I’ve put two new songs up on my Myspace page, which you can listen to if you want – ‘Think Of England’ and ‘The Other Shoe’. Just click here. I’m afraid the recording quality is a bit scrappy (although better than my previous efforts), and it’s clear at several key points that my reach exceeds … Read more

So yeah, those of you who came to the Local Boys Done Good edition of HOMEWORK will remember we did a show all about our hometowns. Well, guess what? If you missed it or just forgot it or loved it so much that you want to be locked in a cell with it projected onto … Read more

So yeah, had a faboo weekend over in Liverpool at the Bluecoat, doing some challenging and fun gigs and getting to soak up some culture. I really enjoyed doing the Revolutions In Form gig on the Sunday, which featured live doodles, a poem passed Chinese Whispers style through the whole audience, performance art, music and … Read more

So, I’m in the midst of a rather pleasant weekend in Liverpool, doing a bunch of gigs at the Bluecoat. On Friday evening, I got to host an evening with Vic Reeves, where we introduced a sold-out crowd to his new book, Vic Reeves’ Vast Book Of World Knowledge. As you can probably imagine, I … Read more

Back at the beginning of 2007, the Onion AV Club’s Nathan Rabin coined the term ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’, to describe the archetype represented by Kirsten Dunst’s character in the movie Elizabethtown: ‘Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime … Read more

Pity the swollen ranks of crap comedy superheroes – every Goitreman and Ochre Bagpiper, each Super Wafter and Captain Brasso, even The Amazing Mr Narcolepsy – and their attempts to amuse by being mediocre. They are all but wisps of bumfluff against the majesty that is Mustache Boy. Mustache Boy is a vaguely Einsteinish hirsute … Read more

Masquerade‘He goes by many names –Loki, God of mischief,Mara, the deceiver.In the dark arts of misdirection and illusionHe is peerless,’Says Cecil.I am looking at a green electricity junction boxConcreted into the ground.Cecil senses my confusion. His beam widensLike an interdimensional rift.

Little GodsStrange, omniscient Maxine watchesA couple conceive on the backseat of a Yatsuki GremlinListens to the creak of leather upholstery and ancient suspensionAnd the hushed whoosh of a snowstorm raging outside the carWhile, seventy years later,Their great grandson thumbs cartridges like little lipsticksInto a magazinePuts the muzzle to his throbbing templeAnd waits for the 12:15To … Read more

So, yeah, guess what? Last night, my first book, We Can’t All Be Astronauts, scooped Best Biography/Memoir at the East Anglian Book Awards! That’s good, isn’t it? The judges called it: ‘A funny, poignant, beautifully written account of a budding writer’s quest for literary success.’ Yep. No argument there, judges. As you can imagine, I … Read more

The Amazing Adventures Of Mr F. Lea can’t blame its title on some over-enthusiastic foreign programmer’s bad English – unlike most of the other games I’ve covered in this hall of shame, it’s just a really crap pun. Appropriate really, since the entire game is basically a succession of weak jokes, as gentle and poorly-executed … Read more

So yes, hooray, tomorrow, Wednesday 30th September, I’ll be reading from my first book, We Can’t All Be Astronauts, at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. But wait! Not only will my esteemed Aisle16 brothers in arms Luke Wright, Joe Dunthorne and John Osborne be providing support with new work, but we have a very … Read more

Of all the video game titles we’ve encountered so far, The First Funky Fighter is the most semantically problematic, colliding various contradictory images into a single, on the face of it ludicrous, claim of primacy. One definition of the word ‘funk’ is ‘the smell of sexual intercourse’, thus making the protagonist ‘The First Fighter Who … Read more

When I heard Jezza Beadle had snuffed it I were rate sad. Not in that whole, ‘Hay let’s get stoned then watch Volume 3 of Steven Segal’s Body & Spirit Motivational Workout on VHS’ internet-age hyper-irony way – I genuinely remembered him as seeming like a nice guy who was made the target of a … Read more

I’ve been threatening for a while now to do a post about my favourite website, Metafilter. But the pressure of actually putting something together that would adequately sum up why I love it, while encouraging others to go and check it out – the amount of time it’d take me to put that kind of … Read more

So We Can’t All Be Astronauts has been shortlisted for East Anglian Book of the Year 2009. You can see who else is on the shortlist here. That’s exciting, isn’t it? I feel very chuffed that the judges liked it. Hopefully a few more readers will stumble across it as a result. I’ll be spinning … Read more

I haven’t been on holiday, on an actual, bona fide, you’re-here-to-relax-not-to-do-work vacation, since I was in sixth form. This is partly because I’m very lucky to do a job that I enjoy, nay love, that sees me heading off to all sorts of interesting places, and a whole slew of festivals, and getting paid to … Read more

Hey, have you ever been to Nedroid.com? I like several webcomics, and Nedroid definitely counts as one of them. Praise indeed. The two main characters are Reggie, a bird, and Beartato, a potato-shaped bear. You should go there and read the comics. Do it. Go check it out. Here’s one I like: Did you also … Read more

‘Story:In the early part of 1950’s in USA, a game called “Violence Fight” was in vogue among Mafia, reckless drivers and general businessmen.The “Violence Fight” was the game to struggle for “No.1 Quarreler” with fighters who were gathered from all parts of the USA speaking boastingly of their strength.And of course a lot of winning … Read more

(via the ever-giving wellspring of EPIC WIN that is Metafilter) So yeah today I watched these performances from an 80s Japanese kids’ TV show, three Techno-Pop bands, P-Model, Hikashu and Plastics. The sound quality is mildly anus, but you get the idea: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM9qs8KCkDg] Everything I know about J-Pop and all its bizarro corollaries could be … Read more

Diet Go Go belongs to that rare class of video game, the ‘issue’ title. The Oddworld series – Abe’s Oddysee, Abe’s Exoddus, Munch’s Oddysee, etc – all foreground an ecological/animal welfare message, Cannon Fodder claimed to be anti-war, although how many players actually picked that up, and to what extent pleading ‘satire’ provided a convenient … Read more

Look, my question to you is simply this: have you watched Paul Robertson’s Kings Of Power 4 Billion %? No? THEN DON’T COMPLAIN YOUR LIFE ISN’T EVERYTHING IT COULD BE! It is special. You could watch it on Youtube: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSdoDjcI5VE] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYKe3lg8KfM] But actually the quality of the compressed vids is pretty shitty. My advice? Be … Read more

So this weekend I toddled north up to the Lake District for a little festival called Kendal Calling. I say toddled – I dozed in a van while Ventriloquist and the Tongue Fu band drove us the 6+ hours all the way up there on Saturday. I’d had to get up bright and early to … Read more

My word, I am pooped. This weekend just gone, I set off for four gigs over two days. My voice still hadn’t (and still hasn’t) recovered from Latitude, so I left little Tim Jr back in Cambridge and resolved to stick to spoken word. I was in fairly high spirits after my gig on Thursday, … Read more

So, after a day of sleeping and staggering groggily about the flat with Supernoodles dangling from my slack gob, I’ve officially recovered from Latitude festival 2009. My voice is still pretty buggered, so no arias for a week or so, but aside from that I’m compos mentis so woot. Despite intermittently shitty weather, this year … Read more

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I know you must have been tearing at your hair and gnashing your teeth with sheer boredom, and for your fortnight of torment, I beg your forgiveness. A combination of tech problems, writerly busy-ness and lovely weather have left me with mere slivers of free time, and every … Read more