. There is a copy of Shuggie Bain, Stuart's 2020 Booker Prize winner, on my bookshelves, but I have yet to open it, partly because my husband says it is the most depressing thing he's ever read (mind you, he has never read A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara). But you did not need to have read the book, or even to have heard of Stuart, to enjoy the programme. And I suspect my husband may be wrong about it being depressing, because the life story Stuart recounted here – and on which Shuggie Bain was based – was tough, but it was also told with warmth and love and a lightness of touch. This was no misery memoir. It began with Stuart in his native Glasgow, where a mural celebrating Shuggie Bain has been painted on the side of the Barrowland Ballroom. It is the accolade that means the most to him, Stuart explained, before laughing that he once caught two men peeing on it. 'That's perfectly Glasgow,' he said.Stuart grew up in social housing with an alcoholic single mother, missing stretches of school because he was caring for her and because he was bullied for being gay. Yet he made it to New York and became a successful designer for some of the world's biggest fashion houses. He seemed to have it all, although he was uncomfortable with high fashion, which revelled in its unaffordability. Thanks to the success of Shuggie Bain, he has now quit the industry to be a full-time writer.There was something irritating about the extremely middle class Alan Yentob fetishising Stuart's working class roots (imagine… a world in which the BBC had working class people in its top ranks) but Stuart spoke intelligently and compassionately. It was lovely, too, to hear from the two art teachers who changed his life by encouraging him to go to college. 'Here's a world that you don't kn){kind=link}
The Booker Prize-winning author took Alan Yentob to Glasgow and opened up about the traumatic childhood that became his inspiration
One measure of a good documentary is that you can find it thoroughly engaging despite having little previous knowledge of the subject. Such was the case with Imagine… Douglas Stuart: Love, Hope and Grit (BBC One). There is a copy of Shuggie Bain, Stuart’s 2020 Booker Prize winner, on my bookshelves, but I have yet to open it, partly because my husband says it is the most depressing thing he’s ever read (mind you, he has never read A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara).
But you did not need to have read the book, or even to have heard of Stuart, to enjoy the programme. And I suspect my husband may be wrong about it being depressing, because the life story Stuart recounted here – and on which Shuggie Bain was based – was tough, but it was also told with warmth and love and a lightness of touch. This was no misery memoir.
It began with Stuart in his native Glasgow, where a mural celebrating Shuggie Bain has been painted on the side of the Barrowland Ballroom. It is the accolade that means the most to him, Stuart explained, before laughing that he once caught two men peeing on it. “That’s perfectly Glasgow,” he said.Stuart grew up in social housing with an alcoholic single mother, missing stretches of school because he was caring for her and because he was bullied for being gay. Yet he made it to New York and became a successful designer for some of the world’s biggest fashion houses. He seemed to have it all, although he was uncomfortable with high fashion, which revelled in its unaffordability. Thanks to the success of Shuggie Bain, he has now quit the industry to be a full-time writer.There was something irritating about the extremely middle class Alan Yentob fetishising Stuart’s working class roots (imagine… a world in which the BBC had working class people in its top ranks) but Stuart spoke intelligently and compassionately. It was lovely, too, to hear from the two art teachers who changed his life by encouraging him to go to college. “Here’s a world that you don’t know anything about,” they had told him, “but it could be yours.”
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