How To Grow A Moustache Exclusive Feature Interview With Michael “Atters” Attree

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^{Welcome to our last exclusive feature interview for the month of Moustache March.  We cannot think of a more fitting way to end our festivities than with an interview with moustache superstar, grand wizard of the graspable appendage, editor-at Large (and resident bounder) of The Chap Magazine, and champion chap himself, Mr Michael “Atters” Attree.} 

^{How can one write an introduction for such an extraordinary gentleman and scholar without it sounding like a eulogy?  Let me just say that when Mr “Atters” agreed to the interview all of us here in the How To Grow A Moustache secret underground lair walked around a little lighter in step and stride, as if we were 8 year old Irish orphans and it was Christmas In Killarney…in fact, only now does that song actually make any sense.}

^{“Atters” has truly done it all, and to try to sum it all up in a few words would be a serious injustice to the man and to you our dear readers. Furthermore, we are sure that like us you are simply dying to wade knee deep and relish your way through the rather whimsical words that follow.  So by all means shed your hope at the door, roll up your pant legs, and enter into the unparalleled universe of the irrepressible Michael “Atters” Attree! Now, periculo vestro ingredimini…}   

Hosting The 2012 British Beard & Moustache Championships

HTGAM:  Briefly Mr. Attree, if you would, tell us everything about yourself.  [That was a tad unfair, maybe just a brief intro in your own words for our readers of the more jejune persuasion.]

Atters:  Well, I’m going to try one of those jejune, “clever” quips; I am a reality escapologist.  When I was seven I saw the 50s film ‘Le Ballon Rouge’ and I’ve gut-wrenchingly wished I’d bobbed off with those balloons ever since.

HTGAM:  Could you please share with our readers some of your most recent exploits? Whether you are aware of this or not you have a huge cult following here in the states.  In fact, if the current moustache world was the glam scene of the 70’s, Matt Smith would be Bowie, and you would most certainly be Marc Bolan.  This is a compliment I assure you.

Atters:  A complement indeed (with an interesting human medley).  I’m not exactly averse to viewing the Atters international terrain out there but I’d be somewhat astonished (and honored) if I found that “huge cult following in the states” ribbing of yours to be (wholly) true.  As for my recent exploits – well, they tend to be posted in pictorial form upon atters.com.  Indulgences of any true merit generally remain clandestine.

Protesting Against Abercrombie & Fitch
“Give Three-Piece a Chance.”

HTGAM:  You seemed to have lived many lives in one, somewhat of a renaissance man in your own right, what keeps you going and growing?

Atters:  My amazement at my knowing so little– My amazement at most of humanity for not knowing it knows so little, my libido.

How To Grow A Moustache Exclusive Feature Interview With Michael “Atters” Attree

HTGAM:  I personally see a little Robert Antone Wilson, Aleister Crowley, Ambrose Bierce, and Baron Von Munchausen in you, am I off on this?  Have you met any of these larger than life cads in your travels on this plain, or the astral one, if you don’t mind me probing?  [Let it be known no disrespect is meant by this comparison, I am a great admirer of them all.]

How To Grow A Moustache Exclusive Feature Interview With Michael “Atters” Attree

Atters:  Another splendid human medley.  So have I’ve been rumbled like that sterling braggart Munchausen then?  Agreed, I try to be economical with the bland parts of a tale…Or maybe I simply do as Lindsay Anderson (an indulgent hero of my teens) once advised me to do (or did he?); “observe and the ordinary becomes extraordinary.”  However – I had unsurprisingly worked that out already, and found the extra-extraordinary rather mind blowing too.  I also had a good chin-wag with another hero of mine, the occult historian Colin Wilson.  I was writing and producing a Channel 4 documentary at the time on “sexual variation,” and desired Wilson as a contributor for a De Sade segment.  We soon meandered off that (over flogged) subject and irrelevantly discussed at length our concept of “heightened reality” incorporating Wilson’s “Faculty X” research which I had already been fascinated by. Incidentally I was the first fellow ever to seriously document “adult babies” via the disbelieving British TV public– even Channel 4 was disgusted and literally threw my proposal back at me (I left it on their desk – they commissioned it within four hours).  That was another superbly freakish chapter of my life resulting in my spending the night in a giant cot soaked in urine surrounded by a coven of elderly nappy clad wailing witches.  So back then I was regularly tripping on both the blandness and awe of the everyday with what felt like an imagined trepan to free my pineal juice glands and indulge in an emotional, heart achingly melancholic super awareness high (with a drizzle of an eternal deja vu).  The ensuing mental plummets into bleakness were usually accompanying (unpleasant) coincidences and bizarre manifestations (you can’t have it all).

