E66: What is it like having Manic Depression? (with Jeremy Thomas) - Part 1 of 2

Jeremy Thomas is a public speaker and author. He is the author of two novels, Taking Leave, and the Santa Monica Suicide Club . He’s also co-written two books about mental health with Dr. Tony Hughes, the A-Z Guide to Mental Health and You Don't Have to Be Famous to Have Manic Depression.

In 2006 Jeremy and Tony co-produced a documentary about bipolar disorder, the Secret Life of the Manic Depressive starring Stephen Fry,  Jo Brand, Carrie Fisher and many others.  This is the first part of a two part podcast where we talk about Jeremy’s fascinating life story and his lived experience of bipolar disorder.

Today we discuss Jeremy's experiences running a record label in London in 1979, some of the dangers of success, what it’s like to have depression, Jeremy’s struggle with suicidal thoughts, what it’s like to have a manic episode and just how easily depression can switch into mania if you have bipolar disorder. We also discuss just how hard it can be for someone to realize they’re unwell when they’re in the midst of a manic episode.

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi - Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast

If you would like to enquire about an online psychotherapy appointment with Dr. Alex, you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com

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Transcript

Jeremy Thomas, thank you so much for joining me this morning. Thank you. Alex. Delighted to be here. Really great. There's a lot that I want to talk to you about your experiences working in the recording industry, your novels, your experience with bipolar, your documentary. Where does it where does it start for you? Where does your story start for you? Do you think? 2s Uh, well, I always say that my story starts. You know, when I was 24, in the music business, and it was all going terribly well, but in a way, you know, I don't know, I just thought about this today that I never, ever talk about this, that when I was 16, 17, I had a real. 1s I just thought there was something wrong with me, you know? There was something wrong with my head, and. And I became very obsessed with R.D. Lang, you know, and some people will know who that is, and some people won't. But he was a very famous Scottish psychoanalyst, psychologist or whatever. 1s And he he wrote two very seminal books. One was called The Divided Self. And one was called sanity, madness and the family. And he had very interesting ideas about schizophrenia, and also about how you treat somebody within a family context, you know, and that was the sanity. And I to this day, I think that's really interesting. You know, if you treat somebody, you're a nutter. You're sitting over there and we're not really talking to you. Well, guess what's going to happen. That's the reality that unfolds. Yeah. And if you go, look, we know you're a bit funny, but we love you and we want you to be part of our family. And sure, we're going to treat you just the same. Then that person reacts, you know. Because, I mean, despite whatever condition they may have, there are human emotions underneath that that respond. Anyway, I mean, I sort of was I went through maybe everybody goes through this period when they're 16, 17. I don't know what's what was it that gave you the the intuition that there was something wrong? I think it was because I had certain sort of depressive not episodes compared to other people or really, but just sort of getting very, very down. And also I think, I think I thought there were two of me, you know. 1s And I look back now and I think there's probably some early ashes detritus of, you know, pre-birth bipolar. I don't know because we don't know what this is. And, you know, I was you know, I was a bit I mean, I've always been a sort of very much, 1s you know, Joker, you know, I can always joke my way out of anything. And I always did do that. But there was always a side of me that wasn't like that at all. But also, I think the first time that I ever really experienced. 2s Uh, you know, anything serious was when I bust up with a girlfriend, or rather, a girlfriend, bust up with me. And it was quite a big deal, you know, to been a big deal like the first one. And that definitely, again, I never talk about this. I think I was 18, 17, 18, and that definitely was like being punched in the solar plexus quite hard. And, you know, it wasn't normal. It wasn't a normal. I feel a bit fed up about that. You know, it was definitely more than that. And, and I remember going to the doctor and the doctor, I think the doctor said, you need some. Valium or something is just really weird. Well, that's what they prescribed back then. Yeah, I suppose it was. It just. This will make you feel better. 2s Which, funnily enough, I was prescribed many years later for a very different reason. But, 1s I mean, I just say that, I mean, you know, because people often say to me, did you ever have any evidence of this before? You know, all my big outbreak of bipolar. And those are the only ones really that that was if I needed evidence that I had some sort of depressive gene, that was it. Because the reaction was not not a normal reaction. And what did it feel like? What what was being depressed like from that? I think this is a long time ago. It felt actually sort of almost painful. 