The Worst Places I've Slept

Supposedly, good sleep is one of the most important factors of a healthy lifestyle. Since the age of five I've had insomnia and ever since, I've had zero regard for where I do eventually nod off. I regularly blame my low motivation, shitty immune system and general lack of dynamism on my traumatic bedtime behaviour. Here are some rubbish places to sleep.

5. The top bunk of a disgusting youth hostel in Paris

When I was fifteen I got sent to Paris to interview a band on my own. My boss had booked me into a hostel, but was adamant that despite the place being dirt cheap, I had a room to myself that was perfectly safe and clean. How wrong he was. That evening after the interview I lugged two rucksacks full of filming equipment and a tripod bigger than me back to the hostel. As I opened the door I saw two bunk beds, one-and-a-half filled. I didn't want to wake anyone up so I clambered into the top bunk in the dark, stepping on someone's face in the process, and slept fully-clothed, hugging the camera, and crying. When I woke up the camera was gone.

4. Leaning against my bedroom door, while standing

I used to live in a horrible basement flat in Clapton. You could get into my room from the outside and everyone hated each other. As a result I spent very little time there and often needed some Dutch courage before facing it. One morning I woke up leaning against my bedroom door in the hallway with no recollection of the night before. Someone opened my door and I fell inside to see a bunch of naked people in my bed. They must have shut the door on me in the night and I passed out where I stood. At least I was already dressed so I could just go straight to work.

3. Numerous park benches

Sometimes when you're wasted and the journey home is unbearably long, sleeping outside for a few hours can seem like the best idea ever. I used to do it all the time and it took a long time for me to learn how shit a solution it is. I remember lying under a cardboard box in Regents Park with my boyfriend, swigging at a bottle of White Lightning and thinking it was hugely romantic. Four hours later the sun was up, the car noise was unbearable and neither of us had slept. I spent the whole day puking and standing at least a foot away from people, in case they smelt the piss I hadn't realised was all over the bench.

2. In basement of a bodega in New York

A couple of months ago I decided to go to New York with no money. I smashed my phone in the snow a few days into the trip when I was pissed and had no way of contacting the people I was staying with. I spent all my money on cabs from Manhattan to Brooklyn three times over to try and find them. I didn't. I started having a mental breakdown in the cab and the driver dropped me off at a police station and told me to, "tell it to the cops, cuz I don't know what to do!". I went into an all-night deli next door and started crying next to the coffee machine and telling the fourteen-year-old Latino kid behind the counter about all my problems. Eventually he said I could sleep there and lead me downstairs into a dark room underneath, with a mattress on the floor and a tiny TV, (presumably the set had been cleared from the last snuff shoot). He put on a Mexican cartoon and told me he'd wake me at 10am. I did my best to stay awake, but I drifted off and woke up to his face about four inches from mine the next morning. I pushed him off and ran out, stepping on his erection.

1. My own bed

As the late Michael Jackson once said, "sharing a bed with someone is a sacred thing". For as long as I can remember I've been disgustingly lazy. And just disgusting. The other week a friend of mine and got home, stamped through the ash trays and beer cans before collapsing into my broken bed. I found a downer on my pillow, swallowed it and passed out. The next morning my friend woke up with a wrap stuck to her face and a condom in the old glass of water she tried to drink. Now I know that my own bed is like Tracy Emin's bed if it had a nasty sexual breakdown. If I want to have any sacred experiences with underage blonde boys I need to sort my fucking life out.