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July 1, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:31:02
"My Gay Brother Murdered His Lover - Unleashing a Demon on Me!" Freedomain Call In
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So, brother, what's on your mind?
Okay, I wrote to you because I've watched many of your personal interviews with people, and whilst I know that you won't go off and say, advise people what to do, I find your advice and thoughts on situations very applicable.
Sorry, that's not the right word, but very... Let's just say useful.
Yeah.
And I'm going to encourage you, just because I get a lot of this feedback, I'm going to encourage you to try and speak a little faster, because if there's pauses between each word, people are going to go completely mental, just in the audience as a whole.
So if you could crank up the speed a bit, I would appreciate it.
Okay, right.
So I contacted you because...
Well, I'm 62, 63 next month.
I think we were probably born in the same city, London.
I grew up there, but I was born in Ireland.
Oh right, okay.
I beg your pardon.
I basically had a reasonably happy childhood.
I'll get into that a bit later.
But the reason for contacting you, um, kind of in my later 10 years, my life's turned into a bit of a mess, mate.
I turned to alcohol, depression, self-harm, attempted suicide, lost contact with my two sons, my two step-sons, lost two marriages.
Two?
Two in 10 years?
No, no, sorry, no.
Two marriages overall.
Okay, got it.
Don't get me wrong, there's been some really good times in my life, like most people have good times.
Some of the stuff I've seen in my life I think has shaped where I am now, which is not a great place, but I'm trying to cope with it and deal with but I'm trying to cope with it and deal with it.
The main event in my life was my brother's crime.
Right.
My brother and I were six years apart.
Born six years apart, beg your pardon, and I was always told from mum and dad, you know, this is your little brother, look after him.
And I kind of took it seriously.
And six years actually in a child's life is actually Quite a little bit apart, really.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
You kind of tend to think in months, don't you?
And weeks and days when you're a kid.
However, I did my best.
But as I grew up, through, I would say, my early teenage years, I think I knew before my mum and dad did that actually my brother wasn't straight.
He was gay.
This isn't something that... it didn't really upset me, although, as you appreciate, back in the 60s and 70s... It was a little less accepted, a little less easy, right?
Yeah.
A lot, in fact, in England in particular.
We used to call them poofters and tease them and what have you.
And was he gay, like, it was kind of obvious in terms of mannerisms and so on?
No, that became later, actually.
In fact, I can remember back in my 20s, turning around to him and saying, OK, you can cut down on the campness.
I'm your brother.
And he was OK with that.
He understood it.
And I would say he was a fairly... what's the word?
He was very straight-minded guy.
He was very kind of...
He did attempt.
He got engaged at one point when he was younger.
He tried dating a girl.
I think the family all thought this girl wasn't the right girl for him.
But he tried to go down that path and fighting it.
And I remember having a very intense conversation with him once and saying, look, I don't think it would be that bad, really, if you told mum and dad.
And he was like, Oh, no, don't kill me.
It's just like, you know, God, this wouldn't be good.
And so I supported him.
Later on in his life, he became involved in some very strange kind of groups.
I met them occasionally before his act of murder.
Um, he got involved in a very strange relationship with an older guy, older than him.
Um, and, uh, would ring me up occasionally and tell me about it.
And I would, I would used to say, look, just get away from it.
Don't, um, I mean, this guy was, uh, he was into homosexual orgies, drugs, And he was trying to get my brother to take drugs.
He knew him for about five years.
They never lived together, but they had an ongoing relationship.
And it was, as far as I could see, it was quite abusive.
My brother was a very passive man in many respects.
He worked in hotel work, service industry.
But he had a very kind and compassionate way with him throughout his youth and teenage years.
In fact, I always thought he would have been better off being employed in a kind of medical, clinical kind of care way because he had a lot of compassion for people.
About five years before the event, although he could drive, he didn't like driving.
He didn't like car driving.
And he used to cycle everywhere locally.
He didn't really travel much.
He didn't really go, I don't know, I'm not really ever aware of him going abroad or anything.
And he had a really bad accident on his bicycle and had a Quite a bad head injury.
He was in hospital for a few weeks.
And how old was he then?
He was roughly 30.
Was he wearing a helmet?
No, late 20s.
No, it wasn't popular then to wear helmets.
It wasn't really a thing.
So we're talking like late 80s.
And was it a concussion?
Do you know the details?
Well, yeah, he was out.
And they thought he had a hemorrhage on his brain.
I believe there's a lot more research on it now.
It wasn't quite as well admitted back then that people can have personality changes.
And his personality definitely started to change.
He became very snappy, very argumentative, very silly things.
And that's when he started to... I have to make something very plain here, Stefan.
I am not homophobic, okay?
I grew up knowing my brother was gay.
And I met many gay people in my life.
So I'm not that way at all.
But the scene he was getting involved with seemed very dark to me.
And it felt to me as a big brother that he wasn't really going in the right direction.
Now, in between my marriages, there was a period where I was single and enjoying my mid-30s.
And you could ask me about my first marriage, but that probably might have something to do with it.
You could probably ask me about childhood, that might have something to do with it.
He started going out clubbing a lot more in gay clubs and mixing in scenes that I didn't think that... I hate to be judgmental, but I just didn't think it was part of his personality, but obviously his personality was starting to change.
And he was a very anti-drug guy.
He never, as far as I'm aware, he never ever took drugs.
He drank very, very little.
He would, you know, at family gatherings, Christmas, blah, blah, blah, he would drink possibly a glass of wine.
He wasn't a guy that really got drunk.
So he got involved with this guy and this guy was persuading him gradually over the course of their relationship that they should take drugs together or have orgies with other guys.
It's a bit graphic but I would get phone calls some nights in this interim period between my marriages I was living fairly locally to him where he'd been gay bashed, got himself into all sorts of situations with other gay people or straight people.
I distinctly remember one evening I got a phone call from him from a phone box in town and by the time I got there he'd collapsed and he was bleeding heavily and
He definitely had the strength kicked out of him and brought him home and actually I'll admit I made my own investigations over the following few weeks and found out who it was and sorted him out in a typical London boy fashion if you like.
Anyway, time went on.
I moved from that location 200 miles north and got a brilliant job.
I was enjoying my life.
Things seemed to be getting better for me and he phoned me occasionally to tell me about his life and I was kind of worried about him, to see him occasionally when I went down to visit my parents.
I got involved in a new relationship And anyway, there I was sitting happy one day in my brand new, well it was about three years on actually, but my great job.
It was brilliant.
I work in a very artistic profession and I was enjoying the financial rewards of this job and got a call one day from my dad.
He said, your brother's in jail.
He's been arrested for murder.
My gosh.
Now, the previous night, we'd had a conversation where he'd spoke to me and said, I can't deal with this situation anymore, with this relationship, with this particular man.
Obviously, I'm not going to name names.
What do I do?
And I said, after a long conversation, This guy is not right for you.
He's, as far as I'm concerned, a bad person, regardless of his, you know, sexuality or sexuality.
Didn't really bother me.
I wasn't interested.
I said, but he's trying to lead you down a path and he's being very abusive to you.
He's using you.
He's controlling you.
Um, I think, you know, Since your accident on a bike a few years ago, your whole personality's changed.
I think you're vulnerable.
I think, you know, and I think my last sentence was to him was, okay, X brother, you know, that's his name.
Call him X. Yeah.
Look, there's a very old saying, and I can't remember where it's from, But a dish is best served up cold.
One day that man will have his upcomings and rewards in life, the evil things that he's doing.
And he said, OK, thank you.
He put the phone down.
I could tell he'd had a few beers, bearing in mind I'd already explained to you that he wasn't really a drinker.
I could tell he was drinking.
Yeah.
He then went out on his bicycle and cycled three miles down the road.
He attempted to break in through the back window of this guy's house.
He had a big house in quite a nice area of this town.
Couldn't get in, so he cycled back to his house.
Got a claw hammer, cycled back to this guy's house.
Claw hammered the double glazing window open.
Went in.
Found a carving knife.
Went upstairs.
This guy was in his sleep.
Killed him.
And left.
Went back home.
And the very following morning, He was arrested whilst he was decorating a neighbor's flat.
Can you believe?
Wow.
That's when I got the phone call from my father.
I leapt in the car.
I probably did about a ton down the M1 and got there.
Now, at the time, I was a big, broad chap.
16 stone, that's, well, I don't know what that is in pounds in American, Canadian money, but that's like 16 times 14 pounds, isn't it?
I walked in there in my leather jacket, longish hair.
I have to say, the cops were brilliant.
My father was there.
And we were allowed to see him, not less than 24 hours after he'd done this.
Now, I couldn't believe I thought, there's some mistake here.
Something's gone wrong.
He's been accused of something he hadn't done.
So, all my life, I'd stuck up for my brother.
Not that he'd been in any trouble, really.
He'd done some silly deaf stuff, but we all do that.
But I always tried to be there for him, you know?
And my first reaction, I can remember we were in like a cell kind of situation.
There was two detectives there, my father and him.
They brought him in.
And he looked a wreck.
I mean, he looked an absolute mess.
I think he was in jeans and t-shirt.
And my first reaction was to hold my arms out and hug him.
And he looked so sorry for himself when he hugged me.
And then he whispered in my ear.
Well, it wasn't really a whisper because The detectives and my father heard it, but said, it's your fault.
Oh God.
You're to blame why I killed him.
And I pulled back from him and I saw marks on his face and up his arms.
And actually these marks Where he had stabbed this guy so brutally, 29 times in the chest.
He'd gone so far in with the knife, the ribs had cut his arms.
My God.
And I stood back and I looked at him and I said, Oh shit, I said his name.
Don't worry, I'll edit.
You said X. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Sorry.
Don't worry.
Why?
And it was the first time in my life I'd looked at anyone, anyone at all.
And I can explain this later, Stefan, but I've seen death and my Loving brother, blond-haired little boy, looked at me with evil in his eyes.
And I thought, there's someone else there.
There's something else there.
I looked at the detectives.
I looked at my father.
And I saw my father's shock and I've never been able to get rid of that scene out of my eyes.
And it was awful.
It was just, there was something behind those eyes.
There was something else, some other kind of being, some other kind of person.
Well... And when, sorry, remind me of the exact moment when you saw that look.
Just as he pulled away.
After he told you it was your fault?
Yeah.
And it was one of those looks that you see out of a horror movie, like where the person's got their head kind of down, they're looking up and you can see the whites of their eyes.
And it was just horrific.
Yeah.
And he swore at me.
Tried to grab me, like in a kind of clawing, grabbing kind of motion.
And they took him away.
And he was screaming his head off.
Your fault!
And Dad helped me and the detectives.
I have to say, to be honest, these days, This is 95 when this happened.
These days, I don't have a lot of respect for modern police.