How To Grow A Moustache Exclusive Feature Interview With Michael “Atters” Attree

These days I can only achieve both states of mind by either feeling desperately bleak or buoyantly crapulent (I’m sure a psychiatrist would idly yawn and tick a few boxes to this lot). So when I recount my previously observed experiences they can sound somewhat farfetched (and understandably so).
Hence I never disclose (publicly) my more extraordinary experiences (and there have been some corkers). This is partly my attempt in minimizing my sounding like the supreme onanist which I (no doubt) sound like already… In short, everyone can experience the extraordinary and make their 
own (non) sense of it all– most choose not to and subscribe to what the general populace blindly dictates. But, I think you know this already… In answer to your “astral cads” question- alas, to my knowledge no – I have met none of the above.  I did interview that cinematic British bounder Leslie Philips.  We even stroked each other’s moustaches… But thankfully he is still hanging on to this mortal coil.

 [pullquote] everyone can experience the extraordinary and make their own (non) sense of it all–[/pullquote]

HTGAM:  This next question I have been pondering for years and have been waiting to pose it to the right person.  I think you may just be that person, being an expert on all things scantily clad and paranormic (might I have just coined a new word (?), spellcheck seems to thinks so).  Ghosts, people claim to see them, or have seen them, or know someone who has seen them.  I have heard the stories most of my life, as most living and breathing folk will…but sadly have never seen one myself.  I consider myself very open to an informal/formal introduction, anything to break up the monotony of everyday life, but alas nothing.  I pry jealously, invoking the devil’s advocate when people speak of such sightings at the pub.  Ex. “Was the spook wearing clothes?”  The answer is always yes, usually described in depth as wearing some period style outfit.  I gaze deep into the teller’s lying eyes for a good 15 seconds and then ask/declare before the spell is broken in a tone a little too sarcastic: “So that must mean clothes have ghosts too?!?!”  The interview usually ends there and I am left paying for my own beer again.  Forgive this longwinded, roundabout question, but this is most important to me, and quite possibly to one of my readers as well.  Do clothes in fact have ghosts also?  For if they didn’t, would not all ghost sightings be rated-R?

How To Grow A Moustache Exclusive Feature Interview With Michael “Atters” Attree

Atters:  Bravo to these “paranormic” musings. A little restricted (time wise) in offering my ectoplasmic pearls of wisdom here but like you, given half the chance I play the devil’s advocate card too.  However, my own ground breaking research into such supernatural matters as the Brazilian Triangle, totty levitation, and a lactating Nefertiti, alas proved inconclusive.  Ultimately, I am astounded by the
gullibility of those who (for example) choose to see a bellowing kettle as being a resident ghost, and then do everything possible to avoid the truth. That’s not to say there are no ghosts of course.  My definition of a ghost may be somewhat different to that of a common everyday clothed one.  Quite simply, I believe I am able to separate my consciousness and enter other dimensions.  I believe these places harbor all sorts of delights – with entities going about their business clothed and as real as we are.  Also, when my consciousness is slightly out of sync with my physical body (through exhaustion), I am often able to see various out-of-body “visitors” around me – and the humanoid ones are indeed always naked (as I would appear to be to others when in a similar out of body state).  This does not mean the beings are dead or even exist in our own dimension.  However, I do believe many of these entities have reoccurring negative “issues,” (death being one of them) and some can be aggressive big bastards.  A simple question here would be, “If I believe and claim I can leave my physical body – why can I not read a masked message hidden elsewhere and report its legend back to a researcher immediately?”  Good question…

How To Grow A Moustache Exclusive Feature Interview With Michael “Atters” Attree

HTGAM:  We are now into Moustache March [by the time this is published] here in the states.  Any tips or tricks you can pass on to the noobs trying out a duster for the first time?  [What a boring question this must be. One that you must get quite a lot, so please draw from the esoteric if you will in answering this with something none of us have heard of, or thought we would ever hear of, let alone consider.]

