The Way I See It: Tony Burke

I was born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, about 50 miles from London. My dad was a builder. My mum was a stay-at-home mum. I had a very ordinary, drama-free childhood.

I always had this innate desire to write, but wasn’t sure it was something I could pursue.

In my teens I got into drinking and girls and smoking fags and all the things that you shouldn’t do, and that became much more interesting to me than anything else. Though I still always wanted to write.

I did an NCTJ in Newspaper Journalism and worked briefly at [local newspaper] the Harrow Observer as a junior reporter. I think I was paid eight-and-a-half grand per year, and I just didn’t feel it was sustainable, so I gave it up. 

Alcohol was already interfering with my life, my productivity, my mental health.

I ended up getting a job at a business-to-business PR agency, writing press releases about roofing products because it paid more. I think that’s probably my first regret, not sticking with journalism as a proper profession. I gave up really quickly.

Even back then, at 18- or 19-years old, I was drinking a lot. Alcohol was already interfering with my life, my productivity, my mental health.

Above: Burke on location directing his spot for Icelandair in 2018.

I don’t think I was trying to hide from anything or bury anything. I was just fascinated with the idea of drinking and pubs and being drunk. I knew it was an issue. I knew that it was an accident waiting to happen.

I gave up the job writing press releases, and took a job on the money markets in London. Big characters, lots of drinking, early mornings, late nights. I enjoyed it as an experience but, once again, I decided it wasn’t for me.

I was unemployed for a while; 22-years-old and living at home, and that was difficult for my parents. My relationship with them suffered at that point because they had this economically inactive, piss-head giant [Burke is 6’ 10”] living in their house.

I think [Tony Cullingham] was a bit of a weirdo and a misfit himself, maybe he saw that reflected back at him.

My dad gave me an ultimatum; “Find yourself something to do or leave.” So, to keep him happy, I went to the library, and I looked up jobs in a book. Advertising was near the front. It was as simple as that.

There was this place called Watford College. I wrote off to this guy, [courser leader] Tony Cullingham and told my dad, “Look, I’ve applied for this college course. Now leave me alone. I’m trying.”

I think Tony Cullingham had the ability to see potential in people. I think he was a bit of a weirdo and a misfit himself, maybe he saw that reflected back at him.

At Watford I felt I’d found a tribe. I’d found somewhere I felt I belonged, and I found something which I could do.

I’d go to college, and then go to the pub most nights, get drunk, get the last Tube, and then wake up half pissed or hungover, and go back to college the following morning.

Above: Burke's film to promote the Watford Advertising Course, which he created in 2010.

When I hit ad land, it was like washing up on this wonderfully dysfunctional, crazy, rock ‘n’ roll beach, having been adrift at sea my entire life. I had placements at M&C Saatchi, Saatchis and Y&R. Then, I got hired at CDP London in Soho Square.

CDP was a great place to work, not necessarily from a creative point of view, but from a social point of view. It was a great culture. Everyone was in the Nelly Dean [pub] most nights. I really enjoyed being there. Probably for the wrong reasons.

Little did I know at the time, but the best days of the agency were well and truly over. It was about to lose Honda, so there were a lot of people rattling around with not a huge amount to do. And when people in advertising rattle around with not that much to do, they tend to go to the pub.

I was this cocky, Soho wideboy. I drank a lot and didn’t do what I was told, and thought there was nothing anyone could really do about it, that I was somehow in control of that situation, which of course, I wasn’t.

There was a time where I went out for a big night and ended up getting arrested at gunpoint and locked up. I had to get the agency to send a car.

I didn’t really think I was doing anything wrong. I thought it was just like, ‘This is advertising, it’s a bit rock 'n' roll, everyone makes mistakes; can you send an Addison Lee please? I’m at Stoke Newington Police Station, and I’m not really in a fit state to get the Underground’.

That was probably the first time that I thought, ‘Well, this is a problem, isn’t it?’.

