In her remarkable 2014 memoir CLOTHES, MUSIC, BOYS Viv Albertine drew an expected line to, through and from the late-1970s London punk scene, and her band’s place within it. Unexpectedly, it turned out not to be The Slits’ story which formed the heart of her book. Written with unflinching honesty, CLOTHES, MUSIC, BOYS was not a standard music autobiography. It had far less to do with music than with what it is to be a woman. Miscarriage, abortion, cancer, IVF treatment, motherhood and failed marriage each played a part in a vivid and sometimes painfully three-dimensional account of a roller-coaster life. Now Viv is on the verge of publishing her second book – TO THROW AWAY UNOPENED (Faber & Faber, April). It’s a sometimes brutal dissection of Viv’s family – not least herself – and it lifts the carpet on behaviour, secrets and misunderstandings during her upbringing in an attempt to answer the question “What made me who I am?”… In this new conversation with The Mouth Magazine Viv talks about family roles – expectations, influence and consequence – and about the fear, loneliness and anger which has sometimes been explicit in her life…

Pre-Order TO THROW AWAY UNOPENED here

HOW ARE YOU DOING, VIV?
Stressed. I’m stressed. I hate this process. The part when I’m sitting at my kitchen table writing is alright. That’s fine. But I’m in a nervous state at the moment as the book hasn’t really been reviewed yet and I’ve no idea how people will take it. You don’t write for that external stuff – so having to deal with… well, not you, but… having to deal with… I’d better not say, ha ha ha…

I E-MAILED YOU RIGHT AWAY AFTER I’D READ IT, BECAUSE I COULDN’T NOT… I WAS STUNNED TO HAVE BEEN SO MOVED BY IT…
Yeah, and I was very grateful for that e-mail. It was one of the first responses to the book so it really did mean a lot, actually. It was supportive. One bloke recently said to me that he thought I was thoroughly horrible throughout the book, all horrible, and that I didn’t see any good in anybody. And that he took the whole book as a rebuke to himself… I thought “My God… Is that really how people are going to take it?”… So I was very very happy to see that you’d actually got it.

TO THROW AWAY UNOPENED EXCAVATES FAMILY… AT TIMES IT’S INCREDIBLY SHOCKING. IT’S TOUGH, UNSPARING AND EVEN MORE DETERMINED IN THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH THAN YOUR FIRST BOOK… I’VE READ IT A COUPLE OF TIMES NOW AND I’VE FOUND MYSELF THINKING ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME, AND ABOUT MY OWN FAMILY TOO. NO-ONE IS AN ISLAND, SO I THINK YOUR BOOK IS PROBABLY MOSTLY ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF PEOPLE ON EACH OTHER…
Yes, it is. It is. It’s a bit of a detective story in a way. I found, doing the rounds of talks about the first book, male interviewers would often ask me about Sid Vicious or Johnny Rotten or ask me “So, did Keith Levine teach you to play guitar?” and so on… I thought “My God, I’ve lived all these years and struggled to make myself confident enough to be a creative person – and these guys want to just reduce it right down to a handful of spotty oiks I knew for a few months in 1977″… I was this working class girl, very shy, not particularly bright (probably slightly below average) and no talent. So I thought “Well, what did make me into one of the few girls in Britain who picked up a guitar in 1976?”…

… A TIME WHEN A GIRL PICKING UP A GUITAR WAS QUITE UNUSUAL?
Yeah, it was. No girl was supposed to pick up a guitar in 1976 – certainly not a working class girl who couldn’t sing, couldn’t play and had never had a music lesson. So what made me do that and then become part of the punk movement? I can’t really believe, myself, that I had the nerve to do it. I mean, where did the anger come from and where did the boldness come from? All of these things seemed quite odd so I wanted to trace backwards. As I kept writing about it all and going further and further back I sort of realised it was down to my mother. The way she brought me up – a very odd way. Then I went even further – to my grandmother, and to other things in my environment which’d affected me. It was quite embarrassing, a lot of it, actually…

I REMEMBER THAT IN THE PODCAST WE RECORDED TOGETHER BACK IN 2014 – AROUND THE PUBLICATION OF CLOTHES, MUSIC, BOYS – I SUGGESTED YOU’D WRITTEN THAT BOOK ‘FOR’ YOUR DAUGHTER…
Yes, I remember. That’s right.