1s And it felt very 1s it felt very tearful, you know, as I often talk about, you know, that the whole mindset was, you know, negative. But it was very and very sensitive, you know, very touchy feely and, you know, and I was very, very embarrassed, you know, I didn't want any of that. You were embarrassed by your sensitivity. Yes. That and also I didn't want to be reacting like this, you know, I wanted to be John Wayne, you know, going, hey, I don't give a shit. Excuse me. You know, my mother had been a nurse and she spotted it. You know, I said I went, no, there's something wrong, you know, and, you know, you don't want to be different at that age. People don't want to be different any age. But, you know, and I think at that age, it's harder to see what the value of sensitivity is because there is a huge value to sensitivity. It makes you more able to engage with other people. It makes you better at doing something creative because you have a greater sense of how other people are going to perceive whatever you produce it. There's all sorts of advantages, but I guess when you're a teenage boy, it just seems like all downsides. Yeah. No, no. Exactly. Right. And, well, you just don't want to be seen like that, you know? You want to be. Do you know you're great and 1s you don't be seen this little sensitive little flower, you know. 1s So to answer your question, which is a very long winded way of answering it, but, you know, when did all this start? I mean, it's it's difficult to really say, but the, you know. 1s When I, when I, when I talked to other people about this, when I give my talks, I always say it like this, that when I was 24, you know, everything was fantastic. I. Was running a record company and had been doing so for three years. It was all going very well. The next year I had three hit singles, two hit albums. 2s You know, I bought myself a flat in London, three bedroom flat in Battersea, and I had a mini Mini Cooper custom made by Mr. Cooper himself, you know, and. It's sickening, isn't it? I had. 1s I had this really gorgeous girlfriend. You know, I really, really liked who was called Love Day and. 2s You know, sir, it was all set. It was all set to be. Hello. Off we go. You know what? 1s What changed that was that my mother had been ill with cancer, and unfortunately, the following year she died. 2s And I was sort of not really thinking that she was going to die until the very, very close to it happening. And so when she did, it was it was not great because we were very close. 2s And that, I think, just sort of triggered some things. And it triggered me enough to go right. You know, because I'd always had a bit with myself where, you know, it's like, you know. 2s You know, whether it was impostor or, you know, you're not really you're not really that good, you know, you really not that good. And and so that really came back and, and I had been talking with a friend of mine to start up a record label. 1s And so it was like, right, I'm going to do that. I'm going to leave my, you know, safe, secure job. So you're running one record label, and then you got an opportunity to start another one with a friend. Yes. That's right. 2s And I've been doing, you know, I mean, the record label and running was, you know, great or fantastic for years then. Very well paid. Super excellent. Great. If we if we could just linger on this for a moment because I'm, I'm in awe of anyone that runs a business like even running a podcast is I find challenging. So something like running a record label can you speak a little to like, what's that like? And also what what what year is this roughly? Well, it's 1979 and. What was it like? Well, it sounds very grand, basically was a record company, but it's more like a record label within a within a big company. And it was a very big publishing company, very successful. You know, they basically wanted me to run it. And I took it on about four years before. And but what you had was you had the infrastructure of the publishing company, and this is your job to find the artist and to, like, try and spot what the next big thing is going to be. Yes, my job was a mixture of which is artist and repertoire. So you're finding a singer songwriter called Alex playing on Wardle Street. Great. Sign him. And when you signed him, what are you going to do? Who is he going to work with? What producer? What material? Let's work all the material out. Should he do a cover version of Tired of Being Alone by Al Green? Right. Um. And. Okay, then what's the budget? And work out the budget for that, and then you get all that. Right? Then you have to look at. Oh, no, hang on. Alex has got very, very long hair. That's really not going to do any more because that's changing now. So let's see if we can persuade him to cut his hair a bit and get a really good photographer in and all that sleeve for the albums, which it was in those days. And now how are we going to do this? You know, and we work out, you know, we're going to put out singles. Who's going to plug the single? How are we going to keep it in house or you go outside? What about the press to the press like him already or no? Well, let's get someone to like him. So it's so interesting because it's like your job was to find the raw