An Interview With Local Writer Ian Newton (1/6) By Jane Foster

(1/6), (2/6), (3/6), (4/6), (5/6), (6/6).

Ian Newton, aka Ahmed Debani, is a local writer known for his exposure of John Prescott in his book Dustbingate, which caused a scandal a few years back. Ian is also the author of two other books with a local theme - Pizza Wars, about corruption in the takeaway industry, and The Night Shift, a comedy written in the form of a sitcom about the antics of a group of local factory workers. The Night Shift has been the focus of much debate on thisisull.com recently. Jane Foster took some time out to speak to Ian, to put the record (and the world!) straight... Hi Ian, tell me a bit about your background and where you come from.

Courtesy of Hull Daily Mail.

I was born on Hessle Road in the 50s. It was a hard existence, but we had some fun. Like most kids around there I was a mischievous lad, but as I saw my mates going away one by one, I thought blow this for a game of soldiers and decided on a slightly straighter path. They didn't piss ball around like they do today with young offenders. But of course we had rules, don't steal off your own and we always respected the old people. If you did anything against that 'Hessle Road code' you were regarded as rubbish. Of course nowadays it's all changed and respect has gone right out the window.

Anyway, to plod on quickly. I was homeless at fifteen, went hitch hiking around Europe and the Middle East. I ended up penniless in France on my way back and got repatriated from to England and got my passport took off me for five years. I have done all sorts of jobs, like one trip on a trawler - they were real men. It was like being on a roller coaster for three weeks. Worked as a trainee RMNS nurse for two and half years and then did a thousand other things. Finally I settled after I had kids.

Prior to this I had found the key to success and gone back to college, got 9 O levels above B grade and two A levels. Then I got a HNC in Chemistry. But I was very lucky, unlike most of my school mates I learned that education was my passport out of poverty and factory fodder jobs. Since then I have had some top notch jobs at such places as BP Chemicals and Anglia Oils were I worked as a shift chemist fiddling the QC results. My Dad was Yemeni and my mother British, and I suppose I did have a confused upbringing and there was some racism that confused me even more.

Sometimes I got called a wog or a nigger, but when I looked in the mirror I saw a white kid. It was only when I looked at photographs of me next to white kids that realised that I had a touch of the tar brush. It was not that bad growing up, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I suppose growing up on Hessle Road and being a half-caste kid did give me the objectivity I have today.

From my own experience of living with Arabs or the British, if I had to choose I would choose the British. My experiences with the Arabs are not good ones. I have also been a director of a pizza company and that's all I'm saying on that one just in case the VAT man reads your site, and that's what my book Pizza Wars was based on. It is a tacky business but it gave me an amazing insight into how business works. Before that I was in trade unions and knew also how politics worked. That's one of the reasons the ethnic business community sort of adopted me to help them understand how politics worked and how to get things done.......if you know what I mean?

Continued ...Next page (2/6)

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