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<td valign="TOP" colspan="2" bgcolor="#333366"><b><font size="1"><b><font color="#FFFFFF">Arts, Culture & Entertainment - E: </font><font size="1" color="#FFFFFF"><b><font size="1" color="#FFFFFF"><b><font size="1" color="#FFFFFF"><a href="mailto:camden@myvillage.co.uk">camden@myvillage.co.uk</a></font></b></font></b></font></b></font></b></td>
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<td valign="TOP" colspan="2" bgcolor="#333366"><font color="#000000"><b><font size="1" color="#FFCC00">Interview:</font><font size="1" color="#FFFFFF">
Tim Lott </font></b><font size="1" color="#FFFFFF">- 05/01</font></font><font size="1" color="#FFFFFF"><b><font color="#CCCC00">
</font><font color="#CCCC00"> </font><font color="#CCCC00"> </font></b></font></td>
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<p><font size="1"><b>Tim Lott</b> is a west London based writer whose
career took off in 1996 after he published his first book <i>The
Scent of Dried Roses</i>, a memoir that movingly deals with his
mother's death and his own depression. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">In 1999 he published <i>White City Blue</i>, a poignant
and funny novel about male friendship and growing up, as seen through
the eyes of Frankie Blue, a yuppie estate agent in the 90's. With
this novel he won the Whitbread First Novel Award.</font></p>
<p><font size="1"> He has just finished his second novel, as yet untitled,
which will be published next year, and is also working on a number
of film and TV. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">A long time resident of Notting Hill, My Village
met up with him to talk about his work. As well as analysing issues
like friendship and personal history in an incisive way, White City
Blues is also incredibly funny. </font></p>
<p><font size="1"><b>Do you purposely blend darkness and comedy in
your books?<br>
</b></font><font size="1">"Life is both pathetic and incredibly
funny. That is what life looks like to me. I am incapable of writing
any other way. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">In publishing funnily enough, people are quite uncomfortable
about books that are both funny and sad. I think they don't know
quite where to put them on the shelves. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">Even Nick Hornby is marketed primarily as a comic
writer when he's really much more than that. It's easier to corral
writers into particular camps. You worked as a journalist for many
years."</font></p>
<p><font size="1"><b>How did you make the move to being a full time
writer?<br>
</b></font><font size="1">"I always wanted to be a writer but
for years I didn't think that I was good enough to do it really.
I knew that it would be very challenging and lonely and all those
things and wasn't sure how I would get on. In the end, journalism
lost interest in me. I didn't feel I was getting very far. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">Someone came to me after I wrote a piece about my
mother for Esquire and said do you want to write this memoir. The
novel was an accident too, because I was actually writing a book
about Tony Blair at the time and it kind of fell to bits. I thought
that as they had paid me to write a book I'd better give them something,
so I wrote a novel, which became <i>White City Blue</i>. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">I think I became a writer because I had failed at
everything else really. I just got bullied into it by life."</font></p>
<p><font size="1"><b>It must take courage to embrace the unexpected
� <br>
</b></font><font size="1">"Life is always a strange mixture
of the planned and the unplanned. <i>The Scent of Dried Roses</i>
was the foundation of my writing career and so I suppose would never
have written that book if my mother hadn't died. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">You can never tell from the perspective you are
at whether something is actually good or bad. The consequences of
any single event just keep going in so many different directions.
A wonderful thing could happen to you and ten years later you look
back and see that it's fucked up your whole life. The past appears
differently each time I look back at it. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">Of course I wish that I could be that philosophical
when my car gets clamped ..."</font></p>
<p><font size="1"><b>In another interview you were asked what your
motto would be, and you answered 'Always burn your bridges, be ruthless
with the past'. Explain � <br>
</b></font><font size="1">"What we do with our past is to turn
it into a kind of myth, some kind of ideal place where everything
was perfect. I've learned from experience that when you lose something
you have got to cut it off, and not hang onto it. And if you need
to break up with somebody, just do it, don't hang around. Any other
course of action would be terrible, going back, coming forward �
</font></p>
<p><font size="1">I think you have to be ruthless with your past because
any other course of action would be disastrous. The past will be
ruthless with you if you're not ruthless with it."</font></p>
<p><font size="1"><b>Describe your relationship with Notting Hill?<br>
</b></font><font size="1">"On the whole I'm a real advocate
of the area. Because it's got the focal point of the market its
one of the few places in London where you can still bump into people.
</font></p>
<p><font size="1">I've lived here since 1983 but I've been around
the area since I was a little kid. My father was a greengrocer in
Notting Hill Gate and when I was young I used to work in his shop.
I still eat in restaurants where I used to deliver vegetables when
I was 14. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">It's a clich� to say it but there has been a real
change in the area over the last few years. I think you can trace
it to the Notting Hill movie really. There seems to be a different
type of people moving in. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">I went into Bali Sugar on New Years Eve and that's
a place where I have been going for years, and suddenly I felt really
out of place. I was dressed fairly smartly but the people in there
were so well turned out it was incredible. They so were all so rich.
I don't know why that bothers me but it does somehow." </font></p>
<p><font size="1"><b>Both your books are set in West London. Do you
consider yourself a West London writer?<br>
</b></font><font size="1">"It could be laziness really. I don't
have to do research if I set my books here. But it doesn't really
matter that much, it's the people who I am writing about who are
important. My new novel is set in west London and in Milton Keynes
so I am gradually moving away. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">The book starts off set in a Fulham council estate
and it's really a look at the 80's from the perspective of a normal
guy, a kind of worm's eye view of a decade when there was huge social
change taking place. I chose Milton Keynes because anonymous soulless
places like that somehow represent that time for me. </font></p>
<p><font size="1">It was the first time when mobility became huge
and people were moving around a lot. A huge number of people from
London moved to places like Milton Keynes in an attempt to leave
the inner cities, only to discover they were now living somewhere
that was even grimmer. The book is a tragedy really, much darker
than White City Blues but still with humorous moments of course."
</font></p>
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