I know they have a difficult job, but I think it's completely changed.
Oh, UK police are terrible.
But then, there was this detective, I won't name him, I still remember his name, but he said to me, he said, your brother is very, very, very ill.
I've been on a few murder cases, and this is one of the most horrific I've ever seen in my life.
The scene was absolutely appalling.
Anyway, he said, look, I know you've got nothing to do with this.
It's just his reaction.
He said, you should never blame yourself.
And I was in a state of complete and absolute shock, and so was my father.
When I grew up, my father, there's issues about him, but he always said to me, whatever kind of trouble, you, your brother or your sister, I will always stand by you.
But it was the first time in my life I'd ever seen my father go weak.
we sat there in the reception anyway it was quite emotional but it Because I lived north, I went back to the family home with him, and we sat there and had a glass of whiskey.
I don't think we really knew what to tell each other, and we couldn't really tell my mum.
My mum's been a very passive person in my life and my dad's relationship.
Very kind, very lovely lady.
She couldn't have taken that then.
And anyway, whether it was something emotional or spiritual, I went to bed that night in the spare bedroom and I woke up in the middle of the night With a feeling, I know as a philosophy you're going to find this difficult, but I woke up and I know I was awake and I felt this presence in the room.
I saw this dark shape and it was laughing its head off at me.
And from that night on, it's never ever left me.
At this time, I'd entered a new relationship, which was my second wife.
And she seemed to be quite supportive at the time and helped me over it.
So, anyway, as time went on, he was on remand, waiting for his trial.
Did he confess?
He went back and forth, actually, Stefan.
He was obviously in a really bad psychological situation.
He was being advised to plead criminal insanity, manslaughter, murder.
He went through the whole plea process.
I wasn't completely convinced by his counsel.
He had a number of psychological evaluations.
He wasn't admitted to a medical jail facility or anything.
They said that wasn't needed.
In my own personal opinion, it definitely was.
You mean crazy?
Yeah.
Possessed is almost like a way of looking at it as well, right?
Yeah.
I mean, at the time, I wasn't particularly spiritual myself at all.
But I definitely think he needed some kind of medical help.
Later on, he did see a doctor in prison.
They put him on medication.
However, this was after my father died of a heart attack.
It was the stress of everything.
I mean, I saw that man go from grey to white within a couple of weeks.
Anyway, so, my father's my father's
Death was another issue, but two weeks after his trial and his judgment, my brother hung himself in jail, which, and this sounds like a very cruel thing to say, but actually did my mother a favor.
Yeah, I can understand that.
He was a, I actually thought, well, that was quite a brave thing to do, really.
Yeah.
I assume he was found guilty and sentenced to a long time.
Yeah.
24 years.
Yeah.
But it completely destroyed us.
I've got a younger sister who's 10 years younger than me.
I mean, even before this murder happened, because of, maybe I'm making excuses for my brother, but his brain injury definitely had something to do with this change of personality.
He became very, he could never really quite tell when he was going to be ultra nice or flip a switch and become snappy and violent.
I mean, he actually threw an iron at my sister.
At one point.
Good Lord, that could have been another murder.
Yeah, yeah.
So she, I think from that point, which was a few years before the murder, decided, actually I don't really like Mariposa anymore.
Oh, that's also just a matter of physical security, right?
Yeah, and became very distant from him.
Sorry, what was your brother living on with this kind of temper and dysfunction?
I mean, what was he?
Well, he could function Stefan.
I think he became most comfortable with his irrationality, if you like, around his family.
I think he sort of put on a kind of facade with work.
I mean, everybody thought he was lovely.
I mean, he was the kindest gay in the town.
He was so soft and gentle with people.
That's why I say, in a former life, he could have been a wonderful carer.
Well, but that doesn't help the argument that it was a brain injury, right?
Because if it's a brain injury, I liken it to Tourette's, as I've mentioned before on the show.
And again, I apologize for my voice, I've just got a bit of a cold.
But if it's a brain injury and it's involuntary, like Tourette's, where people just start screaming obscenities and can't control it.
So if it's a brain injury, wouldn't it be beyond his control?
In other words, if he can control it at work, then it is to some degree a choice, right?
Well... To be honest, I don't... I'm only going by what other people said at his funeral.
A funeral is not where you go to get the truth of someone's life, right?
I mean, a funeral is a very sentimental affair, and no one is going to bring out the darkness if they can at all avoid it.
And I've given eulogies at funerals with people I did not hugely respect, and it's just a convention that you cannot go to a funeral.
It's like going to an autobiography for truth, you know, it's not always the best place to pick it up.
Yeah, no, I agree, I agree, I agree.
Like you said in your last video, you can't, you know, the dead, they have a lot of power, don't they?
But it's funny, I mean, it's an interesting coincidence that I'm getting two demonic tales in two shows in a row, that's quite interesting.
Yeah, I was listening to that earlier today and I thought, oh my goodness, Sorry, I shouldn't laugh.
Every emotion is fine.
Don't self-censor to that degree.
There is humor in death, and there is grief in success, and there's anxiety in triumph.
There's lots of complex emotions that float around these things.
So yeah, do your best not to censor yourself.
I'm not going to judge you for laughing about something that is tragic, because that's part of how we do it.
That's how we get through.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, yes, you're right.
There were some similarities with the last video of mine, but especially about my childhood.
Well, hang on, I don't get the childhood thing, because you said you had a pretty good childhood, right?
I did.
With regards to my parents, up until about the age of 12, it was great.
Yeah.
It was very soft and lovely, although we had hardly any money growing up in London.
My dad was in a fairly sort of, I wouldn't say low class position, but certainly not middle class.
A modest position, as we used to say.
Yeah.
A man of modest means.
Yeah.
Although in his sort of younger years, in his late teens, early twenties.
He almost became famous.
Do you remember that show called Opportunity Knocks?
My goodness, you are mining the early memories of my youth.
Yeah, give a reminder to me in the audience what that's about.
It's a talent, it's an early talent show where What was his name?
Hughie Green.
That's it.
I think that's allowed on the show.
He was a compare on a talent show.
Pretty much like X Factor or Britain's Got Talent or whatever.
And he won.
And what was his talent?
He was a singer.
Oh, cool.
A crooner.
And even today, Some people remember him to my mum about how they used to watch him in shows in London.
Anyway, I don't want to give too much detail away because it'll identify too much.
And so what happened with that, I mean, amazing ambition and opportunity, right?
Well, he was all signed up, ready to go.
Royal Concert Hall in London, everything, and he had a medical problem and it crashed out.
And in those days, if you didn't keep pace with your dates, you were out.
So he had an ailment which meant he couldn't perform and then people just moved on?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, you're talking about the 60s, early, late 50s, early 60s, yeah, late 50s.
And it was all, you know, tin pan alley and moving on quick.
Next one, please.
Off you go.
I mean, I assume he recovered because you say he died after the murder.
But did he ever, you know, go sing in a band or, you know, anything like that?
I think it broke his heart, actually, in the respect of fame and fortune.
He met my mum at the same time.
Got married.
I think he felt that sort of, you know, he had responsibilities so that that crashed and burned.
So, okay, let's get to reality.
And he did went on to go on to into retail, um, in a, in a particularly artistic form in as much as he was a window dresser, if you like in Regent street, Oxford street.
So he put his artistic talents into a new direction.
So, um, Did he sing much around the house when you were growing up?
Was it something he liked to do?
Oh God, yeah.
And he was a sound reader.
He couldn't tell you a musical note on a piece of paper at all.
Yeah, the Paul McCartney thing.
You can't read music, but makes great stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, he could play anything.
And boy, I saw him entertain many, many people.
In a very social atmosphere, you know, in sort of parties and what have you.
He was never, although he sang in pubs in his youth, he was not a pub goer really, he was not a drinker.
Did you ever end up with any recordings of his?
I have one, yeah.
Very cool.
And I'm going to hope that the medical issue was not a blow to the head.
No, no, no, it was a back injury.
No, I've actually got a recording of him with Huey Green introducing him on the show.
I don't know how many friends and family will be listening to this.
It's fine.
Anyway, I'm not bothered about that.
But moving on to my childhood and possibly why Some of the dealings in my life have become emotionally difficult.
When I was about eight, and I was thinking about this today, I was definitely about eight.
I tried to put the years together.
There was a girl that lived next door to me.
Sorry, I shouldn't be sniggering or laughing.
It's not really funny, really.
really she was 12 13 I think and I used to go around and play now Dad was always out working.
Mum was always busy around the house.
She was friendly with the neighbours, so she was quite happy for me to go next door and have this girl come in and play with me.
Anyway, one thing went to another and she started dressing me up in dresses.
Putting lipstick on me.
There was one occasion where mum actually caught her in our downstairs loo, drawing lipstick all over my naked body.
Wait, wait, the nakedness?
That sort of crept in out of the side there?
Well yeah, she did actually.
Because I remember thundering down the Council Estate, where I lived as a kid, I remember thundering down with my friends.
We'd all put on heels and girls hats and we were just laughing.
So, you know, this sort of dressing up as a girl is, you know, I don't know if it's a rite of passage in England or something where you think you're auditioning for Monty Python, but it's not beyond the pale and it can be just kind of fun.
But this sounds like a kind of different situation if there's nakedness and so on.
Oh yeah, it got very physical.
I didn't feel like it was anything wrong.
Really?
Hang on, hang on.
Why were you in the loo then?
Well, because she actually said this at one point, you're my little dolly.
Yeah, that's not answering the question though.
If it's nothing wrong, okay, so how did you feel when your mom came in and found you?
I can't say that I actually really felt any guilt or embarrassment.
To me it was just a game.
But it did become more of a game.
Wait, it was a game but it became more of a game?
I'm not sure I follow that.
Well, it became more of a game for her.
I remember going to her house which was next door And then it was starting to play with parts.
And she explained it, that it was a game that she used to play with her father.
Oh Lord.
And, um, that actually she wanted to see my bits, if you like.
Um, and, uh, I suppose that, well, yeah, definitely at that age I was, Well, it's not puberty, is it, eight years old, but you do start to become aware of things starting to happen.
And I guess, to me, it felt like a game.
It was only when it became to be a little bit more intimate, like asking me to do things to her, then things being put inside me and anyway.
Wait, you mean anally?
Is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
What would she, what would she put in your anus?
This is a bit graphic, Stefan.
You mean as opposed to stabbed 27 times?
No, I think we can handle the, this graphic.
Okay.
things like toothbrush handles.
Anyway, So these sessions, I think, looking back on it, and I really honestly at the time found this, I know it sounds weird, but it didn't feel that bad.
I mean, she used to, her mum and dad owned a sweet shop.
Down the road.
So oh, that's not good man.
That's that's creepy as hell You know, so so the pedophile dad runs a candy store.
