152: Chris Hamilton

Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Chris Hamilton, with whom I went to school in Cardiff over 30 years ago. Chris is a full time professional (and award-winning) musician and composer who started his career as a lawyer, having gone to Oxford to study Law and worked in the City for a big corporate firm in London and New York. We talk about having gone ‘full circle’ as Chris learned the piano when very young.
We talk about our schooldays and the importance of learning and how Chris loved standing up and performing from a young age. We talk about how school can be a traumatic experience whether you were on the A list or Z list (and we reference a film that is very much a guilty, or not so guilty, pleasure for us both – Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion). We are here because of the past and Chris says that he wouldn’t change any of it.
Chris explains why we are the lucky generation in that we have memories of life pre-social media. He talks about going to India and Egypt on a one way ticket and whether that would be feasible these days.
We discuss social media posts and mental health, and Chris reflects on the different type of people who appear on social media. We talk about what people think about social media, and the implications of what we post, and how we are celebrities in our own little bubbles. We also reflect on the use of algorithms on Facebook and whether we would still post even if our posts received few likes, before moving on to discuss cliques and how we project ourselves.
We talk about Chris’ love of music, too, and how he often performs as the headliner on a cruise ship these days. His parents couldn’t understand though why he would want to give his music up to study Law. We also discuss how we both enjoy hearing the sound of our own voices.
We find out about Chris’ lockdown cabarets and discover that he has learned every Oscar winning song since 1934 as part of his stage shows. Chris asks me about my diaries and I ask Chris about his favourite songs. We also learn that he has composed songs since he was a child, has written a musical, and why he is his own worst critic.
Then, at the end of the interview, we learn that Chris lives in the moment and how he has found that we tend to become more nostalgic as we grow older.