Lawrence Jackson

It was a great pleasure to interview Lawrence Jackson for this week’s Nostalgia Interview. Lawrence is Head of Film Practice in the School of Arts at the University of Kent, and in this wide-ranging interview Lawrence discusses how he came into his profession from the film, radio and TV industry. He has taught screenwriting and Lawrence tells us why he especially relates to the protagonist in the comedy film ‘Mindhorn’.

Lawrence tells us why he doesn’t consider his native Guildford to be the coolest place in the country and we learn why his childhood was idyllic when growing up in the vicinity of Wookey Hole. We find out what his earliest memory was (involving grass and daisies under his bare feet) and Lawrence sheds insight on what it is that our apprehensions and expectations of a place come from.

The youngest of three children, and the only boy in the family, Lawrence played a lot in his own fantasy world as a child at a time of ‘Blake’s 7’ and ‘Dr. Who’ and we find out that Lawrence was quite ‘outdoorsy’. He grew up surrounded by lots of ‘whodunnit’ novels which he reveals he was afraid to read through fear that he would be murdered. He loved pop music , especially ELO and we find out why he especially related to ‘The Diary of Horace Wimp’. Lawrence thought that The Traveling Wilburys were gold dust but that his housemates hated it, and that his sister hated his love of Teardrop Explodes. We also learn about how he went through a phase of liking San Francisco acid rock.

We discover why Lawrence thinks that the Goombay Dance Band’s ‘Seven Tears’ is unspeakably bad and he reveals that he used to write down the charts every week (and we find out in a candid confession what it was that stopped him from doing so). He would know what was number 1 in the charts when his friends were born.

We learn how Lawrence entered academia and why he believes it is important not to censure people’s ideas. He was a film buff while he was studying Modern Languages at Oxford, from where he went to Bournemouth Film School which, as he explains, produced some very talented filmmakers. He also worked for BBC Northern Ireland and he tells us about his experience of sitting on the Berlin Wall in 1989.

In terms of politics, Lawrence’s family background is right of centre and Church of England, which he explains is not his ideology, and he tells us why he reacted against Thatcher’s Britain and about the time he went to church every Sunday but later grew out of it. We also discover why he was so disappointed when John Major won the General Election in 1992.

In the final part of the interview we learn why Lawrence’s memories are predominantly positive and why it is that going to boarding school at age 13 was a key experience. He believes that he has fulfilled the dreams he had when he was young and is more of a looking forward than a looking back type of person.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Lawrence Jackson and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.