John Niven
John Niven
John Niven is a Scottish author and screenwriter. His books include Kill Your Friends, The Amateurs, and The Second Coming...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionAuthor
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I am, it is safe to say, not a practical man. The few attempts I've made to hammer in a nail have ended in broken thumbs, burst pipes, and water spraying everywhere with the house on fire.
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Certainly in the case of 'Kill Your Friends,' a book I wrote more than 10 years ago, I routinely meet interviewers who appear to know the book better than I do. But still, you have to talk about it.
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I go to the Caribbean for a month every January with hand baggage only. All you need is a passport and a credit card.
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I grew up in a council house in a poor Scottish town. I came of age during the recession of the mid-1980s when unemployment in my area reached 40 per cent.
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I don't do sports, and my idea of hell is being dragged around ruins/museums/famous buildings, so I guess I'm a beach bum.
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On one level, of course, the notion of judging films or books or music against each other is completely ridiculous. Who's to say '12 Years A Slave' is a better film than 'The Wolf of Wall Street'? Or that one album in a certain genre is better than another in a completely different genre?
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Non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia can only celebrate Valentine's Day behind closed doors. Apparently, this has led to a huge black market for flowers and wrapping paper.
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My family went to Toronto to visit relatives when I was 13 or 14. It was the first time we had ever been abroad. This was the early Eighties, and I remember the impossible glamour of air travel - my mum spending days trying to decide what she was going to wear on the plane.
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I love being a writer. I have a great life. I get up in the morning and pad around in my dressing gown and listen to Radio 4.
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I had left the music industry at the end of 2001, after 10 years, and had spent three years writing every single day - producing two unpublished novels, one abandoned novel, and three unproduced screenplays. The word 'no' and I were on more than nodding terms. The word 'no' and I were talking about going on holiday together.
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I have an iPhone. I like it for the camera and the fact that you can have your email and Twitter and all that stuff in one place. However, unlike most men I know, I hate buying new technology.
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When my last relationship broke up, I bought a house one door along from my ex so that our daughter could continue to see as much of both of us as possible. This seems to me eminently sane and civilised.
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When I went into the computer shop to change my last laptop, the 19-year-old kid behind the counter looked at my six-year-old model and described it as 'vintage.' 'Vintage?' I wanted to scream. 'Son, I've got shirts older than you! I own underpants that have seen more of the world!'
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It strikes me as one of nature's greatest jokes that the types of food we all like to eat more than anything (especially in winter) are the very things that cause the most insane weight gain - mounds of fluffy mashed potato, hot, thickly buttered toast, huge, steaming bowls of pasta, great big... actually, I'll stop there.