Existential Boozer: A Proustian pint with Charlie Steen from Shame
Let’s not get it twisted, it’s pretty rough out there for British pubs.
In 2026 alone, a reported 500 pubs are predicted to close – that’s more than one a day. Crippled under growing running costs and ostracised by the health and wellness brigade, the humble pub is slowly becoming a relic of the pre-digital age. Ironically, though, never have pubs been more needed. In an era where societal fragmentation is rife, pubs remain the last beacon of real community in the modern world.
But it’s arguably not even about modernity. Let’s not forget the crucial role pubs have played in enduring the darkest times in history. It was in The Eagle, in Cambridge, where Francis Crick and James Watson announced their discovery of the DNA double-helix structure, in 1863, the early members of the FA met to determine the rules of football, and it was in Yorkshire’s George and Dragon were the first plans of Britain’s railway were sketched up.
The world has kept on spinning, thanks to the institutions that have kept us watered through the ages. They were ultimately a bridge, from past to present, and so in that spirit, we at Far Out have designed a questionnaire to honour that.
We are channelling the philosophy of the great Marcel Proust, who in the 19th century hashed together a questionnaire designed to uncover the inner workings of the human mind. Borrowing the exact questions Proust wrote – let’s presume in a 19th-century French bar – we are hoping to dive a little deeper into the psyche of our most treasured musicians.
In our most recent episode of Existential Boozer, Charlie Steen from Shame joined us. As a band who have juxtaposed the irrelevance of modern behaviour with the quiet introspection of these trying times, Steen was the perfect recipient for Proust’s existential questionnaire. In a pint-fuelled conversation, he revealed the profound meaning behind the band’s name, songwriting tales inspired by Brazilian bandits, and a long harboured love for expensive records.
A Proustian pint with Charlie Steen from Shame:
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
“I think it’s sort of like a sort of a warm feeling in your stomach, of desire and hunger. I think it’s just when you feel truly lost in excitement and desire, and you don’t know, there’s no sort of direction, it’s not explainable. It’s just purely based on feeling. It’s sort of the same thing when we play live, like the best moments are when you’re just acting on instinct, and you’re not thinking, and it’s meditative, but chaotic, you know? So I think that sort of thing of getting lost in excitement and pleasure, and that youthful feeling, you know, that’s it”.
What is your greatest fear?
“Failure”.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
“My stubbornness”.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
“Hypocrisy”.
Which living person do you most admire?
“Yeah, the living person is tricky. I often think about lots of people, but I guess in terms of people who’ve inspired and influenced me and who I can’t really doubt that genius in terms of someone who’s alive would probably be [Bob] Dylan.”
“Lyrically, and also, you know, like, what else he did in his time, it was just more than music as well, you know, what he inspired and what he spoke about, politically and socially, it was, you know, I think you just can’t really touch him now”.
Do you have a favourite Dylan song?
“If I was to say the one that first made me realise was ‘Masters of War’ when I was like nine years old. That probably wouldn’t be my favourite now, but in terms of if I listen to that, that still reminds me of the first time I had clicked”, you know?”.
What is your greatest extravagance?
“I like to spend money on records, on vinyl. It was my dad’s 60th birthday, and I bought him this quite expensive Elvis record, Aloha from Hawaii. And there’s only 2,500 copies made. So that, I think, that’s a little bit extravagant”.
What is your current state of mind?
“Sort of confusion”.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
“Beauty. But in the sort of stereotypical sense”.
On what occasion do you lie?
“When I desperately want something to be true”.
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
“My torso and my teeth”.
I’ve heard you talk about the band name. Shame. That came from a point of view of accepting an insecurity within yourself?
“Well, embracing insecurities, I guess. I like a lot of the people, musicians and stuff like that, and even artists like Keith Haring, for example, going back to beauty or whatever, seeing these people who weren’t afraid to be outcasts, a lot of that comes from insecurities and what you see as flaws, whether it’s physical or what you’re passionate about. I think that’s a beautiful thing to embrace.”
What is the quality you most like in a person?
“Passion.”
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“Innit.”
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
“My girlfriend Zoe.”
When and where were you happiest?
“When I’m almost doing nothing with my girlfriend. Whether it’s just when you’ve woken up, and you’re lying in bed, and you’re just chatting. Or when we’re performing live.”
Which talent would you most like to have?
“I would like to be good at languages. I’ve been trying to learn Brazilian Portuguese.”
Can you tell us a little bit about how that came about in the song ‘Lampião’?
“I was over in São Paulo with my girlfriend’s parents, and they were basically to summarise it, told me about Lampião, who was this cowboy character, in the backlands in Brazil in the 20th century. And I had never heard who he was.”
