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Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE
From the mountains of Algeria to the squats of South London via sectarian Northern Ireland, Ten Thousand Apologies is the sordid and thrilling story of the country's most notorious cult band, Fat White Family. Loved and loathed in equal measure since their formation in 2011, the relentlessly provocative, stunningly dysfunctional "drug band with a rock problem" have dedicated themselves to constant chaos and total creative freedom at all costs.
Like a tragicomic penny dreadful dreamed up by a mutant hybrid of Jean Genet, the Dadaists and Mark E. Smith, the Fat Whites' story is a frequently jaw-dropping epic of creative insurrection, narcotic excess, mental illness, wanderlust, self-sabotage, fractured masculinity, and the ruthless pursuit of absolute art.
Co-written with lucidity and humour by singer Lias Saoudi and acclaimed author Adelle Stripe, Ten Thousand Apologies is that rare thing: a music book that barely features any music, a biography as literary as any novel, and a confessional that does not seek forgiveness. This is the definitive account of Fat White Family's disgraceful and radiant jihad - a depraved, romantic and furious gesture of refusal to a sanitised era.
A ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE
From the mountains of Algeria to the squats of South London via sectarian Northern Ireland, Ten Thousand Apologies is the sordid and thrilling story of the country's most notorious cult band, Fat White Family. Loved and loathed in equal measure since their formation in 2011, the relentlessly provocative, stunningly dysfunctional "drug band with a rock problem" have dedicated themselves to constant chaos and total creative freedom at all costs.
Like a tragicomic penny dreadful dreamed up by a mutant hybrid of Jean Genet, the Dadaists and Mark E. Smith, the Fat Whites' story is a frequently jaw-dropping epic of creative insurrection, narcotic excess, mental illness, wanderlust, self-sabotage, fractured masculinity, and the ruthless pursuit of absolute art.
Co-written with lucidity and humour by singer Lias Saoudi and acclaimed author Adelle Stripe, Ten Thousand Apologies is that rare thing: a music book that barely features any music, a biography as literary as any novel, and a confessional that does not seek forgiveness. This is the definitive account of Fat White Family's disgraceful and radiant jihad - a depraved, romantic and furious gesture of refusal to a sanitised era.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published February 24, 2022
45 people are currently reading
557 people want to read
About the author
Adelle Stripe
13 books103 followersAdelle Stripe's books include Base Notes, the Sunday Times bestselling Ten Thousand Apologies, and Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, a fictionalised biography inspired by the playwright Andrea Dunbar. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize, Gordon Burn Prize, and Portico Prize for Literature. She lives in Calderdale, West Yorkshire.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
November 26, 2023
Without knowing it I first came across Fat White Family about 4 or 5 years back. A Graphic designer I then worked with enjoyed the more bizarre world of art and film and was insistent that I watch a rather Pythonish film clip with a fair bit of blood and gore. I recall laughing at its absurdity and not giving it much thought.
Later on I was going through a Neo Psychedelia phase via Spotify and enjoying it. Recommendations came and went and Fat White Family for some reason came up, so I played their Serfs Up album, more based on what I thought was a very good name for an album than anything else. One song stood out, Tastes Good with the Money, and that was added to the Likes list to have an occasional play. As is my way with music, I moved on to other things.
The beauty of Goodreads is reading others reviews and them hitting a spot. With that, I read Nigeyb’s review of Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure and thought about how I knew this band and that the review was very compelling. Nigeyb’s review linked.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I did a bit of research and when I had a look at them on YouTube I recognised the film clip that the Graphic Designer had liked. A Parental Guidance warning for the squeamish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLTWN...
I am not that keen on music and sport bio to be honest. I lost interest in what to me was the same old story many years back. I really have no need to read Keith Richard’s bio, as an example, and never will. Nor any other of the more famous, they are not that interesting in my opinion. If I am going to read anything music it has to be the more obscure, those that had a brief moment in the sun, and from my part of the world Fat White family fit that obscurity.
