Pictures Of An Exhibition.

Hello there. This motley crew here is a 'squad photo' of the Midlands Comics Collective, taken at the book launch of MC2 for the Birmingham Post. That's me, wearing the whistle and the poppy. (It was taken in November! I'm not one of those weirdos who wears one all year round, or too lazy to take it off, like those people still driving around with Comic relief noses stuck to the front of their cars.)
I'm posting this because I recently acquired these photos from the nice lady who took them for the Birmingham Mail (she also happens to be my youngest brother's girlfriend. My heart goes out to her! Her familial relationship with me explains my photo's prominence in the Mail article!), because Mikey (the one with the V For Vendetta T-shirt and beard, top left) wanted the photos for the collective's website.

Also in the photos she sent me were the ones she took of me for an earlier exhibition called The Mathematical Explanations Behind Silly Drawings. (A wanky title, I know. Rest assured I had fuck all to do with it!) Above this paragraph is the one they used for the article, and it makes me look quite normal. Almost good-looking!
I think, when it comes to how I look, I'm kind of in the Coca-Cola championship in the English football league of looks, up there with the Ipswich Towns and Southamptons (also, quite aptly, those teams' glory days are long behind them!) not up there with the Man Uniteds or Arsenals, but not nearly as ugly as the Walsalls or the Leyton Orients.
(While I'm on football, I read an article last week about those people going to the FA cup final who didn't deserve to go [ and, after watching the shit that was served up, probably won't accept their free tickets next year.] and it mentioned Conservative leader David Cameron had professed himself an Aston Villa supporter. Aaaaarghhh!! Although he said he can only name about three players and didn't understand the offside rule, it makes me feel dirty that the leader of the Tories supports the same football team as me. He probably thinks that him saying stuff like that will make people like me vote for the twat, but it's more likely to make me stop supporting the club I've followed since before I could walk! Prince William and Tom Hanks have also said they follow the Villa, but I've never stood behind them in the queue for pies in the Holte End at half-time. I have stood behind Nigel Kennedy in the queue. He's still a twat, though. But, I digress.This should have been another post!)

Like I said, I thought I was a Championship-looking bloke. Then I saw the pics she didn't use! This one above makes me look like I've escaped from Highcroft Hospital. (This is a joke specific to Erdington, Birmingham, and I've moved from there now, so I don't get the reference anymore, either!) I look like someone who sleeps in a rubber room, and spends his days colouring in and cutting out pictures from magazines with plastic scissors, (as I might hurt myself with metal ones) and has been let out for the day to look at pretty pictures. Two of which I've just stolen because I like them. I've been relegated to Coca-Cola league one.

After seeing this one on the left, though, I've gone into freefall, had another bad season and dropped into the bottom tier for the first time in my club history. Just look at it! The rictus grin, the three chins, and the pig trotter-like hands! the only good thing about it is the fantastic statue of the Green Man behind me, with his plant-life penis. I love this sculpture. It reminds me of DC comics' Woodrue and Tolkein's Ents. (It's at the Custard Factory in Birmingham, if you ever want to take a butcher's at it.) I'm just glad the picture editor at the Mail knows his onions. Man, I feel low. What I need is a new chairman and a fresh injection of cash. Some young talent would be nice as well!

Okay. The football club analogy finishes here.

Anyway, if you want to see the pictures of me and the rest of the collective, check out the 'Convention appearances' section of the MC2 website, or look at the pictures on the Collective's MySpace.

Birthday Boy.

