[Music]
[Applause]
first is that this is not going to be a
self-help talk this is not going to be
about overcoming your fear and one of
the reasons it’s not about overcoming
your fear is that as a Horace
screenwriter I have a somewhat
complicated relationship with fear it’s
not just about overcoming it’s about
using the second reason that this is not
going to be any kind of self-help talk
for you guys it may be for me but it’s
not you guys it’s because as a Horace
screenwriter I’m not the guy you want to
take advice from all over the world on
Ted and TEDx pages you have great
thinkers you have great scholars who
have activists you have people who are
changing the world in a positive way
every day I am the guy who wrote the
original screenplay for the film
strippers versus wearers so if you’re
going to take my cue for pasty don’t
make it for me all right everything I’m
going to say is true it except I’m going
to throw in one lie so see if you can
spot that as we go through throughout my
childhood and actually through most of
my adult life my greatest fear was
needles now my fear of needles got in
the way of life to the degree where I
might try and you know avoid going on a
really nice holiday just because I
didn’t want to have the inoculation
thought I’d be required to have
so this was an annoying fear it was
something that bugged me and so I
thought I might try and work out how it
came about to see if I kind of reverse
engineering it and looking at where it
came from I could maybe kind of tone it
down a bit so that it didn’t get under
my skin so much so I placed my fear of
needles with two experiences that I have
during my childhood now the first of
these was a bad reaction to an injection
that I had when I was four I have no
recollection of this but my family told
me it’s true the second of these
experiences well I can take you back for
this one
1987 sitting in a class at school now in
1987 they made all the school kids have
TB jobs now that they do anymore but
back then they had to do that and before
the TB job they would have a test them
to see if they don’t have an allergic
reaction so an English class kids
sitting there and one school kid is
sitting there looking nervously at the
little mark on his arm from the tester
starts to feel faint blacks out falls to
the floor hits the hardwood floor wets
himself in front of all of his
classmates I probably don’t have to tell
you who that kid was well it might
actually is a kid called Katie used to
say annoyed looked at Keith no I didn’t
actually laugh because even at 13 not
not because at 13 I had any basic human
empathy I mean you must have met 13 year
old boys before the reason I didn’t
laugh at my friend lying on the floor
was because I was sitting there thinking
I’m next I’m next I had a bad reaction
to a job when I was kid and I’m gonna be
next so I go why it’s a sheep they take
it to the nurse and they delayed my jab
which then meant that I had a whole week
to psych myself up to it all of my
friends were having their injections I
didn’t have my
I had a week to think about it we
destroy it over build it up to something
huge in my head and by the time I
actually went and had that injection the
only way I could get through it and this
is true is by playing a mental loop of a
Bruce Willis album in my head because
that’s the closest thing to cool that
anybody had in 1987 so that I think was
one of the the reasons that I developed
this needle phobia but when looking at
taking a step back and going okay
there’s the reaction when you’re a kid
and then there’s the bad experience in
the classroom maybe were looking at both
I was able to as I say reverse-engineer
it and stop worrying so much and that’s
true and no longer respond because I was
now I need to emphasize this isn’t some
kind of miracle conversion I’m never I’m
not and I will never be at the point
where I could get a tattoo or give blood
but I am at the point where I can maybe
have an injection before I go on holiday
or something like that so I figure
progress made fantastic so I started to
think about other things that bothered
me that maybe I could kind of tweak as
well but maybe if I could place where
other fears came from I could find
something positive from that lower by
boys I’ve always had a slight uneasiness
around barbers hairdressers sitting in
the point you know sitting in the little
chair looking at myself in the mirror I
almost feel this kind of I think the
closest word is dread now I think the
part of this is just a natural part of
growing onda that if you’re forced to
sit and look at your own face for half
an hour you sort of get this sense of
dark grief where like all the hours
fretted away and some horrible sense of
mortality but it’s something beyond that
there was something else there was
something about hairdressers and barbers
that made me very unhappy and I traced
that one back as well and that one led
to the Two Ronnies because when I was a
kid the Two Ronnies had a sketch that
was a parody
the song time musical of Sweeney Todd
