Will Self - Career

Career

After graduating from Oxford, Self worked for the Greater London Council, including a period as a road sweeper, whilst living in Brixton. He then pursued a career as a cartoonist for the New Statesman and other publications and as a stand-up comedian. He moved to the Gloucester Road, London area around 1985. In 1986 he entered a treatment center in Weston-super-Mare, where he claims that his heroin addiction was cured. He then "through a series of accidents" ended up running a small publishing company.

The publication of his short story collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity brought him to public attention in 1991. Self was immediately hailed as an original new talent by Salman Rushdie, Doris Lessing, Beryl Bainbridge, A. S. Byatt, and Bill Buford. In 1993 he was nominated by Granta magazine as one of the 20 "Best Young British Novelists". Conversely, Self's second book, My Idea of Fun was "mauled" by the critics.

He gained some notoriety in 1997 when he was sent by the broadsheet The Observer to cover the election campaign of John Major and was caught by a rival journalist using heroin on the Prime Minister's jet, and was fired as a result. At the time, he argued "I'm a hack who gets hired because I do drugs". Suzanne Moore commented:

If Will Self were a "proper" journalist he would have downed a bottle of Scotch, nodded off, and garnered his quotes from the Media Party machinery just like everyone else. His innocence is rather touching. Maybe he even thought there might be a real story and something might happen. And now there is and it is him.

Self has stated that he has abstained from drugs, except for caffeine and nicotine, since 1998.

He has made many appearances on British television, especially as a panellist on Have I Got News for You and as a regular on Shooting Stars. Since 2008 Self has appeared five times on Question Time.

Since 2009 Self has written two alternating fortnightly columns for the New Statesman. The Madness of Crowds explores social phenomena and group behaviour, and in Real Meals he visits "ordinary" high street food outlets.

In 2012, Self was appointed Professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University. In July 2012, Self received his first Man Booker Prize longlist nomination for Umbrella, which The Daily Telegraph described as "possibly Self's most ambitious novel to date". The book was later placed on the prize shortlist.