It's been a while since my last post, but I've been busy doing real life stuff. It's my thirty-third birthday today, so I've been celebrating that since the weekend. I had an extra special celebration today-I went to work and had a really shitty day! Still I had most of a nice bottle of cava (my erstwhile ex had the rest) when I got in, and opened the presents my kids got me. Where they got the money for two CDs and the God Of War 2 PlayStation game is beyond me. Bless 'em! Also thanks to the lads who came out with me on Saturday, and although it was a fairly uneventful evening, it means a lot to me that they came along. Thanks to Andy and Denise for my MySpace birthday greetings, it's so 21st century! Also, thanks to my dad, who for once, remembered it was my birthday today and ACTUALLY PHONED ME! (He was pissed...) Thanks, also for those people reading this who got me a gift; they're all gratefully received.
Here's to another thirty-three years!!

What I Did At The Weekend, by Mick, aged very nearly 33.

As you know, I've been in Bristol all weekend, for the comics convention, and it was a great weekend. A bit weird sometimes, but fun.

FRIDAY
I got there Friday afternoon, checked into my rather posh hotel (I'd got my tickets at a special price, it was £59 a night rather than the £139 it said a room was going to cost on the sign behind the counter), and as is usual in every hotel I've stayed in, the receptionist was a foreigner with a heavy accent. (Probably because a lot of the hotels I have stayed in have been abroad!) This time she was French, she gave me my key said I was in room 401 and that I was on the fourth floor. What I heard though, because of her accent, was 'feurce' floor, so I went to the first floor wondering why room 401 wasn't there. The room number itself should've give me a clue. Ah well, I found it in the end.
The night was spent with my old schoolmate Mark, (who defected from the People's Republic Of Birmingham to live in Brizzle), his wife, and her friend. The ladies left us in a rocker's pub, called The Hatchet (which, according to Mark, has a door which is covered in human skin. It's a pub which dates back to the 1600s, apparently, and they used the hides of flayed pirates. The door itself doesn't look like human skin, it does look all gnarled and black, but who knows what happens to human skin after four centuries?) while they buggered off to somewhere civilised.
Whilst in there, a woman latched on to us and between her rants at other patrons of the boozer told us all about her sexual fetish for SS uniforms and Hentai. Later on, she introduced us to her friend, whose name I didn't catch, but it was a very tall transsexual, with giant shoes on, making him/her seem even taller. A seven-foot tall bloke with tits and a shocking pink dress on certainly sticks in the memory. At this point, the ladies came and got us, with a strange look on their faces that said 'What the fuck's going on?'
We then went to the Academy to see Mark Ronson, and if you like that sort of thing, it's the sort of thing you'll like, but it was alright, not really my cup of tea, but there was beer there and gyrating females, so the time passed reasonably pleasantly enough.
Got back to the hotel at around two in the morning, hotel bar was closed, so I went up to the room and watched the end of Theatre Of Blood, in which Vincent Price forces Robert Morley to eat his poodles in a big pie, and Diana Rigg dresses up in a ginger afro wig and a stick-on 'cockduster' moustache. It's brilliant.

