Get Booked – Raz Shaw, Death And The Elephant

Hello, I'm Hazel, and welcome to today's Get Booked radio show here in Covent Garden's studio, supporting women's emotional well-being and men's emotional well-being and just kind of opening conversations about mental health awareness and our love of books and writing and reading. And on today's show, we will be discussing Death and the Elephant by Raz Shul, who is sitting in the studio with me now. Just to give you a little bit of an insight, Death and the Elephant, I finished it a couple of weeks ago. It's quite a unique cancer memoir in many ways, and it's so brutally yet honestly descriptive in a way that kind of drew me in. And gave such a diverse understanding to the whole process. And it's from mouth ulcers, guilt, and sex. We're gonna be discussing all of this. Oh dear. To perceptions of making it easy for other people, 'cause people get confused about what they're supposed to say and what they're supposed to do. Actually, shortly after finishing this book, I was speaking to somebody who had a relative who has cancer and he's like, "And I just don't know why she's doing this." And I was like, "Do you know what? I've just read this book by Raz Shaw," and I explained what you were saying and it kind of gave him a better understanding. So people, I introduce you to Raz Shaw. Hello. Hello, Hazel. Great to be here. It's great to have you here. We were chatting a little bit off air before, so hopefully we can keep these certain conversations to an acceptable level. Oh yes, we don't want to talk about those things. So we are here to talk about Death and the Elephant, and also so many elements around Death and the Elephant, and the kind of byline is how cancer saved my life. Indeed. Do you want to just give us a little bit of an intro in your words? Well, I mean, it's The byline, "How Cancer Saved My Life," is the start of the reason I wanted to write the book. So I got, in 1995, it seems like a long time ago, which it is, on the day after my 28th birthday, I was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Up until that point, my life was sort of going nowhere. I was doing a job I didn't want to do. I knew I wanted to do the job I do now, which is a theater director, but I wasn't doing it. And I was running a telesales company with 100 people, earning a lot of money, the only problem was, A, I hated it, and B, I was a gambling addict, and therefore I wasn't, I didn't keep any money at the end of the week, and therefore my life literally was going nowhere. And then I got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. And the reason it's subtitled How Cancer Saved My Life is because in that year that I was ill and I had 6 months chemo and 3 months radiotherapy, the other place I was, I was either in hospital or in the casino, which Weirdly, the casino's quite a good respite from the hospital, and the hospital's quite a good respite from the casino. And so it was a kind of strange, weird, euphoric nightmare year. And at the end of it, in March 1996, when I was given the all clear from cancer, I went on a rampage of gambling, self-harming fury. And at the end of that, 3 weeks later, I seemed to Something, something seemed to give, and, um, uh, I woke up one morning and was like, I think that's it. I think that's the end of— I think I'm waving goodbye to gambling and saying hello to my new life, which was the job I do now. And here, 20 whatever it is, 5 to— no, how many? Where are we now? 23 years later. Great maths. I was always good at theater, never so much good at maths. I like goats though. And 23 years later, I haven't gambled since, and I'm now, I would say, relatively successful in the job I do. And so that's why I do believe without the cancer, I'd have drifted into even more madness in the gambling. I wouldn't have found a reason to get out of it. I wouldn't have found a reason to not continue the mad money-making hateful job that I was doing, and therefore the spiral of, uh, self-harm and vicious addiction. I can't see how I would have got out of it. And so without the cancer, who knows where I would have been. The thing is, I mean, they do say when it's that very popular line, staring death in the face, but cancer is an extreme thing to go through and it causes extreme reactions. Yeah. And The thing is, I was kind of waiting throughout your book for something to happen that made you just hit rock bottom and just go, um, right, I'm gonna go to therapy or whatever. But you, you literally just suddenly just went, nope, done. Wow, that's it. I'm just— and it wasn't that you were like sitting in a pool of casino sweat, you just went— well, I did that a lot, but yeah, no, but I think that can't have been— but by the way, that can't be in a really like clean environment for when you're through chemo. I thought you've got to be really careful. In those days, they were smoking. In those days, you know, they were smoking everywhere. Oh, the good old days. In the good old days where you could smoke on the tube station. Yeah, casino was like— literally, I used to go into my dirty linen basket, get dirty clothes, put them on, go to the casino because they would stink of smoke and sweat. And so yeah, that's not the greatest environment to go travel From there, you know, finish there at 4:00 AM in the morning having lost your everything and arrive at the hospital at 9:00 AM the next morning. It's not the greatest thing, but actually the fuel of it sort of madly kept me going. But in terms of what you were saying, I think the fact that I discovered very early on when I got cancer, you know, there's a chapter in the book called Why Not Me? And that's really about when I got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, I really didn't think, why me? I really thought, well, I looked around at my friends and I thought, actually, if anyone could cope with this, it's probably me. So maybe I'm the one who should be taking one for the team. And therefore it kind of felt like, because I've never really been into this positivity stuff, I never really understood what that means. And even now people will say, you know, he's a grumpy old whatever. And I think that's because, you know, it feels very intangible