1. What is Love?

Love.

For some people, it’s hell. For others, it simply never comes. And for people like me, it’s a Coldplay song playing over the scene in the movie where the romantic lead skips off into the night knowing that everything is going to be OK.

My name is Jason Chapman, and I will be your hero, baby.

I grew up watching a ridiculous amount of movies, and I clung desperately to the notion that when you got the girl and the credits started to roll, everything was going to be hunky dory. When you think like this, you’re opening yourself up to a world of hurt.

My home town is the perfect place for a kid to develop unrealistic ideals for what love is. It is the kind of place David Lynch would have used as an inspiration forBlue Velvet: White picket fences and freshly mown lawns on the surface, before you got to the dark underbelly where Dennis Hopper was lurking with a gas mask and a pair of scissors.

Maybe that’s being a little over-dramatic.

Dennis Hopper has never visited my home town.

I spent most of my childhood with my head in the clouds. I watched a ridiculous amount of films and read every book I could get my hands on. Dad had no idea– or didn’t care– about film classification or censorship, so the first films I watched growing up were the likes ofThe Terminator andThe Fly, much to the horror of my mum, who took care of the Disney side of things for damage control purposes. If I go through life without murdering anyone, mum will have succeeded. Although she did let me watchWatership Down, which probably ruined me more than Arnie punching through a thug’s stomach. Thanks, Mum.

I like to think that I’m a good looking guy. At school, I looked like a shorter, slightly rounder version of aParklife–era Alex James, on account of the curtains. By the time I went to college, I was madly in man-love with James Dean Bradfield, and copied everything from his hairstyle, dress sense and even the way he played guitar. OK, so it was air guitar, but don’t judge me. I’m good at it.

These days, I look like James Dean Bradfield if he gave up being the coolest man in the history of music, started working in a hotel and lived on takeaways, beer, cheap coffee and processed shite. Once my metabolism catches up with me, I’m going to be in big trouble. But for now, I’ll continue to ride my luck in style.

The brown hair-blue eyes combo served me well at school, college and continues to do so to this day, even if it is with my mums friends rather than ladies my own age. But that’s OK, as I prefer the mature lady.

My GCSE results read like a song sheet: a scattering of C’s, D’s, E’s and F’s, and a