March 17, 2026 · 4:27 pm

The Eastern art of egg-painting – dead?

A friend of mine whom I met in Vietnam in 1989, is going back there this year, after 37 years. We both think she may spot a few social changes.

When we were in Vietnam in 1989, they were selling pictures created using broken pieces of eggshell lacquered over.

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When I was in China in 1985, there was a small industry based round painting glass eggs on the INside… 

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There was a small hole in the top of the glass egg. Ladies (I think always ladies) with steady hands would put small, thin paintbrushes through the holes and paint intricate designs on the INside of the glass eggs.

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I have a feeling that, by now, this may be a lost – or, at least, even more niche – art.

I hope not.

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March 5, 2026 · 7:15 am

Chris Dangerfield on his unique ‘missus’ and life in Cambodia…

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Chris Daangerfield and his ‘missus’ in Phnom Penh, Cambodia…

The last couple of blogs have been me chatting to the admirably individualistic Chris Dangerfield, who is plugging his new semi-autobiographical novel Love in the time of Nudie Mags.

Now read on…

JOHN: So where are you at the moment? In Phnom Penh or rural Cambodia? 

CHRIS: Phnom Penh. I’m in the city but, like I said, the missus has bought some land in the jungle – It’s about one and a half Premier League football pitches. It is huge… it’s huge. 

I don’t want to say exactly where it is but it’s not far from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, so it’s in east Cambodia in a little province that my missus grew up in which is very nice. That’s why she got it. 

She’s already had all the footings built and it’s like a mansion. It’s just this huge property and she’s already planted durian, jackfruit, watermelon, coconut – loads of lovely foods. Within two years they’ll be producing fruit and we can eat and sell those.

Where her land is there’s about another 20 little properties and they’re like on posts and are made of just the most hazardous fire material you can choose.

But there’s no work, so what everyone out there does, they grow all their own food; they have a couple of chickens and all that.

There tends to be one cow for the whole province, which gets taken off to a slaughterhouse after a few years or whatever. I don’t really know how that works.

But in theory, once the house is built, we should be able to live there on no money, because everyone else does and they have done for generations. 

JOHN: How long have you been with your missus now?

CHRIS: In April, it’ll be eight years.

JOHN: That’s good. A permanent lady.

CHRIS: Yeah. All the girlfriends I’ve had in the past, when I finally left them, I was over the moon. I never suffered. 

But this one, I’ve never loved someone like I love her. 

I never actually lived with another girlfriend. I’ve had like eight years, two years, four years, eleven year, eight year relationships, but never shared a house with them. 

Now, with her… we’re building a house together because I want to. I want to put down roots. I’ve never done that before. And it’s lovely.

JOHN: Your missus is Cambodian? 

CHRIS: Yeah, but you’d actually describe her as Khmer.

JOHN: I was in Cambodia in 1989.

CHRIS: You wouldn’t recognise it now. I came here the first time maybe 15 years ago and the change from then to now is extraordinary. Back then, I looked out of my hotel window and I counted – I always remember – 38 ‘skyscrapers’ in the middle of construction, just from that one view. It wasn’t even 360 degrees. I thought, Wow! This place is changing! Back then, there was no tarmac anywhere. All the roads were just mud in monsoon season.

It’s really picking up here. I’ll go as far as to say there are parts of Phnom Penh that resemble Tokyo. Like neon and madness. Only small parts. It’s still considered a third world country, but living here doesn’t feel like it anymore.

JOHN: When I was there, just after the Vietnamese Army left, I was told – the translation varied – that the Khmer Rouge were either 5km away or 50km away. “Don’t worry,” they said. “It’s dense jungle, don’t worry…”

CHRIS: Well John, think about it, that whole Khmer Rouge thing wasn’t that long ago and so they’ve done a good job here really of just saying, “Look, let’s put it behind us and move on.”

JOHN: Good advice. On Amazon, your biography says you are “a lifelong connoisseur of opiates, a pharmakon, and raconteur, he has been homeless, hopeless, high, and occasionally brilliant. He’s rubbed shoulders with the worst, stolen from the best, and attended more than twenty rehabilitation centres along the way.”

That’s pretty accurate. But it then says you now live in Cambodia “chasing something he calls The Death Prize.” What’s that?

