Did you find it cathartic?

Because I wrote it in first person, which I didn't realize I was doing.

So, you know, like I'm sat here with Michelle rather than I was sat with Michelle.

So I wanted the reader to be sat with me all the way through it.

So anything negative or anything dark or anything maybe not quite right is for the reader to decide.

I'm just telling it as it happens and my emotions at the time.

So I did kind of relive that stuff, stuff that I'd forgot.

Okay.

I think you should have one name."

Oh, I see.

Right.

So that's the manager when I meet him for when I'm 16 years old and I, I, I bump into this well-known manager in a m- nightclub in Manchester.

The, the first nightclub that I actually get in in my life, and he's there.

And anyway, long story short, I, I, I take him my demo tape that week, and I thought he was gonna say, "Do you wanna be in a boy band?" You know, "Do you, do you want to audition for my next boy band?" And he said, "No, no, no." He said, "I want you to be a solo artist, and we're gonna change your name," he said, "because Anthony Kavanagh is too long-winded.

So we're gonna take Kavanagh, but we're gonna drop the G-H.

If you had to think ahead of what the next chapter might be about, what would be the hope?

are and here we are i've warned you how i always start every episode that is for you to pick any rock bottom moment of your choosing but after that we'll get into the joy the hope and the light yeah the recovery

one in particular I remember was actually right before my first rehab um when I was homeless on paper I was staying at my last room of the inn a friend um and um I just turned up there with my literally smash it's award a suitcase I mean it was you know it was kind of sad but again quite weirdly funny at the same time but you know that they were very kind of stayed with them for a while but after a bit you know friends can only they see also that they might not be helping and i was kind of unhappy there as well towards the end and it was it just anyway i i left there and i had nowhere to go and i needed to keep drinking you know the rule was you can't stay here if you're I literally had nowhere to go.

This was like the beginning of the proper homelessness.

And I somehow ended up in the middle of this town centre.

It was somewhere up north.

And I had my suitcase.

I'd left the Smash Hits Award, but I had this suitcase with stuff in it, passport.

yeah

Yeah, to

feel something.

And I think I didn't feel something for so long.

I know I didn't because I was, you know, I was in, for want of a better word, addiction.

I was very lost.

This is an addiction memoir as well.

You know, I mean...

because let me tell you something right now.

Quite the change.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, well, I've, I've just come back from Manchester and, um, 'cause, you know, my mum was there, um, which we might talk about a bit later.

But, um, I just wa- I walked past that very McDonald's, it's on Oxford, Oxford Road, and I thought, "Blimey," like, you know, I remember, I remember working there.

I'd just left school.

I didn't have many qualifications.

I was dreaming of be- being a pop singer, to be honest.

So they were all kind of building you up and kind of waiting for the perfect time to, to launch you, and then ultimately it happened and, and what was that like for you?