Tony Parsons on Life, Death and Breakfast

Tony Parsons on Life, Death and Breakfast
Tony Parsons

SPECIAL PRICE FOR A LIMITED TIMEThe bestselling author of MAN AND BOY turns his acute eye and pen to the biggest personal issues that face us – as well as the annoying grit in the eye of everyday life.'If a young lover breaks your heart, or if you fall off your Harley, if you make a fool of yourself, well, that is what men do, and what we have always done. That is not a mid-life crisis. It's just the latest in a long line of cock-ups.'Tony Parsons shows us why, as well as being a bestselling novelist, he's also one of the Britain's most popular journalists.This is modern life for men – explained. What the hell goes on in their heads, hearts and trousers, and why? It's about the sound of real guns and the feel of fake breasts. What to do when gobby yobs strike and you've got the kids in tow. About junk sex and performance anxiety; and how cars and football both went wrong.

tony parsons

on life, death and breakfast

For Dylan JonesFrom the Roxy to eternity

Table of Contents

Introduction (#u403355eb-3df3-54f7-a1ee-f6d729fb7e0c)

One The Mid-Life Myth (#u5d022eca-a61b-5d17-9f58-9945ffe20f36)

Two When Yobs Swear (#ue825d4e8-9cf7-596d-a939-8dec27e18fdd)

Three Dying Parents (#ub07a21e9-8b5d-5c23-a973-7c9b5f135c6a)

Four Angry Old Man (#udf272e75-9940-543e-9aba-b7ee2045be05)

Five Fear of Fake Breasts (#u90e35023-0365-5a5a-b6a4-d88944d61ab6)

Six Humiliation (#uff1d1193-53d3-58be-b567-6b40405d8b1d)

Seven Tough Guys Get Facials (#u4d06c62a-4ce7-58b7-87aa-96169666f262)

Eight You Only Wed Twice (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine Getting Tested (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten A Complicated Young God (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven The Gunfire Next Door (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve Performance Anxiety (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirteen Love Handles, Actually (#litres_trial_promo)

Fourteen Man and Boy Racer (#litres_trial_promo)

Fifteen Junk Sex (#litres_trial_promo)

Sixteen Tough Girls (#litres_trial_promo)

Seventeen A Bigger Cock Than That (#litres_trial_promo)

Eighteen Faulty Modern Men (#litres_trial_promo)

Nineteen Get Fit with Fred (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty Gentlemen, Please (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-One How to Be Happy (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Two New Man, Old Lad (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Three Fever Bitch (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Four Double Standards Now (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Five Fake Breasts Don’t Bounce Back (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Six The Secret of My Failure (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Seven Why Men Stray, Why Men Stay (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Eight The Formerly Young (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Nine Big World, Small Society (#litres_trial_promo)

By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Introduction (#ulink_deae4fc1-ce08-5c6a-867f-3eb5a76da5fd)

When I was a washed-up music journalist, wondering what to do with the rest of my twenties, not to mention my life, the telephone rang.

It was a friend on a women’s magazine. She wanted to know if I would write something for them. One thousand words on ‘Commitment’. The man’s view. Sure, I said, before she had a chance to change her mind. I was desperate for work, and the red bills were piling up.

And that phone call saved my life.

Because when I sat down to write about commitment for my mate on the women’s magazine, I discovered my subject.

Sex. Romance. Fathers. Sons. Men and women-especially that-how we struggle to find love, and what we do with it when we find it.

The great game that never ends.

My subject had been music, but that had gone by the time I was twenty-five. The musicians I had known, and loved, and written about, had all moved on. Some of them were trying to crack America. Some of them were dead. Some of them were trying to hold on to their sanity. But nobody was where they had been any more.

I had joined the NME at twenty-two and it was what I did instead of university or National Service. I went in as a boy and I emerged as a man. Or, if not exactly a man, then at least a boy who had taken lots of drugs and met Debbie Harry. But it was never meant to last forever, and it didn’t. By twenty-five I was out of a job, and penniless, and a father. By twenty-nine I was out of a job, and out of a marriage, and penniless, and a single dad.

So whatever way you looked at it, things were definitely going downhill.

I had dropped out of school at sixteen with wild, impractical dreams of being a writer. After years of low-paid jobs that ended with the night shift at Gordon’s gin distillery, I landed that job on the NME. They hired me because I had published a novel called The Kids-exactly the kind of callow, feverish rubbish that usually remains mercifully locked in some teenager’s bottom drawer-and, far more importantly, I looked quite good in a cheap leather jacket.