I THINK THERE’S STILL AN ELEMENT OF THAT, HERE – AN ELEMENT OF WANTING TO LEAVE HER AN EXPLANATION AND A CONTEXT. YOU DISCOVERED SOME OF YOUR MOTHER’S PAPERS AFTER HER DEATH, AND BY READING THEM YOU GAINED NEW CONTEXT ON YOUR LIFE… BUT, EVEN IN SAYING THAT, I THINK YOU’VE PROBABLY WRITTEN THIS ONE MUCH MORE FOR YOURSELF…
I think this one was written more for me, yes. It’s interesting you draw that parallel. Maybe this is my version of the papers my mother left me, in a way? I know it’s probably not quite the right way to do that… My daughter actually doesn’t like to read my books. She finds them upsetting – which is very interesting. It hadn’t actually occurred to me that she’d find them upsetting. I’d thought she’d find them interesting. Perhaps she will one day – but at the moment she just wants to feel like she’s got a strong Mum and that she has an uncomplicated past. She’s young, so…

… SHE’S EIGHTEEN…
Yeah, she’s eighteen. I don’t think you want all that baggage when you’re that age, do you? You get more intrigued as you get older, but at the moment she’s eighteen and making her own life. I don’t think she even wants her friends to read it. Even though there’s nothing much about her in it, she wants to make her own way, make her own history, make her own background, without people knowing what they wouldn’t normally know when you make a new friend. You wouldn’t normally have an opportunity to find out all that stuff. So that’s that bit, and so in some way it was written for her for when she’s ready to be intrigued by it. But I do think it was written mainly for myself… I hope that doesn’t sound too selfish – because within that I couldn’t bear to write a book that wasn’t useful to people in some sort of way. I just really hoped that this book would resonate with other people. I like creativity to be useful – whether it’s art or architecture or whatever.

… OPEN AND TRUTHFUL WRITING CAN BE VERY USEFUL…
Yeah, I think it can be very useful too. I’d be glad if this book helped more people talk honestly and share their experiences more. Honesty is a good thing. If I’d known a bit more about how other people dealt with death, or what other people’s death-bed scenes for their parents were like, I might have been more equipped when it happened to me when my Mum died. Honesty about that stuff can be useful – and I’ve had a good reaction so far from the people who’ve read it.  I’m hearing more and more from friends who have read the book that they’ve had difficult death-bed experiences or fallen out with siblings. So perhaps the sort of things I’ve been honest about have happened to other people too… But you do never know when you write this honestly whether you’re going to be seen as a weirdo or a complete freak or something. Especially when you’re talking about sibling relationships or death or whatever else… Y’know – all the things we still don’t talk about much in Britain.

THINKING ABOUT EARLY CHILDHOOD, QUITE OFTEN IN THE BOOK YOU DESCRIBE EXPERIENCES YOU FREELY ADMIT YOU DON’T HAVE COMPLETE OR NECESSARILY ACCURATE RECOLLECTION OF… I FOUND THAT IDEA FASCINATING – THAT CERTAIN THINGS IN OUR LIVES HAVE SUCH A GREAT IMPACT AND INFLUENCE ON US, BUT IT’S ACTUALLY ONLY OUR INTERPRETATION OF THOSE THINGS… WE MIGHT BE ‘WRONG’ AND SENT DOWN A PARTICULAR PATH OF BEHAVIOUR AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT BY AN ENTIRELY INCORRECT VERSION OF EVENTS. THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING, IF IT MAKES SENSE?
Yeah, absolutely. It does, yeah. It’s so frustrating as a child. You want to know the truth of your family, but there are certain things going on that you don’t understand – so you try and piece it together. You piece it together in quite a childlike way. So, for instance, my Mother starting to sleep in my bedroom… I thought she was doing that because she was lonely. That was me piecing it together in my own childlike way. But then finding her papers years later, I realise that she was worried my Father was on the verge of abusing me… What a different light that shone on that! Instead of being pathetic she was actually quite noble. So you’re right – it’s fascinating the difference between what you perceive as a child and then the truth as an adult. I found my Mother’s papers, I found my Father’s papers, and they both wrote about exactly the same things, and I could remember those things, but we all had completely different takes on it all. So, perhaps the truth is actually impossible to find, in a way… Try as you might, ha.

