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the big boys, the corporate interests in America. That’s
all he is. And that’s what’s happening over here, we’ve
got spin doctors, people that manipulate everything and
everything is manipulation. It’s not winning through a
feeling one has about a person. ‘Wow! I wanna follow
that person. I’d vote for him.’ Not because you’ve
heard something spun about him, but because he feels
something. Like you do about Nelson Mandela, you
can’t help feeling the guy’s a good man. It’s passion,
yeah! Something wonderful. Maybe Tony Blair started
out like that, when we suddenly thought: ‘Wow at last,
a fresh air politician!’ The man was clean and then he
had his dour man, but nevertheless honest dour Scotsman,
Gordon Brown.
What are the elements in society that piss you
right off?
I’m afraid of the ethos of reality TV which pisses me
off. It’s not reality television, it’s completely phoney,
things that are made up, phoney! It’s not even fiction,
it’s contrived bullshit! And celebs that have done nothing
and they have to be celebs and they have to go on
television. It’s a terribly sad culture to develop or to
pursue and take it further and all in the name of the
god Mammon. There’s nothing else in it and I just wish
there were. And I wish that kids weren’t being fed it
all the time. The kids are not brought up to have minds
of their own as individuals. Some do, some break out.
Maybe it’s always been like that but in a different form?
BUY Ralph Steadman books online from and
We’ll probably get by you know, but I think we might
not be able to overcome what which is we’re doing to
the planet. You see, nature will do exactly what it must,
and if we are a hindrance to its development, to even
its destructive powers to reform itself and we are in a
way, we will go. No doubt about it. We seem to think
we have some control over this planet. I once saw a
lump of Greenland breaking off into the sea and moving
south, which of course will affect the atmosphere
and us generally, and it’ll happen more and more. And
as the South Pole starts to melt! We were down in
Patagonia in December and it was such a wonderful
wilderness, just across the water was the Antarctica
and I felt: ‘What an extraordinary thing and what puny
pieces of nothing we are!’ I’ve just been doing a series
of paintings of that area. Look, all in all I’m trying to
be an artist, the fact that I was a gonzo journalist-artist
of a type, met Hunter Thompson and went that way.
That happened. I can’t do anything about that, I’m glad
it happened. It was like hitting a bullseye first time in
America. But I wonder what I’d have done if I hadn’t
met him?
Was is you that did that famous caricature of
Mick Jagger with those over inflated lips or was that
Gerald Scarfe?
Mind you don’t get me mixed up with Gerald Scarfe!
I’ve done the Rolling Stones eating each other. Don’t
worry, because people always say: ‘Ooh I love your
494
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