When did it suddenly become the norm for strangers to hand out misguided, rather offensive advice? Did I miss that memo from Life? 

Clearly I did because I certainly wasn’t expecting the pep talk I received from the sales guy in Paperchase last week. I was buying place cards – something that can be done for a variety of events – when the most obtuse man on the other side of the counter pipes up…

“Are you getting married?”

“Uh…. No.”

“You seem shocked.”

“I am a little.”

“Why’s that?”

[Yes, I really did have to explain to him why I was a little surprised at firstly his forwardness and secondly, his stupidity.]

“Well, you see, I don’t have a boyfriend, let alone a fiancé. In fact, I’m not really even at that stage in my life yet I don’t think.”

“Maybe you should join a singles’ club.”

Wowowowowow … I didn’t say ‘I can’t get a boyfriend’. I said ‘I don’t have a one!’ Two very different things, my fine friend, and if I wanted your advice I would have asked, you prick.

There’s no rest for the wicked though is there?

“I mean, if you don’t have a boyfriend, who do you go to the cinema with? Or dinner?”

I said I was single. Not friendless.

Meet Clive Martin, who last year graduated from London Met – one of the country’s worst universities – and is now one of the best British writers for the notorious Vice magazine. Clive came to fame this year in his ‘Big Night Out In…..’ series, where Clive documents his experience on the different weird and wonderful nights out across Britain – from the rich clubs in Chelsea to lads’ nights out in Newcastle to fetish parties in Soho. 

His articles are densely packed with incisive references to every corner of British popular culture, and his hilarious candour and cynicism have carved out a place for the 24-year old as one of Britain’s best up-and-coming writers. If you haven’t yet read any of his articles, you’ve a lot to look forward to.

We met in a typically hipster bar in Shoreditch outside the Vice offices last week to discuss his experience of British nightlife.

Cherwell: What was your most memorable night out in Vice’s ‘Big Night Out In….’ series?

Clive Martin: The most visceral experience was when I went on a night out with the self-proclaimed ‘Britain’s biggest lads’ at Newcastle University. I’m still slightly recovering from that night. It was fantasmagoric, just so intense.

You mentioned being fascinated with a distinct lack of drug culture amongst ‘Lads’ groups like those – why do you think that is?

Well these ‘lads’ are guys who did the 11+, they got into private school and since then they’ve been told their whole life that they’re winners. And they see drugs as something that creeps and ‘weirdos’ do, so they seem to treble their own alcohol intake to make up for that. They seem to find the idea of drugs bizarre, alien and metropolitan. 

Also I think they see something a little bit gay about drugs – on drugs people lose their inhibitions and start hugging each other and being quite romantic and they can’t really handle that, whereas on alcohol you can rage all night long. On the other hand most of them will probably go and get jobs in the city and become roaring cokeheads.

Do you think Britain really enjoys their experiences on nights out?

We do enjoy our nights out but I think people feel obliged to enjoy them, so you see people trying really, really hard to enjoy themselves, really forcing themselves to have a positive experience. Whereas in London when people go out and it’s shit, people will realise it’s shit and you’ll get people sitting in bars being miserable.

I’ve got a theory that you never hear anyone ‘Woo!’-ing or ‘woop-ing’ if they’re actually having fun – it’s just a fake sound. You go to places like Newcastle and it’s full of girls doing that and screaming “We’re having such a great time!”

You’ve described a lot of student nights out as full of people “doing their best impressions of having fun”…..

When you look at university culture, outside of Oxbridge, and perhaps trendy Brighton where children of rich hippies go, every university scene is essentially the same. From the good ones like Bristol to the bottom of the barrel ones like Sunderland, it’s completely homogenous, a completely uniform experience.

And the same goes for the people dancing?

Dancing should simply be a natural reaction to a good tune, but you go to so many clubs and it’s a mix of disingenuous dancing, and slightly ironic, slightly pretending to be more out there than you actually are.

You’ll ask people for a photo and they’ll have looked quite normal and then in front of the camera they’ll flail their arms out as if they’ve been downing bottles of tequila all night, trying their hardest to make themselves look shit-faced

Is Britain good at dancing?

Certainly not Caucasian, high-street Britain.

Were there any big influences on your ‘Big Night Out In…’ series?

The Streets’ first album Original Pirate Material is one of the best documents of British existence even though it’s ten years old.

Is British nightlife friendly in general?

In general yes but everywhere you get pockets of aggression. The general vibe is friendly, people together trying to have fun, get drunk, get laid. Shows like Boozed Britain where people are puking up in ambulances and glassing each other aren’t representative really.

