Electric Picnic to become John Healy's new Grass Arena
Anyone familiar with Healy’s memoir, The Grass Arena, will know that he has been to hell and back (and then some). The eldest child of Irish immigrants in London, he joined the British army in his teens, and enjoyed some success as a boxer, before he deserted and hit the bottle and the streets.
Healy spent his 20s and 30s in and out of prison. Each time he was released, he went back drinking and thieving. He lived in the parks, ‘the grass arena’ of his book’s title. By rights he should be dead. “I lasted 15 years,” he says. “Longer than any of the other winos. They were all killed, in falls, or by disease, or by the police.”