you have Ronnie Barker in a dress and
you had Ronnie Corbett little ginger wig
and they were slitting customers throats
and turning them into meat pies and it
was a parody it was a sketch it was a
joke but as a child I had no way of
putting it in context and it left all
this stuff in my head and so again
because I’ve had some success with the
needles thing as I said not to the
degree where I could get a tattoo or
give blood but certainly some level of
success I thought well maybe if I can
track down this – Ronnie sketch that
freaked me out so much maybe I’ll be
able to you know have a slightly more
relaxed attitudes towards barbers and
hairdressers and it was actually not
very easy to track it down at the point
I started doing this it hadn’t been
released on DVD it has now and I think
it’s kind of interesting that out of the
whole nine series of the – Ron is prior
to the point this sketch if you buy it
on DVD the disc with this sketch
actually has a higher certificate than
anything else that they did for the
previous nine years so it is an oddly
dark sketch it’s kind of closer in
tongue to some of the gory a Monty
Python stuff rather than the kind of
cuddlier – Ronnie’s thing but for me
just tracking it down and actually
watching it I was able to go okay I
think back to how I was as a child and
somehow take some of the sting out of
the experience of just by revisiting it
and thinking about it logically as an
adult I was able to reduce my fear of
barbers and my equally inconvenient fear
of Ronnie coffee so this was – Thor – I
thought okay – for – and now I’ve got to
be honest with you this last one was
kind of a biggie because it was a bit
abstract I had an image that lurked in
the back of my head for the best part of
three decades and it had an odd power
over me it’s the thing that scared me
beyond anything else as a child I’ll
tell you what the image
it’s an image of a stage magician an
image of a stage magician stood like
this levitating a volunteer from the
audience
but there’s the audience member
levitates their head comes off their
arms come off then legs come off their
eyes go kind of cold and dead
all these floating island this is a
bloodless process these floating
balloons are kind of detached like Lego
parts and the magician’s going tada
someone in the audience is standing up
and saying you’ve killed them and the
text over the top of this image reads
murder
magic now this image disturbed me so
much as a six-year-old and you know
we’re soaring I stir it in an issue of
spider-man pocketbook in 1980 that my
mom had bought me because Spiderman was
my favorite superhero
and so I’m sat in the car outside the
news agents my fingers sticky with
whatever sweets it was that persuaded
her to buy me as well and I open this
comic book and I saw this image and it
absolutely scared beings out of me threw
away the comic at all the comic up threw
away the comic I refused to buy any
spider-man stuff for like six months and
so on this spirit of going back and
looking at these things that bothered me
I thought I need to get this comic I
need to find this comic so I can you
know look at it and maybe that will help
problem was Google was no help do
spider-man murder magic nothing nothing
not a trace of anything that’s weird
surely you know you associate the
Internet we’ve been able to bring up
anything that you look for so I ended up
trolling around on eBay and the thing
was I couldn’t really remember what the
cover of the comic was but I thought if
I see it I think of the triggers on so
for weeks maybe months i sat and looked
through every spider-man back issue that
came up on eBay that was with
that kind of time limit and eventually I
was I saw one of them I think that’s it
and I was like 50/50 I I wasn’t you know
wasn’t hundreds and Polk was about 50/50
I only package turn up with the perfect
timing the day the practice set up I was
in the throws of the worst fever I have
ever had in my adult life I was laid up
in bed I was inking here and I was
confused though sweating and then I
opened this package and there was the
picture exactly as I remembered it now
if you have never confronted a picture
that barely scarred you that badly
scarred you as a child if you’ve never
confronted that thirty years later while
in the grips of a terrible fever I
actually kind of recommend it because
what had happened was that when you when
something like that happens in that kind
of situation it promote it promotes a
really strong emotional response and
that promotes really strong memory
creation and so now when I look at that
picture I associate it with me looking
at it as a feverish adult and not me
looking at it as a terrified child and
I’m able to put it in context and the
weird thing about it was it wasn’t
actually a panel from a 1982 spider-man
comic it was actually a panel from a
1951 issue of astonishing comic that
they reprinted and that they put in it
as filler so by the time I saw it it was
nearly 30 years old now it’s 66 years
old that image but it was only I put a
stake in its heart and stopped it having