Nigeyb makes a good point about this book, “It involves a spectacular amount of drug taking and a wanton disregard for anything approaching professionalism.” From a musical side of things the drug taking is hardly new in the world of music, as for lack of professionalism, from the point of view of making the music itself, the way that Fat White Family approached the making of their 2nd album the lack of professionalism was such drug fuelled chaos that they produced something verging on, at times, hardly listenable. It is truly a miracle it was released. But as to it being a failure, I have to say it is the perfect soundtrack for this book, and after several plays I am liking it a bit more than I might have if I had not persevered. I have a soft spot for lo-fi having listened to such luminaries as the superb Kiwi Chris Knox through to US outsider musician Daniel Johnston. The truth is, Fat White Family are nowhere in the same league in terms of songwriting ability as those two I have mentioned, but that lo-fi ethos is at times evident in Music For our Mothers and with that just gets that little better with each play.
But………that does not matter as this book is better than just another drug fuelled rock and roll story. It is actually an exceptional telling of the lives of the major members of Fat White Family. Let’s start with the fact I have actually listened to this via Audiobook via my Spotify Premium account, this is only the 2nd Audiobook I have ever listened to. It is told in the third person by Emily Spowage and in the first person by Fat White Family founder and member Lias Saoudi and is told brilliantly. Emily Spowage is perfect for the 3rd person telling, and this is offset superbly by the world weariness of Lias narration. This is not just a music Bio, we cover the Saoudi brothers multicultural upbringing of a mixed Algerian Berber father and Yorkshire mother and the trials and tribulations that that caused in such places as Northern Ireland when their parents split and their mother took them to live there with her new husband. Outsiders they were in NI and hence always outsiders and attracted abuse as such. And that is also the attraction of the book, a permanent sense of not belonging in all worlds they were exposed to, be that of their parents, the schools attended and even the world they joined, that being music and outlier performance art.
My music tastes are incredibly broad, I can take in anything from any works of the classical world through to obscure noise musicians, and even in my mid-sixties I am looking for new music to challenge me. Does Fat White Family’s music challenge me? To a degree, the answer is yes. The almost unplayable 2nd album I will give a few more plays as it gets better and better, that is a challenge I like; the debut I have enjoyed but needs more plays. The more polished Serfs Up I am starting to really enjoy. Mind you, I have serious earworm with the tune Tastes Good with the Money. That is now into its 5th day now. Go away!
I would suggest that if one is into the fairly generic pop of say Taylor Swift, then one will not like this band's music one little bit. If one is into say the more experimental pop of The Beatles they may find them a curio, they also might be surprised about a very strong link to those musical superstars if they read/listened to this exceptional book.
Later on I was going through a Neo Psychedelia phase via Spotify and enjoying it. Recommendations came and went and Fat White Family for some reason came up, so I played their Serfs Up album, more based on what I thought was a very good name for an album than anything else. One song stood out, Tastes Good with the Money, and that was added to the Likes list to have an occasional play. As is my way with music, I moved on to other things.
The beauty of Goodreads is reading others reviews and them hitting a spot. With that, I read Nigeyb’s review of Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure and thought about how I knew this band and that the review was very compelling. Nigeyb’s review linked.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I did a bit of research and when I had a look at them on YouTube I recognised the film clip that the Graphic Designer had liked. A Parental Guidance warning for the squeamish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLTWN...
I am not that keen on music and sport bio to be honest. I lost interest in what to me was the same old story many years back. I really have no need to read Keith Richard’s bio, as an example, and never will. Nor any other of the more famous, they are not that interesting in my opinion. If I am going to read anything music it has to be the more obscure, those that had a brief moment in the sun, and from my part of the world Fat White family fit that obscurity.
Nigeyb makes a good point about this book, “It involves a spectacular amount of drug taking and a wanton disregard for anything approaching professionalism.” From a musical side of things the drug taking is hardly new in the world of music, as for lack of professionalism, from the point of view of making the music itself, the way that Fat White Family approached the making of their 2nd album the lack of professionalism was such drug fuelled chaos that they produced something verging on, at times, hardly listenable. It is truly a miracle it was released. But as to it being a failure, I have to say it is the perfect soundtrack for this book, and after several plays I am liking it a bit more than I might have if I had not persevered. I have a soft spot for lo-fi having listened to such luminaries as the superb Kiwi Chris Knox through to US outsider musician Daniel Johnston. The truth is, Fat White Family are nowhere in the same league in terms of songwriting ability as those two I have mentioned, but that lo-fi ethos is at times evident in Music For our Mothers and with that just gets that little better with each play.