Atters:  In general anyone can grow a moustache. Many shouldn’t (namely red heads, hooded brutes and most women).  Frankly, The Atters’ Guide to Growing a Moustache is a tad jejune too;

1. Drink a bottle of absinthe.
2. If and when you wake up– you’ll be a hirsute canvas ripe for topiary.
3. A legion of dollies will yearn to gambol through your foliage (more will not).
4. When using Sellotape – use scissors…Once, when biting off a strip I ended up looking like a comedic surrealist.
5. Most moustache waxes are an expensive junket created by thieving costermongers 
   (sans moustache) so I make my own.
6. Another tip; read my selfless articles in The Chap
7. As for the esoteric approach to ones sub-nasal lodestones?  Come…Step into “The Pentagram of Atters,” and may god have mercy upon your soul…

How To Grow A Moustache Exclusive Feature Interview With Michael “Atters” Attree

HTGAM:  What do you have coming up in 2013? Will you be performing, lecturing or rabblerousing in the United States anytime soon? 

Atters:   All the usual (London based) buffoonery for sure. A few years ago my little “butler” (he was gratis) decided to be my agent and make me “a sshtar!”  Having paid for me to get to Hollywood, we ended up at a trucker lap-dance bar (his choice), then San Francisco (my choice).  Not one casting phone call was made, and when he dropped his trousers and said, “Go in Atters – you might as well?”  I ran back to Blighty.  Who knows?  I may give Hollywood another shot.  I truly detest most actors, however I was recently in a few cinematic trifles, and a London Acting agency has recently insisted on representing me (along with all the obligatory Equity/Spotlight requirements).  So I’m now being wheeled in (and rapidly out again) of numerous castings (mostly in “Atters” character of course).  So there is a minute chance I shall detest myself this year.  Having previously cast for actors myself, it’s rather strange (and pleasurable) to be the performing monkey too.  I must say I did relish the hotels, preening, and fuss that went with my last (cough and a spit of an appearance) acting job (and the surprisingly opulent cheques that still arrive from it).  As The Chap Magazine’s Editor at Large, my former series “The Bounder” recounted my ‘caddish’ exploits and failures- including my trip to Hollywood, pagan escapades on Iona, and the British tour of my (non-politically correct) paranormal theatre show.  I may pop a few of my vintage columns on atters.com soon.

HTGAM:  We here at HowToGrowAMoustache.Com think you may have played a large part in this stache revival.  Do you think this will be lasting or eventually fall out of favor again with the fluoride guzzling masses?

Atters:  I have to say I concur with that that opening line. As for this new whisker movements longevity; sadly I doubt it will last.  We live in the metrosexual back, sack, and crack world of louche Velcro and warm Fanta.  The crunching of leather on gravel has been usurped by squeaking rubber and sugar free gum mastication.  Facial topiary rarely sits well with all this.

How To Grow A Moustache Exclusive Feature Interview With Michael “Atters” Attree

HTGAM:  Any last words before we stand you before the firing squad [sorry, forgot where I was for a second] for your fans here at HTGAM, advice, wisdom, a haiku, or limerick perhaps?

Atters: 

 The Toad-in-hole Beard-splitter

Hop back on your lily pad, 
Your sweet moustache tastes bitter.
Most ladies of the Court call you
Their toad-in-hole beard-splitter.
So fribble with your barley lip, 
Be mindful where you pop it
A hag is apt to ride that broom
and hex your bobbing pocket

 -Baron Munchausen (or was it…?) – 1750

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To find out more about Atters ,and we suggest you do, Check out atters.com or thechapmagazine.co.uk – Also, if you would like to take a shot at appearing in Atters’ regular column in The Chap Magazine please click on our most convenient ad on the right and submit your funky facial fur up for review, critique, etc. Finally, we would all love to hear from you…please leave your comments below! Happy Moustache March 2013! 

A very, very special thanks to Mr Michael “Atters” Attree for taking time out from his schedule for this interview, you are a true gent! 

All photos and film used by permision

Interview By Douglas Smythe