Max Wilkinson, writer of Night City — which is currently on at Southwark Playhouse Borough — recalls the trials and tribulations of becoming a writer in London.
I've always wanted to a writer. In London, that can mean being perpetually broke and frightened.
I fully threw myself into writing at 22. I was never formally trained, and with the arrogance and delusion of the autodidact, I started scrolling through university pages to steal their reading lists, finding the cheapest flat-share rat holes, taking any weird little job that would be foolish enough to employ me.
And writing. Any spare moment I got.
"I was let go from a Superdrug for reading Animal Farm at the make-up counter"
I was always good at finding odd jobs and hustling. When I was young I sold sweets and Pokémon cards out of my bag. I bunked off school and walked dogs for our blind neighbour. I was also fired a lot. A Superdrug let me go for reading Animal Farm at the make-up counter. A pub in Kensal Green fired me, as my banter was "not quite right."
This continued into my twenties, while I desperately tried to get better at writing. I became a tree surgeon's assistant at one point after a tip from a friend in a pub. I trimmed fig trees for a Canadian Heiress in Putney who fed her two massive lurchers Chateau Lafite. Then I somehow got a job in events crewing: lugging equipment for gigs and events. The company was obviously desperate. Amongst leviathan men, I mounted huge curtains for the annual UK Arms Fair at the Excel centre, and fell asleep on some cables after a 48-hour extended shift at the Roundhouse. I lasted three weeks.
"I ended up hungover in a closed-down library next to Holloway prison with a load of metal-teethed punks"
Being rubbish at online applications, I often applied for jobs the old school way: in person. There was a point where I couldn't afford to top up my Oyster card so had to walk everywhere. One day I walked seven miles to a reputable, avant-garde theatre (I won't name it here) which normally had such a vigorous online vetting system. My gaunt, hungry eyes at the reception desk warranted a quick interview with the bar manager, who I think respected my cavalier attitude/sheer desperation.
He fired me a few months later. They were having a Samuel Beckett season, and after a very brilliant production of 'Not I', I got tipsy, and found my manager down in the bar. He had mysteriously been on holiday for a week in Amsterdam, which had more mysteriously turned into three weeks. I quipped that maybe he had eloped with a lady of the night. The next day I received an email headed: 'Termination of contract'. So much for the personal touch.
I was always finding cheaper ways to live. I used to go to Cafe Neros and sit near empty coffee cups to suggest they had once been mine. I tried squatting with a pal in King's Cross: a huge office block next to a church. We were evicted after a month and moved into an ex-Job Centre in Camden. We were evicted after five days. I ended up hungover in a closed-down library next to Holloway prison with a load of metal-teethed punks whose dogs used the floor as a toilet.
"I tutored a boy who told me his dad was 'big in the Filipino mafia' and kept AK47s in the loft"
A few more years slugging it in London, and I finally found freelance tutoring through a friend, teaching the 11+ to the wealthy children of Kensington and beyond. This paid better, and was of course more intellectually gratifying at least. But sometimes you were just being a glorified nanny. I tutored two boys from Iran who were renting their 'summer house' in West Brompton that was also rented/frequently occupied by royals and at one time, a young Prince Charles. Every time I would visit the boys — who incidentally were complete s**ts — I would have to check in my passport with men at the gates and their Alsatian dogs. In St John's Wood, I tutored a boy who told me his dad was "big in the Filipino mafia" and kept AK47s upstairs in the loft.
But then I started teaching in state schools — more familiar territory — and running after school clubs for creative writing. The kids were great and loved the classes and I finally found something, that paid — and that I was good at.
Around the same time, I won a few accolades for my plays and an option or two. Finally, things were happening for me. Or at least I could say I was a 'writer' without cringing horribly inside.
I still teach a lot, I still write a lot. And I'm still worried that I'll wake up on the floor of some horrible squat with marauding dogs defecating everywhere. But I'm quite happy. And I don't look back at these events fondly, or begrudgingly. I just look back.
Night City — Max's love letter to (and horror story about) the London gig economy — runs at the Southwark Playhouse until 3 October 2026.