But………that does not matter as this book is better than just another drug fuelled rock and roll story. It is actually an exceptional telling of the lives of the major members of Fat White Family. Let’s start with the fact I have actually listened to this via Audiobook via my Spotify Premium account, this is only the 2nd Audiobook I have ever listened to. It is told in the third person by Emily Spowage and in the first person by Fat White Family founder and member Lias Saoudi and is told brilliantly. Emily Spowage is perfect for the 3rd person telling, and this is offset superbly by the world weariness of Lias narration. This is not just a music Bio, we cover the Saoudi brothers multicultural upbringing of a mixed Algerian Berber father and Yorkshire mother and the trials and tribulations that that caused in such places as Northern Ireland when their parents split and their mother took them to live there with her new husband. Outsiders they were in NI and hence always outsiders and attracted abuse as such. And that is also the attraction of the book, a permanent sense of not belonging in all worlds they were exposed to, be that of their parents, the schools attended and even the world they joined, that being music and outlier performance art.
My music tastes are incredibly broad, I can take in anything from any works of the classical world through to obscure noise musicians, and even in my mid-sixties I am looking for new music to challenge me. Does Fat White Family’s music challenge me? To a degree, the answer is yes. The almost unplayable 2nd album I will give a few more plays as it gets better and better, that is a challenge I like; the debut I have enjoyed but needs more plays. The more polished Serfs Up I am starting to really enjoy. Mind you, I have serious earworm with the tune Tastes Good with the Money. That is now into its 5th day now. Go away!
I would suggest that if one is into the fairly generic pop of say Taylor Swift, then one will not like this band's music one little bit. If one is into say the more experimental pop of The Beatles they may find them a curio, they also might be surprised about a very strong link to those musical superstars if they read/listened to this exceptional book.
March 8, 2022
Swallowed this up in a frenzied day. An utterly hypnotic and absorbing jaunt into the louche sphere of Fat White Family.
Deftly co-written by author Adelle Stripe and FWF singer Lias Saoudi, and perfectly summarised by the former: "A drug band with a rock problem".
Spanning the mountainous terrain of Saoudi's paternal Algeria, the depravity of South London's squats and the glum of Sheffield's northern hum, this is a music book unrivalled in dysfunctionality and peerless in excess.
If you only read one book this year, make sure it's this.
Deftly co-written by author Adelle Stripe and FWF singer Lias Saoudi, and perfectly summarised by the former: "A drug band with a rock problem".
Spanning the mountainous terrain of Saoudi's paternal Algeria, the depravity of South London's squats and the glum of Sheffield's northern hum, this is a music book unrivalled in dysfunctionality and peerless in excess.
If you only read one book this year, make sure it's this.
May 1, 2022
read about 3/4 of the way through and then blacked out on a train at 5am and lost it, and that for me is the umberto eco ending and the only one i’ll ever know
March 15, 2022
[4.5] - this was probably the most-apt book to have devoured in a single sitting whilst in bed with Covid.
it's the meditations on race and class that put this a cut above 99% of rock biographies. but some of the editing feels a lil' rusty and all the stories of smack, crack and meth did start to blur into one.
favourite lines were:
"[talking to his dad] was like trying weld Lego to Meccano"
and
"each face was like a molested patch of rhubarb"
FFO:
Nick Tosches - Hellfire
John Healy - The Grass Arena: An Autobiography
Mark Lanegan - Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir
it's the meditations on race and class that put this a cut above 99% of rock biographies. but some of the editing feels a lil' rusty and all the stories of smack, crack and meth did start to blur into one.
favourite lines were:
"[talking to his dad] was like trying weld Lego to Meccano"
and
"each face was like a molested patch of rhubarb"
FFO:
Nick Tosches - Hellfire
John Healy - The Grass Arena: An Autobiography
Mark Lanegan - Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir
February 10, 2024
It's a beautiful book. It's filled with heroin, excrements and fingered arseholes, but it's a lovely book.