Oh, yeah And to scrub myself with a loofah fire and acid after that image, but anyway going yeah, well Actually funny enough.
I well not funny, but actually I never really saw much of him it was more of a mother seemed to run the shop and Dad might have been busy.
Well, I don't want to make this sound like anything else, but anyway, so pretty soon after this kind of episode in my life, we moved a couple of months, a couple of miles away in London, not too far.
Into a brilliant apartment, because where we lived before was a council house.
It was in my grandmother's name originally.
She died there.
And back in those days, the law was whoever was living in the house and was a relative could take over the council rent.
Anyway, so... And those are very cheap places, right?
Like a lot of rent control?
Well, they were back then.
They were back then.
We moved to a brand new block of flats and it was all brilliant and great.
I really never thought much more of that until I got older, actually, that episode with that girl.
Your brother was so much younger that I guess she wouldn't have got her claws into him, right?
Well, no, he was about two, so it wasn't really an issue.
Well, you say claws.
Yes, looking back, yes.
Yeah, and look, she's older, and she's more responsible, and she's sticking stuff up the butt of a child.
Yeah.
Sorry, that's nasty, that's predatory.
And, you know, she herself, as she said, this is what her father did to her.
So, you know, sympathy for her.
But she's still older than you, right?
She's, what, two or four years older?
Yeah, I guess so.
And by the way, Stephen, apart from one other partner, yourself, and probably a few other thousand people listening to this, you're the first person I've ever told.
Well, I'm honoured, I really am, I appreciate it.
Well, no, it's because I have a great respect for your work.
Well, it's your work today, brother, so I appreciate that, but... OK, well... So, go on.
So, moving on... Wait, wait, sorry, I apologize for interrupting again, but you had said something had struck you about your brother and this girl.
No, no, no, no.
OK, all right.
So, you moved away, and I guess you didn't see her again, right?
No, I didn't.
Not even at the same school or anything like that.
Have you ever looked her up since?
No.
No, no.
I do know her name, but no.
I don't want to.
I never want to.
She could well be in prison now.
Well, who knows?
Anyway, so that was... Can you just move back a little bit from the mic if you don't mind?
It's just a little bit loud.
Is that better?
Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead.
Okay.
So anyway, The next couple of years were quite happy, but then my father, because he was in this retail trade, he got a promotion, but it meant us moving down to the South Coast.
And at that point, I just started secondary school, enjoying it.
I was getting well in education.
I had quite a high IQ score, I think, at that time, actually.
It was about 115.
Which wasn't bad for a 12 year old.
Not bad at all.
It's a standard deviation up.
Yeah.
So I do consider myself, it sounds a bit egotistical, but I don't consider myself an intelligent person.
Anyway, so we took up the job offer.
We went down and moved and it was probably one of the best decisions we ever made.
However, a few years later, Now I have to admit something.
I've never been a good character with authority.
The reason I say that is because I question everything.
I think even remembering when I first went to infant school and we were being told about royalty.
It was one of those early history kind of very simple lessons.
And I remember coming over to my mum and saying, why have we got a queen?
You know, why is this person in charge?
I couldn't understand it.
It wasn't, you still there?
Yes.
Yeah.
And I always have throughout my life questioned authority figures, except my father actually, but we'll come on to that later.
Managers, people at work.
I think there's probably only three or four supervisor stroke managers that I've ever really respected because of their wisdom and the way that they manage things.
Most of them in my opinion, and I've been a manager, I have been a supervisor of people, I've never, I've always had I've always questioned their authority over me as a human being.
I would never call anyone sir unless I thought they deserved it.
So maybe that's a fault in my character.
I don't know.
But I think it serves me well through life.
I wouldn't call that exactly a fault or even approximately a fault.
The skepticism of authority is one of the things that I guess used to make England great.
And I still think of England as being great.
I'm old school Steph answer Yeah, but we're losing it anyway We were just talking about how you'd moved to the south yeah, my father's health problems got worse and And this wasn't a bad thing, this was something else?
Yeah, it came up, it resurged.
I think he had lots of, well he definitely had lots of mental health issues that were associated with his failure, of failure and fortune if you like, associated with the pain in his body.
And it's funny too because there's this kind of doughnut in the middle of life, right?
So when you're young and you're ambitious, You get a lot of energy from that, and then there's a compromise that you can make.
I think if he won the talent contest, and that is a nationwide talent contest with a lot of participants, so he was obviously extraordinarily talented.
And so if you make those compromises, you kind of get 20 years.
That's sort of in my, from what I've seen, you get like 20 years, you know, like 25 to 45 or maybe 25 to 50 or 30 to 50.
You get 20 years where you trundle along, but then there's this undertow.
Oh man, there's this brutal undertow that happens when the regrets begin to pile up.
And it's almost like, I've said this before, like there's almost like a demon that suppresses your true self just long enough that you can't get it back and then awakes you to that loss.
And then things become very, very dire indeed for people.
I think you're absolutely right.
He hit a wall in his forties, you know, when he had a major operation on his back.
And I think he thought he was going.
And those back operations, I've heard very, very mixed reviews of them.
And, you know, backs that go awry are just another kind of demon that can take particularly men down.
A lot of men have these back issues.
Did the surgery help?
Did it take?
It was the 70s, Stefan, so medical stuff wasn't what it is now.
And he hit a brick wall, and I think he Felt like his past caught up with him.
Now do you mean that sort of physically or psychologically or I guess both?
Absolutely both.
Everything caught up with him.
And I didn't find this out until later on.
Actually it was just before this brother issue.
He actually sat down with me and we had a big chat.
It was kind of remarkable really.
It was about a year before it all happened.
with the brother issue thing.
But he entered a period when I was about 14 where he became extremely violent.
He was very depressed sometimes, very excitable at times, and he beat the living shit out of me sometimes.
And I used to sit Stand there in fear.
And it's a very strange emotion that this is the best man I've ever known in my life.
He beat the crap out of me.
And then the next morning he told me he loved me.
I know what you're going to say about that.
You know, when you love someone, you don't beat the crap out of them.
Well first of all I just want to say I'm incredibly sorry I am about that and I guess my other question is do you know if he was on any medications for his emotional problems?
I think those can mess you up pretty bad too.
Yeah I believe he was actually.
I mean mixed with painkillers and everything I should imagine it didn't really help him very much.
He ended up in mental hospital for about three months.
Well, they may have plied him with even more of these drugs, and again, I'm no doctor, I'm no psychiatrist, but my understanding is that, you know, some of these medications can come with violent thoughts and ideation and so on, and that may have something to do with it.
Yeah, plus coupled with the fact that I think he'd hit this brick wall in his life Where his youth came back to him, because he did explain this to me later in his life.
I mean, he was a kid crawling over bomb sites before he got evacuated.
Yeah, that war, that goddamn war, has cast a pretty long fucking shadow.
Yeah.
It's cast a pretty long fucking shadow.
He was evacuated.
down to the southwest of England, you know, as a ten-year-old, and it didn't go well, you know.
Wait, what do you mean?
Well, he was abused.
Oh, all the people who would take kids in, some of them were not savory, right?
Yeah, it was on a farm, and it started, he didn't go into too many details, he was far too embarrassed about it, but he told me they were Worked hard.
And then one day the farmer's son came in to the barn, as it were, and it started a relationship.
I mean, you ran away twice.
Can you imagine?
The farmer's son was a sexual abuser.
Yeah.
Can you imagine as a 10-year-old, 1940, trying to get back on a train to London to see your Running away and being caught by the cops halfway up and sent back to something like that.
I mean, it's no wonder he was messed up.
And it's funny too, you know, I mean, your experience and perhaps your brother's experience, your father's experience.
I'm not trying to make this about me, but I sort of look at my own history and it's like, yeah, there were one or two close calls, but I managed to escape the worst of it and, and, my gosh.
By gosh, does it ever seem to be...
I sometimes feel like one of the guys who, you know, there were bullets flying all over the room, and I, you know, like Pulp Fiction style, they just missed me.
Because, you know, I mean, talking to people as a whole, this is abhorrently common.
Well, as I grow older, Stefan, I'd like to think wiser, although I've become a bit of a fool the last 10 years of my life.
But as I do, you know, it absolutely disgusts me.
Um, The amount of kids and abuse that young people have had over history, especially the last 70 years that we know about, but it just, it absolutely appalls me.
I just, it makes me weep for kids.
It's just awful.
I mean, it is definitely, I mean, you mentioned the word dynamic and satanic.
Well, there might be something in it, I don't know, but it just, it makes me weep.
But anyway, so there I am, sliding across the kitchen floor, head and head kicked in from a violent father.
But as soon as As soon as I could, really.
I left and joined the army.
And, uh, I loved it.
But I left after nine months because I met this absolutely gorgeous girl.
She was cracker.
From my local area.
So I left, because I thought, well, I want to be with her more.
We had a very on and off relationship for about six years.
It was good fun.
I got involved in reenacting historical stuff.
I had a good circle of friends.
It was the 70s.
And I remember you saying in your last video about the 60s and 70s becoming a degenerate era.
Actually, for me, it was brilliant fun.
I loved it.
I absolutely loved it.
I went back after the army to live with my mum and dad, but my dad had got over his problems and, you know, he was fine.
He was OK.
Especially after the day when I said, you ever lift that hand to me again and I'll smash you in the face.
So the guy who hates authority loves the army.
Riddle me this, Batman.
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
But you see, that was like authority that was earned to me.
Oh, you'd chosen it, I guess.
Do you see what I mean?
Yeah.
Most of those guys, apart from the officers, most of those guys earned their authority.
Do you see what I mean?
Right.
But you're still in a situation where saying no is pretty tough.
I would say no to something I thought was stupid.
And sometimes it didn't fare me well because, you know, a lot of people, don't they, they Shut up, you know?
Don't say anything!
And I was the silly idiot in the room who would say something.
Right.
Okay, so you had this on-again-off-again relationship with this fit bird, if I can fall into some colloquialisms.
But she wasn't your first wife?
No.
And why was it on-again-off-again?
I think it's a case really of growing up In your mid to late teens, early 20s, you know, you're still finding yourself as a person.
Now, now, come on, don't give me all of that crap.
What I mean is, why would you break up?
What would happen?
Was it infidelity?
Was it aggression?
Was it boredom?
What would happen?
Well, probably grew apart.
Boredom, I guess.
I mean, I suppose putting it bluntly, yeah.
We just grew apart.
No, but that's a breakup, right?
So my question is, what's the on again off again part?
Oh, we'd argue about silly stuff.
I mean, I used to be, as I say, we were members of this reenactment historical group, and I was more interested in Toy soldiers and history and stuff than she was.
But she was pretty.
So it's funny, yeah, because it struck me when you said historical reenactments, because that's kind of the theme of a lot of these calls, right?