this power over me by revisiting it as
an adult now this was one of the things
that made me think that I can if I can
start to lower these levels of fear I
can maybe try and look at other points
in my life where fear has been
inconvenient and I can maybe go some way
to making amends I think fear can
something work like a virus and I want
to give a couple of examples of that now
the first of these is the my first movie
first movie
maybe thinking trash house it was a
splatter movie I made it in a warehouse
and shivery and when I when I saw me it
was actually got really good
distribution
it was in every blockbuster in the
country and then he mails from other
film makers asking for advice I got an
email from a filmmaker called Mark and
he said I’m making a movie I want to
shoot it a standard definition video I’m
already making it what do you recommend
and I said to him no man don’t do it
don’t shoot it standard definition you
won’t be able to sell your movie and
that was my fear talking I gave you bad
advice it was me wanting to stay one
step ahead and prove how fluid up I was
because HD was really cutting edge at
this particular point and the thing is
mark mark I’m sorry because that was bad
bad advice because mark went on to shoot
this movie on standard definition video
for 45 quid and he saw cinema rights and
it got cinema release and loads of
territories all over the world so it’s
an amazing movie
it’s called Colin it’s really smart
zombie movie so didn’t check it out to
get the chance
so there was there was Mark I also had a
student lecture about my dear generation
and a student of mine who followed my
career with a great deal of interest he
he tweeted rather a celebrity who just
been cast in the movie of a screenplay
that I’d written and he think this would
break enthusiasm and I saw just reaching
out and saying hey congratulations for
being in this movie that my lecture has
written and I said to him please don’t
do that it’s not professional and I kind
of dumped him down on it
and I was wrong and I’m sorry because
that student is now celebrity liaison
officer for like one of the biggest
production companies in the country and
that was the thing he did the thing he
was great at reaching out to celebrities
and my fear I’ve been reflecting on me
remember write them down that enthusiasm
so then I’m sorry for that and the last
one of these the last one of my
apologies my great apology real is I had
another friend called Mark so if you
were wondering whether the live
that I was making up names I’m not
because I wouldn’t make up two names of
Mark because that’s just mad but I had a
freaking mark he was an amazing blogger
and one day he blanks tickets backstage
to our favorite band this was a band we
loved we’d seen them play the Pyramid
stage at Glastonbury and he said I’m
going to go over and talk to them in a
wave of beer and enthusiasm and I said
Who no mark done we’ve had an amazing
day man and if you go and talk to them
now you know don’t meet your heroes it
could mess up all our memories and he
went and he pushed me away and he went
and spoke to the man away and I’m really
glad to do because he ended up managing
them and so in future he was the one
organising the sold-out gigs and dealing
with over-enthusiastic plans like the
one that he had been so mark I’m really
really sorry man I should never tried to
stop the meeting them but I did I think
sometimes we’re not aware of how our
fears can transmit to other people
because sometimes the other people are
enthusiastic and don’t even really think
about what’s possible and what’s scary
my daughter actually said to me once
daddy how do you split the atom don’t
worry I’m not going to do it in the
kitchen
so so where does this leave us this
little journey well I think that my
take-home from it would be the fear can
suck but fear can be useful at the end
of the day I would turn a lot of my
fears into screenplays and then terminus
stream plays into a cold hard cash
so winner winner chicken dinner but for
this fears can be terrible and they can
be useful but fear is nothing to be
scared of much like ridicule for anyone
whose music preferences so yeah
surprised myself it’s flown by but you
might be asking yourself what the lie
was I promised you a lie in there
somewhere
now the storyteller in me really wants
the lie to be that I said I’d never get
over my needle phobia enough to get a
tattoo or to give blood what really
really love the lie to be would be I
could lift up my t-shirt and have a huge
tattoo all over my back of all the
things that I’ve spoken about like the
needles and the stage magician and all
that sort of thing because that would be
that would be a good ending wouldn’t it
if I just lifted this up and that would
be a really good ending yeah but I don’t
have a tattoo I don’t have a tattoo I do
have a lollipop because I gave blood
[Applause]
they don’t actually give you a lollipop
anymore so I had to go and buy my own my
name is Pat Higgins my conscience is
clear
[Applause]
[Applause]