CHRIS: It’s a theme that comes up in a lot of my short writings. What would you call it? There’s a word for… I’m not quite sure what it’s… It’s like a… I can’t remember… but it seems to fit a lot of situations in my life. The idea of Death being a prize. But also The Death Prize… You’re not going to get anything after you die… It’s like an emblem… Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe I meant The Life Prize. It’s an easy mistake to make after all those LSD days.

My mum died a couple of years ago and when I went back to empty the house and do all that death admin stuff, I found out that the Registrars actually have Death Ink.

It’s an ink especially made for signing death and birth certificates. I think it’s got a lower ferrous content. It isn’t called Death Ink. I think it’s actually called Registrars’ Ink.

It starts off blue but, over time, rather than fading, it changes to black because you can’t have birth and death certificate signatures with their details fading. 

I showed so much interest in it, the Registrar pretty much let me nick it. I’ve got it here.

I was really asking her about it and she said there used to be a few manufacturers, but now there’s only one company that makes it. 

And I was like, Wow! I’d love to get hold of some of that! 

And then she was like: “Well, I don’t think anyone can buy it.”

And then she sort of put it on my side of the table and she said words to the effect of… “I doubt we would miss a bottle of it if it were to go missing.” 

And that was my cue.

I just swiped it.

JOHN: Plus ça change.

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March 4, 2026 · 8:43 am

Chris Dangerfield on the perils of vanity publishers and movie scriptwriting…

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In yesterday’s blog, online from Cambodia, Chris Dangerfield was plugging his new novel Love in the time of Nudie Mags.

We chatted about more than that, though…

JOHN: You mentioned you wrote a novel when you were around 23 years old.

CHRIS: Yes. Tired, etc. I wrote that on a quarter ounce of sulphate and chain-smoking blunts when I was at Leeds University.

The internet was only just coming about. You had to go to libraries or internet cafes. I sort of got ripped off. It was a vanity publisher, but I didn’t know what one of them was.

They had an advert in the Daily Telegraph or somewhere. WRITERS WANTED!

I mean, anyone with any sense… No-one wants writers. They’ve got enough, don’t worry. But at sort of 23, I thought, Oh! I’ll write to them. 

What didn’t help was… The first thing I ever sent off was to High Times, the cannabis magazine. It was a little article. I said, “Would you be interested in publishing this?” Then I forgot about it because I was high. But about two weeks later, I got a cheque for $50 in the post – and a contract – for this tiny little article.

And I thought, I AM A WRITER! 

So I thought: Right, next stop – novel. 

Look – I was using a lot of amphetamines.

So then I wrote the novel Tired, etc. and sent it off to the vanity publisher. 

I got the letter back, the standard letter.

Oh, this reminds us very much of Martin Amis. The characterisation and the voice. Great pacing! And we’d love to publish it. 

So I’m running around the house. I’m 23 years old. I’ve just got my Master’s Degree and I’m over-achieving so that my mum might recognise my existence. 

I wrote back to them and said, Yeah, I’m up for it!

Then comes the letter: The way we do it is you cough up three and a half grand!

I didn’t have the money, but some friends of mine who read the draft – and who also didn’t understand vanity publishing – they said, “Well, we’ll put the money up. You can pay us out of your royalties.”

So they put the money up and the publishing company went bust because the BBC TV consumer programme Watchdog had done a thing about them.

However, the book was stocked in Waterstones bookshops across the country. 

JOHN: So the publishers did their job, then…

CHRIS: No, one of the blokes who put the money up did. I had this strange little bit of literary fame that lasted about a year. It was an encouraging time.

I got a contract to write a movie off the back of that. A $350,000 movie contract with a Notting Hill company called Serious Pictures. It was $175,000 for the copyright and $175,000 for the actual writing of the screenplay. And I would get my money on the first day of principal photography.

JOHN: Based on the book? 

CHRIS: No, that was the mistake they made.

The director was a lunatic, a joke of a person, really.

He and Guy Ritchie had made cheap pop promos together, then they got into advertising.

That’s how it works. You do fifty, sixty grand pop promos, then you get a few cinema ads, then telly ads. And then it’s like Do you want to make a $2million, $3milion movie? Guy Ritchie went off and made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and my director had a nervous breakdown. 

It got to about the 11th draft of this crappy movie. The director’s idea was so bad; it was called Edge Games.