to me. You know, let's be positive. Well, what's that? What do we do? What do we physically do to make ourselves feel positive? But what isn't intangible to me is not being negative. So when I was ill, it wasn't like I thought I wasn't gonna die. No, it wasn't like I thought I was gonna die. I thought I wasn't gonna die. I didn't think about it. Yeah, it's just a different way. But this is what I mean about it. Unique perspective on your, you know, and I think air quotes are such a good thing to do on radio. Oh yeah, I love an air quote on radio, as you can see. It's good as juggling right there. Yeah, juggling or goats. But yeah, goats. And sorry, it's like a— it's, it's like we have an inside joke. Imagine that. Uh, who would have thought it? Uh, but it's a unique cancer memoir. I mean, it's just kind of— one of the points I've got is the fact that instead of you were trying to, you were struggling to have positive thinking. You went, "Nah, the best I can do is to not think negatively," which is not the same thing, but it's still productive. Yeah, I mean, it really is still the way I live my life. It's like I don't go into, when I direct a show, I don't go in thinking it's gonna be a huge hit and I'm really excited about it. In fact, I'm known for not getting excited about anything apart from Bruce Springsteen. But what I do go in is I do— I did play songs after you said that. There you go. Yeah. See, it works. That's Bruce by stealth, by the way. But no, so I go into rehearsals thinking, well, it's gonna be fine. I know a lot of people go and think, oh, is this gonna be any good? I'm worried about it. I don't worry about it because I think it's gonna be fine. And I think that's the way I thought about my cancer. Having said that, one of the reasons it's called Death and the Elephant is because, you know, I'm being quite theatrical, it allows you the opportunity to look at death, to look death square in the eye and see what that feels like. And years later, when I used to do lots of work at drama schools, and I used to do famously, they used to talk amongst each other, have you done the Rashore death workshop? He used to do a love workshop and a death workshop. Love is quite pessimistic. About does love really exist? Don't think it does. It's all fake. There's a pessimistic viewpoint. But, but Death is about if you haven't— if you're an actor and you haven't looked at what it might feel like, you haven't looked into the abyss, how can you actually— everything, everything, everything you do will be a certain level of fakeness, which acting is anyway. But there's a certain level of truth that you have to bring to it. And I think you have to look at death. And it's so, so cancer gave me the license to look at death square in the eye. And I kind of enjoyed that. And I still enjoy that. There's something kind of freeing about it as well. I remember I had this really weird dream once where I just knew I was gonna die in the dream. And for about 10 seconds before, about 10 different scenarios quickly popped up in my head as they can in dreams. And I was like going, "Oh, I wish I'd done this, this, this." And I woke up and I went, 'Whoa, why am I waiting to die to actually get these things done?' And some people who have faced— I mean, this is just the difference between the uniqueness of people. Yeah. But people who have kind of faced these things, they kind of go, 'Whoa, whoa, I was actually really close. I'm not waiting because actually it could have been last week.' And it sometimes gives you that urge to get stuff done instead of just sitting there going, 'But I've got to get the washing out.' It does, although it's very easily gone, you know. It's very— and what I think what it gives you is, is some switch to turn back on, because it's very easy to drift back into, oh, what's the point, not getting things done. So it's not just a switch to go, well, you know, time's, you know, clock's ticking. So sometimes you, you, you, when you're feeling down and you're feeling like nothing's going on, then you turn that perspective. It's a perspective switch. You turn it back on. It's a coping mechanism as well. Totally, totally. You turn it back on and therefore it's, it absolutely hasn't traveled with me every single day for the last 23 years, but it's been a switch that I've really relied on. And perspective is everything as far as I'm concerned, you know. Well, we're gonna go and hit off, gonna go and have a couple of minutes of ads, but then when we come back, I want to talk about some of the things that you dealt with during cancer, about how dealing with other people, dealing with people that you didn't like sometimes, kind of breaking the rules. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting. Oh no, prepare yourself. I will. Back in a couple of minutes. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. I'm Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte, on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie May Is Listening. 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You can contact us on 0208 658 4334 or visit our website www.brownhillgroup.co.uk for your free, no-obligation quotation. At Brown Hills, we've got you covered. Hi, I'm Hazel Butterfield, a blogger, book lover, and mental health advocate, and you can listen to my show Get Booked here at Women's Radio Station daily at 5 AM and 5 PM. Throughout my shows, we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chat to authors, publishers, and book enthusiasts, all with the theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well-being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. Hi, I'm Valentina Barbacci, and I'm the executive director of Media Matters for Women. We're a registered charity operating in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we produce and share podcasts via Bluetooth on mobile phones, focusing specifically on women and girls excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own, and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website at MediaMattersForWomen.org. You're listening to Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter at Women's Radio Station, that's Women's Radio