December 14, 2022
The first half is one of the best pieces of literature I have come across in years. The style elevates a rather predictable story to a completely unreal level where every page makes you ask the question why aren't all biographies written this way. The only weakness is the ending (or the lack thereof) which makes the whole journey feel slightly pointless... which, on the other hand, when speaking about these punks, might actually be the most fitting endings of all.
September 1, 2024
Relentless ⚒️🐷⚒️
July 7, 2022
4.5/5. Lias/Adelle’s voices are my favorite I’ve read all year and this is the first memoir I can remember reading in a long time where the self-depreciation didn’t feel insincere. The writing and tone give the genuine sense of an narrator that does not think they are a “good” or “right” person, and that was more refreshing than I can explain. It was also understandable, because by the end of the book you don’t get the sense that anyone in it is a “good” person, but they are all far more interesting than that and I think far preferable to the cast of authors and main characters most contemporary memoirs or auto-fictions I’ve read recently are penned by/about. In a way this memoir seemed like an antidote to the cult of celebrity that surrounds most rockstars, removing them from their inherently flawed humanity and placing them on a pedestal where even their flaws turn into charming idiosyncrasies or necessary costs of genius. By the end of this read you really get the sense that Lias, or any member of the FWF, might actually not be someone you would like or immediately recognize the ingenue in if you met them in person, which is the same to be said about every other stranger on the street. A book to dash the ridiculous modern idea that artists are this benevolent class of creatives separate from or more enlightened than the rest of society…and therefore a book the culture was desperately in need of. While he may not be the most likeable, I think this book reenforces Saoudi as one of the most sincere, vulnerable, and non-commercialized musical talents today and I am thankful for that. 4.5 stars instead of 5 because I’m not sure how much I liked the switching back and forth between first and third person.
October 26, 2024
Arguably the most entertaining rock biog I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. Not a dull page amongst the 318 afforded here. My jaw dropped in disbelief at times, internally I howled with laughter as I screenshot pages to share with friends. The madness, intelligence, and belligerence of the main protagonists is nothing short of mesmerising. There is a socio-economic/political element within this, which gives it the credentials of a State of the Nation piece.
The book is full of humour, and sadness. A book full of mad antics, and the occasional bit of music-“Fat White Family are a Drug band with a Rock problem.”At times this book seems to offer a cast akin to that of the most decadent of Irvine Welsh novels. Read it. Get your mates to read it. Meet them at the pub. Drink beer and discuss it. Avoid acting it out though.
5/5. 10/10. Etc. Unmissable..
The book is full of humour, and sadness. A book full of mad antics, and the occasional bit of music-“Fat White Family are a Drug band with a Rock problem.”At times this book seems to offer a cast akin to that of the most decadent of Irvine Welsh novels. Read it. Get your mates to read it. Meet them at the pub. Drink beer and discuss it. Avoid acting it out though.
5/5. 10/10. Etc. Unmissable..
March 9, 2022
Despite still not much liking Fat White Family's music, I really enjoyed this (and understand what they're about more). Stripe is obviously a great writer, but it seems Saoudi is too, and even the periods when it was mostly an account of smack, crack and shitting in carrier bags, there was an intensity and a raw intelligence and an insight to it that was streets ahead of your usual rock biographies. Plus people I knew make cameos which is always fun. Actually the Saoudi's family background was more compelling than the decadence, and the pre -FWF period was more involving even if it was less astonishing.
Stay in school, don't do drugs .
Stay in school, don't do drugs .
April 4, 2022
Relentless - You will never hear me complain about my pathetic hangovers again
March 13, 2022
This no holds barred, raw account of the rise and fall of one of the best indie rock bands this century and is destined to become a classic rock 'bio' (of sorts). Adelle Stripe is fast becoming the go to writer for telling the stories of insecure working class artists, and she cleverly makes sense of the often hazy recollections of the different parties putting all the band's lunacy into context. FWF frontman Lias adds well written sections where he offers his version of different daft escapades and some industrial use of Class A's. It is both sad and funny, and unlike most rock bios no-one is spared. Most of all it is well written and hugely entertaining,
April 6, 2024
Cool to read a published work on the good old South London Scene, but I much preferred the chapters documenting the Saoudis’ family background to all the self-aggrandising drug abuse stories that came afterwards.
March 13, 2022
Long live The Fat White Family !