Historical reenactments.
Yeah, probably.
Probably.
Okay, so six years on again, off again, and you finally realized that she was more pretty than interesting, and then what happened?
At the age of 24, I got cancer.
You did not.
Wow, what happened?
Do you want me to tell you the particular type of tensor?
No, I'm just, was it, was it, I mean, I assume it wasn't lifestyle related at that age?
No, no, it was just, I'd actually, I was in the construction industry a couple of years, no, no, no, no, beg your pardon, sorry, made a mistake there, throughout my relationship with, I was in The retail industry, similar to my father, worked my way up the ladder, became a store manager.
Because of the ending of the relationship with that gorgeous chick, I sought another relationship, really.
Started going out with another girl and my own personal mental health was going through a bit of a change.
It was later explained to me by the professor, the cancer expert, that obviously because I was in some kind of distress with pain in my side, but it was obviously having an effect on me.
And I too became a little bit erratic and made bad choices about silly stuff.
Nothing criminal or anything like that.
You know, just not making the right decisions about stuff.
It's probably one of the reasons why the gorgeous chick and I split up.
Anyway, so I was working on a construction site.
It was a temporary job, because that retail management position was good, but I just felt like I was going in the wrong direction.
So I ended up with a temporary job on a construction site.
It was a dangerous part of the construction industry, and a few months into it I fell off.
Funny enough, talking about my father's ailment, I hurt my back.
They examined me and I said, oh, so I've got this pain in my side.
This incredibly young doctor, I think he must have been fresh out of medic school, recognized some of the symptoms.
I had x-rays and within six hours I was having surgery.
for a lump in me.
And I was given six weeks to live.
Oh, that's after the surgery?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
They still didn't think I was going to make it.
Turns out those six weeks were on Pluto, because here you are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Although, That six-month experience of in and out of chemotherapy.
Back in those days, you didn't turn up for chemotherapy, you stayed in hospital for chemotherapy.
And it was pretty brutal back then.
I think they've got more of a measure on it these days.
You know, dose-wise, what have you.
I went through all the losing hair stuff, losing friends in the next bed next to me.
There was one particular tragic night where Nine-year-old boy was an overspill from the children's ward.
He passed away in front of me.
That was brutal.
Really brutal.
Yeah.
Saw a few people go.
Well, a number of people, anyway.
But that was dark.
So that changed me for a while.
So just before all this happened, I did meet this girl.
After all this happened, we married.
We had two lovely boys.
We were a little bit hippy back in those days.
early 80s, days of...
Yeah, well, they were very happy.
My mum and dad Do you mean your wife and the boys, or just the boys?
My wife and the boys.
Mum and Dad never liked her.
She was always too alternative for me, they said.
But I loved her.
She was nice, pretty, and seemed to think I was her knight in shining armor.
That's what she called me.
And she's willing to date and marry a guy and have kids who's crawled out of chemo.
That's some devotion, man.
That's great.
Yeah, yeah, I thought so too!
Yeah, I mean, big honour for doing that, because back in those days you weren't clear unless you had five years worth of it.
I still think it's the same now, actually.
I can confirm that it is.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you're going to be interested in this bit, because I know you're Bit of a tech giant itself.
I invented a computer game.
Oh, very cool.
And it was the first multiplayer game.
It wasn't online because we didn't have it back then, the early 80s.
What people did was, do you remember the Spectrum computer?
I don't.
Sinclair Spectrum.
Oh Sinclair, I know.
I was thinking the ZX80.
Yeah, well I had one of those before.
So I had a colleague who had bags of money and there was a young lad who was one of those whiz kids who learnt machine code on his own.
A colleague, friend.
I invented this game.
We put it all together, put it on market.
Went to high street stores, made enough money for me to buy a house, pay my friend back some money.
The young lad got his bit of cash and we wrapped it all up.
Back in those early days it was all very kind of hobbyish kind of selling.
You made the game, you wrote the game, you produced the game, you sold it, and then in walked the guys in between, the distributors, and they started stirring up details with other people and stuff, and it just wasn't worth it in the end.
The cut was a complete waste of, you know, A complete waste of our time.
I would have got more money on the unemployment benefit.
Sorry, you said the cut?
What do you mean?
The cut.
Oh, sorry, see the cut.
Okay, so once the distributors start to get involved.
But you made enough money just selling it yourself, right?
We did at the time, yeah.
It was enough to pay back the debt to my friend who put the money in and he got his bit back and I made enough to buy the house.
So we called it quits and said, well, the adventure's over.
And I was on the doll for a couple of years, basically probably enjoying my eldest son's first couple of years of his life, actually.
And I thoroughly enjoyed it.
And then a couple of years after that, we had a second son.
In between time, I started working for my first wife's father-in-law.
Sorry, father.
Stepfather.
That would be your dad, okay.
Yeah, yeah, weird.
Sorry, stepfather.
He was a very... Have you heard the expression, wide boy?
No.
Okay.
A market lad.
A geezer you would know who would know somebody who to buy something from.
Ah, okay.
Yeah?
Yeah.
So he was a bit of a trader.
So I started working for him in a very legitimate business.
Don't get me wrong, it was okay.
So I worked for him for a bit and then... So my eldest son's seven years old.
Second one's four.
Three.
Sorry about that.
I went back.
We bought a cottage out in the wilds off the Forestry Commission here.
And I spent a whole year renovating it.
We bought it for stupid cheap money.
And I spent a year doing it up.
And after a couple of years, on a visit to my mum and dad, Because there was some event where my first wife didn't want to go to, so I went on my own.
I came back that night and got into bed and thought, hang on a minute, this is a weird kind of perfume on my pillow.
And she was sleeping with another woman.
Well, that does seem a bit too alternative for you now, doesn't it?
Maybe your parents were right.
So, anyway, cut a long story short, the relationship ended.
This is like late 80s.
If you're a guy back then trying to fight a court for custody of your children, you might go whistle in the wind.
Even if she's having an affair with another woman?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, definitely.
And to be fair, Stefan, She was a bit of an Earth Mother character, so I knew the kids would be safe.
You know, she would have their best interests at heart.
But like an idiot, I ran away.
I'm sorry, how does she have her best interests at heart?
By having an affair while she's married to the father?
I know, I just realized what I said then.
It's a nice little postcard, it just doesn't deliver to this address.
I know, I know.
I know, I know.
I've learned so much over the years.
It's just ridiculous.
So, like an idiot bloke, I ran away.
Not literally, but... I went to visit the kids every couple of weekends, bearing in mind I lived 250 miles away.
Which was a choice, right?
I lived 250 miles away. - Which was a choice, right? - Yeah, and looking back on it, what I should have done, lived a mile down the road.
Of course, yeah, of course.
But I actually went back to my hometown, which for me at the time seemed safer and more logical.
But with wisdom and hindsight, it was completely the wrong thing to do.
Did the woman move in, like her lover?
I believe she did briefly.
It ended after a year, I think, whereupon my first wife, after we got divorced, decided that actually she'd like to go back to blokes.
And that happened.
It was a bit of a confusing time for my boys.
I stayed in touch with them.
You know, I wrote letters.
They wrote me letters back in between visits.
I got drawings.
I sent them funny stuff.
You know, we spoke on the phone.
It was regular.
I sent money.
You know, I kept as much contact as I possibly could from where I was, you know.
We came to an agreement on allowances and things like that.
All right.
Now, in the interest of time, in the interest of time, so we've been talking for over an hour.
So in the interest of time, I'm concerned that we're only into your 30s.
Yeah.
Well, late 30s.
All right.
That's a distinction without a huge difference, but go on.
Okay.
So I'm going to incredibly fast forward.
And I'm sorry, because I really, I mean, I love everyone's stories.
I really do.
And, you know, I'd love to listen all day.
But just in the interest of listeners, and so on, if we can get to the crisis, right, we've got to the crisis, but the crisis for you is after your crisis for your brother is over, he's dead, right?
But for you, it continues.
Yeah.
So I'm in a brilliant job.
I'm in a job where the company encouraged personalities within the industry.
I don't want to pinpoint this too hard because I know people who know who I am, but they sent us to shows all around the world with our skills and making toys.
That's what some people would call them.
So meeting my second wife, got married, she helped me get over the crisis.
With your brother you mean?
Yeah.
So I'm fast forwarding here.
Very quickly.
I got a good salary.
It went up and up.
My career was on the rise.
We were doing good.
We were doing great.
I was training people.
I was well thought of.
I was still a bit of a rebel with regard to management and stuff.
Fought my corner, fought my corner for my trainees, and having a good time.
So, fast forwarding, I wanted to work from home.
This is what a couple of other people at the studio were doing.
Oops, I said studio.
The company had a contract with a film company for three major movies, which I'm not going to name, Quite well known.
I met film stars, went to premiere parties, kissed a film star, spent a week with a very famous film director.
Two weeks actually.
Taught him how to do what I did.
It was very good actually.
So it was on the up and up and up and up.
My wife, who was working for the same company I was, got a position abroad in America.
And I thought, brilliant!
Great!
Always wanted to go back.
I forgot to tell you that when my parents, when I was actually about nine months old, they immigrated to America on one of these ten quid deals, you know, where they allow people to travel across the ocean and set up shop in another country and emigrate.
That only lasted a year because Something to do with my granny.
Anyway, I won't go into it.
But as soon as I got off that plane, effectively, my second wife and I thought we were emigrating to America.
I thought, aha, I'm back.
Brilliant.
And I loved the lifestyle.
We had a five-bedroom house, four bathrooms, huge kitchen, swimming pool.
Brilliant.
The whole thing.
The whole kit and caboodle.
Things were going great.
No more kids, no.
She had two children I got on very well with, but I'm fast-forwarding it.
So I developed thyroid.
You developed thyroid?
I feel something's missing there.
Well, I became a victim of thyroid disease and went to the doctors and found out why I was getting so tired.
Went to an endocrinologist in America, and as soon as I entered the medical office, he said, oh, you're the real beep beep person.
And he was a collector of some of the work I'd done for this company.
And I thought, oh, Jesus Christ, no, please, no.
All I wanted to do was come to the doctors.
And that sounds very egotistical.
No, no, that's good.
That's good.
I mean, you want the doctor to like you and to be invested in you and give you more attention.
You know, the fact that he appreciates your work means he's going to be 1% more likely to work harder to keep you alive, right?
Yeah, but it actually had an adverse effect in the long run.
I had this surgery.
I was getting tablets for my condition.
Things started to look good.
And one day he said, well, I think your thyroid levels are a little bit low.
So I think he thought he was doing me a really big favor.
And on reflection, he was doing a bit of malpractice, really.
He gave me loads and loads of testosterone.
Okay, so where I was living in America, it wasn't unusual in the summer to get like 100 degree Fahrenheit temperatures.