STN, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome back to the next section of our Get Booked show. Here today we have in the studio the author of Death and the Elephant, Raz Shore. We've been chatting away, uh, and we're now going to have, um, a little bit of a chat about, um, the complexities of how you deal with people who are surrounding you and trying to support you when you have cancer and you're going through things like this? It's a very difficult thing, I think, because everyone's different. And I, when I was diagnosed, I was living in a studio flat on my own in Tufnell Park. And my nice Jewish mother, her first reaction was, "Oi, you've gotta come and move home." And I was like, "Not." in the— not until the earth ends. I love it how you were trying to think of a word that wasn't swearing. Yeah, I was trying not to swear right there. But because I could— the idea of being— not that my mother was— my mother used to pride herself on trying to be the anti-Jewish mother. She'd want to call me 10 times a day, but she wouldn't. But the idea of being smothered by that. So I stayed at home. But yeah. And so when you're in hospital or even when you're at home, people quite rightly, and actually one of the, one of the things that I've, you know, I've been blessed with since having cancer is the ability to talk to other people about how they deal with their friends getting ill, because it's a really difficult situation. A friend of mine quite recently, a friend of hers was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and she was trying to write her a note, and so what, she phoned me up in tears about, you know, what do you say? What do you say? You know, what do you say when someone's got 2 months to live? I mean, and so we just sort of went through it, and the fact is that you don't have to say anything eloquent or, you know, or groundbreaking or earth-shattering. Profound. You don't have to do anything profound. You just have to sort of say, I'm thinking of you. And that is, even though it sounds like a trite thing, that's enough. Having said that, I know what you're alluding to is in my book I talk about people coming to visit you who you don't want to be there. And there's this weird phenomenon about being ill, which is that people who you didn't want to see when you were well come and visit you when you're ill. I mean, and I'm lying there and I'm, you know, I'm on my deathbed and— Looking great, feeling great. I've got 350 mouth ulcers, I can't speak. I couldn't usually talk like that. And then random people come and you are the one who's expected to make conversation with them 'cause they're feeling uncomfortable because you've got cancer. So I should be making the effort to talk and they're, you know, sweating a bit, sweating more than I am even though I'm lying in bed with stage 4 cancer. And— Did you keep your clothes on though? At that point, although, you know, it's hard when you are used to sleeping naked in bed, sleeping in a hospital, but that's a whole nother chapter. But— Literally. Literally a whole nother chapter. But and so my mother was very good. She, she managed to find ways of sort of deterring people from coming. But in the book I talk about, you know, there's many ways. Sometimes you have to pretend to be asleep. So they come and he's like sleeping. So you hear them talking. Oh yeah, no. Oh, and he's sleeping. Oh, he doesn't look well, does he? And you literally— and so you do that thing and then you sort of open your eyes and pretend you're, "Oh yeah, hi." And they'd say, "We won't stay long. We bought these grapes." Why grapes? I don't know why grapes. I don't want grapes. Why? Anyway, that's a whole nother why grapes book, I think. That's a whole book. Bring money. Bring money. Bring really tasty food, 'cause when you've had heavy chemo, your mouth just tastes like metal. So all you want is food that are oak, in some ways override that taste anyway. So, and, and my father, you know, who I didn't have the best relationship with, um, in the best way, he tried to be supportive. And he'd sit by my bed and just go— and he wasn't the most articulate of men— and he would just go, oh, we're gonna get through this, we're gonna get through this, we're gonna get through this. I'm like, go away! And then my mother, even with my father, found a way to, you know, to gently make sure he didn't come every day. And, you know, and he was there maybe once every 2 weeks and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it's kind of crazy what, you know, and I was just telling you off air that I dedicated this book to my mother because she, when the book was about to come out, she got diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. And it was all quite ironic and all that kind of stuff. Beautifully from the brilliant publishers, even though the book hadn't come out yet. They found a way to put the book onto an iPad and she read it in the last month of her life. And she got upset by the fact that she said, oh, I must have been a terrible mother because I didn't realize you were so unhappy as a child. I was like, oh no, that's not the point of you reading it. But the interesting thing is she went into a home, a care home for the last 2 months of her life, and then she went to hospice for the last 10 days of her life. And I became the kind of doorkeeper to the people who— and they were all— Because you knew. Yeah, and they were all very well-meaning, you know, but so you would sort of say, well, you can have 2 minutes and things like that. And you felt really bad, but, you know, and in the last 3 days of her life, she was sort of completely out of it. And a couple of neighbors of her, again, very well-meaning neighbors came to visit and they were standing over her bed and they were like, well, she doesn't look well. No, no, you know, she's about to die. That'll be on the death's door. Exactly. And I would say, you know, she can hear you, you know. Oh, and so it's kind of— but it's hard. Very recently, about 2 weeks ago, an actor who I've worked with just diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer, and he's got literally less than 2 months to live, or he's fighting it, so hopefully longer than that, but they've given him, you know, between 