Apr 9, 2018
As a best-selling celebrity biographer for Adele, Amy Winehouse, Justin Bieber, Simon Cowell, Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and many more, Chas Newkey-Burden has some wonderful travel tales to tell. He’s interviewed David Beckham in Madrid, loves the nightlife and indeed daylife of Israel and once spent an entire flight to Australia rehearsing how to evacuate a plane. Plus can you identify the American stranger who changed Chas’ life after a chance encounter when crossing the finishing line of the Dublin Marathon…? Let us know!
In this episode we cover:
His career as a journalist
Magazines Time Out, Loaded, Attitude, The Big Issue
Writing celebrity biographies
How Adele is a true musician
How his biography of Simon Cowell is the most abandoned book in the UK\s Travelodge chain
His favourite places in Israel
The amazing gay scene in Tel Aviv
The Middle East Conflict
British journalist Julie Burchill
Attitude gay magazine
‘The 6 Day Phwoar’
MySpace (remember that?)
Battling with Israeli airport security
The effect of the conflict on the Israeli people
Strong Israeli women
How the Israelis party
Israel’s attitude to homosexuality
His childhood trips to Australia
Hanging around Australia as a teen
The boredom of long-haul flights
Developing an anxiety about flying
Food poisoning in Thailand
The perils of scuba diving with food poisoning!
How Australian soap operas took over the world
Interviewing footballers
How travel writing is ‘living the dream’
Travel writing clichés (I love this bit!)
Interviewing David Beckham in Madrid
The Big Issue – magazine sold by homeless people
Real Madrid loving Madrilenian taxi drivers
How David changed over the years between Chas’ three interviews with him
Being rude to famous people
His work with footballer Dennis Bergkamp
His love of Arsenal football team
Travelling with Arsenal to Paris
Being fenced in by Parisian riot police
Sprinting with Paris
Loving a really bad result for his football team
How to travel as a vegan
Why people hate vegans
The Happy Cow app
The Vegan Passport book
Veganism in Israel
Veganism amongst Holocaust survivors
How a chance encounter in the Dublin Marathon turned him vegan
The American stranger who changed his life in Dublin
Can you help us find the man who turned him vegan?
Vegan Runners
Speaking bad Spanish in Mallorca
His love of America
Honeymooning by touring America
Being disappointed by Washington DC
Loving Los Angeles
Loving the American people
But finding the current America largely sad and divided
Divisions created by Trump in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK
Being inspired by New York
How visiting New York inspires his work
Travelling around Britain
How being self-employed means short trips closer to home
Brighton, Bath, Oxford, the Cotswolds
Loving returning to favourite places
Hinduism
Being a regular visitor to a Krishna temple in London
Plans to go to India
The perfect American road-trip playlist