talent. And then how do we how do we curate it? How do we package it so that it gains public acceptance? Yeah. And it's a fascinating process. I think people are often unaware of the, the, the all this machinery you're describing is invisible to most people because to most people, the way they consume music, of course. Here's the album. Oh, here's an article written about them. Yeah. They're vetted, of course, they don't realize that there are 9000 worker bees. You know, for instance, one of the artists we had, which is weird, actually, was John Williams, the guitarist classical guitarist, and we had all of his sort of slightly poppy albums, which were great. I mean, they were fantastic. And the, the producer of John was a man called Stanley Myers, and he was great. He did a lot of film music, and he came to see us one day and he said, guess what? I've been asked to do the music for a film called The Deer Hunter. And we said, oh, you know, what's that? And, and he said, you know, it's great. And he said, I've already written the theme. I'm saying, great. You know, it's really good. And and he played us the theme and we were me and my boss were looking at each other and we're going, Stanley, that already exists. You know, that is called Cavatina. And that's on one of the albums. And he went, well, yeah. But you know, I'm actually going to change it a bit, and I'm recording it with the LA Philharmonic. And you know, John's going to be playing. And and it was one of those moments where you know, you knew you knew it was sort of naughty. But we owned everything. We owned the record already. Um, so the only problem would be that publishing and the publishing was owned by EMI music. And I shouldn't be saying all this, but no. And and of course, it all comes down to greed. You know, so we went to CMI music and said, look, this could be used, could be used in this film, which we think could be a very big film we didn't know. 1s And anyway, long story short, we they of course went, oh, it's going to be in the film. Brilliant. And then we managed to say, yes, but it's a different arrangement, so we'll have to have a bit of ourselves, which we did anyway. And it was a big hit. But I tried to make that record as Cavatina hit three times before and got close. But you know. And sometimes that's what I mean. Sometimes. 2s You know, I worked, I signed a band called writs w r I t z, and they were like an art school band, like a deaf school. And they were really good boy and a girl singer. Crazy, crazy and crazy. And. 2s You know, I this is this is what's interesting about the music business is that if you work in a company like Warner Brothers or Phonogram or EMI, you have really serious budgets. And if you work in my my one, the budget was not serious. But I mean it was okay, but. 1s And so I thought, screw, I've got to get them away. And I've got to, you know, they had a song called Night Nurse, I remember it. 3s Like this. 2s And I knew the manager of ten cc. If you've ever heard of them. And 1s his name was Harvey Lisboa. And I persuaded Harvey to talk to 1s Lowell Cream and Kevin Godley to the tendency to produce them, and it was a huge deal to get them to do this, but I really only had the money, the budget, to do two tracks. I couldn't, I couldn't, you know. And and they did it. And it was very good, but not quite anywhere. You put it out and it didn't happen. So that was the end of that, you know. So we just did the album with somebody else. But it. 2s It. Had it worked? It would have been absolutely fantastic, you know, and you began a very clever move, you know, Gordon Green. The interesting thing about the smaller labels is rather like a podcast that you have to do everything, and you maybe have five people working in the office and maybe outsource staff. It sounds like things were going well in any case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was all going very well. And you know, and as I say, one of the records that was that I mentioned, I had three hit records. One of them was John Williams. Oh yeah. That was it. Anyway, so coming back to that time, you know, when I sort of my mother had died and all that, I just said, right. You know, it's a foot foot to the floor, you know, let's do it. Start your own thing. See, let's see what you're really made of. That was the whole thing. And I didn't tell anybody else that that was what I felt. And my partner was very bright and he managed a very good group. When I said to my boss, I'm leaving. I was amazed. He'd said to me, well, who's backing you? And I said, well, we haven't, we haven't got the money yet. We're going round, you know. And he said, well, we will. You know, and it was like, what? We got two other people backing us as well. So it was all systems go. And what happened was that I had to work out six months notice. 1s And towards the end of the six months, in a bit of economic recession sprung up on the horizon, and all the people who said they back us when I'm really sorry, we're not going to do that now. 1s So my partner or to be partner came to see him and he said, look, I don't think we can do it. And, you know, I've got an office, I've got a certain amount of money, but I don't have that money. And he said, I think we should call it off. And I said, no, no, we're not going to call it off. We're going to do it. We will find the money. And I just couldn't face the idea of reversing backwards, you know, I really couldn't. Do you think at this point you're already high that you're maybe in a manic? Or is it more just the pressure that he put on yourself? 