SATURDAY

Got to the convention hall at about 11.30, had to wait to get my Exhibitor's Pass, but got in and sat down at the Midlands Comics Collective table, which was directly opposite a Dalek. It was a proper dalek from the TV show, and it moved around and said stuff and frightened children. At one point, the bloke operating it got out, and let kids gathered around the stall have a go on his microphone/headset thing that you speak into, and the dalek says it out loud in a Daleky voice, and his lights all blink and stuff. A couple of kids said 'exterminate!', one just said his own name out loud, but one kid grabbed hold of the mike and made the Dalek shout "Doctor Who Is An Arsehole!" Made me laugh for a good while, that did. It's the kind of rich dialogue that is sadly lacking in the so-far lacklustre third series. Because we were directly opposite a dalek, mostly all I saw while I was at the table, were people with their backs to me, taking pictures of the dalek, or pictures of their mate draped across the thing. Subsequently, they weren't looking at our books. Saying that though, the hall was packed, numbers were up significantly on last year, and we sold far more copies than we did at the Birmingham show in December.
Also, this year, people in costumes were let in for free. There were 'Cosplayers', (a manga/anime thing) Star Wars characters (all bad guys-Boba Fett, Vader,Biker scouts, stormtroopers, etc., The SS fetish lady from the night before would've had a field day if she'd have turned up, which, thankfully, she didn't.) There was a young lady on the stall behind ours dressed as the Black Cat from Spider-Man, which was nice.There was a half-woman/half-fox thing, a bloke in a silver gimp suit and carrying a silver surfboard (I assume he was being Norrin Radd) which was quite impressive, as it was exceedingly hot in there, and his knackers must've been swimming. For all the good costumes, though, there are some that let the side down, such as a Nightcrawler whose face was only half-blue. There was a lad carrying round a big crucifix wrapped in bandages, and no-one I asked about it knew what it was supposed to be. Considering I was surrounded by comics creators and comics fans, doing something no-one had heard of is some achievement. I suppose it might've been his look, and he carries around a big crucifix all the time.
When I wasn't at the table, I went round to the stalls of the people I know and have worked with, to catch up and get my comp copies of the books I'm in. Everyone seemed to be doing alright, selling a few books, and having a good time.
In the evening, A few of us from the Collective went for a Chinese meal with Jemima and Dave from Hi8us, the current batch of StripSearchers, and John McCrea, Hunt Emerson, and Tony Bennett (not the crooner, the bloke who runs Knockabout Press), so there were over twenty of us. we went to a restaurant next to the Old Vic called Cathay Rendezvous, which has hundreds of pictures inside of celebrity patrons they've had, politicians, film stars, footballers, thesps, musicians have all been in there. Funnily enough, they didn't want my photo. A great time was had, anyway. This would turn out to be the only proper meal I'd eat all weekend, as I mostly lived on liquids and fags. Thanks, Hi8us!!
We went back to the Ramada hotel, which was hosting the Eagle awards, had a little chat with Glenn Fabry (I later managed to cadge a fag from him as well) saw little random bits of the Eurovision song contest, such as a big silver man, and some French blokes running on the spot (they'll probably be checking me into my hotel next year) I had a theological argument with a Christian, in which we amicably agreed to differ. I am right, though. Congratulated Andy and Dec, who had just won an Eagle award for Hero Killers, I kept getting asked by Tony Bennett to tell mates of his a joke. He was well impressed by my vast repertoire of low quality humourous stories. I bumped into Mike Molcher, who used to publish the now sadly defunct The End Is Nigh, and sat and drank with him and Simon Bisley, and I also vaguely remember drawing a picture of Nightwing on a girl's back. She asked me to! I wasn't wilfully scribbling members of the New Teen Titans on complete strangers all night. I had to try and remember what Nightwing looked like, and seeing as I'd been imbibing all night, it probably wasn't my best ever effort. If the girl is reading this, I'm sorry. I'll be practising drawing Dick Grayson all year, now, and I'll be ready next May! (I was telling Dan Cox, who wrote Why Can't I Be You? for me, about this episode of me scribbling on females, and he remarked how 'Rock n'roll' it was. I said it would only be Rock n'Roll if I'd scribbled on her front rather than her back. It's a start, I suppose.)
It got late very quickly, and because I wasn't a resident of the hotel, I had to go up to people I didn't know and ask them if they'd get me a drink. Two very nice married ladies got me drinks, and they also refused to let me pay for them. Which was nice. I got back to my hotel as dawn was breaking, around half-five.

