The Psychopath: A True Story(21)
I can’t remember where I heard it but I also remember someone saying that children are like wet cement, because anything that falls on them makes an impression. So I decided that this was a golden opportunity to teach them never to let the world beat them down and always to rise up again no matter what happens to you.
JON RONSON
The best media show, and the most enduring, had to be my interview with Jon Ronson in 2007. Jon is an investigative journalist and BBC Radio 4 presenter, as well as the bestselling author of books like Them: Adventures with Extremists and The Men Who Stare at Goats. He invited me for interview in a London studio, for a six-minute segment for a thirty-minute radio show. His new series was going to have a different theme for each programme and this one was about people waking up after being conned.
It seems strange to think that I would travel all the way from Edinburgh to London for a six-minute interview but that was all part of the job. I was promoting my book but also sharing my knowledge with a wider audience and hopefully protecting people from falling into similar relationships. Little would I know at the time how big an impact that single interview would have!
We sat down to start recording (it would be edited later) and discussed the story chronologically. Jon seemed genuinely fascinated and even wondered at one point if Will Jordan had indeed been in the CIA because otherwise, how could he have done some of the things he had, or known ahead of time things that would come out on the news?
‘You don’t have to know how a magic trick is done to know that it’s not real magic,’ I replied.
Two hours later Jon was still quizzing me about my story and one aspect really shook him.
I calmly said, ‘I was kept pregnant and kept tired and kept stressed, and I was basically in a state of fear for six years. And things that you look back on rationally now, you realise . . . that just doesn’t make sense. That’s all part of the plan. If you keep somebody stressed, tired and in distress then they don’t think rationally, especially if they can’t talk about it.’
‘Why are you OK with this?’ he asked. ‘Why aren’t you a total wreck?’
‘Because it’s not personal,’ I shrugged. I was passing it off nonchalantly, but in fact his question made me realise how far I’d really come. I felt strong and knowledgeable. It made me feel powerful.
‘I can’t think of anything MORE personal!’ Jon exclaimed.
‘Will Jordan is a psychopath and psychopaths don’t behave that way because of anything their victim has done. It’s like a lion chasing a zebra, or a cat chasing a mouse. The cat doesn’t choose the mouse because it’s pretty or rich, or whether it’s intelligent, kind or even if it has babies or not. It is all just about the cat and its game. I see Will as a predator; I don’t see him as a human being any more. The only way I can describe it is that you can watch a tiger attacking an antelope or a zebra without resenting or being angry with the tiger. It is just in the nature of the predator and the hunter to hunt. And if the zebra managed to escape and get away with its life, it wouldn’t actually be offended by what had happened to it. It would be relieved to get away.’
Jon was really taken aback and so stunned to think that there were people in the world who are like lions in society. Predators treating the rest of us like prey. He decided to make the whole of his first episode about my story and called it The Internet Date from Hell.
Our episode of his radio show came third in the Sony Awards that year and has been aired over and over again in the last twelve years.
Jon didn’t stop there though. He went on to research and find out more about sociopaths and psychopaths. He wrote another book called The Psychopath Test in 2011. Although he didn’t mention our meeting in the book itself, he did credit me with inspiring him to write it in an interview he gave to the Guardian newspaper, saying:
‘I don’t put it in the book, but I met a woman called Mary Turner Thomson. In fact I made a radio documentary about her . . . Two things really struck me about the story. First, when I asked her if she felt hurt by him, she said, “No, he’s a sociopath. It’s not personal. Does the wildebeest take it personally when it’s being chased by the lion? No. It’s their nature.” And, second, I talked to a Harvard psychologist named Martha Stout who said that his condition – psychopathy, or sociopathy, or whatever you want to call it – is prevalent in the rulers of our world. The wars, the economic injustice, she said; a great deal of it is initiated by sociopaths. Their brain anomaly is so powerful it has remoulded society all wrong. This struck me as such a huge thought, I kept wondering if I could verify it. Could I become a professional psychopath spotter and journey into the corridors of power?’
The Psychopath Test was rightly a huge success for Jon and still sells very well.
The interview with Jon really felt like a turning point to me. I felt empowered and that I really knew what I was talking about. Jon’s easy-going and relaxed interviewing technique allowed me to articulate things in a way that I hadn’t before, and solidified ideas in my head. I left the studio feeling that something new had been born and that I had made it back to normality.
EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL
One of the main highlights of being an author is being asked to attend book festivals, and to me the golden ticket is being invited to speak at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Something I had visited year in and year out and that my mother had looked forward to every year. I was delighted to be asked in August 2008 to speak about my book The Bigamist and even more so to be able to go into the illustrious Authors’ Yurt. There I was surrounded by all the other authors presenting at the festival and I was fan-girling like crazy, all the while trying to look nonchalant and like I belonged. I was hobnobbing around the pastries with celebrities like Jacqueline Wilson, Kate Mosse and Terry Pratchett. Even Sean Connery made an appearance.