first is that this is not going to be a
self-help talk this is not going to be
about overcoming your fear and one of
the reasons it’s not about overcoming
your fear is that as a Horace
screenwriter I have a somewhat
complicated relationship with fear it’s
not just about overcoming it’s about
using the second reason that this is not
going to be any kind of self-help talk
for you guys it may be for me but it’s
not you guys it’s because as a Horace
screenwriter I’m not the guy you want to
take advice from all over the world on
Ted and TEDx pages you have great
thinkers you have great scholars who
have activists you have people who are
changing the world in a positive way
every day I am the guy who wrote the
original screenplay for the film
strippers versus wearers so if you’re
going to take my cue for pasty don’t
make it for me all right everything I’m
going to say is true it except I’m going
to throw in one lie so see if you can
spot that as we go through throughout my
childhood and actually through most of
my adult life my greatest fear was
needles now my fear of needles got in
the way of life to the degree where I
might try and you know avoid going on a
really nice holiday just because I
didn’t want to have the inoculation
thought I’d be required to have
so this was an annoying fear it was
something that bugged me and so I
thought I might try and work out how it
came about to see if I kind of reverse
engineering it and looking at where it
came from I could maybe kind of tone it
down a bit so that it didn’t get under
my skin so much so I placed my fear of
needles with two experiences that I have
during my childhood now the first of
these was a bad reaction to an injection
that I had when I was four I have no
recollection of this but my family told
me it’s true the second of these
experiences well I can take you back for
this one
1987 sitting in a class at school now in
1987 they made all the school kids have
TB jobs now that they do anymore but
back then they had to do that and before
the TB job they would have a test them
to see if they don’t have an allergic
reaction so an English class kids
sitting there and one school kid is
sitting there looking nervously at the
little mark on his arm from the tester
starts to feel faint blacks out falls to
the floor hits the hardwood floor wets
himself in front of all of his
classmates I probably don’t have to tell
you who that kid was well it might
actually is a kid called Katie used to
say annoyed looked at Keith no I didn’t
actually laugh because even at 13 not
not because at 13 I had any basic human
empathy I mean you must have met 13 year
old boys before the reason I didn’t
laugh at my friend lying on the floor
was because I was sitting there thinking
I’m next I’m next I had a bad reaction
to a job when I was kid and I’m gonna be
next so I go why it’s a sheep they take
it to the nurse and they delayed my jab
which then meant that I had a whole week
to psych myself up to it all of my
friends were having their injections I
didn’t have my
I had a week to think about it we
destroy it over build it up to something
huge in my head and by the time I
actually went and had that injection the
only way I could get through it and this
is true is by playing a mental loop of a
Bruce Willis album in my head because
that’s the closest thing to cool that
anybody had in 1987 so that I think was
one of the the reasons that I developed
this needle phobia but when looking at
taking a step back and going okay
there’s the reaction when you’re a kid
and then there’s the bad experience in
the classroom maybe were looking at both
I was able to as I say reverse-engineer
it and stop worrying so much and that’s
true and no longer respond because I was
now I need to emphasize this isn’t some
kind of miracle conversion I’m never I’m
not and I will never be at the point
where I could get a tattoo or give blood
but I am at the point where I can maybe
have an injection before I go on holiday
or something like that so I figure
progress made fantastic so I started to
think about other things that bothered
me that maybe I could kind of tweak as
well but maybe if I could place where
other fears came from I could find
something positive from that lower by
boys I’ve always had a slight uneasiness
around barbers hairdressers sitting in
the point you know sitting in the little
chair looking at myself in the mirror I
almost feel this kind of I think the
closest word is dread now I think the
part of this is just a natural part of
growing onda that if you’re forced to
sit and look at your own face for half
an hour you sort of get this sense of
dark grief where like all the hours
fretted away and some horrible sense of
mortality but it’s something beyond that
there was something else there was
something about hairdressers and barbers
that made me very unhappy and I traced
that one back as well and that one led
to the Two Ronnies because when I was a
kid the Two Ronnies had a sketch that
was a parody
the song time musical of Sweeney Todd
you have Ronnie Barker in a dress and