2 months and 12 months. And it kind of— the blessing of being through all this is that I didn't feel, you know, you're always hesitant when you're phoning up someone who's he's going through that thing. But I did— it didn't stop me making a phone call because I knew that if he didn't want to talk, he would just leave it, screen the call. And, and if he wanted to talk, I didn't have to find, like we said before, these kind of eloquent things. And actually, he got married last week. It was kind of beautiful, you know. Uh, I don't think he was planning to get married, but, you know, he's not got a lot long. And, and so just He's an amazing guy who's taking every moment and making the most of every moment, but you know. It's that thing we put when staring death in the face, we suddenly start living life. Well, I know. Well, let's do it now before death. Come on. I mean. I'm going to the Lego shop after this. I'm gonna live my best life. Just live your best life in the Lego shop. I'm gonna get one of those big ass donuts as well. Oh. Have you been to Donut Time? I'm trying to resist. I've got, I need to get beach body ready for going to Korea in a couple of weeks and Donut Time is just not gonna help. Yeah, but if you just go for a really like spicy curry afterwards, they might cancel each other out. Oh yes, thanks for that image. Sorry. Goat curry donuts. That's what I'm learning on this programme. Yeah, you are welcome. It's all about opening conversations. Opening it out. It's about wellness. Unique elements in wellness. Unique wellness. We're all different people. We all have to experience wellness in different ways. Yes, sometimes you can only get well by cohorting with goats. And watching goat videos. Hey, Melissa! Hey! I still haven't seen it, but anyway, you know, that's fine. Now, I'm pretty sad I'm gonna tell you something that you— it's not gonna be a huge surprise to you. Have you ever been told you're as mad as a box of frogs? Yeah. Yeah. Now, on that same note, You did mention earlier that you had 350 ulcers. What does somebody who could possibly be categorised as mad as a box of frogs want to do when he's got 350 ulcers? I know what you're leading to. So yeah, well, you know, the thing is, like you said, it's like Lego, it's like donuts, it's like goats. You've got to experience everything in life, and if you have the chance to experience something unique because you're going through something unique? You'd be mad not to. So what is the thing? If you had, as I did, I woke up one morning literally and, uh, had 350 mouth ulcers in my mouth at the same time, at once, and they're all live, so they all feel like sharper than, you know, if you imagine sitting there with little— they're all sitting there going, you know. And what would you do? Well, you would If you were in any way sane and normal and wanted to experience life, you'd take a salt and vinegar crisp. Yeah. Wouldn't you? And you pop it in your mouth and you close your mouth that had 350 live pinging mouth ulcers and you would see what that feels like. Now, taking it back a notch, my amazingly supportive mother, the a day before, sat by my bed trying not to be the smothering Jewish mother that she didn't want to be. And she sat by my bed and she, she saw me take 2 minutes to drink tomato, 1 tablespoon of tomato soup because my mouth ulcers were so painful that I would take a tiny sip and then a bit of water and tiny sip. And she was really— she tried to pretend she was reading Hello! magazine and she was obviously reading the same paragraph about Katie Price. And it was upside down, all of it. And it was upside down and she wasn't reading. And it was kind of, that was really moving to me. And so that was the context of doing that. But the thing is, and yes, and what did it feel like? As I say in the book, it felt like oral Armageddon. But you had to do it because— I don't know, you kind of, yeah. You have to do it. You have to do it. And why not? You know, and I did it on my own. My mother would have— I don't know what she'd have done if she watched me do it. And it was horrible, and it brought water, tears to my eyes and water to my eyes. Both the things I'd say everything to any goats into my room. But, but, but yeah, so, so, you know, you have— I think you genuinely, things like that, things like cancer, if you can find a way of just looking it in its— looking it in its face and sticking one or two fingers up to it. That, that, and, and that, and, and doing that, which is mad and silly, is, is, is one way of doing it. It's a bit like saying, all right, cancer, you've— so you've given me this and you're trying to put me through hell. Do you know what? I can create my own hell. I don't need you. Well, exactly, which is why, you know, I see that and I raise you. Exactly. Why I talk about in my book about gambling and cancer going head-to-head for my attention and for my life. And do you know what, on that note— yeah, on that note, on that rather painful note, let's go off to a couple of ads. And then when we get back— sorry, when we get back, I want to kind of discuss, um, your publishing journey, which was quite unique. Yeah. 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We give practical help to get people back on track. Whether you're thinking of having a baby, trying to get out of an unhappy relationship, or just unsure what benefits you may be entitled to, we can help. Visit turn2us.org.uk. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station can give voice to your brand with a wide range of sponsorship opportunities, including individual programs. We can tailor your experience for you. For more information on how you can sponsor a show, go to womensradiostation.com. Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Welcome back to the second half of today's Get Booked show at our studio here in Coven Garden, where we are opening discussions and offering support around mental wellbeing— easy for you to say— and mental health awareness. We like to talk about books and writing and reading, and today we are talking about the book Death and the Elephant by Raz Shaw, who I've been chatting away to. Now, we have just in the break watched the video that we were referring to, the goat video. So it sounded like we were having a bit of an inside joke, but all you need to do is get over onto Twitter @NuttyButty, and I will have posted a goat video to kind of let you know what we're referring to. The spitting goat. Spitting goat. A little bit like me with 350 mouth ulcers. Yeah. Blah, blah, blah, spit, spit. Yeah, we need to find a video where goats put salt and vinegar crisps in their mouth. We can make a video. I mean, we might not be very popular with— Peter and RSPCA. Exactly. All of those. Maybe get somebody else to do it. Yes. Oh no, no, we don't encourage that. No, no, no. I'm gonna get in so much trouble. No, I'm not encouraging that. I'm not doing that. And occasionally my dog does like to kind of steal my crisps and then she realises the salt and vinegar and she's like, "Dude, what did you do with them?" Dogs aren't gonna love that, are they? No, but he's a beagle. She's selectively intelligent. So she's like, "I'd like a crisp." Sorry, I just banged the table. "I'd like a crisp." "No, you wouldn't, darling. These are chilli and these are salt and vinegar." "I would, I would." I don't like that, Chris. Told you you wouldn't. Oh, these are conversations to have with my dog. I have better conversations with my dog than I do with my kids. Oh no. And, you know, whoever else. I sometimes have a conversation, like, from my Instagram to my dog's Instagram. Guess who manages my dog's Instagram? Oh, is it you? Sure is. And I had the gall to say you were as mad as a box of dogs. Oh my goodness. Come on. Takes two to tango. I'm going to create 350 mouth ulcers just so I can have 2 crisps. Let me tell you, Hazel, you really wouldn't want to do that. No, no, no, it's not good. I don't, and I'm not going to. It's not a good look or a good feel. But I get why you did it. It's like going, I see what you're doing to me, but I raise it. I think you have to stand up to it and look it in the eye. And like I said, you know, it really did feel like my gambling addiction and my cancer were battling for my attention and therefore, you know, I'm very easily flattered and swayed. So one day it was cancer and one day it was gambling and then— They're both going, "No, pick me, pick me!" Exactly. "We love you, please be focused on us." And sitting in a casino playing blackjack is an extraordinary escape from cancer, even and especially horribly when you're losing. Because you feel so awful about losing that you forget how ridiculously awful the cancer you're going through is. Now I don't, as I say in the book, you know, disclaimer, I don't encourage you to get any kind of addiction if you get diagnosed with cancer, but actually what an addiction is, is about is about filling the void of time. It's a distraction. It's a proper distraction. And, and, and I'm always talking about that thing about, about time being the thing that, you know, that any addiction is trying— which is why, you know, obviously people— there's a reason people smuggle drugs into prison is to escape. It's to escape for that period of time. Now, I don't— I don't, you know, again, I don't condone that, but I understand it. I understand why. And so, so being lost in this void of addiction in a horrible way and also in a kind of weirdly perversely brilliant way was an escape from this life-threatening illness I was going through. And when you got the all clear and you went off on a bit of a bender for 3 weeks and then eventually you, it was just like a thunderbolt and you stopped in the last, I think we said it was 23, 22, 23 years. 23 years, yeah. You have you gambled even like once? Have you? No. I mean, interesting that I did a show about gambling at the Royal Court Theatre and at Soho Theatre. And one of the things we did is we went to a residential rehab clinic for, for gambling addicts. And I mean, they told us incredible stories about how one of them faked his own kidnapping so that his parents would pay the ransom. Someone else— There's been like a million movies. Exactly. It is true. And someone else waited till his parents were away and then sold literally every single piece of furniture in the whole house. All that. I mean, it's awful. But for me, no. And to actually— the point I was trying to make is that I do actually do the lottery. Weirdly, I do. And someone in that meeting said that, oh, well, the lottery is addiction. And I think it is to some people. But for me, but I think that a gambling addict always thinks they're going to win. That's why I talk about in the story in the book, the last time I ever properly gambled, I was in a betting shop and there was someone next to me on the same dog as me in a dog race, and I had £500 on it and we were both going crazy. And I thought he must have had the similar amount on it. And the dog lost it, just lost. And he had 50p. Yep. Because he thought his 50p was going to take him back to the millions and millions that he'd lost. And so a gambling addict always thinks they're gonna win, whereas when I play the lottery, I literally don't think I'm gonna win. I quite like to win, but I just play it as it's a tiny— and I don't advocate it, and in the same way as I don't think that an alcoholic— most alcoholics shouldn't drink even one glass of wine. But for me, it's, it's a very different thing. But that's me just being honest. But in terms of all the other gambling, I haven't gambled for 2 years. No, no, no. Well, like when your mates are like, you're sitting out in a pub somewhere and someone goes, um, oh my God, I bet you if he gives that line, like, who's in, who's in, a fiver, get him to go and speak to that girl. Would you get involved? And then, and, and actually all my friends from the beginning have been really good about things like that. You just forget about these things. It's just a natural conversation. Exactly. And I say, well, I don't bet. And so anything that is, is the sort of But interestingly, I can get excited vicariously. I don't have any urges to gamble. I don't have any— I used to not be able to walk past a betting shop without— but I can go into a casino. When we were doing this show, I would go into casinos for research, and I'm fascinated. I don't have any urges. And in fact, when we were researching at the Royal