Welcome to AGONY AUNT, the column in which I sort out a central, or peripheral, life problem for some poor bastard out there – if you have a dilemma or heart/soul/mind conundrum you would like to share with me, and thereby the viewership of the site, please write in and I’ll be happy to put on my ‘see you jimmy’ thinking cap on your behalf. Anonymity can be yours!

And I hope you noticed that I said that I WILL sort out the problem, not that I’d TRY to – that’s because trying doesn’t work, as a teacher of mine once demonstrated to me.

He said “Try to pick up that glass Leven.” I picked up the glass and looked at him.

“No no son – that’s PICKING up the glass, now TRY and pick it up.” Disconcerted, I moved my hand towards the glass and left it (my hand) hovering in mid air.

“Aye, now, ye see son, trying doesnae work.” They were smart alecs back in those days – I’m sure they still are....
I know what you’re thinking – did he fire five shots or six – to tell the truth, in all this excitement I’ve lost count myself, so you’ve got to ask yourself – do I feel lucky – well, do you – PUNK? Sorry, got momentarily lost in my Dirty Harry persona – what I meant to say was, you’re thinking, is Jackie actually in any guise qualified to consider my problem, never mind share it and its solution with the sort of quarter-wits that are likely to visit his site? It’s a fair concern – let me tell you a bit about myself.

Of course I have no formal counselling qualifications, but I was head counsellor for The Core Trust (the award-winning holistic approach to addiction centre I co-founded many years ago in central London – still running well) for some years. In fact, it was hilarious when the project gained enough money to be able to hire trained counsellors. They turned on me, saying “you can’t work here – you’re not qualified”. I said “you should have thought about that before you accepted the job – we’re not doing things as other projects do – that’s why we’re winning awards – we are a prime example of the truism – ‘the joke, the threat, the obvious’ – as an organisation being viewed by others, we’re currently moving from joke to threat, which is why you find it threatening that I’m not qualified to do a job which I’m manifestly doing with great success”. Those were the days...

I’ve done a lot of complementary learning and training over the years – I attended the poet Kathleen Raine’s Temenos Academy, was a permanent course participant with Noel Cobb and Eva Loewe’s London Convivium For Archetypal Studies, qualified in Applied Kinesiology with Brian Butler, and, of course, spent many years working with great thinkers like Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade. I also worked, at the invitation of director Doctor Ruth West, at The Koestler Foundation – a magical time, when in the morning I could be helping out on a project concerned with the roots of coincidence, and in the afternoon helping out on a project concerned with localised logistics of African famine relief. I hope this is pretentious enough for you - I see myself as part Rab C Nesbitt, part Frasier Crane...

And so, to our first question, which I shall be replying to next month....(Agony Jack is still thinking about this very serious problem and consulting with fellow professionals, like Frasier Crane and Michael Levy – be with you soon.’

From: ANON OF BASILDON –“Dear Agony Jack – I am a woman in my early forties and have been married to a man I still love dearly for eighteen years. However, there is one aspect of his personality which in the beginning I thought of as just part of growing up, but which I now think of as weird, obsessive and an absolute turn-off. When we first got together he was mad about the band Depeche Mode, as were all his mates. For myself, I think they made a couple of surprisingly good records a long time ago, considering they’ve always struck me as being slightly brain-dead.

My problem is my husband and his mates are STILL exactly as mad about Depeche Mode as they were back then when they were really no more than big kids, and they meet regularly up to talk about them in the same tones of voice and excitement etc as they did way back then. I used to think this was funny – now I just think it’s creepy – and wrong. To hear the person you love most in the world going on about how the singer Dave Gahan – is that even his name? – I try to block it all out – has worn the same shirt in TWO DIFFERENT PHOTO SHOOTS and why would he do that – is it some sort of signal to the fans? – is to go and sit in the toilet for a long time feeling very tired, small and afraid for the future.

Is it me, is it him? I need it to stop without fatally hurting his feelings. I’ve tried joshing him about it all, but he has no sense of humour about it. “You should get interests of your own” he says. Even this freaks me out – how can a grown man describe Depeche Mode as an ‘interest’? Please help...