1s I think. I think it was. It wasn't sort true. Manic. It wasn't true manic? No. But I think there was elements of that that the judgment. You know, the judgment was really getting a bit skew, if, you know, because I sort of thought I thought, oh, well, yeah, of course I make it work, we'll make it work. And I'm getting the sense of really putting yourself in a box as well, which is like, am I going to really, really succeed or nothing? Yes, I think it was. 1s I think there was an element of that which is that, you know, because it was almost like having another voice, you know, saying, really, what are you doing? You know, you're useless. And now it's going right. Okay, let's do it. Let's just just do it. Anyway, what happened was that we did do it. We did do it. We went and worked in my partner's office in the Harrow Road, quite different to Poland Street in Soho. It's funny actually, because I do a talk about this and I don't want to repeat the talk. It became very clear very quickly that I was not happy about it. You know, that it was like feeling really bad about it, feeling bad about being in the situation and sort of going, oh, no. And I thought, well, now you're just a new boy at school, and obviously we haven't got the money, so that's a bit of a pressure. And my partner had debts in his company, which he thought probably rightly was, well, everyone has debts. Don't worry about it. Just pay them off gradually. And for me, I'd come from little Lord Fulton. Roy. Land where? Debts. You must be joking. So I think it was all, you know, all a bit tricky. And it just became within, within a couple of months. Really very tricky. You fed the press. Oh, God. I really I mean, you know, basically. Well, the confidence was going, gone. All the decision making, the focus, you know, couldn't focus on anything. And I just felt I felt really crummy, really bad. And but I'm going and I'm sure this is like when you really gash your arm, you just hold on tight. It'll be all right. It'll be all right. And and it wasn't it really wasn't all right. And it got a lot, lot, lot worse. 1s And to the point four months. Five months later, I'm coming into the office and I used to come to the office and used to close my door and stare at the wall all day, doodle, maybe call someone. And my partner was incredibly kind, incredibly patient, but also he just did not know what to do and he was embarrassing for him. I'm not sure if I'd broken up with love at that point. I thought that might help if I broke up with her. That was my thinking, you know? Good. Be strong. And of course, it made me feel ten times worse. It became really so bad that I. I just reached a point where I'm going, you are hopeless. You are completely useless and you're worthless. And you know, really, what's the point? What is the point in going on with this? You've bust up with love day. That's good. Now what you do is you bust up with your partner. Max, tell him that you're going to leave the music business, and then you go down to a tube station and Sloane Square, full and Broadway. Try each one and you know where to stay at the end of the platform, waiting the train. Zoom in and you're going to jump in front of it. And I tried that twice, 2 or 3 times, and I couldn't do it. And of course, then it's worse because you're gay. You can't even commit suicide. 2s And. 1s And the way I was told the story is quite interesting. What happened about ten days after I the last attempt, I got a call from my old boss who I was very fond of and likewise. 1s And he said, look, you know, I don't know what's going on, but I'm hearing some terrible things about you. You know, that you're really unhappy and you didn't know about the tube. And he said, look, you know, basically we want you to come back and we want to offer you a lot of money. Well, if Alfa Romeo or whatever it was. 1s But, you know, we we love you. We think you're great. 1s Hearing those words was extraordinary, you know, because it was like, did he just say what I thought? He said? Blimey. I mean, is he got that really wrong? Does he know who I really am? So it made a massive difference. And within a week I decided what to do. And what I was going to do was not take his offer, but I was going to go back to the to Max. My partner, and I was going to go for it. So it's like his his show of support for you switched you out of your depression very quickly. It sounds like it did it, did it, did it did, you know, nearly, nearly. But and I'm back after 2 or 3 weeks and working 14 hours a day, I'm seeing 3 or 4 bands a night. I found a hitrillionecord. I got back with Love Day 2s and and it's cooking on gas. 1s Quite a strong gas. Yeah. And everyone in my life is going, oh, he's back, he's back. It's great. And and I'm going, I'm back. And my partner is, you know, everyone was and I'm really going to make up for everything. But I think, you know, there were a few extra ingredients inside, as it were, that people didn't see. And even I didn't see, I just thought, it's like driving a car and you're going, blimey, this car can go quite fast, you know? Wow. What's that gear? Oh, I didn't know that that. But you know, you don't. You don't, you don't. You're not challenging it yourself. You're not going, oh, I better tell this to going to see a doctor because you're going, this is great. And I guess why would you challenge it if everything externally is improving and everyone is giving you the feedback that things are going well? Absolutely. You feel. Because that's the other thing. Of course, if you're such a, you know, shame and oh God, I'm so awful, but now. 1s Ah! Love it. And you know, you're making decisions doing this all the time. You know, focusing on THAtrillionIGHT. Now, what are we going to do? When I was 14. 