Court, I went to the finance department and I said, I said, can you give me £300? Because none of my actors have ever properly gambled before. And they were like, oh, I thought the point was that you don't gamble anymore. I said, no, I won't be gambling. So I gave her around £50 and we went into a betting shop and they weren't— a couple of people were quite excited about it. Most people weren't. And I was really excited because I was gambling vicariously, but I wasn't gambling. And so it's a kind of thing where the urge is stopped. Completely stopped, but the interest hasn't stopped, and the understanding about the adrenaline behind it hasn't stopped. And so actually, at one point, kind of not that long ago, maybe 10 years ago or something, maybe a bit longer, when online gambling first came along— I never did any online gambling with real money, but I got slightly addicted to doing— playing poker, which I'd never done, with fake money, right? Pretend money online. And you used to have these accounts where you'd get £1,000 fake money. And because I used to run out really quickly, I had like 15 accounts so I could get some more money. And that was kind of weird because I wasn't gambling, because I wasn't gambling with any money, but I was recreating for that moment those— that adrenaline. And I stopped after a while because it felt a bit scary to me. Uh, so that was the closest I've ever come. Do you not think, I mean, that you were quite lucky to have a gambling addiction back in the day when there weren't apps online. Oh my goodness. No money. Oh my goodness. At least when you see that £50 leave in your hand, you kind of go, ah, but you— there's nothing seen. I don't know how people do it. I mean, I, I, I, I literally, if I was a gambler those days, because in those days you had to— you couldn't start gambling until 11 AM at a betting shop, and you had to stop gambling at 4 AM at the casino. Now casinos are 24 hours. But online. So I would not have had a life. I would have— I don't know what would have happened. I genuinely don't know what would have happened because you just sit, and I probably would never have gone to casino and just sat indoor. I don't know, it really scares me, and I'm very grateful that that never, you know, that wasn't available for me at the time, you know. And it's, it's kind of scary. Do you know what though, actually, just going back a little bit to what you said about understanding the adrenaline that you, you acquired from the whole process. There's something about understanding your addiction that helps you not necessarily want to do it as much. A complete and utter understanding. If you know that you're drinking to forget so-and-so and so-and-so, and you completely understand that, I think sometimes that helps you process the beginnings of coming out of it. Yeah, the beginnings of getting, you know, and that's why That's why, um, you know, anything that helps— therapy that helps, uh, you know, AA that helps, GA that helps— anything that helps you understand the underlying— because I always talk about addiction about being, um, you having an empty hole inside you, H-O-L-E, uh, that you're trying to fill. You're desperately trying to fill, and you just, you know, you just find your addiction of choice. And funnily enough, when we were doing the gambling show We came across so many examples of people who— there was a woman in her 60s who'd never gambled and she was just about to retire. And someone took her to a casino in her late 60s and she suddenly got addicted. She found this thing that fueled her adrenaline. And then 6 months later she embezzled money from her company. A year later she was in jail at the age of nearly 70. And then she came out a few years later and became this anti-gambling campaigner. She discovered this thing that was adrenaline, you know, and it's really scary. And I think everyone is trying, you know, that's what addiction is, whether it's gambling addiction or alcohol addiction or sex addiction or whatever. It's finding that thing that will fill you up and make you feel— Or forget. Or forget. Yeah. It's one or the other. It's totally about forgetting and it's totally about making time go really quickly because you're living in a nightmare that you want to escape from and you want to forget. And so, you know, which is why I think you can— addicts do sort of go from one addiction to the other because they think they've solved that one. But, but, but, but, you know, and I could, I could talk about for a long time about the things that I think I transferred addiction-wise. One is my job. But if you find, if you can be addicted to your job, which is again another positive, it's just a way of channeling whatever you need. Now we just come to the end of this section. We're going to be back with our final section very soon. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. I'm Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte. On Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie May Is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Falguni Desai of Action Coach. Are you a business owner with more than 5 employees? Do you want to grow your business? I'm a London-based business coach who helps small and medium-sized businesses to grow and make a profit. I will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses in your business and then work with you to improve it using a structured framework. To find out more, contact me on 07721 654640 and book your 1-hour complimentary 1-to-1 coaching session. 