The idea was you go out into society and you walk around the block. But instead of just walking around the block, everyone you see, you just stare them out and see what happens. And it progresses until, you know… well, you can imagine the rest…

It’s so predictable. It all goes wrong. One of them dies; one of them survives; and one of them walks away or whatever.

He should have just filmed my fucking book. It was the book that he read that made him think: Oh, I’ll get this bloke to write this idea.

I had never written a screenplay.

Anyway, after about 11 drafts when the production house kept saying, “It’s too wordy… You don’t tell a director this and this. It’s, you know, location, basic action, dialogue. Location, basic action, dialogue. The director is the creative part, really.”

When we finally got to the draft that we gave Serious Pictures, they said, “Well, you’ve done it. We’ve read it and we’re ready to go.”

It was a million and a half budget. Remember this is like 30 years ago; not a lot of money for your first film, but not a small amount of money. And I was thinking, Holy Fuck! I am going to get over a quarter of a million dollars!… Oh, I’ll be able to stop selling drugs!

At the time, I was doing like the Groucho Club and Soho House and the Met Bar and I was told by other writers and screenwriters, “Once you get one movie made, you’ll get more made, regardless of how well it does. You’ve proven that you can get to that point. That puts you in like the 0.01% of people. Your career’s sorted. Don’t worry.”

So I come out of that meeting – me, the producer – not the executive producer – the movie producer and the director, and I was like, We’ve done it!

I said: “Come on, let’s go to the French House and get shit-faced! We’ve done it!” 

And they looked at each other and I just felt it in my stomach, I thought, Something’s wrong here. 

And they said, “Listen, we need to talk to you…”

I said: “Don’t you fucking dare. I’ve hung around with you two pricks for a year. OK, what? What? Just tell me now. I don’t want to go and sit down.”

And they said: “Well, in the contract, it says that Serious Pictures get the final say on the final edit.”

And I was like: “It’s your first feature film. That’s just standard, surely? It’s their money. Just do it.”

And they went: “No, we’re going independent.”

I just walked away from the whole project thinking:You’re off your heads. 

The Blair Witch Project had just come out.

One night the director rang me up and said: “How about this? How about we just LIVE it? Let’s just do it!”

And I said: “This whole project for you has just been an excuse to have friends. You haven’t got any friends. You had a bit of leverage with a film contract. And you’ve managed to hang around with me for a year. I don’t like you. I’ve never liked you. You’re a twat. And you’ve just cost me $350,000 and a potential career as a screenplay writer.”

JOHN: So it never got made?

CHRIS: It got made. But it was shit. It was like an art school project made on £20.

But they couldn’t release it because they hadn’t paid me. My agent at the time said: “You release that and we’ll sue Serious Pictures for everything they’ve got. And Serious Pictures said to them: “You shelve that. You forget about that.”

They were good times, though. They were good times looking back. But you work with idiots and sometimes they’ve got power over you. 

JOHN: You’ve got another book in there.

CHRIS: I think I might write a short about it. I don’t think it can maintain a novel. It’s too miserable. The denouement is I was taken for a ride. 

(…CONTINUED HERE…)

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March 3, 2026 · 12:23 pm

Chris Dangerfield – from Cold Turkey to Love in the time of Nudie Mags…

So I got a WhatsApp call from a number starting +855. I looked up +855. It’s the code for Cambodia.

So, of course, I was going to ignore it – I have had enough offers of million dollar windfalls – but the person had left a voice message and I listened to that.

It was Chris Dangerfield, a stalwart of this blog a few years ago.

He once told me he enjoyed reading my blogs about the chats we had but he couldn’t really remember the conversations themselves at all. 

This was less to do with me just making up the quotes (something I never do – I record everything); it was mostly a result of him being totally zonked out of his head on heroin when we chatted. He had a remarkable ability to be verbally very fluent and mentally totally clear-thinking while being utterly spaced-out.

Times have changed; this time we talked via cyber-space…

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Chris Dangerfield: a determined man who never throws in the towel

JOHN: How are you? The last time we talked was in December 2020.

Back then, you were going to publish a book called Thai Style Cold Turkey…

CHRIS: Right. I’ve been writing THAT book for about nine years. It’s now around 800 pages.

You know what a picaresque is? It’s a picaresque, dare I say, post-modern… Post-structural… The novel is a picaresque… 

JOHN: It’s about drugs?

