up doing the most interesting things.

D: Good luck to them, that’s what I say. But I did get cycling proficiency first time, and nobody can take that away from me.

M: I’m surprised when you say ‘not academic’ because my experience of the Divine David on stage is that you're always very articulate.

D: Hm, well I might have the gift of the gab but it doesn’t mean to say that I’m particularly clever. I must have kissed the blarney stone or something.

M: But it’s quite unusual in comedy acts, where the vocabulary is often kept to a basic minimum, and alot of the humour relies on stereotypes, categories of people. If anything you’re working against that.

D: Yeah. I am getting increasingly aware of people who are unhappy with the gay identity personally and I think we’re living in very interesting times really. We’ll just have to see what happens. But with the perfect body and all the rest of it, and maybe that’s down to my own insecurities, now I’m not so much bothered. That’s the joy of getting older really, I’m in my early forties now and I’m finding it a very liberating experience, because death is inevitable and with every birthday it’s another knock on that door, and finally that door will open.

M: And this is liberating because what? There’s less at stake?

D: Well, you just don’t have to be here much longer.

M: To live with your mistakes?

D: To live with everything.

M: Do you know Scott Capurro?

D: I don’t know him but I know of him. He’s very forthright isn’t he.

M: He is very forthright, and he’s not different off-stage, and there are times when I think, “You have a great mind, everything that you say is wrong about the gay scene and gay press is true, but why worry?" Straight people know that the straight club scene can be idiotic and all about wasting yourself.

D: But then we’re all ageing aren’t we? And the more we get sort of angst ridden, you know, that’s more lines, more wrinkles. Do you know what I mean? And some of us can’t afford to get expensive moisturisers and trips to Swiss clinics, and all the rest of it, to have facelifts. So I say, keep the worry to a minimum. I have been tortured in the past, very much so, and I know I have a propensity to beat myself up, crucify myself, do all that sort of thing –

M: About what?

D: About everything. And eventually you just think, this isn’t (inaudible) vile. And you’re making yourself responsible for everything. I think I said on Monday (When David Met Justin) I said in a way it’s a combination of naivety and arrogance the idea that one person can somehow change-the-world, is a bit ridiculous. We can only do it collectively, if we want to.

M: Also, it indicates a kind of poverty of imagination of the rest of us if we think that someone will author our great future.

D: Yeah, someone will do it for us. And that’s how these dreadful dictators happen, isn’t it. People surrender their own will and allow somebody else’s.

M: But with performance there is still that narcissistic element of you acting out and the audience either projecting themselves onto it –

D: But it’s the whole idea, isn’t it, of the isolated person and the audience in a way is kind of ridiculous. That’s why I like to refer to my shows as a gathering. We’re all there, we’ve all decided not to stay in and watch the telly or stare into our navels and get introverted. We’re all out there, and anything might happen. What I like is that if you do a show, people have met, and after they’ve had relationships or created friendships, or that sort of thing, and that to me is very satisfying. Perhaps even more satisfying than that somebody might have laughed at something I’ve said or thought, “Ooh, that was a clever observation.” I think that’s much better.

M: And Duckie does that anyway, doesn’t it?

D: Yeah, Duckie does. Definitely because people who go there feel that they have got something in common and it is counter-cultural, and it does encourage that, and to have a lovely spirit of equality.

M: And television makes that impossible doesn’t it? That it be a social gathering.

D: I’m really into birds and I love ornothology, but I sometimes draw the line at pigeons. But then television is not the same now is it, with all the channels, satellite, digital all that. I remember working in British Home Stores for four years, worked in a shoe shop for five, that you would go into work and you would say, “Did you watch so and so on the television last night?” and it was quite unifying, and that’s not the case now really. So I don’t know what is the thing, the common interest is that we all get involved in. There’s alot of concern that young people aren’t getting involved politically, don’t have any faith in the political system.

M: I think consumerism is unifying.

D: Yeah.

M: It’s like an extention of childhood roleplay games using props where you put on the crown and say, “I’m the King.”

D: Yeah.

M: If we all play along, it’s meaningful.

D: It’s very difficult to not get involved in fossil fuels and all that palava. It would be nice if everything ran on vegetable oil but it’s not happening. Basically I just want us all to have a good time. I don’t want people leaving the shows feeling depressed or helpless or hopeless or anything like that. I think that would be really negative, and there’s enough people doing things to make people feel bad. In fact I think LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) people at school even now have a very very hard time, so you don’t need to be piling on the agony.

