A life in a day...

Stephen Armstrong is a freelance journalist, a writer and occasional broadcaster. He writes on the arts for The Sunday Times and various lifestyle magazines, as well as contributing to Radio 4's Front Row.
He also writes for the Guardian, the Saturday Telegraph magazine, Wallpaper and Men's Health.
Books include contributions to Jam: A History Of Style and Inside Out.
His first solo book, The White Island, is a history of Ibiza from Carthage to the present and went to paperback in June 2005.
He is a board director of Sheffield's Dead Earnest Theatre Company, for whom he co-wrote Stalingrad, a play based on Anthony Beevor's book, and has been on the panel for the Perrier Comedy Award for the last two years.
In the past he has played bass in an unsuccessful indie band and promoted some genuinely disastrous club nights. He was born on 4’th of February, 1968, in Bromley. He lives and works in London.

‘Most of the days I wake up at seven o’clock in the morning and the first thing I do, I listen to Today programme, on Radio Four. I never have breakfast at home. I do domestic duties first, I have a shower and then I usually leave home around 8.30am. Then I take the bus to the office. The thing is, I am a freelance and I never have to be at work at a specific time. In the office, there are fourteen freelance journalists and each one of us rents a desk. Each one of us is a boss for itself. So, depending which bus I have taken, I eventually arrive at the office.
When I get into the office I read the news. Herald Tribune is delivered in my house but then I buy other newspapers. I never buy the same newspapers every day. It all depends from their news that they have on their front pages which are reluctant to my research and I cut and file them. For example, I am writing a story about Big Brother and therefore I cut those kind of news. I don’t keep all the cuttings forever. Most of them I throw away within few days but I do keep relevant ones.
Then I check websites, gossip chat-rooms, journalists websites, blogs, newsletters. This is fairly speedy research which it takes me about twenty minutes.
Then I eat breakfast in the office. Today I had small bag of fruits, danish pastry, a yoghurt with bits in it, raspberry juice and a coffee. It takes me about twenty minutes to finish my breakfast.
By midday I go out to interview somebody. Sometimes I do interviews in England, sometimes I go all around the world. When I travel, I’m never away from home for more than five days, except once a year when I stay in Edinburgh for a month during the festival. I pack up my bag within fifteen minutes and I arrive at different destinations each time. The good thing is that I never pay for the flights, newspapers and PR companies pay for it.
I get to meet different Hollywood stars. I have interviewed at last three months Ricky Gervais from Office, all the actresses from the series Desperate Housewives, Chris Rock and so on.
Sometimes some of the actors are difficult to interview and some are not. It depends if they are interested. One of the tricks of being a good television actor is to be able to absorb another personality so effectively, that the other person watching you, genuinely believes that you really are the other person. This means that some actors almost literally don’t have a personality of their own.
But, for example Eva Longoria, has interesting ideas and a very good sense of humour which makes her more interesting to interview. But some of them are quite difficult. In this case, I mirror their body language, which means I adopt their personality. In a way, I become like them and they trust me more. Alternatively, you lower your status and pretend to be somebody else. It’s a job and I get on with it.
The interesting thing is, when you become like them, they tell you things that they would never tell to a stranger. Everyone has a different type of personality. It’s tiresome but it’s about tricking them. For example, I made Ricky Gervais to talk about his mother dieing of cancer, something that he has never done before. In those cases you’ve got to reveal information about yourself which makes them trust you. You tell them the truth. I told him about the ex girlfriend of mine who died of cancer recently and we compared feelings and experiences. You always have something similar to say, people are not that different. Well, there are exceptions. I’ve never been in a situation to interview a woman from Somalia and I haven’t got experiences to share with them. Often, if you follow that route, then you would have had experienced the horror.
After the interview I write the stories almost straight away. It depends from the deadline as well and where I am in the world, but in general I do write them straight away, which is wrong. Ideally you would leave it for a couple of days because you need time in order to process information, facial expressions and all the rest.
I always stop working between six or seven in the evening, no matter whether I am in the office or in a different country. I meet people and we go out for a dinner or drink, or we go to an event. Time is very short in the day and evenings are the only times left for socialising. Very rarely it happens to interview someone in the evening because by then I’m very tired.
It’s very tricky to interview someone when you are tired or when I go to a different country because my body clock changes. That’s why I use drugs. Usually I use caffeine in order to stay awake. Sometimes I use Modefinil, which is not illegal yet. It doesn’t make you hyper, it just keeps you awake.
Finally, I go to bed between eleven or one o’clock after midnight.’