How We Lived In The Noughties

The relentless grind of my twenties seemed exciting at the time - but it almost killed me

In January 2003, non-league Farnborough Town played Arsenal, the Premier League Champions, in the thrid round of the FA Cup at their tiny stadium in Hampshire. I was working as a Channel 5 news reporter for ITN at the time and had been dispatched to Farnborough the day before the game to do a story about it.

I had never intended to work as a bloke on the evening news, standing somewhere cold and rainy, talking bollocks into a handheld microphone. But that’s what I had found myself doing in my mid twenties. I’d landed a job the year before as host of my own weekly youth culture show but it had been cancelled after 12 months and I would have been jobless had I not accepted the channel’s offer to continue to work for them on the daily news bulletins.

It felt a bit more grown up than sitting in a studio interviewing pop stars in my jeans and trainers, which is what I had been doing. Suddenly, I was wearing a suit and tie and having to work long shifts every day.

I’d get up in the morning and head into the studios at Grays Inn Road, where I would scour the papers for stories to pitch in the morning meeting. If I was lucky, I’d get to nip round the corner to Westmintser and interview a politician or cover a protest. If I was less lucky, I would have to jump in a van with a grumpy cameraman and dash off to somwhere in the provinces to cover something ‘quirky’ (like the bloke who was still driving around in a Sinclair C5 twenty years after they’d been discontinued') or something plain boring (like the summer’s day I was sent to Brighton to cover the fact that it was particularly hot. I had to put together two three minute reports on that story, plus conduct a live ‘two way’ conversation with the anchor, Kirsty Young, who was back in the studio. “What’s happening Sam?” “Well Kirsty, it’s boiling hot…”).

It was interesting work that got me out and about, paid okay and taught me how to put together compelling stories very quickly on the fly. Until I’d started in TV, I’d been working on monthly magazines which allowed you to fuck about and get drunk for three quarters of the month before squeezing all the work into the final week. The world of news reporting was rather more demanding.

I did well enough to eventually earn a contract and the strange title ‘Anti War Correspondent’ in the build up to the allied invasion of Iraq. It was my job to cover the huge anti-war campaign that erupted in the UK, with a sort of detatched curiosity.

I spent time on marches, interviewing activists and sometimes being shouted at by militant peaceniks who considered all journalists to be puppets of the military industrial complex. I mostly had the utmost respect for all of the determined and passionate protesters I came across but I also had to tell a few hippies to ‘fuck off’ along the way.

Anyway, back to Farnborough. I interviewed some fans and employees of the club, knocked out the edit int he back of the camera van then beamed it back to HQ via the massive satellite dish that sat on the vehicle’s roof. These were wild times, before you could send that stuff around the world in seconds using wifi.

By the time I got back to London, it was eightish. I was coming off the back of an eleven day run of 12 hour shifts. I was freelancing on the side too, writing about music for the Guardian and the NME. I interviewed your fella from LCD Soundsystem over dinner in Brooklyn and lunched with the boys from Air in Paris. I got drunk with all sorts of forgotten indie bands in London. I spent a thrilling day eating pizza and talking bollocks with Girls Aloud at some point or another.

It was a fun time where I was saying ‘yes’ to anything and everything that came my way. I was doing it for three reasons: firstly, I was hyper-aware of how brilliant this sort of work was and how lucky I was to get the chance to do it. Who was I to turn anything down? Secondly, the money was decent. Not enough to make me rich but I was young, freelance and renting an expensive flat in Notting Hill with my girlfriend so I need every bit of dough I could lay my hands on. Then, as now, I assumed that every bit of work I got offered would be my last - I was never confident enough to turn stuff down. Which brings me to my third reason: I did all of this work because I didn’t countenance the idea of ever being exhausted. I thought I could do anything. I just thought it was normal to work ceaselessly without any concern for my own welfare. It’s what everyone else seemed to do. My family and my friends and everyone else I could see around me: everyone just worked, worked, worked - only ever stopping to get pissed.