you had Ronnie Corbett little ginger wig
and they were slitting customers throats
and turning them into meat pies and it
was a parody it was a sketch it was a
joke but as a child I had no way of
putting it in context and it left all
this stuff in my head and so again
because I’ve had some success with the
needles thing as I said not to the
degree where I could get a tattoo or
give blood but certainly some level of
success I thought well maybe if I can
track down this – Ronnie sketch that
freaked me out so much maybe I’ll be
able to you know have a slightly more
relaxed attitudes towards barbers and
hairdressers and it was actually not
very easy to track it down at the point
I started doing this it hadn’t been
released on DVD it has now and I think
it’s kind of interesting that out of the
whole nine series of the – Ron is prior
to the point this sketch if you buy it
on DVD the disc with this sketch
actually has a higher certificate than
anything else that they did for the
previous nine years so it is an oddly
dark sketch it’s kind of closer in
tongue to some of the gory a Monty
Python stuff rather than the kind of
cuddlier – Ronnie’s thing but for me
just tracking it down and actually
watching it I was able to go okay I
think back to how I was as a child and
somehow take some of the sting out of
the experience of just by revisiting it
and thinking about it logically as an
adult I was able to reduce my fear of
barbers and my equally inconvenient fear
of Ronnie coffee so this was – Thor – I
thought okay – for – and now I’ve got to
be honest with you this last one was
kind of a biggie because it was a bit
abstract I had an image that lurked in
the back of my head for the best part of
three decades and it had an odd power
over me it’s the thing that scared me
beyond anything else as a child I’ll
tell you what the image
it’s an image of a stage magician an
image of a stage magician stood like
this levitating a volunteer from the
audience
but there’s the audience member
levitates their head comes off their
arms come off then legs come off their
eyes go kind of cold and dead
all these floating island this is a
bloodless process these floating
balloons are kind of detached like Lego
parts and the magician’s going tada
someone in the audience is standing up
and saying you’ve killed them and the
text over the top of this image reads
murder
magic now this image disturbed me so
much as a six-year-old and you know
we’re soaring I stir it in an issue of
spider-man pocketbook in 1980 that my
mom had bought me because Spiderman was
my favorite superhero
and so I’m sat in the car outside the
news agents my fingers sticky with
whatever sweets it was that persuaded
her to buy me as well and I open this
comic book and I saw this image and it
absolutely scared beings out of me threw
away the comic at all the comic up threw
away the comic I refused to buy any
spider-man stuff for like six months and
so on this spirit of going back and
looking at these things that bothered me
I thought I need to get this comic I
need to find this comic so I can you
know look at it and maybe that will help
problem was Google was no help do
spider-man murder magic nothing nothing
not a trace of anything that’s weird
surely you know you associate the
Internet we’ve been able to bring up
anything that you look for so I ended up
trolling around on eBay and the thing
was I couldn’t really remember what the
cover of the comic was but I thought if
I see it I think of the triggers on so
for weeks maybe months i sat and looked
through every spider-man back issue that
came up on eBay that was with
that kind of time limit and eventually I
was I saw one of them I think that’s it
and I was like 50/50 I I wasn’t you know
wasn’t hundreds and Polk was about 50/50
I only package turn up with the perfect
timing the day the practice set up I was
in the throws of the worst fever I have
ever had in my adult life I was laid up
in bed I was inking here and I was
confused though sweating and then I
opened this package and there was the
picture exactly as I remembered it now
if you have never confronted a picture
that barely scarred you that badly
scarred you as a child if you’ve never
confronted that thirty years later while
in the grips of a terrible fever I
actually kind of recommend it because
what had happened was that when you when
something like that happens in that kind
of situation it promote it promotes a
really strong emotional response and
that promotes really strong memory
creation and so now when I look at that
picture I associate it with me looking
at it as a feverish adult and not me
looking at it as a terrified child and
I’m able to put it in context and the
weird thing about it was it wasn’t
actually a panel from a 1982 spider-man
comic it was actually a panel from a
1951 issue of astonishing comic that
they reprinted and that they put in it
as filler so by the time I saw it it was
nearly 30 years old now it’s 66 years
old that image but it was only I put a
stake in its heart and stopped it having