CHRIS: It’s about a bloke getting off drugs. True story. I always write about myself. All writing is autobiographical. 

JOHN: Thai Style Cold Turkey.

CHRIS: Yeah, yeah. Though I doubt it’ll be called that when published. It’s just a working title, but it’s quite a nice one. Have you heard of Blaise Cendrars? He wrote an incredible novel called Moravagine which, in French, literally means… Well, literal doesn’t really cut it. It’s either Death TO Vagina or Death BY Vagina. 

The central character’s called Moravagine; that’s his name. It’s the story of this sort of psychopath murderer who goes to this psychiatric sort of… This is where people go where you never let them out. He manages to charm his therapist. 

His therapist is just fascinated by him and thinks, I wonder what it would be like to let someone like Moravagine loose on the world and follow him on his travels. 

It’s one of those novels that just changes you, you know? But Blaise Cendrars said – words to this effect; this isn’t verbatim – There is only one subject of literature and it is Man. All writing is autobiographical, written by that ‘other’ who writes. 

And so my novel, Thai Style Cold Turkey is about when I went to Thailand to get clean in a brothel. People are expecting drug stories and there’s some in there, but it’s told in first person present, which is very clunky to write in anyway – very clunky to read – but, when you tell something in first person present, you also remember things, so then it’s not first person present and I mix up tenses in the one paragraph, because it works. 

So I’m still writing Thai Style Cold Turkey but what I realised, as it just kept growing and growing, I thought: You can’t drop this on an audience.

My last novel, I was 23 when I wrote it. Yes, for a few people in the comedy industry, my name still comes up – People I know in the industry say, “Oh, someone asked about you the other day, someone mentioned you the other day.” 

I’ve got my YouTube channel, my Substack is doing really well. That’s great. But if I were to drop Thai Style Cold Turkey on them, I think it would do more damage than good for my future literary career.

And I’ve walked away from my lock-picking business. 

JOHN: That was where you got all your money, wasn’t it? 

CHRIS: Yeah. Yeah, and I did think Walking away is a risk… but I’ve always wanted to write… well, I’ve always been a raconteur… It’s time to take that risk.

I’ve got enough money for about a year. My missus has  bought a bit of land in the jungle here in Cambodia. We are going to build a house on it and I still need to earn money. So I released this new book of mine – Love in the Time of Nudie Mags last year on the 28th of November. In America, on Kindle, it went to Number One – Number One, John – in new releases.

I mean, it’s got a Will Self endorsement on the cover, but no one knows Will Self in America, let’s be honest. 

But yeah, number one in new releases, It went to number 81 in Dark Humour in America, which now means I’m an Amazon Top 100 bestseller, which is mind-blowing. 

In the UK, it’s also now available from Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwells, all independent bookshops, libraries. Even if they haven’t got it on the shelves, they’ll order it for you.

JOHN: And, of course, Amazon online…

CHRIS: On Amazon in the UK, it peaked so far – I mean usually you give it a year to see really where it’s stabilised – it went to 117 in British Literary Fiction, and the weird one is that it seems to be stabilising in Love, Sex and Marriage Humour, where it’s sitting around 160.

JOHN: Who knew Love, Sex and Marriage Humour was a genre? Love in the Time of Nudie Mags is a coming-of-age story, isn’t it? 

CHRIS: Yeah, it’s written from the point of view of a 14-year-old’s journal. It was quite worrying, actually. It was of some concern how easy I found it to write as a 14-year-old. I thought the biggest problem was going to be having a convincing, you know, illiterate, under-educated, under-nourished 14-year-old’s voice. But no (LAUGHS) it came naturally. 

I’ve already started the next novel. That’s going to be the same character again. I only write about myself.

JOHN: So the next character’s going to be what? In his 20s? 

CHRIS: Sixteen. So much happened in my 16th year. It’s a good year.

JOHN: What was happening when you were 16? 

CHRIS: Well, I don’t want to give too much away. My father died. I left home. I started art school. I fell in love for the first time. I discovered LSD. I mean, they’re five quite major things for a 16-year-old. But there’s a lot more.

If the 14-year-old novel is a coming-of-age one, this is really… It was like a splintering of assumptions and realities that I’d held dear and supported and saved me in tricky situations. It felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath my… What’s the German word?… My weltanschauung – my world view.

JOHN: So you’ve given up the lock-picking business, You now a full-time writer.

