'MY RESEARCH INTO PSYCHOPATHS MADE ME SLIGHTLY CRAZY' | This is Hull and East Riding

'MY RESEARCH INTO PSYCHOPATHS MADE ME SLIGHTLY CRAZY' | This is Hull and East Riding:

'via Blog this'Tickets: £12 To book: 01482 323638.

Visit: www.hulltruck.co.uk

In print: Jon, a Cardiff-born journalist, had his first book, Clubbed Class, published in 1994. The travelogue saw him try to bluff his way into a jet-set lifestyle.

On screen: The Men Who Stare At Goats, Jon's book about US Military experiments with the paranormal, was made into a film in 2008, starring George Clooney.

On stage: Jon was once, briefly, the keyboard player for the comic character Frank Sidebottom.

Jon Ronson sees psychopaths everywhere – but not, thankfully, in the mirror, as he tells Will Ramsey

J on Ronson is too remorseful to be a psychopath. Anxiety, it seems, is a bit of a hindrance if you want to be truly power-crazed.

For a start, there's the churning sense of disquiet and the burning shame.

Neither are exactly helpful if you're looking to set up a dictatorship, or in the less bloody, but still brutal, realm of business, launch an aggressive takeover bid.

"They do not feel any anxiety – I feel it all the time, which is not a pleasant feeling," he tells The Guide.

"But because I feel so remorseful, it does stop me from being a git, so it is a necessary evil."

The author speaks from a powerful position on the subject – though not too powerful, that would be a bit, well, psychopathic.

For his most recent book – The Psychopath Test – Jon interviewed individuals including a Haitian death- squad leader, who had been jailed in New York for mortgage fraud.

There was also the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, who conducted the interview beneath a giant oil painting of himself.

They exhibited similar traits, including self-aggrandisement and a lack of empathy, whether they had been involved in dealing out death, or haranguing their subordinates in the boardroom.

All of which can be checked out in the handy, 20-point "psychopathy checklist" created by the psychologist Robert Hare.

Jon first became fascinated by Hare's work after visiting Tony, who had feigned madness to avoid a prison sentence and had spent the past 14 years in Broadmoor, the maximum security mental hospital.

The psychologists told Jon that while they accepted Tony had faked his condition, his smart appearance – he was dressed in a pinstripe suit – his "superficial charm" and cunning pointed to the behaviour of a psychopath.

More strangely, Jon was told that Tony's madness was the type that "made the world go around" – psychopaths, it seems, lurk at the heart of the business and political elite.

As he began researching the book, Jon admits he began to see a change in himself – having becoming so intently focused on finding out who, and who was not, a psychopath, he became "slightly psychopathic" himself.

But all that's passed now.

As he chats to The Guide, Jon says his sole psychopathic trait is an occasional "grandiose sense of self-worth" – but he ranks very low on the other checkpoints identified by Hare, which range from pathological lying to multiple sexual partners.

The 20-point system uses rating points from one – if the trait "applies somewhat" – to two if it "fully applies".

"My sexually promiscuous days are behind me – though I look back on those with a sense of fondness," said Jon, who is talking about his book at Hull Truck Theatre next week.

"At worst I am a one or two on the scale – the average is four or five – with the clinical cut off 28 or 30, so there is a huge difference."

Despite that, the traits are not uncommon – with some psychologists claim that one in every 100 of us is a psychopath.

"There might well be five psychopaths in the audience at Hull Truck, according to my calculations," said Jon.

"There will definitely be at least one."

What's certain is there won't be one on stage.