this power over me by revisiting it as
an adult now this was one of the things
that made me think that I can if I can
start to lower these levels of fear I
can maybe try and look at other points
in my life where fear has been
inconvenient and I can maybe go some way
to making amends I think fear can
something work like a virus and I want
to give a couple of examples of that now
the first of these is the my first movie
first movie
maybe thinking trash house it was a
splatter movie I made it in a warehouse
and shivery and when I when I saw me it
was actually got really good
distribution
it was in every blockbuster in the
country and then he mails from other
film makers asking for advice I got an
email from a filmmaker called Mark and
he said I’m making a movie I want to
shoot it a standard definition video I’m
already making it what do you recommend
and I said to him no man don’t do it
don’t shoot it standard definition you
won’t be able to sell your movie and
that was my fear talking I gave you bad
advice it was me wanting to stay one
step ahead and prove how fluid up I was
because HD was really cutting edge at
this particular point and the thing is
mark mark I’m sorry because that was bad
bad advice because mark went on to shoot
this movie on standard definition video
for 45 quid and he saw cinema rights and
it got cinema release and loads of
territories all over the world so it’s
an amazing movie
it’s called Colin it’s really smart
zombie movie so didn’t check it out to
get the chance
so there was there was Mark I also had a
student lecture about my dear generation
and a student of mine who followed my
career with a great deal of interest he
he tweeted rather a celebrity who just
been cast in the movie of a screenplay
that I’d written and he think this would
break enthusiasm and I saw just reaching
out and saying hey congratulations for
being in this movie that my lecture has
written and I said to him please don’t
do that it’s not professional and I kind
of dumped him down on it
and I was wrong and I’m sorry because
that student is now celebrity liaison
officer for like one of the biggest
production companies in the country and
that was the thing he did the thing he
was great at reaching out to celebrities
and my fear I’ve been reflecting on me
remember write them down that enthusiasm
so then I’m sorry for that and the last
one of these the last one of my
apologies my great apology real is I had
another friend called Mark so if you
were wondering whether the live
that I was making up names I’m not
because I wouldn’t make up two names of
Mark because that’s just mad but I had a
freaking mark he was an amazing blogger
and one day he blanks tickets backstage
to our favorite band this was a band we
loved we’d seen them play the Pyramid
stage at Glastonbury and he said I’m
going to go over and talk to them in a
wave of beer and enthusiasm and I said
Who no mark done we’ve had an amazing
day man and if you go and talk to them
now you know don’t meet your heroes it
could mess up all our memories and he
went and he pushed me away and he went
and spoke to the man away and I’m really
glad to do because he ended up managing
them and so in future he was the one
organising the sold-out gigs and dealing
with over-enthusiastic plans like the
one that he had been so mark I’m really
really sorry man I should never tried to
stop the meeting them but I did I think
sometimes we’re not aware of how our
fears can transmit to other people
because sometimes the other people are
enthusiastic and don’t even really think
about what’s possible and what’s scary
my daughter actually said to me once
daddy how do you split the atom don’t
worry I’m not going to do it in the
kitchen
so so where does this leave us this
little journey well I think that my
take-home from it would be the fear can
suck but fear can be useful at the end
of the day I would turn a lot of my
fears into screenplays and then terminus
stream plays into a cold hard cash
so winner winner chicken dinner but for
this fears can be terrible and they can
be useful but fear is nothing to be
scared of much like ridicule for anyone
whose music preferences so yeah
surprised myself it’s flown by but you
might be asking yourself what the lie
was I promised you a lie in there
somewhere
now the storyteller in me really wants
the lie to be that I said I’d never get
over my needle phobia enough to get a
tattoo or to give blood what really
really love the lie to be would be I
could lift up my t-shirt and have a huge
tattoo all over my back of all the
things that I’ve spoken about like the
needles and the stage magician and all
that sort of thing because that would be
that would be a good ending wouldn’t it
if I just lifted this up and that would
be a really good ending yeah but I don’t
have a tattoo I don’t have a tattoo I do
have a lollipop because I gave blood
[Applause]
they don’t actually give you a lollipop
anymore so I had to go and buy my own my
name is Pat Higgins my conscience is
clear
[Applause]
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