the times | Monday April 4 2022 7life
GEOFF PUGH/SHUTTERSTOCK
of all those treatments has been
collected in a new book called Be
Yourself and Happier: The A-Z of
Wellbeing. “My little black book of
treatments is the envy of all my
friends,” he says, twinkling.
Young grew up in a solidly middle-
class family with two siblings, an older
sister Emma and twin brother Rupert.
He refers to Rupert’s struggle with
mental health and alcohol addiction
several times in his book. “If my
brother isn’t settled then I can’t be
settled,’ ” he writes. However, Rupert
took his life in 2020. That must have
been devastating.
“Of course, addiction is a terrible
thing and people can be very
judgmental about it,” he says. “But as
I say in my podcast, when you look
at the pain in someone’s life, there
is little wonder when they turn to
self-medication whether that be
alcohol, drugs, sex, even shopping.”
Both boys attended Horris Hill prep
school near Newbury, Berkshire, in
the late 1980s. Tatler describes it as
“All-boys heaven’’ but Young says,
back then, as a boarder, he felt
abandoned. And then there was
sexual humiliation and violence.
“Teachers would look at our penises
in the bath,” he says. “And I saw
children thrown against radiators.
Once, my brother was pinned by
his neck against a shelf. It was a
horrible environment.”
He intends to make a documentary
about it. One of the lingering
questions for him is: all these years
later, where does he focus his anger?
“Where does the responsibility lie? I
mean, it’s run by different people now.
Could I sue them? I think I would like
a public apology at the very least. My
parents scrimped and saved to send us
there and they had no idea what was
going on. I think my mother would
like to destroy those teachers if she
could. I had to do a lot of work to get
through that trauma.”
His book won’t be for everyone.
There are interesting sections on
“breathing” and “boundaries”, but
when it comes to dealing with slights
and managing micro-aggressions,
wellbeing looks like hard work.
For example, Young offers a “conflict
resolution” strategy for the following
scenario: you go out for a meal with
your partner and you are very hungry
so you order an extra portion of
potatoes. As you place the order, your
partner laughs. Are they “shaming”
your appetite? You have to travel all
the way home and discuss the incident
in an appropriate setting to find out.
And he has fought some intense
battles over the usage of correct
pronouns. One night when he was
appearing in Cabaret Young felt
“scared and disrespected” by the
amount of noise backstage. He told a
member of the crew to be quiet. She in
turn was “triggered” by being told off.
She felt Young had not intervened “in
the proper way” and complained to
him on behalf of herself “and others”.
Young stopped her in her tracks.
He said you cannot use the term
“and others” if they are not present.
“It was great!” he enthuses. “I loved it!
Because just by changing the language
I didn’t have to get embroiled in
her stress.”I made
a fool of
Simon
Cowell.
I hate
bullies
Sometimes he does seem to be
extraordinarily sensitive. When I read
he’d been triggered by a box of Belgian
chocolates because he was still bruised
after a break-up with a lover from
Belgium, I did wonder, can one be
too in touch with one’s feelings?
“Oh, of course. Sometimes it all feels
very American when you’re having
endless discussions about pronouns,”
he concedes. “There is a fine line
between unpacking valid feelings
and just being a dick.”
In the accompanying podcast The
WellBeing Lab, Young hits upon a very
resonant idea. “Western society is set
up so that we avoid experiencing any
pain,” he asserts. We are all shopping,
scrolling, drinking or eating too much
as a way of displacing our deeper,
more uncomfortable feelings.
But couldn’t it be that heightened
emotional literacy is a problem too?
These days we expect our “pain” to be
immediately explored and validated.
We are talking on the day the
possibility of a Third World War
breaking out is being openly discussed.
Any savvy dictator would surely cite
shame over potatoes as evidence of the
decadent, self-involvement of the West.
“That thing with the potatoes never
actually happened,” Young says. “But
of course, you choose your battles.”
Young is sitting in his sunlit dining
room in south London. Unshaven
in a hoodie, he’s smoking a fag andscraping Maltesers from a box; I
think he looks a bit tired. Recently
he has started suffering from severe
migraines. This morning he went for
an MRI scan.
“Again, the MRI was partly because
I just love the attention,” he says,
laughing. “It’s liberating when you
can admit certain things to yourself. I
don’t think there is actually anything
seriously wrong with me.”
He loves attention — fair enough —
but not just any kind. He has ditched
certain influencers on social media
who made him feel bad about himself.
“Now I only follow puppies and
flowers and designers,” he says.
And he has also auctioned off
his two Brit awards (he won best
breakthrough act in 2003 and best
single in 2005) because they brought
back bad memories, and gave the
money to a dogs’ home. “I hated the
Brits. It makes me sick to think of
going to it. I got no sense of love there.
Just fake people saying, ‘You’re so
great.’ F*** off. Who needs that?”
However, he has kept hold of his
awards from TV shows such as Top
of the Pops and CD:UK. “Top of the
Pops meant a lot to me. And CD:UK.
I always wanted to go on those shows
as a kid.”
With a greatest hits album coming
out this year, he has been doing a lot
of taking stock. Does he regret being
a Pop Idol contestant too? “Oh no, I’mproud of that. I am one of the few
who had a proper career and if I ever
doubt myself I just think about that.”
After Cowell described one of
Young’s Pop Idol performances as
“distinctly average”, Young is famous
for having taken him to task. “There
is no way you could ever call that
average,” he said at the time.
He is still proud of that too.
“Yes, because I hate bullies. I’m
glad I made a fool of him. I wanted to
show the other contestants we could
stand up to this white, privileged,
wealthy prick who could decide what
exactly? Whether we got to record a
single with [the children’s characters]
Zig and Zag?”
Even though Young was one of the
few talent show alumni to enjoy a long
career, he is now ready to give it all
up. “No one likes an ageing pop star,”
he says. “I don’t really want to work
any more, I want to retire. It’s always
refreshing to ask yourself, ‘Why am I
doing this?’ The fact is I want to live in
the sun, maybe the south of France [he
speaks French], with some animals. I
don’t need much to get by really.”
That is progress. In his podcast
Young discusses his shopping
addiction. Specifically, buying vacuum
cleaners. “Oh, I know the hit you get
from buying something new and the
shame that comes afterwards. But you
do the work on yourself and you know
most shopping is bollocks.”
So, he doesn’t need much money.
What’s stopping him? “There are a
few more things I want to do. Some
theatre. Another album. But by the
time I’m 50 I’ll stop.”
His proposed French idyll sounds
lovely. With all these therapies and
treatments, plus some animals, he
could open the ultimate wellbeing
centre, I suggest.
“Oh, no, I really don’t want other
people around,” he says. “That would
be a nightmare. I’ve made a
‘joy list’: I want to learn dry stone
walling, I want sunshine, and maybe
a partner, but I’m unsure about that.
“The main thing that makes me
happy is helping others. That is what
has meaning for me.”Will Young. Right:
with Gareth Gates
on the 2001-02 series
of Pop IdolDavid Attenborough of trauma’
The WellBeing Lab
podcast is out now and
Young’s new book Be
Yourself and Happier:
The A-Z of Wellbeing is
published by Ebury on
April 21 at £14.99