1s A friend of mine and his family. A slightly mad family, but, you know, quite interesting. And they had a mad South African aunt who came over and she used to read people's palms. And this is so stupid. This. And and she she you know, I out of all of them, she went, you know, you are going to be so successful when you're 24 or 25 something rubbish like this, and you're going to have millions of pounds and, and every the people, the family came to me and said, you see, she was right. You are. And so it's all nonsense, but, you know, it's all fuel on the fire. I had this idea, as you know, when you're in this state, you have a lot of ideas and they all seem like good ideas. Yes, absolutely. Everything's a good idea. And you're also very fearless. So you know where you think, oh, you know Mr. Smith running Phonogram Records? Oh, no. No, I'll just drop him a line. I could never go and see him or, you know, whatever in this state, you just knock, knock on the door high and what's. Because I think people respond a lot to confidence, like we were saying before. 1s What? What are you what are your reactions from other people, let's say new people that you're approaching at this time of your life? Well, I mean, you just supremely confident. And, you know, I don't think people understand that. And it's it is a it is one of the really great things about bipolar that you do have this total confidence and, and you are very attractive because of that. You know, that you can, you know, running or not to get, you know, and you can do things and people go, you are completely believable. Yes. So people make the assumption that there is always competence. Yeah. Behind the confidence. So I'm going to go to the to the Dorchester Hotel and sit in a bar and I'm ordering a couple of drinks and I'm getting talking to somebody and that, you know, and I go, well, obviously I've got a large factory and mansion in Oxfordshire and six cars and they're going to go, yeah, why not, why not? Of course it's the Dorchester. Looks good. Sounds good. Confidence. Why? Why would it be anything else, you know, anyway? You know, there was a thing called the Radio One in Concert series, which happened every Saturday, and it was recording the best bands of the day and putting them out in a concert. And this is where it is quite good that I suddenly thought, where do all these concerts go afterwards? Where did the recordings go? And I sort of figured out they went into a vault in the BBC. So I thought, well, if I got hold of 36 or 50 of those and you're talking Elton John, LED Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who, the police, you know, um, maybe if I talked to the groups, I could reach an agreement with them and I could put them out. 1s And we wouldn't have any recording costs. And I would have, you know, there would be a definite sales definite. So it can be quite, very good. So I went to the BBC and, you know, all suited and booted. And they weren't quite as responsive as I thought. But I was right. They were in a vault. Anyway, long story short. Very long story short, they agreed to give me a piece of paper saying in principle 1s to do a deal for 36 of these things. And. 1s And that really was the springboard to. I went, I took Loveday as a as a present to New York. And, you know, I knew a few people who were quite high up and companies and I went and saw one and I said, look, look at this piece of paper with all these concerts, these are albums now. Hell. You know how much you. I want to sell them to you. I want I want to sublicense for America. And I want you to tell me how much money, money you're going to give me. 1s And they're like, what? 2s And it was quite funny. And and they said, Jeremy, you know, really do you really think you're going to get David Bowie, Elton John, all these big names to give you the rights, you know, do you really think that? And I went, yes, I do. And I've already spoken to half of them. Which was not true. 3s But, you know, that was also my idea that, you know, bluff it out, you know, to fake it to the makers. Yeah. 2s Uh, the guy came back and he said, providing you can prove that you've got all these agreements, legal agreements, and we'll give you $5 million. So I'm going. That's great. That's all I need. 1s I've made it. And that and that, in a way, I guess is the interesting thing, because to me it wasn't, you know, the 5 million was the hard bit. 1s But of course the hard bit was getting the agreements. Yes, but I didn't see that it wasn't interested in that. So then what happened next? Hired a chauffeur in New York called Frankie, who thought that I was a member of the British aristocracy. And East called me Lord Thomas all the time. Great. We went back to England, and then sort of slight amount of secrets started to happen, you know where. 