It was relentless: a completely insane regimen of graft that stretched the body and mind to breaking point. We all held ourselves together with alcohol and drugs to numb out the sense of dread, overwhelm and anxiety that hovered menacingly in the background. I am knackered just thinking about it.

When I got back from Farnborough I met my girlfriend at a mate’s birthday party in a bar in west London. I had four or five bottles of lager then announced myself too tired to carry on and got a cab back home. Once there, I took two paracetamol, some antibiotics I’d been prescribed for the sore throat that had been haunting me for months - and then I threw up in the sink. Next, I staggered into the bedroom, collapsed on the floor and had a violent epileptic seizure. Coming round, piss all over my jimmy jams, my girlfriend explained what had happened and suggested I went to bed, which I did. But five minutes later, I had a second fit, even more violent than the last. An ambulance was called; I had a thrid seizure on the way to hospital and then a fourth while lying on a gurney in A&E.

I stayed in that hozzy for the whole weekend, undergoing tests. I remember an elderly Indian man in the bed opposite telling me that I needed to slow down, sleep more and (and this is a verbatim quote because it has lived with me ever since) ‘always carry a packet of Mini Cheddars around in your pocket’ to stave off the jitters.

It was all excellent advice, of course. But when I was 26 I wrote it off as the daft ramblings of a neurotic codger. Even when the doctor told me that the blood tests suggested I was suffering from exhaustion and needed to change my lifestyle, I nodded and feigned concern but secretly resolved there and then to ignore all of his advice. ‘What a boring dickhead’ I thought to myself. ‘Doesn;t he know that living like this is great fun?’

I’m not sure, in retrospect, I was having much fun at all. I didn’t have much of a plan for my career: I was just rolling with the punches, taking anything that came my way irrespective of whether it brought me any sense of fulfilment or satisfaction. I drank copious amounts of lager every night and the only food that passed my lips was takeaway or microwaved ready meals. I played five a side football once a week and thought that was enough to keep me fit. I smoked weed to help me get to sleep; in those days, cocaine was still just an occasional weekend treat. I stumbled into bed every night in a state of complete inebriation before waking up a few hours later and starting the insane working routine all over again. I was a shit boyfriend.

Like I say, none of this behaviour seemed abnormal at the time. Everyone I knew seemed to live this way. How are any of us still alive? Lucky, I guess.

Now I am 48. As far as I am aware, there are fewer young people living the sort of draining, reckless and often unhappy lives that we lived back in the noughties. They seem to be more aware of what’s good for them and stricter about setting boundaries to preserve their own mental and physical health. People moan about young people in the workplace being less willing to stretch themselves these days. But I think it’s great. I don’t want my kids to live their twenties the way I lived mine. There is a way of doing fun, interesting work of value without sacrificing your wellbeing. My generation were just hoodwinked by a conspiracy that told us overwork was the only way of fulfilling our dreams.

These days I focus on 3 things to make sure I stay well: sleep, strength and sobriety. All the science tells us that getting consistent, high quality sleep is the secret to longevity, a sharp mind and healthy body. I prioritise good sleep over almost everything else. I get to bed at ten every night - and, whenever possible, try to squeeze a cheeky kip into the middle of the day too. Basically, I fucking love sleep. It’s my favourite hobby.

I lift weights to keep my body strong. I run less than I used to because it fucks my back and my knees. But fitness experts reckon lifting weights is life’s ‘cheat code’ - it’s not necessarily about looking jacked (I don’t); it’s about making your body more resilient. It’s changed my life.

As for sobriety: I couldn’t do any of this other stuff if I was drinking. Alcohol fucks with your sleep quality, diminishes your physical strength and makes you too lazy to do the stuff that really makes you healthy and happy. I think booze and drugs deprive you of any peace, encourage shitty decisions and only cover up misery temporarily before bringing it back, even stronger, the next morning.

I’d have been well advised to adopt the Rule Of S when I was in my twenties: but if someone had told me to focus on sleep, strength and sobriety back then I’d have pissed myself laughing. Instead, I just kept on pissing myself from epilepsy.

Life is brilliant. I’m happy to still be living it. And I always try to keep a packet of Mini Cheddars to hand.