Ineedtomakemistakes. I’dratherblurtsomething outandbetoldI’mwrong
no. If it’s going to be dramatised in some way, me and my sister will write it together and make sure it’s done right.”
Then all the fuss died down and Darren was left trying to make a living. He did a show based on the book at the Edinburgh Fringe and travelled around the country carrying boxes of books to resell at events.
It was precarious but nothing like the years of alchoholism, chaos and pain that he describes in Poverty Safari.
Today, Darren and his partner Becci Wallace have two-year-old Daniel and baby Lily.
Thanks to musician Becci’s job at the University of the West of Scotland, they have bought what Darren calls “the shell of a house” in East Kilbride.
On paper, he admits, he is now middle class.
That does not mean his new column will be complaining about the price of avocados in Waitrose.
Darren said: “It’s important for me to keep a connection with the community. It would be easy to disappear into the world I’m in now and only do very organised public appearances. That’s not me. I need to have my ear to the ground.
“Things change so quickly. Food poverty has evolved over the last five years and I haven’t lived through that. It’s the same with welfare, since Universal Credit came in 2012, it’s different. I haven’t experienced that harshness. I listen to people, hear their experiences. If I’m going to write about it, I need to know what I’m talking about.”
What he won’t be doing is retreading the sticky stuff from his own past. Darren said: “I’ve told that story. I don’t like talking too much about that any more.
“I will still cover the things I’m interested in. I’m looking for new ways to express the ideas and I’m looking forward to hearing what readers have to say.” arren is taking a break from Twitter, where he has been a controversial presence in the past. He says that there is a huge difference in the way people respond to him in person and how some of his opinions have been interpreted on Twitter.
But it can be addictive. He said: “It’s such a stimulant. You tweet something you think is funny or clever and it starts to get a reaction. You get dopamine hit. It validates you.
“Then I spend too much time on there and start thinking that the way Twitter thinks is the way everyone thinks. There’s a certain type of person on there, they’ve got something to sell, a persona to push.” Darren, 34, has got used to people knowing about his personal struggles, whether it’s mental health issues or porn addiction. And he will keep exploring these sticky areas in his new column.
He said: “If you are making a public life condemning other people’s behaviour and not examining your own, you’re missing the point.
“That’s taken me to some uncomfortable places but I’m willing to go there. I’ve got a public platform, so if I am going to talk about it I need to be honest about it.
“I wrote about my personal life when I was a young rapper. When I was into drama, I wrote a play about it to process and deal with trauma and gain a sense of self esteem and identity.
“I never expected to have the audience I have now but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. So I try to control and manage it so that I’m only revealing my experiences, not other people’s lives. I treat it with certain level of care.”
The Me Too movement has, he admits, forced him to rethink his own attitudes and behaviour.
He said: “I’m a man figuring it all out. There are my personal responses and the political reality.
“Women feel afraid and frightened of men or subjugated in some way or subservient. Then I have this personal reaction where I grew up frightened of my mother. I have had to reconcile the personal and the political and realise they are not mutually exclusive. And do it without taking away from the importance of Me Too. “People who don’t do this are dishonest. I need to make mistakes before I know what I’m doing. Otherwise I’m being inauthentic. I’d rather blurt something out and be told it’s the wrong thing to say then go away and think about it.”