M: What made you want to return to performing?

D: I think, one, I wanted to re-connect with an audience, and two, I probably was a bit bored. I enjoyed doing my painting, and I enjoyed creating the garden last year for It’s Queer Up North. It was very nice to create a space that’s about relaxation and nature and just quite a healing environment really. People came in to work early to sit in the garden before they started their shifts, people were having meetings in the garden, alot of events were held in the garden, poetry readings, music, there was even a treasure hunt, and again, gatherings.

M: A sort of micro-utopia.

D: Yes. It was lovely. I had lots of bamboos which actually over the three weeks they were growing at the rate of about six to eight inches a day, and by the end they were touching the ceiling. It looked amazing. We were really lucky with the location: big windows, lots of light, and no plants died in the making of that. It was good. And also people brought things to the garden, from crystals to little gnomes. I had cultivated strawberries in there, but people brought wild strawberries, other plants and herbs, things like that, you know. People got very involved in it and that was lovely. Again, it was an organic growth situation. And I thought it was important to do something that was about being calm and being earthed and making an acknowledgement of nature and how important it is, and I enjoyed it, as opposed to everything being chaotic and anarchistic and mad and borderline destructive. I did want to produce something that was calming and beautiful.

M: David Hoyle as opposed to the Divine David: is he calmer?

D: Mm, definitely. I don’t have the energy that I had, and that’s natural as you get older, you don’t. And I think mentally you realise that you’re part of a continuum, there’s only so much you can do within your own lifetime really, so you’re keeping hope alive really. I think I’m very into the idea of humanity. I think that’s a very unifying energy, and something that we all contain. As I say, I’m not particularly theoretically gifted, I don’t have alot of people that I can quote or anything like that, to back up any arguments that I have. I think it’s just within me, you know, and it’s like a compulsion really. People who perform are compelled to do it, I think. I did enjoy the art exhibitions, I did enjoy the garden, but I just thought it would be nice to re-connect and get back involved in performing again. Even if it’s just to sort of tidy things up in a way. I mean, I might not do it for ever and ever. I don’t consider myself to have any clear organised career trajectory, I wouldn’t put myself under that sort of pressure and I don’t think it’s that important. It’s nice to meet you today and have this interview, you know, I’ve enjoyed it very much, and that’s enough for me. It’s just on a day-by-day basis. This is happening, and it’s a lovely thing that is happening. It’s nice to meet new people, and that you’re sufficiently interested in me and what I’m up to to get on the train up from Farnborough and come to London and for us to meet, and that’s lovely, and I think that’s probably more important than what we’re talking about.

M: Well, I only interview people that I like, otherwise I just write features. I always think that if I’m interested enough to want to talk to this person, that’s a good reason to do it.

D: Also, I find interviews quite difficult because when I’m on stage and you do have the pressure of performing and speaking and all the rest of it, that seems to suit me better than – I can’t be coldly analytical about anything really. I always become emotionally involved in it all, it’s kind of artificial in a way.

M: The analysis is artificial?

D: Yeah. I think that it’s something that happens when we’re all together, and that’s it really. So I’m looking forward to being at the Soho Theatre, I like Tim very much, who also manages Kiki and Herb, I’ve enjoyed getting to know Sarah Frankcom who’s directing it, and it’s interesting working with a director. I like the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester very much. I admired her work, I went to see a production of Kes, and I love Kes, and she directed that and then I got to know her through that and then she said she’d always wanted to work with me bla bla bla, so that’s what we’re doing.

M: How much direction does it take?

D: Well, exactly. I think she can help me in terms of presentation, and maybe giving it a bit of structure but not too much because there’ll always be room for the spontaneous and for the inspired, definitely. I wouldn’t want to go on and know that everything’s scripted from the moment I say, “Good evening,” to the moment I say, “Goodbye,” like it’s just this thing that I do again and again like a xerox. I would hate that.

M: But that’s the excitement of watching improvisation, because you usually can tell if people are totally scripted.

D: Yeah, you can. I mean, you might aswell just stay at home and read a book.

M: What other performers do you enjoy?