It's stupid.
Okay, so I'm getting young.
I'm 25 now, and I'm not, I'm 50.
So, I'm 25, I'm turning into a sex monster.
I'm turning into a young man with a full-on virility.
And that's when my drinking problem started.
Oh, so you got with the testosterone, I guess, increased libido, a sense of fearlessness, and also maybe a lack of consequence processing, because, you know, that's what drinking does, right?
Yeah.
And that's when it started.
Subsequently, the company had a complete management change.
Living and working in America, We were, let's say, given a big bag of money and retired.
It destroyed me.
It completely destroyed me.
Well, that's everyone's fantasy, right?
Oh, yeah, retiring in your 50s with a big bag of cash, but, you know, waking up and looking at that long stretch of day without much to fill, I mean, that'd drive you crazy.
Well, no, it wasn't quite, yeah, no.
No, no, if it wasn't your experience, that's totally fine.
I just, I would imagine it being that way.
So, I'm going to wrap this up quickly for you.
Basically, my alcoholism, although it's not like it used to be... Sorry, you said that it destroyed you, like the retirement or the buyout?
Yeah, I tried to kill myself.
But what was it that, I'm still not sure why, if it wasn't what I said, then what was it that made you pursue that end-of-life goal?
I'd lost the best job I ever had in my life.
Ah, right.
And it kind of made me reflect on my father, my brother, The horror of that, which used to keep haunting me.
So you were very busy after the disaster with your brother?
And once you weren't as busy, is that right?
Once you weren't as busy, it all crept into your brain?
I think God.
Do you know what, Stefan?
That's actually never occurred to me.
Oh yeah, I know.
Listen, workaholics, they're being chased by some serious fucking demons, man.
You know that.
I mean, oh man, this guy can work, he can then go party all weekend, he can get up and work again, it's like, yeah, okay, I get it, he's terrified to be alone with his own thoughts, right?
I mean, I get it, right?
I mean, so yeah, I mean, that certainly would seem to be the case, that after a particularly, after a trauma that you can't deal with, right?
I mean, you're going to throw yourself into work.
It's not all workaholics, but it certainly seems to be a lot.
Yeah.
So I think you've... What just struck you there, my friend?
I think you've just alluded to something that I've never really... I've never really put together, anyway.
So... Well, I'm sorry to interrupt you just as you're about to continue, but losing the job might have been a good thing.
Because if you kept avoiding, so you avoid through work, that doesn't work as well as you want it to, so then you start drinking, right?
And if that doesn't work as well as you want it to, then you start doing cocaine.
And if that doesn't work, like you understand, if you're not dealing with the feelings, they're always catching up, right?
The monster in the rear view gets closer and closer, and after a while, you just can't run anymore.
That's kind of where I am right now, actually.
That's why you're calling.
Yeah.
It's caught up, right?
Um, I wake up in the morning frightened and scared, lonely, um, lost.
Most of my friends, family, my boys don't see me anymore.
They refuse to, in fact, they, reported me a few weeks ago for harassment because every now and again I would try and ring them.
They disowned me because they thought they had a suicidal drunk on their hands.
I was never violent.
I was never abusive.
Never.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Dude, dude.
Listen, no, no.
Hang on.
Hang on.
What happened with your boys?
Right, so saying you were never abusive, if you're alcoholic and suicidal, you're a bomb for people, right?
Because it's like, oh great, great, now I can get close to this guy and maybe he'll kill himself, right?
Yeah, I know, I know.
So what happened with your boys?
Well, I think my biggest mistake with them... Okay, okay.
I'm gonna admit something here.
I used to phone them up when I started getting drunk and being... say stupid stuff.
I think I was trying to be more like a mate than a dad.
And what would you say?
I don't know.
I think I'd sort of brag about certain things like sort of how well I was doing.
Oh, like you were saying, like I kissed a movie star and I hung out with a famous director for a week and like all this kind of stuff.
Yeah.
I'll tell you something from a son's perspective.
Yeah.
I'll tell you something from a son's perspective.
So my father came with me to where I was living in school.
And he stayed with me for a couple days and he gave a lecture.
He gave a lecture at the university I was attending.
And I know that he was proud of that.
He was proud of his professional standing.
And he thought that I would be impressed by his status, right?
Yeah.
Oh, God.
No, no, listen, I'll tell you.
Yeah, you understand, right?
So you're trying to say to your boys, listen, I'm a great person.
I'm a powerful person.
I'm an interesting person.
I'm a cool person or whatever, right?
But from the perspective, I don't know what your son's with.
I just, you know, from my perspective, when my father was doing this, it struck me the opposite way that he wanted.
It struck me the opposite way that he wanted.
Because he's saying, he's saying, look at the great success that I am.
I can come and give a lecture and it's a full house and yeah, look at, I'm successful and all that.
And so, so what I see is, oh, well, you, you, you can really work at things and make them a success.
You just didn't want to do that with your marriage.
Yeah.
I think they were impressed for a while.
Sorry, it's interrupting.
If the person, if the dad says, I'm really smart, I'm really competent, I'm really cool, I'm really good, I'm really accomplished, and I left you, then you understand that the dad is saying, and make really, really good decisions.
And how does the son interpret that?
Well, it was a good decision to not spend time with me then, according to you, right?
So it is a very delicate thing.
And, you know, bragging as a whole is not a good thing.
But in particular, if you kind of left your kids and you said you went 250 miles away and you saw them from time to time.
But if you're saying what a smart and wise and accomplished person you are and you didn't see your kids, it's kind of putting salt in the wound.
Anyway, so you'd call them up drunk and brag a little.
What else?
Well, I don't think the attempted suicide went down very well.
And when was that?
2007.
That's after I lost my job.
So dad had become a failure.
You know, Dad had sort of walked out the limelight.
Yeah.
I think they were impressed for a little while.
I mean, I totally understand what you're saying, Stefan.
I can see that light in their eyes about what you're saying.
You know, okay, Dad, how am I supposed to be impressed by this?
And then you walk away from us when you're As a father you're supposed to be the most responsible figure in their life.
Left because he ran away.
Ran away from... yeah.
Also you chose for their mother a woman who had another woman move in.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's the decision point by which children are going to judge their fathers.
Who did you marry?
Could you make it work?
Why did she cheat on you?
Why were we being raised by two women at some point?
Why was the affair... Why was the side chick moving in and being mom 2.0?
I mean, that's how they're going to judge.
So you say, oh, you know what?
I'm really doing well in my career.
What does that have to do with anything for the kids?
Do you know I was actually blamed after that first marriage by that wife that I should never have told them that that was the reality of the situation.
That's why dad left.
Well of course a woman who had an affair doesn't want you telling the kids why.
Yeah.
Of course not.
I mean because she busted up the marriage.
Yeah.
She busted up the marriage.
And apparently she said that they were mentally affected by it.
And I just thought, well, what the F are you supposed to think I'm supposed to say?
Well, that's the perspective of a wrongdoer, right?
Which is, it's not the crime, it's the capture that matters, right?
It's not the crime.
It's not that she had an affair with another woman.
That's not the problem, you see.
It's that the kids know about it.
And it's like, no, no, no, that's not the problem.
The problem is not turning the light on, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so hang on, so you would leave them, I guess you'd call them up and then how did the suicide attempt come about?
What was going on?
Well, it was because, you know, I'd lost my position at work.
But why not get a new job?
I don't understand.
I know, I know.
I know, but... I mean, everyone gets fired.
I mean, if you haven't ever been fired, you've been playing it way too safe in life.
I know.
I was there... I was with that company for 16 years.
It was my life.
It was my dream job.
But the last couple of years of it, not that they ever knew, but my alcoholism was starting to affect me and, you know, drinking during the day, and it was just getting worse.
Why do you think they wouldn't know?
Because I was 4,000 miles away.
Oh, come on, man.
Do you really think?
I mean, you've been a manager, right?
You know when people are being productive and when they're not.
You know when they're firing on all cylinders and when they're not.
Yeah, but you know and I know that alcoholics are the most brilliant liars in the world.
Yeah, but you can't lie producing what you're not producing.
I mean, you can talk a good game, but... Yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
That's probably one of the reasons why they made the decision they did.
It was probably whispers on the wind, if you like.
Oh yeah, it just, look, it just takes one person to smell alcohol on your breath during the day, who then talks to another person, mentions it, and you know, it's like, it takes about 35 seconds for that shit to get around.
Yeah, yeah.
So we lost that, well, I lost that position.
Oh no, I know that.
But then why not?
You could start your own shop.
Was it like, were you out of energy?
Well, I lost my, I think the expression is mojo.
I lost it completely.
I did attempt to, and I did, I was actually quite successful for a period where I actually got my act together and was starting to make stuff for independent manufacturers.
And it was going okay.
But I'm afraid working at home sometimes, I know you do.
The bottle beckons and yeah.
Yeah, it just slides and you become lonely and distant from people even though you've got a very supportive wife.
Well hang on, supportive?
I mean didn't she notice that you were drinking?
Didn't she, like, what did she say about your drinking?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
What did she say about it?
She did.
She said it's ruining us.
It's impacting on our relationship.
She gave me all the warning signs.
Believe me, I've attended a thousand and one AA meetings and there are some wives that can and some that can't.
Unfortunately, and I don't I don't blame her at all, Stephan.
I don't blame her at all.
You can't have a relationship with an alcoholic.
No.
Because all you're having a relationship with is the booze, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you're not there.
So, fast forwarding.
That marriage ended four years ago.
Hang on, I still want to know the 07 suicide attempt, if you don't mind.
Okay, well, yeah, I tried to cut my wrists.
No, I don't mean the mechanics, but what led up to it, like the days, weeks before?
I was drunk, to be honest, and got into a hole.
My wife was doing at that time, we'd got back to England, and there I was in this house that we owned completely.
I was attempting to get my bits together, if you like.
I just thought, what the hell am I doing?
I've got this far.
I've got the pinnacle of my career.
I couldn't see beyond that.
I'd lost, you know... Do you know, Stefan, you know when...
I'll mention that word again, egotistical.
You know, when some of these pop stars and movie stars end up dead on the floor, because they've lost that adulation, they've lost that fame, that fortune.
I mean, I used to walk in a room, Stefan, and people would ask, what's my autograph?
I mean, how stupid is that?
I kind of got it.
I understood.
Fuck me, I think people are going to recognise me from this.
It just built up and I found myself drunk one night when my then-supporting wife was out for a girls' evening or something and I just lost it.
I just thought, well, I've lost everything.
Lost contact with my boys.
I lost contact with reality.
Yeah, you lost your home, your job, your work, and you're losing contact with your wife.
Yeah.
How old was your father when he died?
Three years older than I am now, which is 66.