A couple of weeks later I was arrested at work by the riot police, who stormed the agency and dragged me out one Tuesday afternoon after causing more havoc and mayhem after a bit of a drinking session in Soho.

The only person who ever said anything to me was my creative partner at the time. I remember a very sobering moment in my life when he was going to get married in Majorca. He sat me down, shut our office door and he gave me this envelope. He said, “Look, this is an invitation to my wedding in Majorca. Please don’t come.”

I realised that there was a man in front of me who loved me, respected me creatively, liked me as a person, knew my strengths and weaknesses, and who really didn’t want to be delivering the news that he was approaching the happiest day of his life and, because he wanted it to be the happiest day of his life, didn’t want me there. That was probably the first time that I thought, ‘Well, this is a problem, isn’t it?’.

Above: A young Tony Burke, in 2003.

I was on the ropes at that point. Deep down, I was in a desperate situation. People talk about mental health now, no one did then. I was very lost, I was very sad, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

I had a secret group of drinking buddies, and we were all glued together by this one thing, which was alcoholism. And we were all functioning at that point. But obviously, I stopped functioning.

I’d been made redundant and couldn’t get a job, and I just went on a rampage for a few months with my redundancy money.

It got to the point where I wasn’t even thinking about advertising, or about getting a job. I was leading this grubby, shadowland existence, descending further into chronic alcoholism. I didn’t even have the distraction of a nine-to- five job anymore.

When it comes to alcohol and drugs, people see the bad behaviour. They see the dickhead. They see the mess. What people don’t see is the source of all that. And the source is an illness, just like any other illness. And a profound sadness.

I would go on a massive bender every single day. I would wake up and check to see if I still had keys, phone, wallet, fags. If I had three out of four of those, it was a bonus. And, whether it was night or day, 2am or 2pm, I would just start drinking again.

This went on for a few months. I went back home for a bit, but I was still drinking. Then one day I came back to London without telling anybody.

I don’t think anyone knew the full extent of my behaviour. Unless you’re an alcoholic, unless you’re an addict, you can’t fully understand the depths to which an addict will stoop, and how you just stop caring about yourself.

What is important to point out is, when it comes to alcohol and drugs, people see the bad behaviour. They see the dickhead. They see the mess. They see the damage. They see the piss. They see the ruined evenings, the parties that you have to be thrown out of, or the weddings that you aren’t invited to. But what people don’t see is the source of all that. And the source is an illness, just like any other illness. And a profound sadness.

Above: Burke's spot for Icelandair. 

For quite a long time, people are not sympathetic towards you. They just see an idiot who’s squandering an incredible opportunity. I think, maybe these days, you’re more likely to say you’re ill and that you need help. Back then, you think you’re getting what you deserve. And I felt I was getting what I deserved.

I thought, ‘Let me disappear. Let me spiral down into this fucking sordid, horrible, disgusting, dirty burrow, and let me stay there, and you guys can all just get on with your nice little lives. Don’t worry about me, there’s nothing to see.’

It was love, really, that solved the problem. It was having people that cared about me, because I’d stopped caring about myself.

My best friend Dave, who I’ve known since primary school, eventually came and found me in London and said, “Come on, this has to end.”

It was love, really, that solved the problem. It was having people that cared about me, because I’d stopped caring about myself. I don’t want to be melodramatic and say it was going to end in death, but, you know, it was not going to end well.

Without love and support, you’re a hair’s breadth away from sleeping on a park bench. I was essentially a tramp, that’s where it got to, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I had family, that I was loved, that people thought I was worth saving, then no one would have come forward.

Above: Burke with his son, Joe. 

I’ve worked with the homeless since, because although I wasn’t really homeless, I was definitely down and out. And the only reason people are on the streets is because they don’t have anyone that cares about them. That was the only difference between me and them at that point.

Dave took me home to my parents’, who took me to hospital. But there was nowhere for me in the hospital, so they found me a bed in a rehab facility in West London.

I came out after two weeks and the world opened up to me in a way that it hadn’t done before.