“He’s very culturally important in Brazil. The song I’m singing at the beginning is written by Volta Seca, who was a kid, he was 11 years old, when he joined Lampião’s gang. They were bandits, and he was illiterate, and he wrote two songs that are still sung to this day in Brazil, ‘Muié Rendera’ and ‘Acorda Maria Bonita’.
“At the time I was really interested in paradoxes, and he was perfect for that, in terms of this backland bandit, who also did interviews and had his photo taken, and some people hate him, some people love him.”
“Then the thing that I was interested at the time was age of information, how someone who’s so known in a country that’s pretty much the size of the continent of Europe can be completely unknown in other places? And to hear about something orally again, learn something in that way, I just found really interesting.”
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
“If I could actually change something physically, I’m blind as a bat. I’m really fucking blind. I wear big, thick glasses, and I wear contacts now, but I would love to be able to see properly, you know? I’ve never woken up and opened my eyes and been able to see. Everything is just a complete blur.”
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
“The band.”
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
“I don’t think I’d like to come back as an animal, even though we’re animals. I’d definitely like to come back as a person. I think I would like to have come back and been myself, but so that the band was about in the ’90s, and we could have actually made money.”
Where would you most like to live?
“I love London. But if I was to live anywhere else to be Sao Paolo.”
What is your most treasured possession?
“My record collection and my book collection.”
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
“Ennui.”
What is your favourite occupation?
“I love writing.”
Who are your favourite writers?
“I love Iris Murdoch, James Baldwin, Oscar Wilde. I love Steinbeck, Dylan, obviously, and [David] Bowie and Mark E Smith. There’s a whole host of people I love, Katherine Allfrey.”
Do you have confidence in your sense of writing?
“I think, going back to that thing of happiness or whatever. I think there’s something in being quite uncomfortable. I can’t remember who said it, but some writer said, ‘a writer needs two things: inexperience and arrogance’. I think there’s that thing where you’re kind of fighting your insecurities.”
“I don’t feel super secure. I like some things we’ve written. But I think that’s been the challenge, we talk about people singing back songs or whatever, I feel like that’s something to aim for.”
“Some of my favourite lyricists would be Lou Reed, who can say it all in one sentence. But then, another thing about Bowie, “You’ve got your mother in a whirl / She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl,” I still think that is two sentences that you could spend hours thinking about, and years. I’ve thought about that one my whole life.”
Who is your greatest hero of fiction?
“Oh, that’s a good one. Well, going back to Katherine Allfrey, that writer, she wrote a book called On a Dolphin’s Back, which is a children’s book about this poor girl on an island in Greece who discovers a dolphin, and the dolphin shows her around, Greek mythology. The dolphins have come from Poseidon, who struck down these sailors, and they all turned into dolphins.”
“So the little girl in that’s pretty cool. But I don’t know. All the films and fiction I tend to like aren’t on good characters. I really like a book called The Moon and Sixpence, but I’m probably going to butcher the name, Maugham, I think it is. There’s a character who is despicable, but there’s this sense of passion is something you can admire.”
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
“None.”
Who are your heroes in real life?
“It would be the obvious ones, like Rosa Parks and people who really stood up for something incredible. I guess musically, I think growing up there would be Keith Haring, I really love. Just as a person, because I remember seeing him as a kid and identifying with him quite a bit.”
“Mark E Smith, maybe from a lot of sides, I respect the fact that he never wavered from something so unique and what he achieved. I’ve been listening to a lot of The Fall recently, but I don’t think he’s a very good person.”
“But in that sense of passion and drive, and his lyrics as well, yeah. It’s pretty, pretty amazing.”
How would you like to die?
“It was funny, I was at my mate’s yesterday, and he had loads of crucifixes up on the wall, and with the album, well, I grew up Catholic, and it’s the same. I go back and stay in my childhood room, and I’ve got the crucifix on the wall, and I always think about my mum always used to say, ‘I might die tomorrow.’ And it’s very in touch [with] death.”
“I would more like to die sort of happy. I think I’d like to die somewhere hot, potentially.”
Did Catholicism influence Cutthroat?
“Yeah, in ‘Spartak’, it comes from that line, ‘Cast the first stone,’ which is in the Bible. But yeah, in terms of how you view death and stuff like that. My granddad’s funeral went on for three days. It’s just a massive party and that celebration of life, and it can go at any second. And instead of that being a fear, that being a strength. Obviously, if you are properly Catholic, you have the full belief. But, I’m a few generations down from that, there’s more questioning of what it means now.”
What is your motto?
“Why not?”
One for the road: what is your favourite Shame song?
“I really love ‘Angie’, and I love ‘Quiet Life’, and I do really like ‘Lampião’.”