D: I liked Nathan Evan’s show which was in the Homotopia festival – I wanted to call it the Homophobia Festival then – in Liverpool, which has happened two years running now, and they’ve now got funding to take it into 2009, and that’s a very exciting developement. Liverpool seems to be doing a lot for the arts and counter-culturally and all the rest of it, so I’m very supportive of what they’re doing. I liked his work because he was very very autobiographical and I think that that must be quite difficult to do really, to share your innermost and that sort of thing and to make an entertainment out of it. I take my hat off to him. I like Chloe Poems, because over the years he-stroke-she has always kept true to his original manifestation as a gay socialist transvestite poet, and hasn’t really deviated from that, you know, a voice that’s there. The voice of descent. Gets very little press coverage even though recently he-stroke-she was invited to address the literature group at Harvard University in America. It wasn’t covered in the gay press which I think is a shame because as a community that was something we could have been very proud of. He was born into a very poverty stricken background in what we call the Scotty Road in Liverpool and for him to have gone from that to being invited to go to Harvard and speak and perform, and he also performed in New York, I think that’s a success story.

M: It’s quite amazing.

D: Yeah, but again, it wasn’t covered. That wasn’t validated, and it should have been, because people don’t like his socialist politics, because we’re gay, that’s it. I think that the way that alot of the gay press are trying to package LGBT people is that we’re not hardline socialist, we’re not communists, we’re not left-field, we’re just as apathetic and ridiculous as anybody else, we couldn’t give a fuck about anything as long as we can listen to Kylie and go shopping, la la la la, and just buy more things – I mean, who’s going to inherit them, do you know what I mean? As gay people, surely we’re free of that sort of thing of having to acquire a load of shite in order to what? Where’s it going to go?

M: Not only in the gay press but in the general media, during the time you’ve been gone, gay people have been recast not only as acceptable but as super-consumers – they will teach you how to buy soft-furnishings for your house, how to buy fashionable clothes.

D: I know, and also it’s a bit annoying, sometimes you get people who are what I call professional gays on the television, like you say, with the soft-furnishings programmes and all that sort of thing. A Queer Eye for a Straight Guy and all that. And sometimes you get people and they’re talking to you in such a way, like “Well, they’re gay, you’re gay, therefore if I say this to you, you’ll get it and you’ll be interested,” and I think, “Please, please don’t judge me from that.” I watched A Queer Eye for a Straight Guy and I felt like crying, I felt de-energised, demotivated and depressed at the end of it.

M: Did it make you want to buy?

D: No, it made me feel ashamed.

M: I have the same problem with Queer as Folk.

D: Well, I think that’s a very brave thing to say because we’re all meant to love that, aren’t we. I’ve got no furniture at the moment, no carpets or anything, but I’m not having lamenated flooring because everybody’s got it. I shall buy some from somebody who’s got some cheap carpet and make sure it’s fitted.

M: Can you imagine doing television again?

D: Possibly, because the money’s always useful, isn’t it. I enjoyed doing Nathan Barley because obviously I was working with Chris Morris who I respect hugely, and that was a wonderful opportunity, and that sort of encouraged me to think, “Well, actually, I do enjoy performing,” and via performance things can be said and done that do, to me, have some sort of validity. But I’d hate to set myself up as sort of, “Be like me. I am right,” because everybody’s on their own journey, everybody’s on their own voyage of self-discovery, and it’s not for me to interrupt that and say, “Actually, don’t tune into your self and your own relationship with the world around you, stop all that and just listen to me, be like me, I’ve got all the answers, bla bla bla.” That’s too arrogant and too stupid, and it’s not fair. I don’t want that role or position. One programme that I think is very very subversive and very amusing is Footballer’s Wives, I don’t know if you watch it. I think that is just brilliant, I think it’s fantastic. I think when you’re watching it you’re just aware that the whole celebrity pop culture and all the rest of it, I think Footballer’s Wives just completely carves it up and makes it what it is, it’s just a laughing stock and insubstantial nonsense, and quite empty and ridiculous, and you feel sorry for these people who seem to be like the pieces on a chessboard, allowing themselves to be moved around this chessboard that isn’t of their own construction, but they can’t think themselves out of the game, out of the situation, so they’re all trapped. They might have multi-million pound houses, and all the gear, the clothes, and cars, and champagne, and the lifestyle and everything, but we know that they’re deeply unhappy and lost, and I think Footballer’s Wives gets that across really effectively. I see it as being a very subversive programme. I think it works because it has got mass appeal. I think it’s clever, I like it. And Footballer’s Wives Extra Time is wonderful.

M: What is it?

D: Well, if you enjoy seeing elderly nurses wank off young footballers then it could be just the show for you.

M: Sounds good.

D: It’s almost Chaucerian, you know.

M: It all sounds a bit like Bret Easton Ellis.

D: Yeah, well, my friend Lee, the top (inaudible) Billy Baxter, he loves Bret Easton Ellis and the way that all the commodities are listed, the heartlessness and all that sort of thing.

M: I think it’s seductive because it’s critical but at the same time it feeds the fascination for the young, the bored, the rich. It almost presents ennui as the pinnacle of decadence. If you enjoy wealth, you must be nouveau riche.

D: Of course, yeah.

M: Like the cherry on the cake of fame is to disavow it.

D: But alot of people want to be famous, but then why? What is that motivation to be in as many people’s consciousness as possible? Why?

M: What do you think it is?

D: I think it’s perhaps because people are encouraged that only by say millions and millions of people knowing you, only then will you have any sort of substance. I think that’s quite sad. As I said, over the last six years I have got involved with the local community where I live, and I’m very proud of that. I love the people that are in my life now. They’re not showbusiness people atall, they’re people who are making the most of the lives that they’ve got and they’re very loving generous people and I love being amongst them. I think it’s one of those situations where you think, “I’m looking for something,” and you can go all round the world and all round the houses, and then the minute I stopped performing and went back to living full time in Manchester I realised it was all on my doorstep. We’re all on the road to Damascus, aren’t we. It was there all the time. I think I’d gone through performing sort of saying that life was a loveless experience and very isloating and alienating and bla bla bla, and all along if I hadn’t been performing I could have been evolving.

M: You could have made some friends!

D: Exactly, everything could be lovely, years ago, so I’ve learnt that. Everything’s on your doorstep if you take the time and trouble to get to know people, and be around for each other, and encourage each other to develop any skills that we have, and follow any dreams that we might have, then I think that’s time well spent. Alot of it is that some of us don’t have a lot of confidence, and we perhaps don’t have alot of self-esteem, and we have a lot of insecurities and all the rest of it, and it’s just being honest about that and acknowledging it and working on it, and encouraging each other. In showbusiness you get alot of people who, the minute they find out that there’s cracks within you, and that you can be considered weak, then they’ll get the crowbar in there and fucking destroy you.

M: Why?

D: Because they’re egotistical monsters who are at war with life, and everybody is their enemy, because everybody’s in the way of them and their megolomania, and their Hitlerian vision. I’ve no intentions of moving from where I live. I’ve been there nearly nineteen years now and it is my home, and it’s very important to me to have a home.

M: The people who get angry at your shows –

D: What are they getting angry at? We should celebrate the fact that we do have, to a certain extent, free speach, and that we have created, like Duckie has, arenas of debate and expression, and if that makes you feel uncomfortable, don’t go. There’s plenty of places where you can go and people will encourage you in your miasma. Don’t go to the great debating chamber, don’t go to the forum, just go to a gym or a licensed brothel, and just sort of hang out with each other, and become proper prostitutes within the capitalist system. Sell yourself and buy it all. It might make you very happy, perhaps that’s your thing. They might do stamp-collecting or ornothology, marking off what birds they’ve seen or some other activity, or they might enjoy going to the gym and working on their body and that’s okay. People can do what they want. It’s not for me to say, “You can’t do this,” because I don’t have the right to do that. If they enjoy going to the gym and keeping themselves fit that’s fine, they might have a more positive attitude to life than I do. As you can see, one cigarette after the next, that’s my mental situation, so if they want to be fit and have an efficient body, good luck to them.

M: Have you ever tried it?

D: The gym?

M: Yeah.

D: Yeah, I have. I don’t think I’ve got one of those physiologies that sort of go into bulk or anything like that. Plus, I think it helps that you eat, cos you’ve got something to convert it into the muscle mass.

M: Not just nicotine.

D: Yeah, not just nicotine. And the rest. Which, again, I don’t do as much as I did. There was alot of drugs involved when I was performing before, and quite a full-on lifestyle really.

M: I wouldn’t have picked up on that. I was about eighteen and the first gay club I ever went to I went with my dad and it was a show of yours, and we thought maybe we probably wouldn’t relate to what was going on, but it was amazing.

D: Wow, that’s lovely, and that’s nice that you went with your dad. It’s very heartening to hear when gay people do have the support of their parents, I think that’s wonderful, because society in the past sort of encouraged parents to be ashamed of their own offspring. Ofcourse that’s disgusting and very very sad and very tragic, so I think that’s wonderful. I find it very heartening what you just said. I think that’s beautiful. Not alot of people have that, so if you could imagine not having that support and acceptance, you can understand people maybe spiralling out of control, and not feeling very good about being themselves and what a negative impact that can have psychologically, so to have the father that you do, you’re very lucky. But it’s nice that it’s not made you complacent, and not care about other people who’ve not been so fortunate.

M: I think to a certain extent it makes it very difficult to properly identify with how hard it can be. I had a hard time at school occasionally –

D: Well, I came out of school and came out of my childhood and all that feeling that I was constantly and permanently wrong, that I was an abberation, that I shouldn’t have been born, I probably should have been aborted, that I had no right to be here, that I was a malformed piece of shite, you know, and that’s a horrible thing to live with if that’s your waking reality all the time. No wonder you’re more than ready to take a handful of drugs and drink yourself senseless, because to a certain extent maybe it does mask the pain, but eventually if you don’t use drugs and drink wisely, that becomes a problem in itself. I’ve read quite a few books about Druidic things, and they say you should take drugs in a spirit of reverence, you should realise the power and potency of the drugs that you’re taking and be very aware of that as opposed to just knecking them to temporarily eleviate some sort of pain that you’re going through. Sort of be a bit more grown up and a bit more responsible. I think I’ve been very nihilistic and I think it all came from having a very negative self-image, and I wouldn’t wish to be the patron saint of nihilism saying that if you’re unhappy with yourself, what you do is drug and drink yourself to death. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. That’s why I say, everyone’s on their own journey and hopefully we can all be quite positive about it.

...

D: It’s very draining, I think, sometimes, watching television. You can just sit there and it’s like your brain’s melting cos you’re not doing anything. I think it’s nice to be active. That’s why I like radio, because you can potter about and do this that and the other and still take in the information. I alternate between radio 4 and radio 3. Sometimes with radio 3 you can do what I call strike lucky and just have an hour of uninterrupted music and it’s such a joy to enjoy the music and not have chattering voices talking about nonsense, and it’s relaxing.

M: I can’t take much of those radio 1 DJs. Remember when you’re at school playing rugby and you’re running very fast to make sure that you’re never near the ball? I feel they do the same with content.

D: But that ball can hurt, can’t it. If you’re not ready for it and you don’t want it. I was much happier walking around the playground on tip toes singing I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane.

M: Were there older figures who understood?

D: Mm. I think at primary school there were alot of good teachers who I have very warm memories of. I think secondary school is a battlefield and if you don’t fit in then you’re very much a victim of the majority really, and everybody wants to conform basically. If you’re seen as being unconventional, you’ve had it. I’d love to know the statistics, and I’ll try to find them out before I get to the Soho Theatre, of just how many teenage suicides there are in an average year, that sort of thing. I don’t know how I’ll get that information but if you know somewhere let me know.

M: It’s very high among boys who think they may be gay or are thought to be gay by others.

D: Yeah, they feel that they’ve somehow let the side down. It’s not a nice experience. Teachers, bless them, their hands are tied really. They’re not allowed to acknowledge it really, or talk about it as a living reality. You can end up in a very self repressed situation, and I think that’s where a lot of my performance came out of really. I think I’d kept things so in, bottled up, that I just decided to release it.

M: Was it cathartic?

D: Yeah, it was very cathartic, definitely.

M: And then by 2000 ...

D: About that, I thought I was so tied up with the Divine David, it was my life really, every waking thought, I just thought it was disproportionate really. I started to wonder what life would be like without the Divine David, and I found that quite frightening in a way, because it was my life. It felt like a very radical thing to do to stop doing it. I think I needed to take time out and sort of ask myself questions about why I was performing, what I was doing, who I was, bla bla bla, quite basic things really but I was so busy I never really had time to think about things like that. What did I owe to myself, what did I owe to my friends, what did I owe to my family, the realities of life really, instead of just being superbly artificial and over-decorated –

M: But adored.

D: Which I appreciate very much, but I needed to take time out.

M: So after the ice show you go home. Was it like cold turkey from attention?

D: Yeah. It was like the biggest come-down on earth. It was horrific.

M: How long did it take to get used to it?

D: It took a while because obviously prior to a show it’s all to do with adrenaline, and I was producing a massive amount of adrenaline and I had no outlet for it so things could get quite hairy, and I think I was drinking alot aswell which didn’t help. So, the combination of drinking and adrenaline and no real focus or forum for it was pretty scary really. It wasn’t a very happy time atall. It took time to wind down and get to a different rhythm, very much so.

M: Do you feel vulnerable to that, getting back into that cycle?