March 20, 2022
Truly tragicomic. Nothing else to say here. A great fucking book.
April 4, 2022
How could you not give this 5 stars?
December 7, 2022
Great book, really enjoyed it. Makes me never want to hang out with FWF
August 16, 2024
I touched him once
May 14, 2025
enjoyed this overall - love fat whites and most things lias does - do feel it’s a bit of a repetitive read at points; most story ‘beats’ boil down to “we played a gig and we did a load of drugs and we fell out for a bit” i feel
March 5, 2022
Superb. Best music book I've read in a long, long while.
March 10, 2022
Stellar.
June 26, 2022
Brutally honest, funny and heartbreaking at the same time. Even if you hate the Fat Whites, it’s worth reading.
March 18, 2023
Loved it. As grubby as I had expected but thoughtful and eloquent. As intriguing as it is repulsive.
November 27, 2023
This started with a bang and then there came a whimper, unfortunately. I love the Fat White Family’s music. The craft of Stripe’s text is excellent. Lias Saoudi’s diaristic entries are absolutely the best. He truly is a master of his language and a turn of phrase. That said, the drug-addled band’s escapades are pretty well known and documented. This gives additional dimension to all of that trauma — and, if the words can be trusted, these men’s tolerance for abusing their bodies (and surviving) may not have a rival. Talk about imprinting some serious damage at a cellular level. But as the book tore through their whirlwind of a pre-covid life and career, I was left with the profound absence of any method to the madness. Sure, they were pissed off at society, enfants terrible, weighted by mental disorder and family trauma. And yet, they clearly are/were a) whip-smart and b) had some important, conscious motivations for how they made music. Very little of this is (substantively) explored. The music is really just small moments connecting the binges of smack, gear, liquor, ketamine, hash, pills, etc. And it’s not like they are the first to have told this story. Given Lias’ art school background (and Saul’s come to think of it), you’d think explaining how the output for these 21st C. ‘wreckers of civilization’ came to take its final form might be more of a worthy investment. Instead we have nihilism and chemically stunted personas in the foreground. They’re just too good for that to be the end all. I’m treating this as a ‘Vol. 1’ of an ongoing, evolving career that hopes to keep us all at the edge of our seats for decades to come.
April 27, 2022
As a fan of the band and its various shoot-offs I really enjoyed it, and I think I would have even if I wasn’t, but I suppose we’ll really never know on that front now. It’s a bleakly comic fat white knuckle ride through a mad and clearly maddeningly turbulent stretch of time, with realism regularly injected by lias’s well-written interjections - epic for any fans of his life beyond the neutral zone series. Adelle Stripe is the perfect steady hand to guide the project and has synthesized the undoubtably numerous unreliable narrative accounts in a v readable and enticing fashion. Struggled to tear myself away from it at times, laughed, grimaced, longed to start again - a new yard stick for future biogs in my book!
December 23, 2023
Easily the best book I've read in 2023, likely an all-time favourite too. Was thinking about it constantly between reading and there was something special about being taken back to the period of time spent listening to FWF records as a college and university student, seeing them play at home in a Swindon pub of all places, going White Hotel for Moonlandingz (one of the best gigs I've ever been to). I too moved to Sheffield for distance and peace and quiet, glad reading this coincided with the new release - I needed that.
January 15, 2024
making this my only personality for a while. in the echoes where their music doesn’t speak, ten thousand apologies roars in garrulous drug-fuelled mania… it’s fresh and rotting at the same time. come to revel in masculinity stretched every which way but don’t expect any feminine input. still, this itched every greening scab in every way it should.
February 29, 2024
As a fan of Fat White Family, delving into "Ten Thousand Apologies" felt like a dream view to their wildworld. Lias Saoudi's candid storytelling pulls back the curtain on the band's journey, from the highs of creative breakthroughs to the lows of personal struggles through raw honesty.
August 15, 2025
I’m not the biggest FWF fan but this is an incredibly good music biography. Funny & interesting & doesn’t glamourise the various addictions and diagnoses (generally the opposite of glamour). Also barely mentions music.
March 31, 2022
Written for and by the enfant terrible. Obsessed with the fact they took drugs, so have a lot of people. Yawn.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews