The Wind Thieved Hat

Horatio Clare is an award winning writer and broadcaster. And if there was an award for being a lovely bloke he’d probably have won that too. I first came across Horatio through his book Heavy Light in which he writes vividly about his experience of the highs and lows of bipolar disorder and what it’s like to be sectioned. But there are many other books too – from traversing the oceans on containe...

“The book already exists in the future and you’re just trying to reveal it – you’re just trying to find out what it is.” I love the writing of  John Higgs . It was a chance encounter with 'The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds' that first switched me on to his unique literary landscape. It’s a landscape where there’s a surprise round every bend, a place where diverse...

‘Sometimes a fuck up isn’t a fuck up: it’s the angel on the shoulder of the devil on your shoulder.’ These lines were among the first I came across by the Australian poet and artist Darby Hudson. I liked them so much I asked if I could use them to head a chapter on mistakes in my own book. Darby said yes, and so began our correspondence. I’ve thought for a while that Darby would be an excellent gu...

Dan Nelken is on a mission: he’s passionate about helping creative people create and get over what's stopping them. A fork lift driver and advertising copywriter by trade, his book A Self Help Guide for Copywriters was a breakout hit during the pandemic. I wanted to speak to Dan not just because I’m on a similar mission, or because I wanted to talk about copywriting per se, but because I know he h...

Kathryn Mannix is a best-selling author and palliative care doctor. Given that this is a podcast about the creative process she may seem to be a rather unusual guest, but as you’ll discover, Kathryn is a brilliant wordsmith and someone who has a great deal to say about stories; the stories we use to make sense of life and of death. Kathryn’s self-declared mission is to make us all more comfortable...

My guest in this first post-pandemic episode of TWTH is the writer, performer and broadcaster Byron Vincent. He joined me in my shed at the bottom of the garden and it was really lovely to be able to record in interview in person for the first time in a long time. Byron grew up poor. With the cards stacked against him. He had a tough time when he was younger. He’s the only one of my guests, so far...

Of all the books I read to my kids when they were growing up, there was one that I loved just as much as they did - ‘The Murderer’s Ape’. An enthralling globe-trotting tale of murder and mystery. And at the heart of the story is a ship’s engineer who just happens to be a gorilla, the one and only Sally Jones.  In this episode of the Wind Thieved Hat, recorded down the line, the creator of Sal...

It’s rare but every so often a documentary film comes along that transcends the medium, that is in itself a work of art. For me, Garage People is such a film. It describes the lives of a group of people living in the arctic circle in Russia, all of whom have their own garage space where they pursue all kinds of activities, from salvaging scrap, to carving religious icons, playing death metal, bree...

I first came across the writing of Oliver Burkeman in his weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Each week beneath the gently ironic title of ‘This Column Will Change Your life’, Oliver would ponder on an idea or technique intended to make modern living just a little easier.  He’d cut through the worst excesses of the cult of positive thinking with his laser guided wit, and somehow, in so...

John Wood and Paul Harrison are two artistic heroes of mine. They make work that is both simple and complex, profound and mundane. It’s always engaging, often funny and, as you’ll hear, has occasionally ended in disaster. Look on the Tate Modern website and you’ll see them described as ‘an art world Laurel and Hardy’ - and it’s their ability to create entrancing short videos that has now led to th...

In this conversation, recorded down the line, I talk about writing and life with poet Toria Garbutt. We chat about what it was like growing up in a close knit northern town in the aftermath of the miner’s strike; Toria tells me how poetry has enabled her to come to terms with some of the toughest episodes in her life; she explains how she’s overcome getting stuck with her second collection; and sh...

If you ever find yourself on a shoot for a TV commercial then there’s a good chance that the Director of Photography, will be male and white. Deepa Keshvala, one of the UK’s most sought after DOP’s, is neither of these things. And in this brilliantly refreshing and inspiring conversation Deepa gives me her unique take on the creative process. She tells me about her first film, Canned, a documentar...