SUNDAY

I spent a lot of Sunday feeling as rough as a badger's ballbag, but we managed to sell a few more copies. I bought my eldest a manga-type T-shirt, and my youngest an Alien facehugger plush. That might sound weird, but it is something she's wanted for ages. Alright, it is weird. Saw the guys from Doctor Who dismantle the dalek and put it in the back of an averaged-sized car whilst I was outside having a smoke. Its head was on the passenger seat. What was funny, though, is that there was a car waiting to park behind them, they had nothing to do with the convention, and I was wondering what they thought of a bloke spending ages putting bits of dalek into his car, wasting their time. Simon Bisley was next to me, having a fag and said "Even in bits it still fucking freaks me out." Now, Simon is built like a brick shithouse, I wouldn't have thought anything would intimidate him.
I left the con to go home at around three o'clock, said ta-ra to everyone, and stood waiting for my slightly delayed train (Wildfowl on the line, apparently. Bloody Virgin trains.) standing next to the half-woman/half-fox type-thing who was getting the train home in full costume. I don't think I saw her real face at all over the weekend. That's dedication, that is. (There's a picture of her on the MC2 mySpace, I think. It's part of the slideshow on there.I think my left hand makes an appearance in one of the pics. fame at last!) Spent the train journey home trying not to fall asleep and wake up in Preston, (I'd only slept for about six hours the whole time I was in Brizzle) and trying to use my WAP phone to get the football results, but my phone decided to not work. I got home, looking lke a drowned rat at about half-five. It'd been a good weekend. I might just need a new liver, though.

The Villa drew 2-2, if you're interested.

Hi to all the peeps I met out there, and might read this,(Steve, Ez, Andy, Dec, Ian, Dave, Dan et al) good to see you.

Brizzle 2007.

This Friday I head down to what's locally known as 'Brizzle m'luv' for the Bristol Comic Convention, a weekend where you intend to behave but end up nursing a particularly damaged liver. It's going to be strange for me this year for a number of reasons. It's the first time I'm going without a spouse, as I no longer have one .

(Not strictly true, thinking about it, I've been without her before. It was the time we went as 'StripSearch' graduates, flogging our book 'Stuffed' and it must be the memory loss caused by alcohol at said event. I do remember, however, being asked by John McCrea if I wanted to go to a strip joint with him and Simon Bisley, but I'd drunk far too much by that point, and I don't think John went anyway. Biz probably did, though.But, I digress.)

Also, I'm not there to promote myself as an artist-for-hire. Well, maybe a little bit, but I've got Septic Isle to do, and it's a big job, and it's one I really want to give my full attention to, as it's a fantastic project; one I feel strongly about. (There's a panel from the 'difficult fourth page' of SI to your left, there. I'm now in the middle of pencilling the fifth page.) So I don't want to take on too much extra drawing, but, if the unlikely event of DC offering me megabucks happens, I may have to have a rethink, obviously!

I think I've got three new books on sale at the Con. Mine and Lee Robson's Whole (that sounded rude read aloud!) is in FutureQuake #8, Why Can't I Be You? (with Daniel Cox as writer) finally appears in True Romance Comix (it's only been about two years since I finished drawing it!), and MC2 is making its Brizzle debut, and to celebrate, there's a new mini-comic from the Midlands Comics Collective called Mini-C2, in which my No Such Thing one-pager is in. No doubt some of the older books I've been in will be on sale as well. None of the books I've been in have ever sold out!

I'm going down there a day early because I'm going out with one of my oldest friends, Mark, who lives down there. Apparently, we're going to see Mark Ronson do summat at the Ramshackle night at the Brizzle Academy. I thought he was the dead guitarist from Ziggy & The Spiders, but I've since found out he's that bloke who gets singers I don't like to cover songs by other people I don't like. I've not really heard that much of his stuff, though, so I can't really comment. Might be a laugh.

The weird thing about these conventions (well, at first, anyway) is seeing your heroes pissed up. Finding out that the artists whose drawings you pored over in your formative years are ordinary blokes. Well, mostly, anyway. (I'm thinking of the 'Glenn Fabry has conversation with a toilet door' incident at the Brighton Convention, amongst others) I'm looking forward to find out what we'll all get up to this year, I'm also looking forward to catching up with the people I know, but only see at these events, and trying to cadge a drink off them!

Dirty Doctor.

I've found this very interesting deleted scene from the last series of Doctor Who. It makes what was subtext before simply text.