As a writer for Vice, the cult following it has seems to be balanced by the constant supply of haters and indignant, offended readers. Do you enjoy recognition from readers or do you thrive on the haters?

People saying an article is really good is nice but with Vice articles, there will always be people who hate on it and nit-pick. There always seems to be someone saying “you need to come down where I come from and I’ll teach you”. The editors of Vice certainly enjoy seeing people get wound-up by our work.

Are you pessimistic about the future of youth culture?

I’m pessimistic about the future because young people have no music of their own. I remember dubstep when I was young and it first came out with the likes of Digital Mystikz and Skream in Croydon, and nothing’s changed, young people are just listening to a watered-down version of it.

As well as the lack of music, teenagers seem soft and don’t seem to cause any trouble. They’re not going to be able to cope with the world. When I was a kid we were into terrible stuff – new metal, BB guns and I don’t see that from them – they just want to take pictures of themselves and comb their hair.

Alex Thomson is one of the most important and influential televi­sion journalists in the UK today. He is a regular presenter and chief correspondent for Channel 4 News and has been involved in some the most important news stories in the past decade. No stranger to con­troversial situations, he has reported from places like Northern Ireland during its latest troubles, Syria during its civil war, and more recently from Kelvin MacKenzie’s front door, leading to the infamous ‘doorstepping video’ that can be found on YouTube from last year.

It is with this in mind that I ring his number, panicking quietly as it connects. One Cherwell journalist to another, I keep telling myself. I’ve been lucky enough to get him on a day when he is free: not only is he frequently out of the country reporting, but when he is at home, he has two young sons, George and Henry, to look after.

After a few polite preliminaries, I open by asking him about his time at Oxford. Thomson studied at University College between 1980- 1983, the golden Thatcherian years.

“We liked to wreck things” he tells me. “ A lot of graduate recruiters at that time had links with the apartheid regime in South Africa, so we got in the way and exposed them.” It is at this point that I discover that he too wrote for Cherwell while at Oxford, where he picked up a taste for exposing foul play early on in his ca­reer.

Thomson fills me in briefly on his busy ca­reer: after graduating from Oxford, he was faced with the option of doing a postgrad­uate degree in journalism, or scraping along near the bottom of a local paper “making the tea and unwrapping the custard creams”. In the end, he tells me, he opted for a postgrad jour­nalism course at Cardiff. He then briefly worked as a researcher on ‘Wales Today’, before tak­ing up a much sought after traineeship at the BBC, then cycling around India for a year, a story which he tells in his book Ram Ram India.

Back at the BBC he worked in Northern Ireland, where he was a reporter on the cur­rent affairs prog r a m “ S p o t ­light”. He was involved in producing a documentary about the shooting of three unarmed people in Gi­braltar by the SAS.

The Thatcher government, uneasy about this, attempted to cut some of the programme.

“I felt this was censorship,” he says, “so I re­taliated by leaking that the government had tried to censor the documentary.” Simple as that. It seems his taste for exposing foul play had begun to take a front seat early on for Thomson.

“After that my position at the BBC was unten­able,” Thomson reflects. “Luckily I got offered a job at Channel 4 where I have been ever since.”

We turn to his cur­rent role as chief correspondent for Channel 4 News. “At Channel 4 investi­gations are long-running, so things resurface, and you often get to come back to investiga­tions and stories many years later”. In the 1990s the Northern Ireland situation resurfaced, in the form of the Saville Inquiry.

“We’d interviewed a number of sources over Bloody Sunday,” Thomson explains. “Many were anonymous sources who wanted, with­out any consideration of financial gain, to let the world know what had gone on.”

The Saville Inquiry asked Thomson to re­veal these sources, but as he says, “to reveal sources who had put themselves at risk would have been against my integrity as a journalist, and a breach of confidence.” For a while he was threatened with contempt of court and even imprisonment, but in the end it came to noth­ing.

For a man who spends a lot of time in the public eye, his private life offers little relief. In 2000, Alex became a father to George and Henry. Henry is autistic, and I ask how the experience of raising an autistic child has affected him. “My wife Sa­rah is an investigative journalist,” he says, “so over the years she has acquired the skills to get inside systems and institutions, and if need be, fight them.”

For many years, the couple had to fight local authorities in order to obtain the care that Henry needed. It seems to have been a tough struggle for both of them: “It was a hell of a fight, but in the end we got what we wanted, and now Henry is flourishing at school.”