CHRIS: Yeah, that’s the plan. Like I say, we bought this land. I never wanted to sell lockpicks. It was an accident, though it’s given me an amazing quality of life. I’ve been able to be my own boss all my life. 

I’m 53 now. But I don’t want to be 63 and not have given it a go to earn a living as a writer. 

I’ve got no regrets in life; it’s a waste of energy. But to be 63 and still be selling lockpicks and waking up and dealing with customers and writing sales copy. It’s time to take a risk and my missus is in full support. She just says, “I trust you”. 

JOHN: So you have the 16-year-old novel next and there’s also Thai Style Cold Turkey.

CHRIS: Thai Style Cold Turkey I write two or three nights a week, but I think I need – I want – to write two or three novels a year for the next three years to build up an audience.

Love in The Time of Nudie Mags took three months to write. That’s why I had to stop working because I was writing all night – literally going to bed at six o’clock in the morning, getting up, working, YouTubing and it’s an exaggeration to say it nearly killed me but I was wrecked.

It was like Something’s got to go here. Am I going to give up the dream of being a… not being ‘a writer’… I don’t give a shit about being ‘a writer’… But earning a living from a passion rather than a ‘job’ is important to me and so I thought Well what’s going to go? – Working at the business is what has to go…

(CONTINUED HERE)

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February 23, 2026 · 9:08 am

Jason Cook proves determination CAN triumph in the film industry…

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Getting movies made is neither an easy nor a fast process.

I first met and blogged about the indefatigable, highly-creative, dyslexic and very determined Jason Cook back in 2010, when he moved into production offices at Elstree Studios. He was trying to raise finance for the first of a movie trilogy based on his semi-autobiographical books.

Last year, his first film Cookster: The Darkest Days was released – actually a prequel to his series of novels.

JASON: So Sky bought the rights to Cookster: The Darkest Days about a month ago, We hit the top ten in the movies on Sky. It’s also available to buy on Amazon Prime.

JOHN: Well plugged. 

JASON: It all came about just by chance. Someone managed to open the door to Sky for us. 

We did a dyslexic event at Sky Studios. They watched the movie and they decided to do a buyout deal. They bought the rights for three years.

JOHN: For the UK and Ireland? 

JASON: Yes. So that was amazing for us as an independent. And they’ve also put a clause in the agreement that they’d like to see the other four films when we make them. So that’s brilliant. More than we expected.

JOHN: Cookster: The Darkest Days was released in UK cinemas last year.

JASON: Yes. Through a company called AJAMAX Releasing.

JOHN: There was talk of Indonesia.

JASON: We’ve just done a worldwide sales deal. So that’s been signed. They will start to release it worldwide, but we’ve taken out Indonesia, South Asia, Hong Kong so that Djonny Chen (the producer) can just put it straight into there.

JOHN: So, next…?

JASON: We’re just starting to get Pirates of the South together now. 

JOHN: Which is based on your novel: Euphoria: Pirates of the South and is about…?

JASON: It’s about a girl from Hackney who’s in an abusive domestic violence situation with her family. She finds solace on the streets with a gang of people and comes out of the gang. A promoter sees that she’s got talent, she learns how to DJ and then becomes a number one DJ. in a male-dominated industry.

It shows how domestic violence has an impact on people – not only directly but on the people around them and in schools and so on.

We’re taking people back to the rave culture, rave times, when Thatcher was trying to close down all the raves and the pirate radio stations.

The era of love and unity, where everyone’s at raves and coming together – black, white, Chinese, whatever, all together. We take some of that culture and the police trying to stop it, close it all down and stop the radicalisation of it.

It’ll be shot in 18 days in Borehamwood and around Hertfordshire. We’re looking at some iconic places that we can shoot in. And there’s music from that era to be mixed into that.

JOHN: The music will cost a bit of money, won’t it?

JASON: Yeah, the music will. 

Troy Stacey‘s the director. And then we’ve got Alain Philippe Cross as Director of Photography; he’s quite well-known in the commercial and film world.

We’re just locking down all locations now and we probably start shooting in a month or so. 

JOHN: I saw on your Props List that you are having some prop cocaine. What is prop cocaine? Sugar or something? 

JASON: It’s vitamins. I think it’s vitamins. Some vitamin stuff that the prop girls come out with.

