Three Big Questions for Shaun Hand

Shaun Hand Week has meandered a little beyond a week and has us wondering what even is time? We're stuck in holiday mode, not really getting to things until after this weekend. Shaun Hand is the popular Black Country based author, musician and DJ. His most recent novel, The Strange Deaths of White Working Class Men was published in 2024. His most recent music EP, The Twilight World of the Birmingham Music Library, can be heard on Spotify here; and he's been spinning records all over the city all week and yet, and yet, still found time to respond to our Three Big Questions, like this...

1. Working as a DJ what was the weirdest request you’ve had?
Shaun Hand: I get weird requests all the time. It's very odd when you get asked to play the thing you're already playing... I’ve been asked if I can “play something funky” whilst playing James Brown, “Are you gonna play any ‘90s dance?” whilst playing ‘90s dance, stuff like that...

2. More painful. When was the last time you felt embarrassed?
Shaun Hand: I read somewhere that when you remember bad things or catastrophise, your nervous system reacts like said thing’s happening there and then. I remembered something very embarrassing that happened about eight years ago whilst in the shower the other morning, and so felt the embarrassment all over again. And it was so embarrassing that I’m not going to tell you what it is.

3. You know the thought police are coming, you’re flushing the evidence down the toilet in a dystopian future that arrived right now. You’re an artist, it’s intolerable. You heard the sirens approach and now they’re (banging) at the door. What do you keep? What do you hide in your psyche, what can’t you flush away, what goes into the gap under the floorboards beneath the piano in the loft. What do you keep? All seem essential to you... Your writing? Your music? Or a single item from your record collection?
Shaun Hand: Oddly enough, I’ve just re-read 1984… Let’s see…
Some family pics
Something – anything – to make music with (if there’s a piano in the loft, that’ll be perfect)
Something to listen to last thing at night
The Collected Works of Shakespeare (got the bug after doing King Lear at night-school in my twenties. If nothing else, there’s so much to understand, think about, and go “hmmm, that’s clever” over that if you could only stash one book to keep you going for a long time, this would sort you).