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
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-turnedgreengrocer 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
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. 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.”
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NON-FICTION
EMPIRELAND by Sathnam Sanghera Viking, hardback £18.99 (ebook £9.99)
HTHE British Empire is a paradox, according to journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera. Although many see it as a distinctive force, it was in many ways a relatively incoherent, almost accidental phenomenon; more a coalition of commercial interests than a codified national project.
At its door can be laid slavery, systemic racism, massacres and atrocities, yet it paved the way for the NHS and Britain’s modern multiculturalism.
Empireland is a wide-ranging survey of Empire and its aftereffects, where Sanghera examines his subject through a range of potent lenses. From the debate on the restitution of cultural artefacts to attitudes towards immigration, and Brexit exceptionalism, he contends we can only really move on as a nation when we learn to look our past squarely in the face.