Oliver James is a clinical psychologist, writer, broadcaster and documentary producer. After attending Eton, but despite mediocre ‘A’ Levels, Oliver won a place at Cambridge, studying Social Anthropology between 1973 and 1976. He then studied clinical psychology at Nottingham and trained as a child psychologist. His upbringing, he claims, had prepared him for a career involving the life of the mind – a job in the city would have been unthinkable – and all his sisters now work in some form of therapy.

He soon carved out a flourishing TV career. In 1982 he made his first series which was about childcare. A series called Sex with Paula (featuring Paula Yates) followed in 1987.

In 1992 he made three films, two as producer and one as producer-resenter for the BBC2 Crime and Punishment season. Rape, for 40 Minutes, recorded the meeting of a rapist and a rape victim. Prisoner XYY/334422, also for 40 Minutes, plumbed the psychology of an imprisoned psychopath. Wot U looking at?, for Horizon, explained why the poor are more violent than the rich and why violence has increased since 1987 in the UK.

In 1997, he produced and presented The Chair, a 7-part interview series for BBC2, including one in which Peter Mandelson MP famously shed a tear.  Stephen Fry and Tony Blackburn were amongst other celebrities interviewed about their psychological backgrounds. In 1998 he was the presenter of a two-part series about his book, New Britain on the Couch, for channel 4. Between 2004 and 2006 he also presented a series of programmes about childcare for This Morning.

In recent years he has been very concerned by Britain’s increasingly selfish and wealthy society which follows, he claims, the American capitalist model.  In various books and newspaper articles he has described how we become more prone to depression the richer as we grow richer.  Affluenza: How to be Successsful and Stay Sane (published in 2007) features anecdotes about a cast of characters James encountered during his travels, skirting close to the self-help genre with instructions on how to avoid succumbing to the virus.  The Selfish Capitalist, published in 2008, is a companion volume, having begun life as an appendix to Affluenza.

His other notable works by Oliver include the bestselling They F*** You Up – How to survive family life, and he has written various columns and articles for The Sun, the Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Express, the Independent and most recently, the Observer magazine, as well as numerous women’s magazines.

He notes that he lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and two young children.  Having resolved to take his own medicine, he looks after his young children some of the time, and endeavours not to work long hours.

Affluenza

It is often accepted that our hugely increased wealth over the last half century has done nothing to increase our happiness – but Oliver James believes market capitalism actually increases certain types of mental illness.

There is currently an epidemic of 'affluenza' throughout the world - an obsessive, envious, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses - that has resulted in huge increases in depression and anxiety among millions, particularly in English-speaking nations. 

The Affluenza Virus is a set of values which increase our vulnerability to emotional distress.  It entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous. Over a nine-month period, Oliver James travelled around the world to try and find out why.

He discovered how, despite very different cultures and levels of wealth, affluenza is spreading. Cities he visited include Sydney, Singapore, Moscow, Copenhagen, New York and Shanghai, and in each place he interviewed several groups of people in the hope of finding out not only why this is happening, but also how one can increase the strength of one's emotional immune system.

He asks: why do so many more people want what they haven't got and want to be someone they're not, despite being richer and freer from traditional restraints? And, in so doing, uncovers the answer to how to reconnect with what really matters and learn to value what you've already got. In other words, how to be successful and stay sane…