YOUR MUM AND DAD ARE BOTH CENTRAL FIGURES IN THE BOOK – OR, RATHER, YOUR MUM IS. YOUR DAD IS CRUCIAL TO THE STORY BUT HE’S A PRESENCE OFF TO ONE SIDE FOR LARGE PARTS OF IT… IT’S VERY SKILLED, I THINK, YOUR WRITING IN RELATION TO THE BOTH OF THEM BECAUSE, FOR A WHILE, I FELT A GREAT DEAL OF SYMPATHY FOR YOUR DAD – AND COMPLETE EXASPERATION WITH YOUR MOTHER’S BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS HIM… BUT THEN, LIKE LAYERS OF AN ONION, YOU PEEL AWAY AND A REALLY RATHER SHOCKING WIDER TRUTH IS REVEALED…
Well that was the thing. I’d started to feel sorry for my Dad – I found his papers first, and I felt very very angry with my Mother. I wanted the reader to come on the same journey I went on. I thought that was perhaps a bit of a risk because I knew that my Mother was the better person, and yet for quite a bit of the book I was letting the reader think she wasn’t. That was quite painful to do, actually – to put her in that position. But I went through that feeling towards her before I knew everything and understood everything (as far as I could, anyway). I’m glad you’re saying that works, because I did want the reader to sort of side first with my Father and then eventually realise that… he was a narcissist. And narcissists make people feel sorry for them.

THERE’S A GREAT MOMENT IN THE BOOK WHERE YOU ACT UPON THE NOTION THAT IF YOU CHANGE YOUR OWN BEHAVIOUR THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU HAVE NO OPTION BUT TO CHANGE THEIRS… IN THE CASE OF FAMILY THAT’S AN INCREDIBLE THING TO DO BECAUSE THE LONG-ESTABLISHED OR IMPOSED ORDER CAN START TO SHAKE…
God, yeah.

… I GOT A KICK OUT OF IT. I COULD REALLY IMAGINE YOU DOING THIS… SITTING IN SILENCE, NOT SAYING A WORD TO YOUR MOTHER AND SISTER… LIKE, A TOTAL REFUSAL…
Yeah. It was such a tiny thing, but… when you realise the role you play in the family… “God, I’ve been playing a certain role in the family for fifty-odd years”… To decide not to play that role anymore just as my Mother was dying seems insane in some ways. But at those times your senses are so heightened that you’re behaving on another level. An irrational level, in some ways, but a much much purer level too. So I couldn’t not do it. I couldn’t not change my behaviour. I realised that if I changed being that person (the entertainer) in the family that it’d be very unpleasant and uncomfortable for other people. They’d have to change their roles too, of course. But they couldn’t do it. They couldn’t step up and change their roles. They were too mired in their positions in the family. But had we had longer..? Who knows? Maybe we could’ve all shifted our roles slightly. But… I don’t know.

IN MY EXPERIENCE FAMILIES (ANY CLOSE SOCIAL GROUPS, IN FACT) DON’T REALLY LIKE IT WHEN YOU TAKE CONTROL AND SHIFT YOUR ROLE, OR CHANGE ‘WITHOUT PERMISSION’…
No, they don’t. They don’t… I mean, even in a marriage that doesn’t work. And even more so if you’ve always been considered the weak one and you become strong. You came together, you formed your relationship, in a certain way with a certain dynamic… So, for instance in my marriage, instead of being the weak one who was ill for quite a long time, when I got well I regained my strength. That completely tipped the balance of the marriage. My husband just couldn’t shift, he couldn’t readjust. It’s something that happens in many many human relationships… You need to be fluid, but often people are simply not able to be – and particularly in families.

I DON’T SEE HOW THAT COULD EVER CHANGE, THOUGH…
In a family? Oh my God! Yeah… Those roles are practically set in concrete, aren’t they? I do think we need to be taught these things, because it all goes unsaid. If we were taught these things in school, or they were discussed all the time, or people were more honest about it on social media or whatever, then it wouldn’t be such a shock when someone in a marriage or in a family (or whatever) changes their role. You’d be able to recognise it and deal with it… I mean, you do it with a baby, actually. You have to shift your role every three or four months when you have a baby, because they dictate to you that they’ve moved on from that particular phase and you can’t relate to them like you did anymore. It’s gone. It’s actually quite devastating with a baby, to be honest, every time you have to shift. And you’re usually a little bit slow about it, actually…