When I got inside that place and they shut the door, I knew I couldn’t get out, and no one could get in. I knew that for the first time in a long time I was in a safe place, and I was really, really grateful for that.

I was in rehab with people who couldn’t wait to get out and start drinking again, or start smoking weed again, or doing coke again. They felt that they were there against their will. I felt sorry for them because I knew that it wasn’t over for them, whereas it was for me. I knew that I was going to get sober, and stay sober.

I came out after two weeks and the world opened up to me in a way that it hadn’t done before. I did have to put my advertising career on the backburner, because I knew that I couldn’t let anything consume me like advertising had, to the point that I was not able to look after myself. That was the compromise. 

Above: Tony Burke, who says sobriety sometimes feels like having your nose pushed up against the glass of a life that you’re no longer part of [photograph by Alex Bamford].

The danger is when sobriety becomes normal, and you get complacent. Your life, your family, your responsibilities become the reason you're not drinking and the structure of your sobriety. In other words, you stop having to try to be sober because you've designed your life around it. That's when you're most vulnerable, because something could derail that at any moment, and you'd have no way of coping.

When I left rehab I was 29 and I had nothing. No job, no money. Then, somehow, I embarked upon the most surreal year of my life.

I got a job working for a soft porn film company. I wasn’t even thinking about advertising at that point. I was just thinking about living and functioning.

I ended up surrounded by porn actresses, essentially writing, co-directing and producing this quite low-rent lesbian porno content inside a fairly hedonistic organisation, which revolved around lots of partying and drugs.

You haven’t just given up alcohol, you’re now stood with your nose against the glass watching a life continue that you’re no longer part of.

When you give up drinking, the first year or two are almost the easiest, because you’re so focused on it. I’m quite obsessive, and sobriety became a bit of an obsession, and being obsessed with not drinking was almost as easy as being obsessed with drinking.

Sobriety creates as many problems as it solves. You feel isolated and socially awkward. You live in a world and work in an industry where booze is used to celebrate, commiserate, bring people together and relax. You haven’t just given up alcohol, you’re now stood with your nose against the glass watching a life continue that you’re no longer part of.

The sober you is not the authentic you. You are an addict. A tramp on a bench. A pissed-up streetwalker. Sobriety might be more comfortable and overwhelmingly better for you and everyone in your orbit, but that beast is not dead because, deep down, you know what and who you are.

Sometimes I wake up in my bed in my nice clean house, with my beautiful family – I have two kids, Joe and Elsie, and a beautiful partner, Anna, who's supported me every step of the way – and it feels like it’s someone else’s life because the addict in me is still there, waiting for an opportunity to fuck everything up and burn everything down. 

Above: A clip from episode one of the BBC's The Monastery documentary, from 2005, in which Burke took part, spending six weeks in a Benedictine monastery, a period he says gave him "a sense of self-forgiveness". 

When I gave up alcohol I felt like a new person. I had a real appetite for life, and I worked at it. The porn job wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but it was six very interesting months.

The girls I was working with were flawed, and not the happiest people, but they were interesting, and I had a lot of respect for them. I certainly wasn’t going to become some seedy porn baron. I was also trying to keep myself out of trouble.

They had this recovering alcoholic, media tosspot, who’d fallen into soft porn and could potentially find redemption in a Benedictine monastery. It was a no-brainer for them.

In the middle of this, I saw that a TV company was looking for five people to go and live in a Benedictine monastery for six weeks. No alcohol involved in this decision, but my ego, my sense of self, was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that’.

The TV company were storytellers, and they had this recovering alcoholic, media tosspot, who’d fallen into soft porn and could potentially find redemption in a Benedictine monastery. It was a no-brainer for them.

Above: Burke, at 6'10" tall, towers over a nun during his time on The Monastery.

This was 2004. I’d literally been out of rehab for a few months, and I found myself, via porn, in in a crumbling, 500-year-old monastery. I think I took it on through ego. When it comes to alcoholics there’s this model; high ego, low self-esteem. You hate yourself, but you also have this incredible sense of grandiosity.