Sorry, how old was your father when he died?
Three years older than I am now, which is 66.
So I'm 63 next month.
66, okay.
And how old were you in 2007?
Sorry to do the math on your brain, but I haven't had my second coffee today.
Twelve years back, 52.
52.
Yeah, 54.
Well, it has struck me just in my mind.
Well, not that it would struck me in my funny bone, but it just struck me that...
Your brother, when facing a prison sentence, killed himself.
And if you saw the future as a prison, that impulse might be similar, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I did.
Incredible nightmares.
Incredible nightmares.
Oh, that's hell.
That's hell on wheels, because what you desperately need is rest to restore yourself.
You're terrified of going to bed.
Oh yeah.
I mean some nights... Waking up in some Billie Eilish song or something, right?
It's hell?
Some nights it's just like... I see this face, you know, him.
Never goes away.
The beast.
You're haunted, right?
Like you're haunted.
Yeah.
I just... I mean I...
I've been fairly good.
Strangely enough, since my wife and I divorced four years ago, four and a half years ago, and living on my own, even though at times I still feel frightened and scared and wake up in the morning and think, what the hell am I doing all this for?
Why am I here?
What purpose am I serving?
I still, strangely enough, although I've had What alcoholics laughably, I think, call a slip.
That expression seems to me a bit of a joke sometimes.
But I have failed on a number of occasions.
I've been the most sober in those years.
And the temptation sometimes is incredible.
It really, really is incredible.
Well, you have to remember, of course, that when you live alone, you have nobody to disappoint.
Yeah, and it would be so easy some days just to have And nobody would know.
You mean to kill yourself again?
Oh, not again, to commit suicide?
No, no.
Well, apart from that, but to get absolutely smashed every day.
No, no, I understand that.
But I think that it's improved since your wife is gone, because you don't have disapproving eyes in the house that are constantly reminding you of how distant you are from someone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.
It's a hell of a, it's a hell of a burden to be continually disappointing people who live with you, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You know, your wife signed up for this high-flying executive, a mover and shaker and autograph giver, and what does she end up with?
Well, she ended up with a sad drunk, whose career went down the toilet.
At the same time, she becomes a high-flying executive of her own.
Yeah, yeah.
Her career took off.
You said a couple suicide attempts, so there's one in 07, what else?
There was one a couple of years later and I ended up, I mentioned spirituality earlier on, I ended up in a convent.
It was an experience in itself.
You ended up in a convent?
Holy circle of life Batman, you're dressing up as a girl again!
It's quite a circle you got, that's a multi-decade circle you got going on there brother.
I know, I know.
And that's what my life's been like.
But at least they wouldn't be putting lipstick on you, I'm assuming.
Well, funny enough, I did play Jesus in a play.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
So how did you end up in a convent?
Oh, God.
You said you wanted to go.
All right, all right.
Okay, we'll get to the present.
All right.
All right.
So what is eating you up at the moment?
Well, I think I just can't see any way out of this cycle.
I mean, I've made many attempts to go and see counsellors and addict advisors, and it's becoming more and more difficult the older I get.
And I know you can't.
I know you can't from over there, so don't do it, Gary, but it's getting really, really difficult.
The nightmares, the pain of the past, there's loads I've missed out Steph.
Stuff I've seen, friends are gone.
The way I've seen it, the stuff has just circled my life all the way through it.
I made a joke just then, my life is a drama.
And I've had friends over the past go, I don't know how you've done this.
I go, well, you know, you've got to fight it.
And I've always been, like I say, a bit of a fighter.
I've always questioned stuff, questioned myself all the time.
And this stuff just keeps haunting me, my brother.
It just, it's the key.
I know it's the key.
And I just can't seem to lock the door on all that.
Because there's still a lesson to be learned, right?
Wherever there's still lessons to be learned, shit comes back, right?
Essential lessons to be learned.
The beast got your brother, you understand?
It's circling you like a fucking shark.
Let's just call it the beast, we can call it whatever you want.
It can be psychic energy, it can be the devil, if you want to characterize it that way.
But he got your brother.
Yeah.
And he wants you.
Yeah, that's what it feels like.
So where the fuck is your fight now?
I'm losing mate.
Okay, so why are you losing it?
Why is the beast so powerful that you can't stand up and kick it in the nuts?
Is he all-knowing?
Is he eternal?
Is he omnipotent?
Why are you so small relative to this haunting?
Why have you given up?
Are you afraid of being stronger than your brother?
Are you afraid of surviving what he didn't?
I'm afraid of the next day.
No, you're afraid of the next surrender.
Yeah, I guess.
And you understand that the demon has been grooming you, the beast has been grooming you for a hell of a long time, man.
Right?
That's the drinking, right?
Yeah.
Right?
That's the drinking, that's the distance, that's the brooding, that's the inactivity.
All of this, you know, it takes a long time to undo the knot of human life.
Right?
And he's been picking at your threads for decades.
And I'm tired.
Right.
Because it's a battle that you keep losing.
Feels like that.
And again, I'm just telling you what I think, so tell me to back the hell off at any time I go against your experience.
No, no, no.
Do you know what?
Sometimes, some days, Stephan and I, I just, I just think, I wish, I think I know what you're going to say to this, but I wish somebody was on the other side of that bed.
I don't mean sexually, physically, that sort of stuff.
I just wish there was somebody there.
Kick me up the arse!
Well, I'm warming up my knees as we speak, right?
Because, no, let's look at what this beast has done, right?
There was a beast in your childhood, right?
You were surrounded by, well, you had neighbors, a pedophile family.
You had a molesting girl, which you didn't talk about.
Yeah.
So this is when people say, well, I didn't think there was anything wrong with it.
You know, I used to have these two girls, when I lived in an apartment in Canada, there were these two girls down the hallway I used to go play Monopoly with.
And, you know, people would say, what were you doing?
And I'd say, we were playing Monopoly.
Why?
Because we were playing Monopoly.
This sounds like the beginning of a bad story, but it's really not.
Right?
But you kept all this shit silent, right?
Yeah.
So you knew?
Well, yeah.
And keeping it silent, right?
Keeping it silent put children at risk.
And I'm not blaming you for any of this.
I'm just pointing out the causality that's probably going on deep down in your brain.
Because if you had talked to someone then someone would doubtless have talked to the corpse and the corpse would doubtless have talked to the girl and then would have led to the father.
Yeah.
And he could have had his fucking ass locked away.
Yeah.
As opposed to having a sweet shop, which is bait for his prey.
Yeah.
And she's probably ended up somewhere a few years older than me, if she's still alive, and feeling probably very similar to me in some ways.
Oh, no, worse than you.
You were the victim.
Oh no, it's a whole different planet, right?
It's a whole different planet.
Well, she was a victim too.
Yes, but she was also a victimizer.
And if she never contacted you in the years since and said, I've been to therapy, I'm so sorry, you know, I really prayed upon you, it was wrong.
Well, she never did that, right?
Wow.
Yeah, no.
Because that's what you do when you've done someone wrong.
When you develop a conscience, is you make amends.
I contacted a girl...
who asked me to go steady with her and I said no because I didn't have any clue what it meant.
I was like 12, right?
Like some years ago I contacted her and I said I'm very sorry for that, right?
It wasn't even like I did a bad thing but I, you know, those early romantic interests can leave a deep imprint and I was like I genuinely did not know what that term meant because I was British, right?
New to the country.
I think I actually know what you mean actually.
There was a point where I was a bit naïve like that.
It wasn't even naïve.
I didn't go steady.
What does that mean?
I don't know.
Does that mean we have to learn to dance?
I was too shy to ask what it meant, right?
So just, you know, I have apologized Two people over the years, right?
I mean, when we play Dungeons & Dragons, when my daughter was younger, she loved to act out what was going on.
You know, like, I dodge like this, and then I roll like that, right?
And it was really slowing the game down.
The other kids were getting impatient.
And so at one point I said, you know, can you just stop doing that?
You know, something like that, right?
I wasn't sharp, really sharp or anything, but I was getting a little impatient because I was concerned that everyone was losing interest in the game.
And that night I said, you know what, that was really rude of me.
I apologize.
You know, you're trying to show me exactly what's happening in the game.
It's very real and vivid for you and I should not, and I was wrong to do it.
I was rude to do it.
I really, really apologize.
That was so, that was, that was not, that was not right.
And I, you know, please continue to do it and that won't happen again, right?
Yeah.
I mean, that's what you do, right?
That's what you do with people that you've wronged.
You call them up and you take the fucking burden off them.
You say, I did it.
It was me.
I didn't want my daughter sitting there thinking that she was somehow being wrong for visualizing what was happening and wanting to show people and being enthusiastic about the move she was making in her character.
I mean, come on.
I don't want, I mean, it was me.
It was me who was rude about that.
And that's what I've tried to do with over the years.
That's what I've tried to do with my boys actually is apologize.
That's all I've tried to do.
Don't give me that.
Come on.
You think I wasn't listening earlier?
No, honestly Stefan... Okay, well then who was it who was calling them up drunken and bragging about his exploits?
Yeah, me.
But all I can do is apologize.
And I've tried to do it very tippy-toe, very sort of... I mean, I haven't seen my youngest son.
He lives three miles from me.
I haven't seen him in six years.
I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
And I haven't seen my, well, for the past while, I mean, I haven't seen my grandchildren properly for the last couple of years.
So this is what the beast does, right?
How does he undo you?
Well, when you're in the cult of the beast, what does he do?
He isolates you.
Yeah, most certainly is.
The beast is like, the beast is like, hey, you're drunk, you know what, call up your kids.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
That's going to work wonders.
They're really going to be impressed by you.
And be sure to pour into their ear all the wonderful things you're doing, so that they feel even more rejected.
Okay, all right.
Yeah, no, you're right.
You're right.
Wait, wait, you got really sharp with me there, which was fine, which was fine.
Did I piss you off there?
No, no, no, you just pointed out a reality.
And I want you to fight this.
I mean, I would love for you to have a great relationship with your boys and their kids and all of that.
But I don't know where your fight has gone.
You understand that there's some seriously fucking dark forces in this world.
Yeah, yeah.
I've seen it.
You have seen it.
You have seen it.
You saw it in the feral possession of your brother when he snarled the most destructive thing that he could have possibly snarled at that point.
Yeah.
It was you.
You know, I've never ever told my sister that.
Right.
I am.
Now, we don't, we don't have a way.
So I did a call, I haven't released it yet on the play A Long Day's Journey Into Night.
And in that call, I was talking about how since we lost God, we now have to have scapegoats, right?
So imagine that you and I were 150% Christians, right?
So we would look at your brother and we would say, the poor boy lost his fight with the devil.
And you would feel sympathy for your brother, and you would hate the devil who snarled in your ear that it was your fault, right?