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Hi, I'm Valentina Barbacci, and I'm the Executive Director of Media Matters for Women. We're a registered charity operating in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we produce and share podcasts via Bluetooth on mobile phones, focusing specifically on women and girls excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own, and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website at mediamattersforwomen.org. You're listening to Women's Radio Stations supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Stations creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter at Women's Radio Station, that's Women's Radio STN, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Hi, I'm Hazel, and welcome back to the the final section of today's Get Booked show. I've been joined by Raz Shore, talking about his book Death and the Elephant. It's not that easy for me to say. Well, it's not, it's not. Just been chatting away. Yeah, I had so many questions, and I think— I mean, you just go, I have to come back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've covered like 2 chapters. I've only watched the goat video and the sneezing panda video, so there's plenty more of those to watch when I come I feel like we need to make sure that, you know, upon— I'll put the videos up on the Get Booked WRS on Instagram. And yeah, yeah, we'll get it all over there so you can kind of follow our journey and feel what we've been going through. Yeah, pandas, sneezing elephants, donuts, and spitting goats. And, and yeah, and we've also been talking about the fact that the Lego shop is 2 minutes away. Oh my goodness, I couldn't be less excited— I mean, more excited. Yeah. Oh, wow. Would you— this is your playground, right? You're a theatre director. Oh, yes. Theatre. What's it called? Theatre. West End. Yeah. Around here. Yeah. You do it around here, innit? It's all like that. I do it everywhere. Yeah. Anywhere. Anywhere and everywhere. You do. You do. Are you doing the Fringe? No. I did a show last year with the great Julie Heismanthaus, a one-woman show at the Traverse. She's brilliant. She's brilliant. Which won lots of awards, which is coming to London at the end of this year. Okay. And I did a show at the Royal Exchange at Christmas. The Producers, which again looks like touch for Micah, is coming to London at the end of this year as well. Brilliant. So, you know, what's going on? Keep you busy. Keep you out of trouble. Yeah. Keep me out of sitting at home watching goat videos. And yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's like, you know, what is somebody who is an ex-addict who is a bit bonkers? What's the best thing for him to do? Theatre, darling. Oh, darling, theatre. Yes. Well, unfortunately, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's like being a vicar. It's a vocation and you don't earn a lot of money, but— and you don't have any choice in it. And, you know, and it drives you mad and you have your own congregation. I like this analogy. You have your own congregation. Just off the top of your head. It's really good. And sometimes, sometimes the congregation needs slim, and sometimes if you've got something sexy to offer, the congregation gets bigger. But it's not a job for a normal person, you know, and it's not a job, you know, that is actually in a serious way, it's quite hard for your— it's quite a hard job to keep your, you know, your well-being, your mental well-being intact in this job because you're always being knocked back and you're always being said no to. And I support any young people, and there's a lot of amazing young practitioners now, and amazingly, a lot of brilliant young women who are starting to really take over the London and regional theatre scene. And I'm here to support them because it's not an easy job. Do you know what? I've got a lot of actresses and, do you know what, bloggers, Instagram influencers, it's all kind of grouped in together. Yeah. And they're all focusing on mental health awareness and wellbeing just because of what they've experienced in putting themselves out there. Totally. You put yourself out there, you make yourself vulnerable. I've just done that in a big job application that I just made that I didn't get, and you put yourself out there and— Who turned you down? Name and shame them. Oh my God, I can't, I can't. But, you know, and I'm 51 years old, but it doesn't feel any less awful. You know, I think what happens when you're older is you can pick yourself up much quicker. But for the 3 or 4 days after we didn't get that job, it felt pretty awful. And, and, you know, and I, I hid myself away because I, you know, I couldn't— I didn't want to see anybody. I didn't want to talk to anybody. So it never ends. You just learn different coping mechanisms. That's why, as a, as a mentor of young, especially young directors and I feel that's a really important job to, to be part of being there for their, you know, their mental health and their well-being. Because however, especially when you're successful when you're young, there's a crash somewhere and you've got, you know, and it comes so quick as well. It does. It does. But it's amazing. I'm really excited about the theater world at the moment because it is genuinely amazing how, how diverse it is, how many young women, how many people of color are really just caning it in the industry. And that's— It's been embraced. Definitely the variety out there. Do you remember like 20 years ago when you could pretty much look in The Guardian or The Times and it was the same shows? Totally. Oxbridge white men, you know, doing shows and it's changing and it's changing rapidly. And as a 51-year-old non-Oxbridge white man, I think it's amazing. I don't feel threatened by it. I feel excited by it. And there's people helping to open opportunities as well. And it is brilliant. Actually, talking of opening opportunities, I just wanna quickly touch on this 'cause I think it's quite interesting. I didn't actually know about this until I read your book. Unbound. Unbound. Unbound are amazing. So what, so the journey of my book is that when I did the first draft, I sent it to a few agents and a really big agent picked it up and said, "Oh, I love this book." And he said, "We're gonna sell it." And he went round to quite a few really big publishers and other smaller but quite renowned publishers and they all said, They said the same thing. They said, we love this book, it's great, but it's about cancer, he's not famous, so we're not gonna be able to sell it. And then someone told me about Unbound, and actually my friend Lucy-Anne Holmes, who, she started the No More Page 3 campaign, and to give her a plug, her book about sex is called Don't Hold My Head Down, has just been published by Unbound. It's an amazing book. Oh, connect us, get her to come on the show, it'd be brilliant. You would love