Raj Patel

Raj Patel

1. When were you happiest?

Swimming on the Barrier Reef, surrounded by warm teeming ocean.

2. What is your principal defect?

Laziness.

3. What makes you depressed?

The way we treat one another.

4. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

Man-boobs.

5. What is your favourite word?

Pup.

6. What is your most unappealing habit?

According to my wife, it’s fiddling with my eyebrows. But the fuckers are so big, it’s hard not to.

7. What is your favourite smell?

Concord grapes.

8. What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Crisps.

9. Who are your favourite writers?

Joan Didion, Jose Saramago, Philip K Dick, Shakespeare, George Orwell, John Berger, Arundhati Roy, anyone published by Portobello (ok, ed?)

10. What is the worst job you've done?

Working for the World Bank. The work was cushy enough, but it warped me. I even defended the Bank at a party when I worked there. Some rubbish about ‘working from within’ the corridors of power. Luckily the defence was feeble, I was drunk, and I quit soon after. But not without leaving a chunk of integrity and self-respect at the door.

11. When did you last cry, and why?

During the first ten minutes of “Up!”. I was ambushed by one of the finest moments of cinema I’ve ever seen.

12. What do you most value in you friends?

Kindness.

13. What gift would you most like to possess?

A better memory.

14. What was your most embarrassing moment?

The period 1991-95.

15. What is your most treasured possession?

A mass-produced Zulu war-mask with the words “We Carry/ You Home Safely Raj/ Patel” carved onto it with a blunt knife. It was given to me by the Abahlali baseMjondolo Shackdwellers movement in Durban when I left South Africa. I write about them in The Value of Nothing. Soon after the book went to press, some of the people responsible for giving it were been beaten and killed by an ANC militia.

16. What is the worst thing anyone's said to you?

It’s unprintable, but it was said to me at school by the man who would later make millions as Sasha Baron Cohen’s producer, a man who, I’d like to think, was responsible for the unfunny bits in Brüno.

17. If you could edit your past, what would you change?

I’d spend a little less time watching TV, and more time learning the names of plants and stars.

18. If you could go back in time, where would you go?

The Paris Commune.

19. What is your greatest fear?

That it won’t be enough.

20. What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

The only constant is change.