Coffee-Table Notes

NEIL Cooper  is theatre critic for The Herald, and a freelance writer. When did working in the media first start becoming an ambition? From a very early age, I guess, but I had absolutely no idea how you went about it. I was a print junkie, first with Marvel comics and science fiction fanzines, then later with the music papers, which were at their post-punk peak when I was a teenager. The NME was my 'bible', and I started picking up music fanzines from Probe, which was the hip record shop in Liverpool. My favourite was one from Manchester, called City Fun, which was a deeply pretentious scene gossip-sheet with live reviews and record reviews. It was extremely opinionated and dripped sarcasm from every page. At the time, I didn't realise it was probably produced by a bunch of pseudy students. But I still didn't have a clue about seizing the means of production for oneself. I was also influenced by Tony Wilson on Granada Reports. One minute he'd be reading t...

Full Interview with Rachael Cloughton for History of Art Scotland, who published it online in History of Art Scotland in a much edited form in September 2010. Rachael Cloughton  - Who do you consider a good critic? Neil Cooper - It depends what sort of critic you mean. There are different types, from broadsheet journalism and tabloid journalism to specialist publications, and then there are academic critics. All are doing different things, and all in their own contexts are as valid as each other, but I’m not academic in any way, shape or form, so can only really talk about criticism from a broadsheet newspaper or arts magazine point of view. To be honest with you, though, I don’t read nearly as much criticism as I probably did before I started doing what I do. That’s partly to do with a time thing, and partly to do with being really easily led and not accidentally mimicking whoever you’ve just been reading. I’ve consciously had to stop reading certain things becaus...