Troutfishing on the Tees follows a vain and vulnerable man whose faith in career, cricket, and Tony Blair unravels as deindustrialization and institutional decline expose the brutal realities of New Labor Britain. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

A lot of the book is based on real life. You could say that I’m the man who put the semi into semi-autobiographical!

A particular inspiration was my unexpected (by everyone but me) redundancy from the once mighty chemical giant, ICI, in the 2000s.

I can thank my brother (and co-author) Patrick for the inciting incident. Around ten years later, we were sitting in a pub car park in North Wales when he challenged me to write a sitcom. So, with his help, I did.

Tony Blair exists in the novel partly as a political figure and partly as a projection of Steve’s hopes and fantasies. What interested you about using that imagined

Again, this is based on personal experience. I was a constituent of Tony’s between 1999 and 2001 and actually wrote to him once, voicing my concerns (in true Steve Hemmings style) about safety in the Millennium Dome. I got a very generic letter in return, but I wondered what it would be like if he still read and responded to constituents’ letters.

Funnily enough, I had a similar experience more recently with Keir Starmer, my most recent constituency MP!

The book is packed with cricket, popular music, workplace language and Teesside detail. How important was it to you that the novel function as a kind of social record of the North East around 2000?

I think it’s a cool period in which to set the novel. Back in 2014, when I first started writing, it was a bit twixt and between. Now people are nostalgic for the general vibe around then, with clamshell mobile phones, car CD players, in-person dating, new Labour even!

In the North East, in particular, there were much better prospects of long-term employment, working with one private sector employer, although these were fading rapidly.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?

The book forms the first part of a Teesside Trilogy.
I have been working on books 2 and 3 simultaneously.
Book 2 should be out early next year.
Watch this space!

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