Yeah, it felt like.
And it would be entirely existentially, metaphysically comprehensible to us that there was a demon who passed from the older devil man who was exploiting and drawing your brother into the orgies and drug use and the general disintegration of his humanity, turning him into a rutting Animal.
Like, we can either be humans or we can be devils.
We can't ever be animals.
Because we're not.
We have this consciousness.
We have this...
Capacity to extrapolate and synthesize and conceptualize.
We can't ever just become animals.
So when people try to draw us down into the animal, oh, just go have sex and have drugs and, you know, whatever, right?
Be vain and work out just for the purpose of vanity and, right?
If people try to drag us down to the animal, we end up as evil.
So it would be perfectly comprehensible to us what happened with your brother.
That there was a devil in the older man who seduced, both literally and figuratively, your brother into evil.
And then when the devil was in danger of being dislodged from your brother, Right?
So the devil and the older man was in danger of being dislodged by your brother because you gave your brother some gentle, sensible, good advice.
Right?
This is a bad guy.
You need to get away from him.
Right?
So then what happened was the brother... the beast jumped from the older man to your brother and had your brother kill the older man.
Why?
because he could create more death, more mayhem, more misery by abandoning the old shell and inhabiting the new, right?
Do you think it jumped from him to me?
Well he's not in you otherwise you wouldn't be calling me but he's near right?
So he jumps from the old man to your brother and then he plants the seeds to end you Right?
Which is to blame you for the murder.
Which makes you have a very uneasy fucking relationship with giving people good advice.
Hey!
Remember that time when I gave someone good advice and they went and stabbed someone 27 times?
So you then have a very uneasy relationship with virtue.
Right?
So that way he keeps you distant from God and draws you closer to darkness.
Well you can't see your good advice you're trying to help your brother got someone killed right?
That's the narrative that the beast would want to create within you right?
So you better stay the hell away from goodness and virtue because goodness and virtue not only gets the old man killed but gets your brother killed too!
He hangs himself after he is sentenced right?
And my father.
And your father But your father died of natural causes, right?
I'm sure the stress of this was not helpful.
Oh, no.
But tell me what you meant by your father then.
Oh, it destroyed him.
I saw him go within seven months of that.
He just completely, I mean, it destroyed him.
He went to visit my brother in prison once.
My brother told him of a piece of missing evidence and he asked him to destroy it for him.
And my father phoned me up and said, as a weeping man, to me, what do I do?
And I said, Dad, you've got to do the right thing.
And it killed him.
You mean he had to turn over the evidence to the police?
Yeah.
He told them where to find the missing gloves.
Right.
And going back to what I said earlier, as kids... So that's the beast working to destroy your father by giving him an impossible task.
Yeah.
And I know he I know he felt really bad about it because, like I said earlier, he'd always promised us as kids, no matter what you do, no matter what scrape you get into, I'll be there for you.
and well you know because I knew that I knew that if ever if I didn't want my father to get in trouble you know it just well it's an impossible task because let's say that your father had not turned over this evidence to the police and let's say that your brother had been acquitted and gone on to kill someone else
Thank you.
Then what?
Well, yeah.
Now you're an accomplice.
No, I'm not sure that... Well, I think... Yeah.
I think... Yeah, I agree.
I agree.
I agree.
And I totally understand what you're saying about The Beast.
I do get it.
I mean... So hang on, let's finish this up, right?
So the Beast, then, is around you.
Oh, I've seen that.
So then the Beast is like, hey, you know, you're thirsty, man.
You know, that drink looks really good.
You gotta watch your whistle.
Ah, one.
What will one harm?
What will be fine?
I have one more.
Ah, it's not the end of the world, right?
You've had it tough.
Right, so it's whispering in your ear.
Oh yeah, it's a warm blanket.
It will take away that stuff.
Yeah, no, listen, do you know how the beast works?
The beast works in a very simple manner.
The beast says, do this and I'll leave you in peace for an hour.
Yeah, oh, definitely.
Right, do this, go have sex, go have a drink, go have some drugs, go whatever, right?
Go scream at someone.
If you yell at someone, right, I'll leave you in peace for an hour.
And that's how it trains you to do its bidding, right?
Now, another way that people are broken is through sleep deprivation.
So how does the beast work to destroy you?
Deprive you of sleep.
Through nightmares, right?
That's how they break people, right?
That's how they break people in torture scenarios, right?
They deprive them of sleep, right?
Now, if you were a Christian, I know you say you're spiritual, but if you were a Christian, you know what you'd say?
I'm being haunted by a devil.
And I need the help of who?
You're making some kind of snapping sound, which is interfering with our conversation.
I think the devil is trying to distract us.
Sorry.
It's just my nails, actually.
If you were Christian and you were facing this beast, whose aid would you ask for?
Thank you.
Well, I've called upon him many times.
I mean, I found my spirituality when I ended up in that convent.
And when you say about looking into the... I mean, I had this discussion with these nuns about these dreams Whether you call it psychological, spiritual or whatever, yes I am a Christian and I do go to church as much as I can.
I have seen the face and it is empty and it's devoid of all emotion.
It cares for nothing.
Yeah, it wishes everyone to embrace its non-existence, which is death.
I saw in my recurring dreams, I see a golden throne with a golden rim.
And on that golden throne sits a figure of complete blackness.
And I stare into that complete blackness and there is nothing.
There's no heart, there's no feeling, there's nothing.
Death and life.
So, in this ancient battle between good and evil which is characterized in many religious contexts and which atheism cannot encompass.
Atheism cannot encompass this manifestation.
Atheism would say, or materialism or secularism would say, Well, you know, this is just maybe a bit of mild DT's brought on about excessive drinking, and you know, it's an illusion, and so on, the bad dreams, you know, there could be unresolved psychic trauma, and you know, maybe there is, and all of that, but unfortunately, the question of blame Which is at the heart of what happened with your brother.
Who's responsible?
Well, is the old man who corrupted him responsible?
Well, who corrupted the old man?
Is your brother responsible?
Well, he had a brain injury and he was on drugs, maybe.
And are you responsible?
Well, you just gave him some good advice.
And who is responsible?
Now, in the Christian context, it's like, yeah, we fight the principalities of darkness.
And sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.
And your brother lost the fight.
And he did a great evil, or a great good.
I don't know.
Maybe this other guy would have corrupted 10 more people.
The older guy.
Well, it's complicated, right?
I mean, it's obviously murder.
I'm not sanctioning murder or anything.
But if you play out the consequences, it's complicated, right?
I'll just add a little sub note to that, you know, when you're describing this man.
I remember the newspaper reports at the time, and the place that he worked at.
They interviewed a few of his staff, and you know, like, you know like you get these television programs where this person was murdered, and oh, they were such a wonderful person, they, you know, all feel sorry, and, you know, did this and that.
This wasn't that, I'm guessing.
They couldn't find one person to find a good thing about him.
Right.
And that's the Raskolnikov question from Crime and Punishment which we don't have to talk about now.
So atheism cannot encompass how this psychological energy passes from one person to another, this nihilism, this darkness.
But without a doubt Our psychology, our mental processes, they pass from one person to another.
I mean, just look, why are we speaking in English?
Because people have passed the knowledge of English from one person to another.
Almost like English is a ghost that we have to cast into other people so they can speak English, right?
I mean, our culture, our history, well, what used to be our culture and our history, was passed down.
So we imprint upon each other all the time.
You know, we are like fists in play-doh, right?
You punch down with a fist in play-doh, you leave an imprint of a fist.
Everything that we do with each other is imprinted, right?
So you're trying to imprint upon me, not consciously.
I'm trying to imprint upon you, I hope consciously and with good advice.
This is why I have these conversations, why I put them out there into the world, because this is how... Oh, you've listened to conversations, you know, right?
This is perspectives that imprint upon other people.
And hopefully it's rational and good arguments.
I believe that they are.
But the mere material world cannot encompass the glories of virtue and the tyrannies of hellish evil that human beings are capable of.
The biggest mass murderer in the 20th century was Chairman Mao, put into power in China by communist spies of the State Department.
His great leap forward alone killed 45, he slaughtered 45 million people.
Now Richard Dawkins and other people talk about, well, you see, morality is an adaptive strategy for similarly constituted gene pools to aid each other in reproduction.
Fuck off, right?
It doesn't encompass shit.
When you see a pile of bodies 45 million high, Don't talk to me about evolutionary adaptation.
No.
So where we are as a culture can't encompass our capacity for evil and theology does a magnificent job of that.
Now I understand, like, I'm an atheist and I get all of that, right?
Which means I'm talking about the beast.
This is very, very important.
It's very, very important.
How do we learn?
We don't learn logically, we learn metaphorically.
I mean, I'd like it if we learned logically, but right now, in general, we don't.
Which is why you're having these dreams, right?
Why do you dream about a predator?
Unless you're supposed to fight it.
And where's your fight?
I guess it's... It's a lack of sense of purpose, you know.
Well, the dreams are giving you purpose.
There's evil that has great power in this world, and you know it very, very well.
And the dreams are saying, here's what you have to fight.
Here's what you have to fight.
Here's what you have to fight.
Here's what killed your brother.
Here's what killed your father.
Here's what's trying to kill you.
There is a predator in the house.
You're actually echoing the same words that those nuns said to me.
When I explained this stuff, you're actually echoing exactly the same thing.
Right.
The more you become aware of yourself, the more sober you are, the more you fight back, the more difficult the battle is going to be.
Yeah.
Because he'll fight back.
The beast will fight back even harder.
And you've got to be strong.
But you don't have anything to fight for.
That's the problem.
This is Nietzsche, right?
One of the most powerful statements that ever I heard that was not directly around ethics was, give a man a why and he can bear almost any how.
Give a man a reason for something that is strong enough and he will find a way to do it.
Everyone calls me and they say, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing with my life.
It's like, what are you talking about?
There's evil everywhere and it's gaining power.
You're like a doctor with a cure in a time of plague saying, I don't know what to do with my life.
It's like, go cure some people.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you've seen some deep, deep darkness in this world.
And it's as close as the hairs in your nose, right?
Yeah.
Now, do you think that the world understands the darkness that is rushing towards us?
The wave of my dream?
Do you think that the world understands the danger that freedom, that civilization, is in?
Are you talking about my personal situation or the world by perspective?
Oh, it's getting worse.
Right.
And do you know why it's getting worse?
Because you're not doing anything.
So last week in my local... You know what English streets look like, don't you?
It's a bit of a mile.
Yeah.
So you can go up to your local shops and there was a guy standing there protesting about his experience of Jehovah's Witness.
He was 27 years in the church and he was standing there with placards protesting about his beliefs and how they're doing it wrong.
So I approached him and I said, look, I think you're very brave.
There's a few issues I'd like to protest about.
