The Skinny on... Anahit Behrooz

What’s your favourite place to visit and why?

Venice! I love that everything has a little boat counterpart, I love that everything is in service of the aesthetic™, I love that it’s filled with loser film critics with their red lanyards for two weeks of every year. Casanova would have had an aneurysm.

Favourite food and why?

Chips, because they fuck. Pizza, for similar reasons. *Joey Tribbiani voice* put your hands together and.... Before anyone yells at me, this is a legit thing that legit Italians do, it's called a pizza con le patatine fritte and it is the shit and they have it in Naples so don't come at me (although upon Googling apparently it is a delicacy largely aimed at children).

Favourite colour and why?

That Majorelle blue, when it’s so deep and rich and looks almost impossible. I have in the midst of my winter mental breakdown started painting everything in my flat that colour. The toilet seat’s next.

Who was your hero growing up?

This was a question in my English GCSE exam and I put JK Rowling because I DIDN’T KNOW BETTER OKAY but I did get full marks across that whole subject so. Who’s laughing now, JK. I also had a big thing for Robin Hood in all his forms (vulpine and otherwise) because he was sexy and annoying and a forerunner of the wealth redistribition movement.

Whose work inspires you now?

Not JK Rowling. Still Robin Hood.

As it's the love issue, if you could have a dinner conversation with any historical couple, who would it be and why?

Either Marquis de Sade and whoever he was fucking because I suspect he was actually a deeply awkward and unsexy freak or Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley so I could stage an intervention. I can't think of anyone that I'm like, 'wow I'd like to learn from them'. I don't think most people are very good at being in love and that's actually quite reassuring. Maybe Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward? They seemed to consistently fancy each other. Or maybe Emily Dickinson and Sue Gilbert but we'd skip dinner and go straight to a queer bar where they could finally kiss in public.

Is there a particular love story, fictional or real, that has significantly impacted your outlook on relationships?

Doris Day and Howard Keel yelling at each other in Calamity Jane definitely did something. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Antonio Banderas fighting in The Mask of Zorro definitely did something similar. Take from that what you will.

What’s your all time favourite album?

Carrie and Lowell by Sufjan Stevens. But also Music from Scrubs and Scrubs Original Soundtrack: Volume 2.

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?

Sin City was so ugly inside and out that it gave me a headache.

What book would you take to a desert island?

If I say The Lord of the Rings does this count as book promo? Can I expense this conversation?

Who’s the worst?

My neighbour.

When did you last cry?

Oh like five minutes ago probably.

What are you most scared of?

Spiders and dying alone :) How about you!

When did you last vomit and why?

The Skinny’s staff Christmas party because someone (Ros) kept ordering prosecco. My most embarrassing vomiting story though, in terms of the wankiness of its component parts (Bloomsbury I'm so sorry), is when I did a shot of what I thought was tequila at an undergrad party, realised it was whisky, and immediately threw up on the croquet lawn. Uhhhh Tolkien maybe walked across that croquet lawn once (HMRC you better give me my money back).

Tell us a secret?

Bold of you to think I have boundaries and everyone doesn’t already know all my business.

Which celebrity could you take in a fight?

I could definitely arm wrestle Jeremy Allen White and then aggressively make out.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be?

A pigeon.

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Mapping Middle-earth: Environmental and Political Narratives in J. R. R. Tolkien's Cartographies is out with Bloomsbury on 22 Feb
BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship is available via 404 Ink