Spidey 3

I took my daughters to see Spider-man 3 today. It's worth watching, but it suffers from 'third movie syndrome'. It's a bit bloated, with each of the bad guys (there's three-Sandman, Venom and Goblin,Jr.- called 'New Goblin' in this apparently, according to the action figures I've seen) each having their own story arc, but none of them have enough screen time to develop properly, and because there are so many villains , and villain's origin sequences, this means the film goes on at least a half hour too long.

Since the Bourne Identity came out, most fight scenes I've seen since in big action films have copied its close-up shaky camera fighting scenes. Batman Begins, Casino Royale and now Spidey 3 have this similar technique. It doesn't work in this film, a lot of the time it was hard to follow what was happening. With the earlier Spidey movies, most of the fight scenes happened in daylight, in this one, they all happen at night, except for one, which ends up underground (ie. dark) making it even harder to follow, especially when Spidey has the black outfit on.

I did enjoy it, though, the scene with Flint Marko trying to pull himself back together after first being made into sand to grab a locket which has a picture of his dying daughter was a great one. after this, though, he hardly says anything and spends most of his screen time either being a dust cloud or a giant sand monster, the type of monster we've seen before in the Mummy movies. It's a shame, I've always liked Sandman as a character, it's a pity he wasn't given more to do.

Tobey Maguire was great, though, especially when the black suit turns him a little bit bad. Like Superman III , our hero goes off the rails. When Christopher Reeve went bad, he just grew a five o'clock shadow and wore burgundy boots, but when Tobey goes bad, he combs his fringe down and wears eyeliner. Apparently, being bonded with an evil alien symbiote turns you into a member of My Chemical Romance! Also, I thought Harry Osborn's story in this film was great, and maybe should've been the film's only antagonist. It's just a shame they didn't give him (or his dad) the stripey hair he has in the comics. That's a great look(See picture) .Also, Bruce Campbell is great in his cameo, taking his frenglish accent from Peter Sellers and/or 'Allo 'Allo!

Venom, when he turns up, was a bit of a disappointment. he's only in it for about fifteen minutes, but the climactic fight at the end is exciting, except for Mary Jane being kidnapped and held hostage to get Spidey to come and fight them. Again! This happened at the end of the last two movies as well. Also marring this sequence is a really annoying British news reporter who gives an ongoing commentary to the action.

Gwen Stacy (Played by Ron Howard's daughter Bryce Dallas Howard. She has red hair in real life, yet she plays a blonde. Kirsten Dunst, who is Blonde, plays a ginge. Seems strange to me.) is introduced, then forgotten about, total waste of time. Implicating Flint Marko as Uncle Ben's killer also wasn't really needed either, in my opinion. Topher Grace is good as Eddie Brock, but again, not given enough screen time.

Generally, though, it's an entertaining movie, not as bad as I'd feared it was going to be. The kids loved it, they're not encumbered with thirty-odd years of comic nerdiness like I am.

Art Update.

Welcome to the update of my art career, if you can call it that, as people who have a career tend to get paid for it!

An associate of mine who might be called Sanatogen or something took some photographs of those vans that have my artwork on them, and I don't just have the crappy one my old friend John took with his phone. There is proper proof they exist! That big building in the background is Birmingham's Council House, in Victoria Square. Hence the statue of ol' Queen Vic's back in the first pic. I'm surprised the pictures look as good as they do considering they've been blown up from an A3 piece of paper. The main arts champion figure can only be about 4" tall in his original state (That's 10cm to the people that can't measure in English.) but he looks good blown up to 6ft. There's not many people you can say that about.

Here is a newly launched website called Art Peeps, showcasing Midlands artists. Guess which chubby four-eyed Brummie is on there as well, then?

Also, if you link here, my work on the Jonas Moore thing is mentioned in an article. It doesn't say whether it's good or bad, but it is a mention of me from someone I've never met. In a very small way, that's fame, right?