And then he started to explain his life experience.
And we stood there for an hour on the street.
And I admire that kind of bravery.
And I said, well, what keeps you motivated to do this?
And he said, well, I can see where the world's going.
And he said he still believed in God.
He still believed in Jesus Christ.
But he didn't really believe in organized religion, and I kind of get it, I understand, even as a Christian believer, I understand.
But I thought that was such a brave thing to do.
So, going back to what I think your question was, what can we do?
How can we fight against this beast, even beasts within ourselves?
And actually, the things that you've said to me in this Long conversation.
I'm sorry to keep you.
Actually, you've enlightened a few things, especially about my boys and how they perceive me and how my efforts to contact them have been fruitless.
Well, negative, right?
Well, yeah.
They reported you for harassment.
That's about as negative as it can be, right?
Yeah.
So let me tell you who's behind The Beast.
Right.
Who's behind the devils?
The angels.
The angels.
What I mean by that is... Those who purport to be good, but they're in fact evil.
No, no, no.
What I mean is the beasts are sent by the angels to rouse you to virtue.
See, the beasts think they're working alone, right?
That they're just all in power and so on.
But, again, you're a Christian, we know how this works.
God is all-powerful, the devil is not.
So how does God make you good?
Well, there's no good without temptation.
There's no virtue without temptation.
So the devils are sent to remind you of evil so that you start working for good.
And the devils think that they're independent.
My mother was a kind of devil, and she taught me everything there is to know about how to be good and strong.
You understand?
How do you make the knife sharp?
You lean it up against the whirring whetstone until sparks and sharpness bleed off the edge.
How do you make a muscle strong?
Resistance.
You think that the devils are there to overwhelm you.
I'm saying the devils are there to provoke you into a fight.
So turn it against yourself.
If all you see is the devils, you'll lose.
But you gotta see what's behind them.
Right.
So, um, metaphorically speaking, use an ancient art of using their strength against them This is an old argument from C.S.
Lewis, right?
It's in a book you may have read, or you should read, called, oh gosh, it's about the devil who works to tempt the other devil.
That title will come to me.
But it is saying if you are tempted by gluttony, be more ascetic.
If you are tempted by greed, be more generous.
Extract your virtues from your temptations.
The evil that is done to us can either overwhelm us or strengthen us into virtue.
And you have had a lot of evil done to you, my friend, and you've been around and seen a hell of a lot of evil.
To have a beast snarl into your ear that you, giving good advice to your brother, Caused someone to be stabbed to death 27 times to the point where your brother had scratches on his arms from the beast's ribcage.
That is an evil occurrence that happened to you.
Yeah.
Right?
That is about as ugly a thing as can happen to someone.
And it's been counseling you to despair and death ever since.
Don't fight, you can't win.
Don't fight, you can't win.
We're too strong, we're too powerful.
All you see in the world are devils.
Where are the angels?
Satan rules the world.
You are helpless.
You must succumb.
But every shadow is cast by something solid.
Every darkness has to have light on the other side, otherwise we wouldn't see it, right?
Yeah, and every single one of those bottles has been a devil.
So smash through the darkness to find the light on the other side!
Rouse yourself!
For God's sakes!
You have seen deep into the heart of darkness, and then what the heart of darkness does is says, oh, that's all there is, man.
That's all there is.
There's no angels in this world.
We've got it in the bag.
We've won.
No, no, no.
The trick, you know, the trick in economics Is the unseen cost to the visible benefit, right?
Everyone, oh, the government's created 5,000 jobs, right?
You don't see the 10,000 jobs that weren't created, right?
So you've got to see the hidden costs, not the visible benefits, or the invisible benefits, or the hidden costs.
The government cuts that funding.
Oh no, 5,000 jobs are going away.
It's like, okay, so that's the visible cost.
What's the hidden benefit?
The 10,000 jobs are going to come.
And the virtue of not using force to get them, right?
So in Economics, you have to see what is hard to see in order to be wise.
And if you look at the devils and you see only the devils, and not the light that's on the other side that's casting that shadow, you fall into a black hole and you miss what is blindingly obvious, that the devils are here to make us fight for good.
I would not be the fighter that I am without my mother.
Every angel, every devil is on the leash of an angel.
Okay.
Okay.
Stephan, you are actually making this really clear to me.
I'm beginning to see.
Okay.
How many people have experienced what you've experienced?
You are being hardened into a warrior.
Not W-O, which is the temptation to worry, right?
But W-A, warrior.
You have... Say your father, right?
Your father and his last ambition.
He learned it too late in life.
And his lost ambition became a curse to him.
Like, you know, the smoker who gets lung cancer who's like, God damn, now I wish I'd never picked up a cigarette or had quit five years ago or ten years ago, whatever, right?
The purpose of the devil is to obscure the light until it's too late to find it, right?
And the purpose of philosophy is so that people don't have to stare evil in the face to know that it exists and needs to be fought.
Right?
So now you've stared evil in the face.
And you know, you've been battling in it for over 20 years.
And if it's a fight with no light, then you're going to succumb.
You're going to succumb.
There has to be some capacity to win.
And the purpose of the devil, of course, is to obscure all the light on the other side so that you give up.
And you tried to give a little bit of that light to your brother, right?
You tried to say, listen, but it was too late for him.
And that's not on you.
The Christian answer to that is that your brother succumbed to a whole host of little temptations, right?
Maybe this old guy flattered him, and his vanity responded.
Maybe this old guy gave him money.
Yeah, I think he did.
Right?
Maybe this old guy promised him fame, fortune, glory, renown, whatever it was.
And, you know, step by step, inch by inch, you go down that road.
He was certainly a lot wealthier than my brother.
Right.
I think, yeah, I think you're right.
There was some kind of financial thing there.
And this elderly sadist who enjoyed undoing the souls of decent people, as you say your brother was sensitive and caring in many ways, he taught you everything there is to know.
about the demons in the world.
Right.
Okay.
And what are you going to do with that knowledge?
Well, if you think the demons run the world, you're going to fade away.
Or you're going to be staggering along, not disturbing their malevolent plans in any way, shape or form, right?
Which is fine with them too, right?
If you just drink yourself away and, you know, don't do anything, then you're, you know, one less warrior on the battlefield, there's no harm to the enemy, right?
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.
I'm kind of hesitant to tell you what I really do for a living.
In a military metaphor that you're putting forward, it makes a lot of sense to me.
Listen, I'm aware of your concern about privacy, which is fine with me.
I mean, the important thing is that you come out of this with a purpose.
You're actually, I don't want to sound too, what's the word, sycophantic here, but you're actually You're actually opening my eyes right now.
Now, I obviously am not talking about corporeal ghosts that float through the air with horns and bat wings.
That doesn't matter a shit.
It doesn't matter what we think of them as.
The metaphorical way is the powerful way to do it.
Whether it's imprints of neurons transmitted through language and experience, it doesn't matter.
The beast, or the beasts or the devils, is the most powerful way.
to think of it and that will do.
Well.
But the imprinting of sadism and destruction. .
You understand that your brother was aiming to be a mass murderer.
Or the demon that possessed him was aiming to be a mass murderer because he killed this old man.
And then what did he try to do?
He tried to drive you to suicide!
And you're saying that the event's destroyed, you're dead.
This is the lashing out, this is the gout of acidic fire and flame that comes out of these black-nailed fingertips, right?
It lays waste to an entire gene pool, it can lay waste to an entire town.
And look at Rotherham.
Yeah.
You don't think we've got some beasts to fight in this world?
We really do.
We really do, and I could use you.
You want to be in the army?
You want to come full circle?
You want to be in the army?
We've got some shit to fight, man.
I first came across you a few months ago.
Sorry, a few months before the Tommy Robertson Freedom March.
You know, when you did that Tape over your mouth advert thing?
Yes.
Um, that's when, um, well, I would say actually I was awoke about a year or so before that.
Um, I know, but it's a very tricky, tricky, uh, tricky army to be in right now, Stefan.
It is a tricky army to be in and it's going to be trickier tomorrow and trickier the day after.
Yeah, I know.
I try to separate that kind of stuff from my own personal issues.
I know what you're alluding to.
Just fight on principles, though.
I mean, there's no point going after individuals.
Just fight on principles.
No, no, no.
I know exactly what you mean.
It's like mentioning that guy standing on the street the other week.
I just thought, This guy is fighting for a principle that he believes in and you know you mentioned Rutherford and there's many other places and I allude back to the beginning part of this conversation where I think it's just absolutely appalling that we've got to this situation where, I mean you go right back to the Australian
Experiences of some children, you know, being deported from England and Europe and what have you.
Kids all the way down through the line, from chimney sweeps to, you know... Well, I've got a whole... I've done a whole audiobook reading of a book by Lloyd DeMasse called The Origins of War and Child Abuse.
Yeah, we can't fix children, we can't fix anything.
People can get this if they want.
It's free at freedomandradio.com forward slash free.
It's in a chapter-by-chapter podcast list and it's well worth listening to.
Yeah, will do.
Listen, Stephan, I've taken a lot of your time.
Was it helpful?
I need you to tell me, if you don't mind, I'll just sort of express my preferences here, brother, that I don't want you to kill yourself.
Right?
So if you have any thoughts in that way, you will call a hotline, you will get help, right?
Because we're really poking in the nest of the devil here, right?
I agree.
I cannot express how much I really, really appreciate this.
lit up my eyes, as it were.
And I appreciate that.
Thank you very much.
But will you make me that promise that if you do feel self-destructive, you will call a hotline that you will get help?
I promise.
Because you have a good 20 years in you, right?
Now, if I were a Christian, you know what I would say?
I would say That God spared you when you were 24 because you still got some stuff to do.
Somebody else once said that.
And God, which is some tangled theology man, but God gave you death as a warning so that you could really help people live.
And we live to some degree in combat, in spiritual combat against immorality, in verbal combat against immorality.
And you and I are too old to pick up arms, but we are wise enough to use language so that others don't have to.
You don't want your sons to get drafted in a civil war.
You don't want the bombs falling again.
You don't want people being blown up.
And that means taking a strong stand against evil.
And we are the elders of the tribe.
And if we don't do it, if we fail in this task, which is merely verbal, whatever we fail in our language, our young people have to take up in their musculature.
Where we fail in syllables, others have to pick up swords.
And I really, really don't want that.
And neither do you, of course.
I got you.
You've got a good purpose, man.
You've got a good purpose.
And a good heart.
And I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry for the trail of destruction that this beast has left through your family.
I'm so sorry for that.
But yeah, take the fight to the enemy.
Okay, mate.
Thank you.
Keep me posted, alright?
Will you keep me posted about how things go?
I will write to you.
I'll write to you in a couple of months and tell you how I've gone.
All right.
Thanks, man.
Great conversation.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
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