Alexander Masters
'Who would play you in the film version of your life?’ It’s a standard question in those Sunday supplement interviews (second only to 'who would you invite to your dream dinner party?'). But it’s one that Alexander Masters doesn't need to answer.
The Cambridge writer has already been portrayed on screen – in the film adaptation of his bestselling book, Stuart: A Life Backwards – by none other than curiously-attractive Sherlock fop, Benedict Cumberbatch.
“It’s so weird that you can’t think about it,” says Alexander, when I ask him how it felt. “And it was rather odd finding out things about myself. I said ‘he’s got this really poncey way of standing. Why is he standing like that?’ Well it turns out I stand exactly like that, with my hand on one hip, and Benedict picked it up. So I try not to do this little poncey stance any more...”
It’s 13 years since Alexander first met Stuart Shorter, the homeless drug addict who was to become the subject of his hugely successful first book – and also his friend.
They met at Wintercomfort, the Cambridge daycentre for the homeless, where Alexander had taken a fund-raising post after finishing his maths MA at the University. Lured by the job's flexible hours, it meant he could spend the mornings pursuing his dream of becoming a writer. Not that what he was writing – a play about Cyrus the Persian – was up to much.
“Ooh, it was dreadful muck! It had something like 32 characters and it was idiotic, absolutely un-producable! I wasted an unbelievable length of time on that nonsense,” he grins. “Finally I’d run out of money, so then I started on Stuart.”
They were an unlikely pair: Alexander with his comfortable upbringing, top-notch education and frightfully nice manners; Stuart with his horrifically abusive childhood, spells in prison and history of violence.
Alexander admits that his first attempt at writing about his damaged friend wasn’t much of an improvement on Cyrus the Persian. “It was very much soap-boxing. ‘Here is this poor chap and you’ve got to be nice to him’. Stuart hated it, quite rightly, and I knew it was boring, and it had to go.
“Eventually I figured it out: here’s Stuart, he has this fabulous story, he has this life that’s all of a tumult, write about the tumult! Don’t try and rationalise it, just write the story.”
And he did, warts and all. “Stuart had to be a character who at times you really disliked, because he wasn’t on the streets for nothing: he had got into trouble because he was a troublesome person. But he also had this wonderful humour and generosity of spirit and sensitivity. It was very important to capture that complexity.”
It turned out to be a winning formula. The book became a bestseller, scooping Alexander the prestigious Guardian First Book Award along the way; then there was the TV film which earned Tom Hardy, who played Stuart, a BAFTA nomination.
Yet Stuart, who'd overcome his addictions and was living in a flat in Waterbeach, never saw its success. In July 2002 he stepped in front of a train near his home and was killed instantly. Hours earlier he’d been trying on suits for his sister’s wedding; at the inquest, the driver said he'd seemed surprised to see the train.
Did Stuart kill himself? “I don’t think he did, except in a sort of…” Alexander tails off. “I’m not claiming to be a great expert, but when I was working in that sector, there was a slow tendency towards suicide amongst a number of them, in the sense of just not paying attention to daily risks.
“OK, so you wouldn’t actually step out in front of a car, but you wouldn’t really saunter much faster than you should. That gradual allowance of risks builds up, and eventually one’s going to get you.”
Does he still miss him? “Of course. For quite a long time after he died I’d hear him. I’d hear a very strong Fen accent and I’d turn round and have a real sense of ‘Oh my God!' But of course it couldn’t possibly be him.”
Given the success of Stuart, Alexander was under pressure to find someone equally fascinating as the subject of his next book. He didn’t have to look very far.
Released last year, The Genius In My Basement is about Simon Norton, a child prodigy and breath-takingly brilliant mathematician whose talent had faded into an obsession with buses and trains. Simon also happened to be Alexander’s landlord, and lived – in considerable disarray – in the rooms below his flat.
By all accounts Simon is quite a character. He sports an Einstein-esque hairstyle and dwells in near-squalor among piles of timetables, which he studies while feasting on a diet of mackerel and Bombay Mix.
Writing about him seemed an obvious choice. “I liked the idea partly because he fits a stereotype – this wild-haired character – and yet he has all sorts of qualities that are intriguing.”
There was a problem, though. Simon isn’t what you’d call a talker. More of a grunter, actually. And he essentially lives a happy, albeit uneventful, life. “Stuart had this huge emotional range, but Simon has an incy-wincy little half-inch of emotional range,” explains Alexander. “There’s no drama. No drama at all! And so how do you make a story out of that?
“From the point of view of writing, that’s what I liked about it, because it was a completely different biographical problem.”
Yet the lack of drama – and conversation – is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to someone as downright odd as Simon. “We went to a ceremony recently – a huge crowded room, and all these people in fancy clothes – and Simon decided he wanted to lie down. And so he lay down. Bonk. Like that. It was wonderful! And afterwards people were saying ‘I wish I could do that’.
“Simon does exactly what he wants to do. He’s an intriguing person, and he’s utterly his own person. He just says what he thinks, and that’s very refreshing.”
Although Alexander now lives with his girlfriend in Sussex, he’s spending two days a week in Cambridge – at Simon’s house, naturally– to work on his next book. And this one is proving to be a bit of a head-scratcher.
It’s about the author of 147 diaries which were found dumped in a skip; yet there’s no indication as to whether they’re male or female, let alone living or dead.
As the diarist is from Cambridge, Alexander is working on the project with the help of local people, everyone from a graphologist to a detective. And no-one had to twist his arm to come back. “I love Cambridge,” he says. “It's is a wonderful place, and it’s filled with these slight outcasts, like Simon and Stuart, who actually have something to say.”
So what about that other standard Sunday supplement question: who would Alexander invite to his dream dinner party? “It varies a hell of a lot. I sometimes think of that and then forget who they are.”
He pauses, then smiles. “But it’d be nice to have Stuart back. That would be good.”
Alexander’s next book….
When a friend found 147 diaries abandoned in a Cambridge skip, Alexander pounced on them.
“I think it’s amazing,” he says. “They’re no-one special, it’s someone completely ordinary, which is wonderful. It’s a biography which you begin without knowing who you’re writing a biography about. I love that!”
Has he read them all? “No no no! I’ve been trying to figure out how best to do it, you see. Do I approach them very delicately? Or am I very systematic and just go through until I’ve figured out who it is, then go off and find out whether they’re around?”
“I think it’s a mystery story. The diaries are a nameless corpse: you don’t know who this person is and you’ve got to find out, just as they do in TV dramas. They gradually figure out who the person is, then they put a name to them, then they get a bit of a history of the person, and then they gradually figure out how the crime was committed.
“And the crime in this case was someone who was thrown out. Imagine throwing that out. It’s awful. It’s a crime!”
The danger, of course, is that the 'corpse', or its writer, is, in fact, still alive – and doesn't fancy being the subject of a book. “Well if it becomes absolutely stipulated that I cannot do it, I have to ditch it,” says Alexander. “That’s the risk. But then that’s part of the excitement of writing it.”
March 2012 (c) Cambridge News