I’M AN ANGRY OLD MAN
GARRY BUSHELL FINDS BEST-SELLING AUTHOR TONY PARSONS IS AS UNCOMPROMISING AS EVER WHEN IT COMES TO HIS WRITING AND OPINIONS
TONY PARSONS has a confession. “I still get angry,” the best-selling author tells me. “I’m an angry old man. And I’m obsessive. If there’s a problem, I have to solve it, I can’t let go.” Once the “hip young gunslinger” of the rock press, at 67, Tony now seems closer to Clint Eastwood’s William Munny, an elderly maverick still ready to right wrongs.
Face mask refuseniks currently rattle the writer’s cage. He can’t believe some people are still walking into supermarkets without one.
“Ninety thousand have died here. In Japan, it’s just over 4,000 – and their population is nearly double ours. Nobody whines about wearing a face mask in Japan.”
The land of cherry blossoms is close to Tony’s heart – he married Yuriko, a Japanese translator, in 1992. They have one daughter, Jasmine.
Tony’s rage is fuelled by strong working-class values and an innate sense of decency. Mercifully he gets to let off steam with his boxing trainer Fred.
He was 50 when he took it up. “Yuriko said, ‘I don’t mind – but never come home and complain about it’.” So he didn’t, not even when he tore his intercostal muscles “the most painful experience of my life”.
Tony used to spar in a deserted gym, important, he says, because
“if hot young women in Lycra are watching you getting knocked down, you’d feel the need to get up and knock the other guy out”.
Nowadays he does all the training without the full combat sparring. “I’ve been punched in the head enough,” he laughs. “Fred still spars with young professionals. Rather him than me. At my age, to carry on would be hopelessly macho.”
His approach to writing is as disciplined as his ring-work.
“I set myself a daily task – a first draft of a chapter, or writing a scene, and when it’s done, I go to the gym or walk the dog or watch a movie. It works for me. Focus is everything.”
Tony has sold more than three million novels. The most successful was Man and Boy; the awardwinning 1999 book about family, love and fatherhood was a publishing sensation, selling a million copies and spawning a film starring Ioan Gruffudd.
Tony followed it with similar novels, and then took a huge career gamble by turning his hand to crime fiction. He wrote The Murder Bag without a publishing contract and lost a fortune by having to turn away work. It was, he says, “a very expensive lottery ticket… I spent a couple of hundred grand writing it. It was reckless, but I was in too deep; I had to see it through.”
His agent sold the book in 24 hours. It went straight to number one and was dubbed “spectacular” by Jack Reacher author Lee Child.
“If it’d flopped, we wouldn’t have been on the street,” says Tony. “But we’d have had to sell our house. You have to reboot every once in a while.”
He wrote six books involving his single dad detective, Max Wolfe, and doesn’t rule out more. “If I ever went back to him, he’d have to have moved on; his daughter would have to be a teenager.”
The idea for Wolfe came from a conversation with Oscar-winning film director Sam Mendes who told him he was going to direct the next Bond movie. Both men started re-reading the Ian Fleming novels. “Before I’d finished the first page of Casino Royale, I decided I could do that… write a thriller.”
Tony’s new book Your Neighbour’s Wife combines elements of his previous successes, being a love story, a murder story and a psychological drama. “Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is possibly the greatest novel I’ve ever read,” he says. “It’s a love story and a murder story, and I loved that.”
Fatal Attraction gave him the initial idea. “I thought it’d be more interesting if the roles were reversed. If the wife was cheating on her husband and the bunny boiler was a man – because most are.”
Tony was born in Romford, Essex, the only son of a marine commando war hero-turned-green grocer and a school dinner lady. He left grammar school at 16 with five O levels. Aged 20, and working in a gin distillery, he wrote The Kids, a pulp fiction novel similar in feel to the cult Richard Allen youth books.
In 1977, he and Julie Burchill, who became his first wife, were recruited by rock weekly NME to cover punk rock… and by 1978 they’d had enough of it, attacking all their old (anti-)heroes in the savagely funny book, The Boy Looked At Johnny, subtitled The Obituary Of Rock ’n’ Roll. They had one son, Robert, whom Tony raised as a single father after their break up.
Tony landed his first proper publishing deal with Pan. The result was Platinum Logic, a novel set in the music industry in 1981. The raunchy follow-ups included Limelight
Blues – about a Fleet Street gossip columnist – but didn’t set the world alight. “Even I struggle to remember them,” he laughs.
In the mid-90s, he became a Daily Mirror columnist.
“My mum was Mirror, my dad read the Daily Express,” he says. “They were distinct brands.”
Journalism helped his novels. “The discipline, the word restrictions, 1,500 words delivered on time…
“I’m grateful to have a couple of careers.”
Tony’s values have never changed, but his politics have. Once a staunch socialist he’s unimpressed by Labour leader Keir Starmer. “He’s too cautious,” he says. “He sat on the fence over Brexit and it’s the same with coronavirus. He’s not Corbyn but he’s still rubbish. He’s too ‘I told you so’, he needs more conviction.”
Tony points out the widening gulf between Labour voters and party members. Ultra-left demonstrators spraying insults on the Cenotaph was a key turning point.
“They openly despise patriotism; they see it as racist and xenophobic. When those Jamaican criminals were being deported, some Labour MPs demanded we let them stay. As if we don’t have enough rapists and murderers… what about the victims? The Labour leader should be standing up to the drooling fools.”
He voted for Boris, once his neighbour in Islington, but worries about the Government’s “pathological obsession with the virus”, adding “What’s the cost of lockdowns in mental health and jobs? Why is the virus more important than cancer? How many have died of cancer who wouldn’t have done?
“Every small business I know has done everything asked and it’s not been enough. Half of disabled kids have not been to school since this began. The NHS should be supporting us, not vice versa. This vaccine roll-out is incredible but there have been a lot of ****-ups.”
Tony has kept writing during lockdown, despite the family having to move out of their Hampstead home for six months after a water pipe under the house burst.
“I’m now on the second rewrite for the book after Your Neighbour’s Wife,” he says. “I’m always trying to write the best novel I can. I feel lucky to get published, to find an audience.”
He’s too cautious. He sat on the fence over Brexit and it’s the same with coronavirus. He’s not Corbyn but he’s still rubbish.
Tony Parsons on Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, pictured