1s I didn't tell Loveday, but we had a mini cab driver who we both liked. And in the end I very quietly gave him a job and bought him a Mercedes car and. And I'd sort of arranged a bank bank loan to function at the junction because it all, you know, everyone else is going, this is all going to happen. It's all going to be great. You know, 1s the hospital where my mother had been ill and some Middlesex Hospital, the woman running the radiography department, very nice, came to see me. And she said, you're in the pot business. We need your help. We need to raise £800,000 for a scanner. 1s So I'm going. Yeah, sure. 1s No problem. Yeah. 1s Well, it wasn't quite that, but I said okay. And she said, I want you to come and talk to the Board of Trustees. Now, this is the board of trustees of a major hospital, you know. Lord. Lady, sir. Oh, professor, you know, and and I think this is interesting because I'm going love to. Most people would go. I don't think so, actually. You talk to them, I'll give you the ideas. This was like 25 people. So I went and talked to them and I said, I said, look, let me cut to the chase. You're probably all thinking that it would be very nice to have a country fete, you know, where you have cream buns and, you know, sell whatever. That is not going to work. You know, if you really want to have a success and you want to buy this scanner, here's what you do. 1s You hire Wembley Stadium. 1s You book Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Wonder. And you have them come and play. £15 a ticket. 1s The place takes 80,000 seats, 8000 tickets. You also film it and you also have merchandising from it. You probably need to take all the money from the merchandising to pay the groups, you know, for coming to do it. But you would easily make 800,000. 1s And I mean, I just did it like that and and they went. 1s My God, is that possible? Well, of course it's possible, you know. I mean, I'm very busy at the moment, but it's possible. 2s And I. My partner Max knew the manager of Fleetwood Mac. That was it. I never knew Stevie Wonder anything to do with him, but it was a good idea. And that is what I think is interesting, because this is way before Bob Geldof. 1s This is it is an interesting thing that it happened like that, did it a little bit and they were ideas can be great. Yeah, but you almost need a separate army of people going, okay, thanks. You go away now. We'll do that. Yeah. You need to have, I guess the, the dream is the people who can come up with the ideas and then the executors, the bean counters, who can help you figure out how to translate those ideas, how to match those ideas with reality and how to anticipate problems and so on. Yes. Yeah. Well, I think what you need is you need people who can execute it and and bring it off. Because I hate people thinking that people with bipolar are mad and stupid and they're not. They have lots of good ideas. The the reality is that they're not thought through. That's the reality. You know where I'm going? There you go, Stevie Wonder, you know, or like you said, you can be having ideas all the time. You can have a huge volume of ideas. Some of those ideas would be really good, but it's hard to distinguish the good ideas from the not so good ideas and then hard to translate how to anticipate problems which could occur. Yeah, well, of course you're not the one to be doing that. So basically the confidence is really bubbling. And are you are you sleeping much at this point. Not. Probably not too much, you know, because you're probably waking up quite early and going, I love everything you know out of here. But I mean, I was also, you know, also drinking a lot alcohol for me was very much the fuel to a lot of this 1s I hired. I'm going going. Right. I'm going to I probably not do this with, with my partner. He doesn't seem very enthusiastic because he'd said that's going to be very difficult to do. This is the the fundraiser or the trying to get the the rights for those BBC recordings? Um, no, for the for the rights for the BBC. My partner Max had said to me, you know, it's a really good idea, but it's going to be very complicated and very difficult. And I wasn't easy to be so, so negative about it. And he went, I'm not being negative. And being realistic, you know, and it's like, well, I think you're being negative, you know, or got, you know. So in the end, you know, I'm thinking yeah. It's not he doesn't have the vision. Doesn't have the vision. So I'll probably have to buy a building. I'm not sure if that's cheaper, or whether I should rent a whole building for my new office. And I mean, I never say this in my talk. Actually, I had two lovely people who'd worked for me before, you know, who were now another jobs. And I said, basically, there's going to be a new job for you. 1s And it wasn't. I mean, it was like really serious offer. Then I'd thought, right, I'm. I'd seen a house. I wanted. And I already have my three bedroom flat. But. And I hadn't sold that. But I found this house and I'm going. It's a five bedroom house. It's two bathrooms. Garden? Yes. I know it's not too expensive. I can just. Well. Now I will be able to afford it when the money comes in. So I saw the guy who owned it. The flat of the house was empty, completely vacant. He was very nice. And he said, look, you know, I like you would be great if you had the house. I'm going away on holiday for six weeks. Seven weeks if you held on. And when I come back, we'll do the paperwork. It'll be brilliant. Is that okay? And I went. Yeah. Sort of. Yes. Okay. And he didn't know because I didn't tell him that I'd already taken a firm of builders around the house. And the builders obviously had my number. You know, they knew that they could do this. And they said, we can do the work that you want, which is completely, completely reassembling the whole inside of the house. 