Also I found this. It's a really badly written article on the comics scene here in Brum from the Birmingham Mail in which they misspell John McCrea's name, so they did. From that article is this photo of Jemima Cattel, from Hi8us' StripSearch scheme, and Andy Baker, A StripSearch alumnus, like me, and one of the organisers of last year's Birmingham International Comic Show. I post this pic because Jemima is holding up my artwork, it's page three of Never Strikes Twice.









Above is my contribution to the MC2 mini-comic. It's a one-pager I've written, drawn and star in called No Such Thing (Which, coincidentally, has the same initials as Never Strikes Twice, my other published self-penned strip. I can't wait for the next one, which might be called Neville Southall's Todger!) It's a pretty obvious plot, but I had to come up with it in a week, as it's on sale in Bristol next weekend and I don't think it's too bad, except for the fact that the child's Aston Villa pyjamas are now out of date because of the poxy new badge (see last post). Now it's done, and my chargrilled thumb is all better, I can now crack on unhindered at Septic Isle, and page four will be finished this weekend, hopefully.

Oh, and next week I'll be in Bristol for the Convention, so if you're in the area pop by the MC2 table, and say hello. Oh, and buy some stuff!

Badge of shame.

It was bad enough when Birmingham City got themselves promoted. I had to put up with a shitload of gloating from Bluenoses at work on Monday (they're obviously unaware that Villa will hand the Blues their arses next season). Then, today, Aston Villa unveil their new crest. It's horrendous. Except for the lettering, there's hardly any claret on there (seeing as that's our main colour, it seems a bit of an oversight not to include it.) and the once rampant lion now looks like a cat playing with a star-shaped ball of wool. The star apparently represents our European Cup win ( which has its 25th anniversary on May 26th).

Apparently, a design team came up with this after asking 'Villa fans all over the world' what they would want on the badge, and this is where it's flawed. In trying to please all Villans, they've ended up pleasing no-one. A crack team of designers came up with that? It looks like a page torn from the Cunt Coloring Book.

Why do they have to keep changing the crest anyway? What happened to tradition? All my Villa-licensed pint glasses and mugs are all now out of date, like my favourite old bath towel which has the old round crest on it. If the bright new future promised to us by Randy Lerner and Martin O'Neill is all about rebranding the team rather than actually improving the useless shower I've had to watch these last two seasons, then they can stick it.

Monday Meme (on a Tuesday)

Hi there! the dynamic Dan has asked us all to do the meme what he wrote. I kinda felt obliged. I was going to do it yesterday, but I couldn't be arsed...




What is your name? Yes, your real one?

Is this identity theft? Michael Trimble is the name my Grandmother calls me. To everyone else I'm Mick, and to my brothers I'm Mickey. An unfortunate hangover from when we were all children. I also have a middle name, but I won't tell you in case this really is identity theft.

What feeling does blogging give you?

The feeling that I should be spending the time doing something useful.

How many of the blogs you link to have you physically touched? In the flesh?

Jemima, BB, Cherry girl, Steve (Banal Pig), Andy Winter, Bolt-01, Dan Cox. Sometimes the touching is inappropriate. Sorry.
Oh, I've met Ian Sharman as well, but I don't think we shook hands or anything, so I've met him but had no physical contact. Does that count?

What do you do in the comfort of your own home when not blogging?

I generally spend most of my free time lately drawing, and nursing hand injuries.

Tell me a thing that you wished you had blogged about but decided not to?

My adventures in Internet Dating. It might upset the people involved!


Why did you begin to blog?

I thought it'd be a good way of getting my art online without paying for a proper site or domain name. Also, I live under the delusion that I'm funny, and I enjoy writing funny stuff. I hope people enjoy reading it. If you've enjoyed reading it half as much as I've enjoyed writing it, then I've enjoyed writing it twice as much as you've enjoyed reading it.

What do you enjoy about reading other people's weird ramblings?

