How my personality changed.

When I was about 21, I went through a kind of retroactive upheaval of my personality and beliefs.

Through university I had been a heavy-drinking, lazy, Top-Gear-aficionado, Jeremy Clarkson-loving, liberal, computing gaming, proponent of the illegitimacy of the Iraq Wars, agnostic, opponent of climate change, Guardian-reading, arrogant twat. I realise how contradictory many of these positions are now, but at the time, I would have had a clue. Thanks to the arrogance, and my general ability to have an answer for everything, I would have put forward a case for my own wonderful intelligence, and in my mind I would probably have won the argument.

My re-education (and more generally, education, if you prefer) came primarily from three things.

I believe the first was that on one of my many viewings of the TV channel Dave I watched the first episode of the first series of Stewart Lee's TV series Comedy Vehicle. I had read an article on Stewart Lee by the Daily Mail (this is how brilliant a critical thinker I was) and even though I knew the Daily Mail was a pile of crackpot lies and insanity designed to make people angry at things, I nevertheless got angry with Stewart Lee.

The article said Stewart Lee had insulted Richard Hammond, and had wished he had died in the car accident and that he had brain damage. At the time, I was shocked and appalled (exactly as the Mail wanted me to be) and I took a strong dislike to Lee, in defence of Hammond. Fortunately, I never said it aloud, or displayed my hatred for Stewart Lee in public, otherwise people would have proof that I am a stupid hypocrite.

I'm not sure why I watched it, I think maybe it was to be able to say "yeah, that Stewart Lee, he's not even funny, I watched his TV show and it's shit" just so I could defend Richard Hammond. But I watched the first episode of Comedy Vehicle.

My mind was blown. Up until that point I hadn't realised comedy could actually be intelligent. The first joke is "If you only ever read one book in your life, I highly recommend you keep your mouth shut". It's brilliant. It draws you in with the cliche, and then the punchline zings makes you realise what a fool you've been.

(I later found out that Lee actually bought this joke from Simon Munnery for £1, and although I was slightly surprised to find out that the joke that drew me into Stewart Lee isn't actually his, I realise that it is effectively a witty one-liner of the kind that Lee can't, or doesn't want to, write, but nevertheless it sums up exactly what he is like a performer; that joke is his show in microcosm).

I got into Stewart Lee, and he made me realise a lot of the ridiculousness of the right-wing politics. I had always described myself as liberal or left-wing (not realising that there was a difference between those two things) but I still had some level of right-wing ideology thanks to Top Gear etc. But now that right-wing sentiment in me had been destroyed.

Now we move to the second factor in the change in my personality. I attended a lecture by The Plashing Vole. He went by a different name, of course. And I was slightly fearful of him. He seemed to go on about poetry quite a lot and had a slightly intimidating air of knowledge that I knew I couldn't match. I wouldn't have avoided courses run by him, but I certainly viewed the lectures he ran with trepidation.

He had also been angry once when people hadn't turned up to a seminar, of which I was guilty. So perhaps that had something to do with it too.

Well, this lecture was just brilliant. Fascinating and engrossing. I am a strident note-taker. Over-enthusiastic, some might say. But that whole lecture I just sat, listening, learning. The lecture was on some aspect of media and also went into how the banking crisis had happened and why. (I don't really know why I did media at university as the second part of my joint degree. I am an English major, through and through, and I should have known that, nevertheless, that lecture was one of the single best learning experiences of my life).

The third event was Christopher Hitchens, and I'd say that at this point, Hitch has defined the new aspects of my personality more than anything else.

I had been aware of him, and was a great admirer of his atheist stance. I'd watched videos of him explaining why women aren't funny, and read a couple of articles. But fundamentally I didn't know much about Hitch aside from the fact that has was a very sensible atheist with some very obscure views, including hatred of Mother Theresa and support for the war in Iraq.

I considered him a sort of enigmatic figure, a main course of genius with an order of insanity on the side. It was only very close to his death that I began to realise just how brilliant he actually was.


His support for the war in Iraq, for example (which by the way, is something I completely subscribe to now: it was the right decision taken for the wrong reasons) is something that makes him an easy target.

But when you examine his reasons you begin to see how much of the liberal west got caught up in its own fantasy, and how many people's knowledge of the situation really does not go any further than:

1) It was all Bush's idea
2) It was a war for oil
3) The West started the problems in the Middle East with our foreign policy

If you believe those three things, I strongly recommend you read and listen to Christopher Hitchens, or better yet, get a decent grounding of understanding in the political history of the Middle East.

But I digress.

Part of the problem with Hitch, is that he is such an inspired and brilliant rhetorician but also so unbelievably erudite and intelligent, that it would be easy to do two things:

1) Misunderstand him
2) Take every word he says verbatim without applying any critical logic to it
(something that I see quite regularly away from Hitch with many of my friends or whatever you call some of the people on Facebook who believe themselves to be free-thinkers because they read a couple of Guardian articles a week and take everything Charlie Brooker says as the gospel - pun intended)

What I've learned from Vole, and Hitch especially is that most important thing you should do is mentally challenge everything you hear, read or think. I knew it before. But I absolutely solely believe it is the most important part of your life now.