1s But we can only do that if we start next week. 1s And we'll need x thousand. And and I'm thinking, oh, because I wanted it to be a sort of present for love day, you know, and her birthday at the end of the year. And it was October, the end of October. 2s And they go, you know, and I just thought, well. 1s Does? Will it really matter that much? 1s You know, really, it's just technicalities. Yeah. You know, I know eight builders, you know, say what happened was the eight builders went in because I had a key and they really just wrecked the whole place. And basically the owner came back early from holiday after ten days. 1s And went berserk. And as did his youngest son. And. And I was going, look, you know, really, it doesn't matter. What's all the fuss about? What is all the fuss about? I mean, when you look at it, I mean, look, all that's happened is I haven't bought it, that's all. 2s My lawyer was going mental, 2s you know, it was going really mental. 1s And I always remember I said, 1s I said to I said to myself, you know, I've had enough of this, you know, this sort of rudeness, you know, really, you know, disrespect. I said, I'm going back to a place where I'm really respected, New York. And I took my friend 1s Trevor, who was Paul McCartney's drummer, and he'd been in one of my bands, you know, and I knew him very well, and he was used to the high life. I said, do you want to go to New York tomorrow on Concorde? And he went, yeah, okay. 2s So we fortunately couldn't get on Concorde because that would be really expensive. So he flew first class on Air India. 1s And again, I never say this. You're going to get this. This is going to be funny. And I said, you know, oh, Trevor's completely wiped out, you know, sleep. So I'm going off to walk round. I'm going to go and talk to the pilot. So I went knock knock, knock. And then this time it's obviously pre, you know, twin towers etcetera. And they all went, oh, hello, can we help you? And I went, yes, I want. I want some advice. And. 1s And they said, right, what was the advice? And I said, look. 1s Basically, 1s it looks like I'm going to be doing a substantial amount of business. Transatlantic. 1s In the next year or two. Right. And they're going, oh yeah. Got it. Have you got a card? I had a card. And I said, the point is, what I'm trying to work out is would it be better to buy a plane? 6s And, you know, I tell you, the guy was brilliant. He took it simply seriously. And he's going, uh. Well, that is quite an interesting idea. 1s Have you thought about leasing? And I'm going leasing. No, I mean, is that leasing? That doesn't sound very good. He said, well, it is because it's much cheaper and you can get a better plane later, you know. 1s He said, I tell you what, would you like me to radio, head to a sales office in Delhi and I could get you a quote for both. And I went, well, that would be very thoughtful. 1s That's amazing. 1s And yeah, never say that and never tell that. 1s Anyway, back got to New York and the next thing we know, Frank is there. And he had been a cop, and he was really quite theatrical in a way. And basically he arranged. He said, I think I'm worried about you. You're looking very stressed. And I said, stressed about violence from this guy owning this house, his son. And oh, that's right. The son turned up at the airport. 1s I remember that now. This is silly, tiny thing. And it was nice to sort of make up for, you know, clowning me. And he's put his hand out to shake hands and I put mine, and he gave me a writ. I gave you a oh, what a writ. You know, writ for criminal. Oh, oh, a subpoena. Yeah. Wow. That was quite funny. And this is on your way to New York, 2s and I'm going, am I? You know, do I care? 1s Um, but when we got to New York, um, and there was Franklin written on this, and he went, right. And the next thing we know, he'd arranged to arm bodyguards. 2s Uh, who were called John and Frank. They were very tall. The suited and very, you know. And they worked for Sammy Davis Junior 1s and. 2s They basically hired them for a minimum of ten days. And they'd said to me when we were in this hotel. 1s They sort of said, you know, you always stay in this hotel. Like there was something wrong with it and it was a five star hotel. And I said. 1s Well, what's wrong and where? And they said, oh, well, our top clients stay. And they said, well, they stay in the Carlyle Hotel. 2s So I said, we'd better just get on with it then. And book ten days in that hotel. The best suite. I won't have less. 1s And book yourselves and let's go. And that's what happened.