I like reading about other people, even if I don't particularly like interacting with real people. It's like catching up with someone, without all that boring conversation stuff.


What would you never blog about?

My sex life. Probably because there's fuck all to blog about!

What is your blogging software of choice and why?

I'm on Blogger, because a few people I know were on it already, and it's a lot more user friendly than MySpace. I'm on MySpace as well, though, as it's more popular, and I can put some pictures on there as well-although I've not updated on there in ages. Oh, I'm on ComicSpace as well, which is working out really well for me in terms of making contacts and getting my work out there.

Is Blog a really stupid word or is it just me?

I'm afraid we're stuck with it. Also it's a lot easier to say than 'place on the internet where lonely geeks talk to themselves'. There are stupider words than 'blog' though, like 'flibbertigibbet'.

The bit about nothing in particular:
Can you name a highlight of the last year?

Professionally, there were lots, MC2 finally coming out and the reviews that it got were great (personally, the story I'd written and illustrated got some very favourable reviews. I think the Birmingham Post called it 'a postmodern and poignant superhero story' which is what I was kinda going for.) as well as all the exhibitions and the book launch that came along with it. It was fun pretending to be famous and sitting behind a table asking people 'who shall I sign it to?'
Also, getting picked for the Jonas Moore thing, which has only been online a week or so and has already had 90,000 hits, is a highlight.

I am not going to ask for a low. Instead, what's your favourite cake?

I like all cakes except Eccles, Pontefract and Kendal Mint Cakes. Oh, and Urinal Cakes are an acquired taste and all.

What makes you laugh?

Comeuppances. Stupid puns. Inappropriateness. Inventive swearing. And, may I be damned forever, I have a weakness for a sick joke, but this means Karma is going to get me at some point soon. Although I'm a fan of modern comedies like Father Ted, Peep Show and Phoenix Nights, it's the classic sitcoms of the Seventies that I have a great love for- Rising Damp, Porridge, Fawlty Towers, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? and Open All Hours are my absolute faves, which is just as well, because they're always on.

Oh, and Brian Blessed. Give him a knighthood!


What do you just not understand about puny humans?

The lack of respect for other puny humans, and the overpowering need to feel superior.

Why do people buy The Daily Express/Mail?

The overpowering need to feel superior. The people who buy those rags are the ones who want to bring back hanging, and those same people also say 'Hanging's too good for them!'
Make your right wing mind up!

What music are you listening to right now and why?

'Siberian Divide' by Mastodon, who are going to be the next big stars of Metal. They write big epic songs which sound phenomenal. I'm listening to it because my Media Player randomly picked it to spew into my ears.

What makes a housewife drive an off-roader to take the kids to school?

Laziness, and to justify buying the big fucking thing in the first place.

What colour pants are you wearing? (It's a compulsary meme question. Sorry)

In the American sense, grey. In the British sense, black. All of my underwear is of the grey/black variety.

What colour pants would you never wear?

Burberry. Is that a colour? And whilst yellow is practical, I'd never wear pants that colour.


Why do people go out in tracksuits when they never do jogging or the gym?

Because they're sucked in by advertising, or because they're Scouse.It's always perplexed me that the only clothes that fit really fat people is sportswear.

Have you watched the new(ish) Battlestar Galactica?

I keep meaning to, I keep missing it. Also, I'm kind of put off by the fact that the updated Galactica has made Starbuck into a woman and has less black people in it than the original. Is that progress? Bloody Star Trek in the '60s had more black people in it!

How much difference does a please and thankyou make?

It means a lot and it costs little or no effort. It's the difference between being asked to do something rather than being told to do it, and that makes all the difference to me.

Where is Gary Coleman?

He's currently on tour with the Harlem Globetrotters, who I think are playing in Wolverhampton or somewhere this week.

Why did you do this meme?

I don't know! I generally don't do memes, but I didn't want to be left out with this one.