her, and she's brilliant. She introduced me, and basically Unbound are proper publishers with amazing people in it, but they, they just do it in a different way. So they crowdfund. So, so you, so you go on their website, you make a video, you, and like any sort of crowdfunding, you have, you know, £500, you get, you know, a pub party and this and that. But actually, at the bottom line, for £20, you get the book. And so it's a kind of pre-ordering. It's a very clever system. But they get their name mentioned in it as well. They get their name in the book and you become— and what's amazing about it is because the publishers these days, you know, most books don't make money. So what they're taking away is the risk of that first £15,000 to £20,000 to get the book to market. And so what that means is they're able to take risks on books books that other publishers shy away from. And I think— and they've grown and they've really— they've become really influential in the publishing world because of their model and because they produce proper books. It's not self-publishing. People say, oh, self-publishing. It's absolutely a proper publisher with a just different model of funding. And it's extraordinary. And I just think they're— anyone who's looking to find a way to— and they vet books. So they don't just say yes to anything. So they have to be— it's got to be a good premise. It's got a good premise and they invest in it. But at the end of the day, they're much more prepared to take risks on really interesting books that other people have said no to. And, you know, Lucy's book is a prime example. It's a— she wrote lots of great chick-lit books and she started the No More Page 3 campaign. And she wanted to write this book about— I can't say the word, but about effing and about sex, you know, and everyone said, well, no, and then Unbound said yes, and it's doing really well. It came out last month and it's an amazing thing. So I would say Unbound are, you know, the future really. And it's unbound.com. It's thinking outside the box, it's finding different ways, and as you say, if you are famous, you can do anything. You can release a video, you can start a YouTube channel or start open an Instagram page and within hours, you know, you've got followers and people that are wanting to get on board just because you're famous and they're gonna do it. Whereas, you know, it takes people ages to get followers. And I mean, look at the book, look how many books have been published by Katie Price. Exactly. I think she's a brilliant businesswoman, but I'm not gonna read any of her books. And obviously the question beyond that is how many books have been published by Katie Katie Price, however, 50,000, how many were written by Katie Price? Oh, I think she has said that in an interview. Zero. They're like, I love this page. Yeah, but I didn't write it. Yeah. And that's fine because there's a market for that. Yeah. But actually, you know, as what Unbound and other publishers and similar to that do is they allow the market for books that people have shied away from. And it's been amazing. And, you know, I'm really proud of, A, the way the book looks because it's been really well designed. It's been— I had amazing editor, I had an amazing copy editor, and so it's proper and it's properly professional and it's, you know, and it's just changing the face of publishing, I think. And you can find out a little bit more about the book as well on razzshaw.com. Yes. Now we are coming to the end of this interview, but there's like, we've just been gassing away and there's at least a few questions that I need to get in there. We're gonna have to like shoot through them. Quick fire, let's do it. Right, okay. Do you have any books that you love at the moment? Well, you've just said, yeah. Well, no, yeah. Did you read it? I love Lucy's book. Rachel Bland, who sadly just died, who's part of You, Me and the Big C podcast. Right, of course. I haven't read her book, but she wrote a book to her son Freddie so that he could read it, you know, and she was writing it when she died. That's very nice of her. And, you know, and it's just, I just need to wait until I read that. And the book I'm really enjoying right now has nothing to do with cancer and nothing to do with anything. It's about the making of Spider-Man the musical on Broadway and how it was a $75 million flop. And it's an amazing book. Oh, wow. It's written by the guy who wrote the book. What Not to Do. Yeah. And 3 tips on mental health, mental wellbeing. Oh my goodness, 3 tips in less than a minute. I don't know about 3 tips, but I think, you know, I think it's just about, it's just about taking time to breathe. And I always talk about addiction about being something where you don't, you don't think about breathing. And just, you have to take pause, you have to pause and breathe. And it's about perspective, that's 2. It's about, well, cancer gives you perspective, but look at, just find your own perspective. 2 and a half. Yeah, I don't know what the other half is, but understanding yourself— what you were saying about your addiction, it helps. It helps. Yeah, I mean, therapy. I, I say therapy, therapy, therapy, therapy for everyone. It's amazing. It's amazing. I've got counseling tomorrow. I love it. Exactly. And it's not, it's not a dirty word. It's not a stigma. So, you know, it's just about, you know, understanding yourself more. Yeah. And even my— the sort of conversations I've had with my dog have helped as well. She's a great counselor. Um, it's been an absolute pleasure having you here this evening. It's not been long enough. It hasn't. Thank you, Raz. I've, I've been Hazel Butterfield. This is Get Booked. Join us next week. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity, from opinions, career, ethnicity, education, and most importantly, women's well-being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website womensradiostation.com for more information. Hi, I'm Liz Van Linden, a UK travel consultant for Hazelmere Travel. People come to me as they want unique experiences and a personalized service. This happens from the moment that they inquire till they come back home. 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