D: No. It’s negative. I feel alot stronger in myself, definitely. I must say, I’m nearer death so what have I got to worry about? It’s a great liberator. I don’t think death is the worst thing that can happen to you atall.

M: Is your idea of death biological death, brain death, total oblivion?

D: I think there’s alot of mystery. We don’t know the answers do we. End of. As Craig would say in Big Brother, if he wasn’t chasing Anthony, bless him. Were you a Big Brother fan?

M: No. My boyfriend was so he considered it a wonderful bonding intimate experience to curl up together and watch it –

D: I mean, you weren’t meant to like it, were you.

M: I thought it was awful.

D: But I really liked it.

M: Do you watch it alone?

D: Yeah.

M: Now that depresses me. I switch it over straight away. I regard it as a depressent in television form.

D: Well maybe I am addicted to watching depressents. But nobody can take away from the joy and success of Celebrity Big Brother, this last one. It was addictive.

M: Which celebrities were in it?

D: Pete Burns, who looked magnificent and has become an artwork.

M: Do you know him?

D: We know of each other, I believe, but I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting him, and I’d love to. There was Rula Lenska, and I remember Rock Follies which is brilliant, a brilliant series. It would be nice if they repeated it but it would probably be seen now as being so obviously left-wing and agit prop that they probably wouldn’t allow it on.

M: I’ve never seen it.

D: Oh it’s worth it. It was quite feminist really. It was a series in the 70’s and Rula Lenska was one of the characters, had a great cast, and it was about a group of women who formed a band and sort of went up the greasy pole into showbusiness and rock-and-roll success, all the rest of it, and what happened on the journey individually and collectively, and it was fascinating, it was brilliant.

M: And there was an MP.

D: Yes, George Galloway. He’s the leader of the Respect party, against the war in Iraq.

M: And he was criticised for being on there.

D: He was, yeah. He said his motivation for being on there was to get into the consciousness of young people and perhaps kind of politically motivate people. Whether or not he did that, I don’t know.

M: Do you think that was his motivation?

D: Well, he said it was, so it’s not for me to say, well it wasn’t. If he says that was his motivation, then that was his motivation.

M: I find Big Brother disturbing, especially the non-celebrity one.

D: They’re being sold the dream, aren’t they, the people on Big Brother. The idea of celebrity, fame, la la la la. That’s the world that we live in. Alot of young people really just want to be famous. Years ago they might have wanted to be a doctor or a dentist, or something like that, now they want to be famous. They say pop will eat itself and when you’re watching Big Brother you think it could very well. That’s the joy I get from it. It is an act of cannibalism, and it’s crazy. The people who go on Big Brother don’t really know what they’re getting involved in, I don’t think, other than it’s going to make them famous so therefore it’s going to make everything okay.

M: Did you have a desire for fame when you were young?

D: No. I find myself in quite a paradoxical situation really because I don’t believe in celebrity culture atall because, maybe I’m a very naive person, but I like to believe that we’re all entitled to feel that we’re equal. Even though I’m working as David Hoyle I will still come out with that phrase, “We are all equally beautiful, equally valid, equally justified.” Anything that’s going to take away this awful feeling that happiness is something for other people, feeling okay about being yourself, that you can never feel that, that that again is only for other people. That’s a very tortured way of thinking.

M: I think the effect, for me atleast, when I was younger, was that I would only be able to enjoy formal social events if I could imagine it was a film or a set.

D: Yeah, okay. But I think when you are younger in a way it is like you’re the star of your own film. You can imagine, even if you’re just leaving the house and going to the shop, that there’s cameras. The weird thing is now that there are, because CCTV is everywhere. We’re no longer a manufacturing country and obviously they are making a lot of money out of the motorists, so they have cameras left right and centre on the roads, on the streets, everywhere. But I know that feeling that you’re talking about when you are young and you’re walking around, and it is like you’re in a film. I definitely felt that when I was younger.

M: It’s not a problem to have an active fantasy life, but it can be sad in a way, because it’s the beginning of the process of devaluing your close friends and family in favour of a fantasy existence.

D: Yes, and you’re making them into kind of bit players in your own psychodrama.

M: The desire to be known though, I mean, you stood up infront of groups of people and there was a mixed response, but for most people who tentatively try standing up infront of people in one way or another get a fairly unanimous response of total disinterest, which kind of kills the exhibitionist impulse eventually.

D: Well I like karaoke. I think that that gives everybody a chance.

M: A very democratic form of entertainment.

D: Definitely. Yeah, I’m all for it.