I bring the topic up to the present day, relishing the chance to ask the man who edits Channel 4 News what he actually think of current affairs. I am intrigued, for instance, to know what his thoughts are on the recent publication of the findings of the Leveson in­quiry.

“Well, it was cer­tainly a very in­teresting piece of theatre,” he muses. “Not very relevant to the realm of television j ou r n a l i s m though. The things that the News of the World was ac­cused of were al­ready illegal: it is illegal to hack some­one’s phone, and it is illegal to pervert the course of justice, there’s no denying that.”

“But what was interesting is the revelation that successive judg­es, chief constables and Prime Ministers have been systematically intimidated by the tabloid press. The power of blackmail that they have is both corrupt and corrosive; those in power are in thrall to it. In my opinion Rupert Murdoch is one of the greatest threats to the institutions of this country.” This is clearly a man who un­derstands these scandals, and whose strong views are informed by the perils of his job.

It is no surprise, then, that his view on the recommendations of the report are just as forcefully expressed: “I believe that if tabloids wish to turn over someone’s private life, then you should first go to the courts, and have to prove it is really in the public interest. If the Archbishop of Canterbury commits adultery, or it’s politician who speaks about ‘family val­ues’ then yes it is in the public interest, but if it’s someone like a footballer who has said nothing about ‘family values’ then no, it just isn’t.” He takes this further: “It is our right not to live in a system of corporatised blackmail”.

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I ask him about his ‘door-stepping’ video in­volving Kelvin MacKenzie. It was an incident memorable enough, to make it onto Charlie Brooker’s 2012 wipe.

Alex went to interview Kelvin MacKenzie last year at his own home, only to be ignored and eventually have a car door slammed on him. He remains pragmatic in his stance on this: “A number of things need to be said here. First, if you dish it out, you should be able to take it. Second, he has never explained why he over­ruled his own journalists over Hillsborough. We emailed him beforehand and went round to interview him without cameras originally, playing everything by the rules. When I came round the first time, he told me to ‘fuck off’ and then slammed the door in my face.” A horrible incident to happen to any journalist, but this seems to be a regular occurrence for Thomson, a man who in any case reported from some of the most dangerous political warzones of this decade.

But a good journalist never gives up, and fol­lowing this incident, he then went round a sec­ond time, with cameras, and the events were captured on camera as visual evidence. “In my view, his behaviour was farcical and he made a public idiot of himself.”

He notes, “In the end, we got nine complaints to Ofcom. Since we did everything by the book, it wasn’t overruled, and to cap it all 1000 peo­ple liked the video on YouTube.”

Political warzones, hacking scandals and leaking news are all in a day’s work. But what about when Thomson isn’t reporting to a back­drop of Syrian gunfire? “I do enjoy swimming, particularly in the sea at Whitby, on the York­shire coast. I did a marathon last year, but aside from the fact I did it for charity it was a pretty daft thing to do to my body!”

Finally, I ask if I can have a photo for our in­terview. He replies, “It would probably be best for you to use one of me in the field, as that’s where

At what point does being sad be­come depression? At what point does a pessimistic point of view become a problem? When does apathy about your very exist­ence become dangerous? These are questions that far too many people have to ask themselves nowadays, hid­den by a cloud of their own guilt and shame, unable to find help, left to flounder, seeking solace in silence.

I know because I’ve been there, and all the time I was struggling with my own mind, those around me were finding it very difficult to deal with me too. Depression is seen as an issue to be swept under the carpet, and yet it is an ill­ness which affects around one in four people each year. It is thus more prevalent than many other conditions which are equally as devastat­ing, but clearly something distinguishes it in our minds. Is it fear? A lack of understanding or ability to empathize? The fact that the long-standing silent struggle of depression suffer­ers has rendered the issue inaccessible to the average (I use this word loosely) person?

A few months ago, just before leaving for a year abroad, I decided I’d had enough of hiding away in the shadows of my own mind. I sudden­ly needed to expel the negativity I felt, to show people I was no longer afraid, and I wrote it all down. I published a blog, which I now use just so people know I haven’t got lost somewhere on the continent, and I told a bit of my story. Not all of it, because sometimes some things do need to be left unsaid, but enough so that I hoped people might understand.

The response I received was astounding; peo­ple I would never have imagined struggling with anything told me how my words echoed with how they had felt at some point in their life, and people who had never been depressed said they had gained some insight into what it can do to someone. I realised that the reason I had received these responses was because what I had done was so out of the blue, and so rare. This is the problem: those who have it are so quiet and ashamed that they leave every­one else blocked out from their pain, and that evolves into a fear and uncertainty surround­ing the entire issue.

It becomes easier to describe each time I try now. Things happen, life pushes you along, throwing all sorts of things at you which you must try and bat right back, and it just isn’t al­ways possible. Sometimes you miss, and those things start to knock you down, and eventually you end up on your knees, struggling to keep going. But that isn’t depression, although it is different for everyone. I think I would describe it as it is an emotional and physical manifesta­tion of an unbearable, draining, chronic sad­ness which is so deep rooted you cannot escape it. It’s there, living in your mind, and no matter what you do, it will always outrun you.

Depression crept up on me. At first I was con­vinced I hadn’t changed, but now I see that I had. I became irrationally worried about the tiniest of things, I stopped going out, leaving the house, leaving my room. I cried at any­thing, everything and nothing. I was tired all of the time but couldn’t sleep, my work as good as stopped. At that point, tutors got involved (of course), they encouraged me to get help. I rejected it. I didn’t want help, because this was all my fault, I didn’t deserve help, no one could help me anyway; this was just how I was. Things got worse, I became so caught up in my own mind that I felt that the only way to stop feeling so disconnected from anything physi­cal was to hurt myself, to use pain to bring me back to some semblance of the real, physical world. I was lost, and sure I would never find myself or a way out of what was happening to me and so I started considering ‘a way out’ in another sense. Soon after I realised that this was not normal and that I had changed far more than I ever thought I could.

It was at the point that I realised I had be­come dangerous to myself that I went back to my tutors, tried counselling (and absolutely hated it), went to doctors. The medication I was on made me sick, dizzy and constantly tired. I was so ill at the start I felt worse, but some­thing was different. I had regained some moti­vation. I started venturing out again, but this wasn’t easy at first. Feeling ready for the world only lasted for short bursts of time, resulting, for example, in one hideously em­barrassing incident where a tutor happened across me crying under a sink in my faculty library. But once the physi­cal reaction to the drugs had stopped, I was simply being. I certainly didn’t feel any better. But I also didn’t feel worse. I was just tired. I was sleeping for most of the hours of the day. I was allowed to miss essay after essay; it was a weird limbo.

However, slowly but surely I started achiev­ing more. Not necessarily feeling happier, although I did sometimes, but coping and do­ing things in spite of how I felt was a big step. What I have realised is that the medication is not there to fix your brain for you: that’s your job. It’s about working out how your own brain works; all the while it is trying to trip you up. A battle of the same will, one might say. I guess my point here is that it isn’t easy. In fact, it is the exact opposite, but it’s probably going to be worth it, because you’re guaranteed to get somewhere, as long as you are willing to fight through how you feel. It isn’t a question of be­ing able to do it; it’s a question of wanting to.

What is easy for me to see is that my year abroad could not have come at a better time. Although I was devastated to have to leave so many people in Oxford who I loved, and who had been all of the support I had needed over the past year, an escape from the pressure here was a breath of fresh air. Of course, I had new battles to fight, and I had to learn all over again how to cope – because now I really was alone. I couldn’t just call someone to come and sit with me for some time until the feelings had started to pass.

However, this has been good for me. I could never have managed it straight away but I have come far enough in my recovery that time was now all I needed. Being in France has given me that; I don’t have essays to write every week, or numer­ous lengthy commitments every day. If I ever feel that I just can’t cope with something, lying down and closing my eyes until it goes away is a real possibility now. Of course that has made a huge differ­ence; it hasn’t made me bet­ter, but it’s given me the chance to help myself.

Telling people you are struggling is never easy, it’s like admitting to all your personal faults and weaknesses at once. And asking for help is even worse, especially if you are as stubborn as I am! But it’s worth it, because suffering from depression is so unbelievably hard. I found it nigh on impossible to help my­self when I felt I was doing it alone, and even though those you love may not understand why or how, or what to do to help, at the very least talking can help. Plus, they might sur­prise you, and themselves, with what they can do to help you.

I’m still not on a clear track to being com­pletely better: on the whole I cope now, and am generally happier on a day to day basis. I’m becoming the person I remember again. But I am wary, because depression has this sneaky way of tricking you. It can make you believe anything is true because it is your own mind talking to you, but it is a warped version of re­ality or fantasy that you are being fed, and it is so important to remember that. For me, the most important point I’ve drawn from this is that you have to talk about it, to those close to you, to others who feel the same, whether you know them or not. Because they are the people who can stop you from losing yourself. So tell some­one, and talk, make them or let them understand, because in the end, I bet what you are most afraid of is yourself. And believe me, if you’ve got the courage to talk to someone properly, there is nothing to be afraid of.