Andrew Mueller
Andrew Mueller, author of I Wouldn't Start From Here has interviewed everyone from the Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams to the supermodel Helena Christensen. Here, he explains why the words of Conrad Black's late father have become his life's motto.
Andrew Mueller
1. When were you happiest?
Before I knew better. This applies to one or two isolated specifics, as well as to the existential generalities.
2. What is your principal defect?
An inability to be philosophical about the continual and, to my mind, unnecessarily obdurate refusal of the universe to organise itself entirely for my convenience.
3. What makes you depressed?
The continual and, to my mind, unnecessarily obdurate refusal of the universe to organise itself entirely for my convenience.
4. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
It does not turn adversaries to stone with a single glance.
5. What is your favourite word?
There’s something weirdly gratifying about getting somewhat arcane and rarefied expressions into the public prints: a day upon which I glide an “unhorsed”, a “ne’er-do-well” or a “milquetoast” past a sub-editor is always a good one.
6. What is your most unappealing habit?
Shouting at the television during political discussions, sporting events and even, on occasion, “Neighbours”.
7. What is your favourite smell?
Australia, after spring thunderstorms.
8. What is your guiltiest pleasure?
Murdering hitch-hikers.
9. Who are your favourite writers?
The ones who made me want to be one, and who make me want to be a better one. There are quite a lot of these, but if I have to blame two, then George MacDonald Fraser and P.J. O’Rourke, for demonstrating that there’s nothing funnier than serious subjects.
10. What is the worst job you've done?
Working in a record shop. Though it might have been the best job I’d ever done, had it not been for the continual and infuriating interruptions of the general public – a body of people for whom I’ve never cared overmuch, frankly.
11. When did you last cry, and why?
The book signing I did in Bristol at which the audience consisted, in its entirety, of the parents of an ex-girlfriend, was a near thing.
12. What do you most value in your friends?
An absence of the bad kind of nonsense, and an abundance of the good kind.
13. What gift would you most like to possess?
The ability to fall suddenly and unrouseably asleep fifteen seconds before takeoff, to wake shortly after landing.
14. What was your most embarrassing moment?
Possibly that joke above about murdering hitch-hikers. I mean, I don’t, and on reflection I’m not really sure it comes off, as gags go, though others may disagree.
15. What is your most treasured possession?
My house keys. Without them, the others are kind of irrelevant.
16. What is the worst thing anyone's said to you?
Hard to say. The primary compensation of being crashingly insensitive is that you take almost nothing personally.
17. If you could edit your past, what would you change?
So little that it’d seem churlish to ask.
18. If you could go back in time, where would you go?
The Holy Land circa 30AD and 7th century Arabia, with a view to asking a couple of distinguished personages if they were absolutely sure they’d thought this thing through.
19. What is your greatest fear?
The implacable self-righteousness of the incredibly stupid.
20. What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
I find myself unable to improve on the reputed last words of Conrad Black’s father, George Black, which I have embroidered on a cushion in my loungeroom, and which never fail to bring comfort in times of worry, confusion or despair: “Life is hell, most people are bastards, and everything is bullshit.”