At the monastery, I found myself surrounded by this incredible community of monks, and it just slowed everything down for me, living at their pace. I’m not a Christian, or certainly wasn’t a Christian, but it’s not about God and it’s not about Christianity. It’s about humility. It’s about silence. It’s about introspection.

The monastery really gave me a sense of self-forgiveness.

It was exactly what I needed. My brain was still. I didn’t need to be anywhere. I didn’t need to pay rent. It was like being in rehab really, but just a different version. A spiritual rehab, I suppose.

Sobriety was probably not going to be enough. The monastery really gave me a sense of self-forgiveness. A sense that I had a relevance, that I was not a bad person, and that I had some people in my corner. And I took that back out into the world.

Above: Burke's co-directed promo for his brother's band, Eight Rounds Rapid. 

Eventually I got another job in advertising. I went to work for a direct marketing agency. I felt that, after everything that had happened, I needed to get serious again and start thinking about my career.

I accepted I was never going to have the advertising career that I’d wanted, because I’d fucked it up, and I didn’t think there was a way back.

I didn’t think I deserved that career, anyway. I felt I’d had my chance and I’d blown it. I was, for that moment in time, happy to sit in the middle lane, take a breath, enjoy the fact that I was still alive, not in prison, and sober and clean. For the first time in my life I felt I had some control.

Even on my first day I was wondering how quickly I could get out.

It was a DM agency, and I remember on my first day there, I spoke to the ECD and she said, “You won’t find anyone here writing screenplays or trying to write novels. They know what their job is, and they get on with it.”

I just remember thinking, 'you poor fuckers'. You’ve got no creative ambition. Even on my first day I was wondering how quickly I could get out.

Above: Burke's first short film, The Fox, shot in 2011.

Two years on in that job I was sort of up to my old tricks a little bit, without the booze, but rattling the bars, pissing people off, rowing with people, not doing what I’m told. So, it wasn’t just the alcohol. I’ve got that in me, a bit of an agent provocateur, I suppose, especially 20 years ago. I left and I went freelance, and I’ve been freelancing ever since.

I made another contract with myself that I didn’t want to break, and that was to make a feature film. Cinema as my sanctuary. At weekends I’d be going to see two or three films a day, because I felt safe in the dark, watching a film. Again, a bit like rehab, no one could get to me.

About 15 years ago I made my first short film, The Fox, which won some awards and did quite well. I said I wouldn’t make another one. But then, you know, I went again.

I was on a high when people were reviewing [PROTEIN]. It was in The Guardian, Mark Kermode was bigging it up on his podcast. Then… nothing. Six years of work, over.

I ended up making about seven or eight shorts. I started directing music videos. I started directing commercials. This is all while I was a freelance creative.

I’ve written lots of feature films over the years, and about six years ago, I got a bit of traction on a script that I’d written [PROTEIN], which I went and directed in South Wales. It came out last year in cinemas, on Amazon and Apple TV, and was then released in America. I think it’s just been voted Empire’s 24th best horror film of 2025. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Above: The trailer for Burke's critically acclaimed debut feature film, PROTEIN.

There’s been an incredible, crushing low since finishing PROTEIN. I was on a high when people were reviewing it. It was in The Guardian, Mark Kermode was bigging it up on his podcast. Then… nothing. Six years of work, over. And the only option is to start again. It's like you've climbed Everest and, at the top of that mountain is another, much bigger, mountain to climb.

When freelancing went a bit dry in 2018, I decided to sit down and write a novel.

Hotel Ophelia took me five years. Well, it took me four months to write a fairly flabby 130,000-word first draft, and then I spent four-and-a-half years editing and rewriting it. It came out in 2023.

It was my childhood ambition to be a writer, and to me, that meant being an author, and I’ve been able to tick that box. I don’t expect it to sell millions of copies. It’s not Fifty Shades of Grey, but it’s art, isn’t it?