I DON’T WANT TO SPOIL AN IMPORTANT NARRATIVE THREAD ABOUT YOUR SISTER, FOR THOSE WHO ARE GOING TO READ THE BOOK… BUT I DON’T THINK WE CAN TALK WITHOUT REFERRING TO YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH HER… MY OWN NAN (SHE DIED ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO) HAD AN OLDER SISTER WHO WAS ALWAYS CONSIDERED BETTER, SOMEHOW – PRETTIER, CLEVERER, MORE CAPABLE, WHATEVER… EVEN IN THEIR SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES THERE WAS A SENSE OF RIVALRY THERE. THEY GENUINELY ADORED EACH OTHER, NEEDED EACH OTHER, AND WERE CLOSE… BUT THERE WAS ALWAYS THIS PALPABLE SOMETHING THERE – SOME SORT OF EDGE, YOU KNOW? FORGIVE ME FOR HAVING BEEN NAIVE, BUT WHEN I WAS YOUNG I’D ALWAYS LOOKED AT OLDER PEOPLE AND ASSUMED ALL THAT SORT OF STUFF GOT LEFT BEHIND SOMEWHERE… THAT BY THE AGE OF, I DON’T KNOW, ABOUT 40 TO 45 YOU’RE MATURE AND SUSSED ENOUGH TO GIVE EACH OTHER A BREAK, ‘COS YOU’VE REALISED NOBODY LIVES FOREVER AND WE’RE ALL ACTUALLY JUST SURVIVORS AT SOME LEVEL…
Yeah! It’s terrible, isn’t it? As a young person you assume that all that just dissipates as you grow up. But it actually doesn’t. It’s fixed forever – not only in the way you relate to each other, but in the way that everyone else in the wider family relates to you, relates to the two of you. The ‘clever one’ and the ‘pretty one’ or whatever. I’ve seen it time and time again in families. They set you in these roles and I think, as I realised when I was writing, that parents very much pit you against each other in those roles. Your Nan and her sister were probably pitted against each other by their parents in some way. It’s the divide and rule thing, I think – even if they’re doing it unconsciously. They separate you and they pit you against each other. They try and make the one fall into line and behave by highlighting what the other one does well, until in the end at some level you’re adversaries rather than siblings. It’s a subtle thing – and it doesn’t ever go away.

AGAIN, I DON’T WANT TO REVEAL ANYTHING – BUT THERE IS AN INCIDENT BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR SISTER WHICH TRULY SHOCKED ME. JUST AT THE LEVEL OF BEING A READER IT WAS GREAT TO BE THAT SHOCKED, ‘COS IT MEANT YOUR WRITING WAS ABSOLUTELY FEARLESS… THE FEARLESSNESS OF REVEALING WHAT MIGHT BE CONSIDERED AS REALLY TERRIBLE BEHAVIOUR ON YOUR PART… BUT IN SOME WAY I FOUND WHAT HAPPENED UNDERSTANDABLE… AND, I DON’T REALLY WANT TO USE THE WORD BECAUSE IT MIGHT COME OVER AS PATRONISING, BUT I WILL SAY ‘FORGIVABLE’…
Well… I’m still embarrassed about it. I’m still embarrassed about my behaviour… But the point is that I think when anything on the criminal scale happens (no matter what, and no matter how small and domestic or how large), it is important to understand why. And so that had to be a big part of the book. I couldn’t write the book and get to the incident where my sister and I have our… erm… ‘falling out’… without having prepared the reader a bit. Otherwise they’d have no understanding and no empathy whatsoever. So in doing that, I suppose I had to reach some sort of understanding and empathy myself, for ‘the deed’. And… Erm…

… IT’S DIFFICULT TO TALK ABOUT IT…
Yeah, yeah. It is. It’s there in the book, of course, but it’s going to be very weird talking about it to people. Not pleasant… When I handed the book in to the publisher I thought “Oh my God, what have I done?” (which is exactly the same as I’d thought when I handed the first one in, ha ha). “Now I’m gonna have to talk about this for a year”… ‘Cos the thing is, it’s really not cathartic at all, it keeps it with you. Now the publicity for the book is racking up, I’ve found that I’m dreaming about my family a lot and I’m having disturbing dreams… There is a price to pay for this ‘ridiculous’ honesty, I’m afraid… I dunno… I don’t know if I can go through it again, to be honest… But in this case it was necessary to do so I could make sense of so many other things. It was useful, and I just hope it is for some other people, really.

I’M A BLOKE, AND A NORTHERN BLOKE AT THAT… BUT AS YOU KNOW I’M VERY CONSCIOUS OF THAT AND DO SPEND A LITTLE BIT OF ENERGY ON TRYING NOT TO BE TOO ‘CONSTRAINED’ BY EITHER OF THOSE THINGS…
Yep. Good, good.

… SO I DON’T MIND ADMITTING THIS TO YOU AT ALL – BUT THERE WAS A MOMENT IN THE BOOK WHICH MADE ME WEEP… YOUR MUM TRIES TO ASSIMILATE YOUR HALF-BROTHER (HER SON FROM BEFORE HER MARRIAGE TO YOUR DAD) INTO THE FAMILY PICTURE AND YOU GO FOR THIS DAY OUT. THERE’S A TRIP ON A BUS – AND YOUR MUM PAYS EVERYONE’S FARE EXCEPT HIS… I FOUND THAT DEVASTATING… IT WAS SO SAD… IT WIPED ME OUT.
Ohhh… Yeah. I know… It was terribly painful to write about. I wrote it so that it’d hit you. So it did really strike you, that moment?

YEAH… HE’S NOT IN IT TOO MUCH, BUT I FELT IN SOME WAY HE WAS THE SORT OF WRONGED HERO OF THE BOOK.
Oh, yeah. Painfully so. He was the most wronged person in this family, I feel. I can’t put right my parents’ wrongs or my mother’s wrongs – and it’s been agony. The guilt… And the guilt I’ve felt about being part of the second family who got all the attention (even though it was slightly warped attention). To be that young – I can’t remember exactly how old I was. Under ten? Ten or eleven? I don’t know. Can’t remember. But to be that young and see your mother in such a suddenly different light… To have the curtain ripped back, like in THE WIZARD OF OZ, from this parent you’d adored… And to see the… spite…. It was just awful… And now I can’t find him. I can’t get in touch with him. I’ve got a feeling he’s probably not alive anymore. So it’s ‘unfinished business’. But I have to keep telling myself “Viv, it’s not your unfinished business”, you know?

I DON’T THINK TOO MANY PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT THIS SORT OF STUFF, ACTUALLY… AND WHEN IT DOES HAPPEN IT’S USUALLY ALWAYS FEMALE WRITERS. I WONDERED WHY YOU THOUGHT THAT MIGHT BE?
I think women are trained. Certainly in the times I was brought up girls were trained to be empathetic, to always think what other people are feeling. To be wives. To be the centre of a family. Every quiz in every JACKIE magazine was “What’s he feeling?” or “What’s she feeling?”, you know? So I was brought up to get inside other people’s heads. And my Mother was like that as well. We always talked about what other people were feeling, what they were thinking and what motivated them. To think about family and to think about motivation. So, personally, not only because I’m female but because of the way I was brought up, and the times, I was very much attuned to working out what makes people tick. I think men were much less like that, but I think young men now are much more emotionally intelligent. They are being taught to – and being allowed to – feel. So it may change – but that’s why up to now women have been better at writing about family and family dynamics, I think.

THERE ARE A FEW EXCEPTIONAL BOOKS BY MEN ON FAMILY – BLAKE MORRISON’S TWO PARENTAL MEMOIRS…
Yeah. Blake Morrison. He sticks out a bit. And you get someone like Proust who could do it, too. He fictionalised it, but he was brilliant at it. I just love some of the books by women that are out there at the moment – Claire Dederer, Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Solnit. There’s some fantastic female writing going on. I think there’s something very exciting happening in female writing right now – and I feel as excited about that as I did when we started up punk. Probably some women wouldn’t like me to say ‘female writing’, so… women authors excite me…

AS A PRETTY VORACIOUS READER WHAT EXCITES ME IS NON-FICTION. I TOTALLY BYPASS FICTION, TO BE HONEST…
Yeah. It’s about having an exciting moment, a connection, isn’t it? Because it’s not just what people are writing about – it’s the form, it’s how they’re writing, isn’t it? You get someone like Maggie Nelson mixing theory with really honest accounts of sexual encounters. Or colours, she writes about beautifully. Or you get Rebecca Solnit talking about politics, family politics, but it’s interwoven with nature writing. It’s all really exciting – the form of the writing is really exciting.

