York author Tom Wilson holding a copy of his first book, The Intrepid Odyssey Of A Salford Alcoholic
YORK playwright, poet, TV scriptwriter, musician, artist, outreach worker and teacher Tom Wilson has written his first book, The Intrepid Odyssey Of A Salford Alcoholic, part one of his How To Relapse And Die double bill.
Let Tom introduce himself, “I’m a recovering alcoholic in the 12-step fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’ve been sober now coming up to 38 years.
“I’ve lived here in York for just over 20 years now and I’m so glad I came here. It’s a wonderful place for artists such as myself to garner inspiration and to find opportunities to express themselves.
“My biography covers a lot of my Salford childhood and the more recent years covering the first 25 years of my recovery in the rooms of AA.”
One of 11 children, from whom only nine survived the poverty cull, in his early school days Tom was bullied relentlessly until he went to secondary school, where he became a notorious and disruptive “pain in the a**e” for teachers.
“I was constantly fighting, swearing, smoking and causing trouble most of the time while involved in truancy, vandalism and petty crime,” he says. “Early futile jobs led to extreme frustration and increasing dependence on drink and drugs and further forays into serious criminal behaviour.”
The back and front cover artwork for Tom Wilson’s The Intrepid Odyssey Of A Salford Alcoholic
Tom’s drinking, self-destructive attitude and immature belligerence raised his marriage to the ground and his now added drug indulgences soon took him into jail.
“Then a road accident left me with a serious disability after being run over on Christmas Day! I then formed a band, The Parody, which absconded to London when Manchester was an apathetic ghost town,” he says.
“London eventually provided me with a harrowing rock bottom after the demise of the band in 1985. I was at the ‘jumping off place’.”
Roll forward to late-2005, when Tom moved to York. “I began to think more and more about getting out of London but I really didn’t want to go back to Salford as it had become incredibly feral with the drug wars and even more deadly with the burgeoning gun culture,” he says.
“I think I managed to get out of London just in time, looking back. York opened up a lot of new vistas and challenges for me. I’ve done another four plays, two of which I wrote. I‘ve had three successful art exhibitions, all for good charitable causes, I must stress – people from the Ukraine living in York; Medical Aid For Palestinians; MIND and the Haiti earthquake foundation.”
Tom Wilson at the launch of his exhibition at St Bede’s Pastoral Centre with York Central MP Rachael Maskell in September 2022
Tom continues: “I’ve made around half a dozen short films and I’ve written a feature film about my sister Christine. I’ve done a little teaching since settling in York and I’ve worked at the council as a drug and alcohol strategy advisory role.
“I’ve retired from full-time work and decided to take Mark Herbert (This is England and Adolescence) at his word and write a book just to send a copy to ‘him’ in particular. The original title originated from a kind of comedy sketch I’d been working on a few years earlier called (very tongue in cheek) ‘How To Relapse And Die’.”
Tom used this as the starting point for the book’s title when contacting a publisher, i2i Publishing, in Manchester. “They were recommended to me by two dear friends, both great writers: Alan Franks, formerly of The Times and Simon Van Booy, who I knew from Dartington College of Arts,” he says.
“They liked the concept of me telling my true life story but also with an emphasis on my drinking and debauchery but also on my cataclysmic fall from grace and subsequent recovery and resurrection, for want of a better word.
“As I’d never written a book before, only standard plays on A4 paper, I started to write like fury once I’d started and then when I got to something like page 480, I submitted it to the publishers, only to be told it was far too long. After long discussions with the powers that be, we decided to split the manuscript in half, thus producing not one but two books!”
In 1991, Tom had a poem published called The Intrepid Sylph. “I’ve always liked the word ‘intrepid’, especially when it’s attributed to an alcoholic’s journey. So I thought also of various word searches that would dredge up good traffic. Then I came up with The Intrepid Odyssey Of A Salford Alcoholic,” he says.
Tom Wilson with his artworks at his City Screen Picturehouse exhibition
“I thought it had a certain ring and a cachet to it. So under the banner of ‘How to relapse and die’, part one, The Intrepid Odyssey Of A Salford Alcoholic. Part two will be called ‘The Gift Of Desperation’, which is the term we use in the fellowship to describe every alcoholic’s moment of heartfelt surrender and it invokes a kind of a spiritual awakening.
“The first book deals with my making it to my first ever A.A. meeting and the second picks up from the previous 38 years of sobriety and recovery.”
Tom wrote his story with “a lot of humour and a kind of flippant attitude”. “But, believe me, there’s a strong serious undercurrent and a powerful message for the souls that are still suffering who may not know there’s a way up and out of this maelstrom,” he says.
“There are a lot of light-hearted japes and some intriguing and zany memoirs but it also carries a vitally important message for those who may need hope and some guidance; it’s all in there.
“I’m hoping that the books serves to entertain and enthral the non-addict and the non-alcoholic but should anyone with those insidious tendencies read it, they may find something in the book more valuable than just entertainment and an old ‘sot’s’ nostalgic romp.”
The Intrepid Odyssey Of A Salford Alcoholic, by Tom Wilson, published by https://i2ipublishing.co.uk/, is on sale on Amazon and at waterstones.com and foyles.co.uk.