‘The person we become as adults has everything to do with how we play as children.’ I first came across Cas through the Netflix documentary Abstract, the Art of Design . My interest was piqued by the fact we share the same surname, but I soon became utterly absorbed in Cas’s brilliantly iconoclastic approach to creativity. For Cas play is a fundamental part of the human experience, shaping the peo...

Poet, playwright, performer, graphic artist and designer Inua Ellams is without doubt one of the most inspiring and eloquent creators I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with so far. There’s so much in this short conversation, recorded remotely during lockdown. Inua talks about his childhood in Nigeria, and the black privilege he only became aware of later; he talks about finding inspiration in sour...

I’m a sucker for a portrait project. And Richard Beaven’s All of Us is one of the most beguiling I’ve seen for a long time. Originally from Devon in the UK, Richard now lives in a small town called Ghent in upstate New York. On the town’s bicentennial Richard set out to photograph as many of the townspeople as he could, one by one. The captivating series of 276 medium format images will soon be a...

For many years Guilhem Gallart was a successful record producer and recording artist. Better known as Pone, he helped shaped the sound of hip hop in France in the 90’s and enjoyed a number of hits with his collective the Fonky Family. In 2015 Pone was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or motor neurone disease. There’s no cure for ALS. It’s left Pone tetraplegic, dep...

It’s often said that you shouldn’t meet your heroes. So it was with some trepidation that I went down to Brighton one rainy day in January to meet Henry Normal. Henry’s name always used to pop up on the credits of some of my favourite TV shows. Paul Calf’s Video Diaries, Mrs Merton, The Royle Family, The Mighty Boosh … I could go on. But I needn’t have worried about meeting him. Henry’s a lovely m...

'Life is monotonous. We are often wrapped up in our thoughts as we move from place to place. We can become blind to the environments and objects we interact with. NEON was founded to elevate the everyday.’ So say Mark Nixon and Viliina Koivisto. Otherwise known as NEON. They work together from their studio in Margate creating fantastical architecture, art and design. Their projects are usually lar...

My first encounter with Nicola Davies was on telly after school in the 1980’s when she was presenting the Really Wild Show, a TV show for kids all about animals. My second encounter with her was at a family gathering when I discovered - with a double take - that Nicola and my wife are related. Today Nicola is a writer. She’s written over 60 books, many of them award winning, and most of them for c...

This conversation with the Emmy nominated and internationally acclaimed creative director & designer Ana Criado was recorded over lunch in her garden in LA. Ana is as generous with her stories as she was with her paella. The tale of how she wound up being hired to create motion graphics for one of the best studios in the world without knowing anything about motion graphics is brilliant. We als...

Al Murphy is an illustrator. He’s also one of those rare human beings who’s as humble as he is talented. Our chat, which happens to be on the first anniversary of TWTH, is both funny and frank. Al talks honestly about the inevitable insecurities that come with forging a living as a solo creator; the difficulty of making edgy work in today’s cultural climate; the curse of Instagram and much more be...

When Kate and I first spoke about her practice as an artist in episode 9 I came away from the conversation feeling that maybe we should have talked more about mental health. But interviewing your wife is kind of a weird experience so I let myself off the hook. Recently, having been asked to write an article for Creative Review magazine about mental illness and creativity, I asked Kate if she’d tal...

Alex is a creative technologist who works with Nike, Uber, the BBC, and the NHS to explore, imagine & prototype future-forward creative concepts for human-centered technology. Exactly what that means you’ll discover during our chat. Alex is also a lecturer on artificial intelligence at the University of Arts London - and one of the Financial Times 'Top 100 black and minority ethnic leaders in...

Ivan Black’s kinetic sculpture is both magical and mesmerising, behaving in rhythmical yet beautifully unpredictable ways. In one of my favourite creative conversations so far I speak with Ivan about his Bohemian upbringing, about the role of rave culture and repetitive beats in his work, and about the bursts of inspiration which have sustained him through the travails of living and working as an...

This conversation was recorded at Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff, just before Kate played with her band This Is The Kit. Kate is charming, inspiring and hugely insightful on creativity. She talks about how her process never really begins or ends, she reveals how she writes her extraordinary lyrics, and she makes a plea for more smiles and more play.