YOU’VE JUST REMINDED ME OF SOMETHING, ACTUALLY. YOU JUST MENTIONED COLOURS… I WOULDN’T LIKE ANYONE READING THIS TO THINK THERE ISN’T AT LEAST SOME LEVITY IN YOUR BOOK. THERE IS GREAT HUMOUR – THERE’S A SECTION WHERE YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR ABSOLUTE OBSESSION WITH COLOURS, AND THERE’S A SECTION WHERE YOU TALK ABOUT HOW TO POO PROPERLY…
Ha ha… Oh good! Yeah! A couple of people have got in touch and said “I’m not sure I can read your book at the moment, Viv, ‘cos I’m feeling quite…”… erm…

… CONSTIPATED?
Ha ha ha ha. Yeah… “I’m not sure I can read your book at the moment ‘cos I’m feeling quite down. Emotionally fragile”. They think it’s gonna be, like, a really heavy book. But the rhythm is very important (I think I actually learned that from music). The rhythm of a book is very important, so… I’m not relentlessly miserable, by any means. It switches into different rhythms and different tones. It’s all written at quite a pace and there’s lots of humour in it. You’ll never be in something heavy for too long, sort of thing. I hope people don’t presume it’s this, you know… bloody heavy book, because it actually isn’t. My first desire when I write is to write a sort of ‘page turner’, y’know? Something that makes people want to turn the page. That’s the number one, for me.

BY THE END OF THE BOOK YOU’VE COME TO TERMS WITH THE LONELY LIFE… SORRY, RATHER THE SOLITARY LIFE YOUR MOTHER LED IN HER LATER YEARS… AND IN A WAY YOU ALSO SEEM TO HAVE COME TO TERMS WITH THE FACT THAT YOUR LIFE IS SIMILAR. THAT YOU TOO HAVE A SOLITARY NATURE. NOT THAT YOU ARE LONELY OR ISOLATED OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT – BUT THAT YOU ARE PRETTY SELF-CONTAINED..?
Yeah, I am. And I think that’s quite hard to admit in this society. I think it may have been easier to live in the Forties or the Fifties and be a bit solitary..? For a woman you’re supposed to be part of a family and be the centre of it all. And have big Christmasses – “Oh, we had fifteen people round for Christmas Day” – and all that sort of thing that I’m hearing all the time. You’re supposed to be the centre of all that. But also, in this time of social media, where it is all about what you’re seen to be doing, you can’t even be in your Sixties without needing to be seen to be out and doing stuff. It’s now like it’s almost impossible to just grow older. Society won’t let you. So it’s quite hard to admit that, yeah, I’m on my own a lot. Sometimes it’s lonely and sometimes it’s not. The choices I’ve made have led me here and that’s how it is. I have a nice life – but I would be able to enjoy it more if there was no social media and I wasn’t susceptible to the constant ‘in your face’ of what other people are doing. You can’t help it as a human to see it and think “I don’t match up” because you’re not out all the time, you’re not going to this or that, you haven’t got loads and loads of friends, you’re not dressed in this… or whatever. I thought it was important to talk about that, actually. I thought it was important that someone started saying “There must be millions of us who live like this, so let’s start being honest about it”…

BECAUSE OF THE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA THING, A FEW PEOPLE I KNOW HAVE LEFT FACEBOOK ALREADY – SO, WHO KNOWS? THE WHOLE THING MIGHT COLLAPSE. THAT MAKES ME THINK “BUT HOW CAN SOCIETY POSSIBLY GO BACK TO HOW IT WAS BEFORE SOCIAL MEDIA?”
I don’t know about that. I’m not sure that social media hasn’t been slightly over-egged – this idea that everyone’s living online. I think humans are so adaptable, especially the young. I’ve still got great hopes for the young, even with all this internet and social media that they’re bombarded with. From what I see, they ain’t that much different. My daughter and her friends, they’re out drinking and hanging out and sitting on a wall outside a pub, and all that sort of thing, as much as I did. My daughter and her friends, they do Instagram because it’s a sort of visual thing but they’re not on Facebook particularly. They’re not that bothered about it. They live a very interactive face-to-face sort of life. Yeah, basically I think it’d be really great if Facebook goes down…

FINALLY, VIV… YOU’RE ON THE EARLY PART OF THE CURVE OF PUBLICATION OF TO THROW AWAY UNOPENED, SO IT’S PROBABLY TOO SOON TO ASK… BUT I WONDERED WHETHER YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHAT COMES NEXT FOR YOU?
Yeah, I have. I have got an idea of what comes next, but I don’t think I should say – because people often say that ruins the book… But, yeah, it’ll be another book.

 

Pre-Order TO THROW AWAY UNOPENED here