There’s cocaine and drugs in this film again. A little bit of violence, but we’re going to keep that to a minimum. We’ve steered away from the old cliché of the football violence and people like that coming into the rave scene. 

It’s actually the story of a young girl and how she changes her abilities to understand her family’s domestic relationships and also finding a pathway to enlightenment within the music.

JOHN: So what are you doing after Pirates of the South?

JASON: We’ve just been talking to an American team about Rats in Space. They’ve shown interest in being part of it.

JOHN: Rats in Space is based on your children’s book…

JASON: Yes. It’s an animation feature film about Hector the Rat from London’s Underground and his journey to become a rastronaut. 

JOHN: Become a what?

JASON: A rastronaut.

JOHN: Of course.

JASON: It’s a big family adventure that follows the character Hector and his goofy friends. We show his journey from busking in London’s Underground to becoming a rastronaut against all the odds..

The American team like the animation style that we’re going for and we’re in the process of making that happen. There’s a chance of us going over to America.

Cookster: The Darkest Days is now part of a worldwide distribution deal, so it will go to all the countries apart from what we’ve carved out from that –  Indonesia, Hong Kong, Asia.

JOHN: Any plans for a sequel? 

JASON: There is a plan. There’s four books, so there’s four possible films. All the films have been scripted and adapted by award-winning writer JoAnn Hess, who also scripted Cookster: The Darkest Days.

The second film will be based on my book There’s No Room for Jugglers in My Circus but it will be re-titled Cookster: There’s No Turning Back for the film. 

And then the next one will be Cookster: The Gangster’s Runner. Then Cookster,: A Nice Little Earner, and then Cookster: The Devil’s Dandruff.

We’re now in the casting stages for Cookster: There’s No Turning Back.

JOHN: I remember way back, in I think maybe 2015, Vinnie Jones had shown some interest.

JASON: Well, he was at Elstree Studios and one of the guys there knew him quite well, knew his dad and organised for Vinnie to come over and see us.

Vinnie came over and met us and said he loved the books, said he’d love to be in the movie, which was really good. But at that time we had an investor who it turned out was pretending. So, due to what happened, we couldn’t get Vinnie.

I always remember Vinnie said “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was shot on a lot less than you think it was”.

He said: “I love the material, I love the role. And, if you guys can get it together, then I’d be happy to come on board.”

But that was maybe ten years ago; we couldn’t then and time has moved on.

Hopefully our investors are stronger this time instead of being like they were back then. 

At the moment, Ajo is our casting agent. So he’s on board with the project. All happening. But that’s all we can disclose at the moment on that.

And then I’m also working on my new book: The Masonic Coins of the Roman Empire. It’s about the coins that enslaved men. And we tell the story of how that evolves from Egyptian times up to now.

It’s a bit like The Da Vinci Code meets Gladiator. 

JOHN: Well elevator plugged.

JASON: And there’s other things going on which I can’t talk about.

JOHN: Have you investigated the idea of getting some sleep?

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February 13, 2026 · 10:15 pm

Who says I don’t write about myself?

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A couple of weeks ago, I was saying to someone that I have always made very bad first impressions, particularly in my rare job interviews. I almost never got jobs through interviews. Then and now, on first impression, I think I come across as irresponsible and – this came up at my college interview – certainly not someone who would be able to concentrate or to keep deadlines.

In fact, at college, there were 24 people in my year and only two of us always delivered work in on time. I was one.

The someone I was talking to a couple of weeks ago agreed, yes, I do come across on first meeting as (her word) ‘scatty’… ie scatter-brained.

Fair enough, I think.

A month or so ago, a different someone was saying they’d known me for several years but actually knew nothing about me; that I never really write about myself in this blog.

In fact, I have occasionally written about myself, particularly in the early days of this blog, when I was writing it daily.

No-one in their right mind is going to plough through all the blogs I have written, stretching back to 2010. So here in its entirety is an old blog I genuinely accidentally stumbled upon yesterday.

I originally posted it on 23rd November 2012.

It was titled: TEN YEARS AGO THIS MONTH IN MY LIFE…

So we are talking about events back in 2002.

I have hidden some people’s names to preserve their privacy.

Beware: it runs to almost 2,000 words…

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I am feeling both lazy and in a bit of a rush this morning.

So, instead of transcribing one of several chats I have had with people which would make for a more relevant blog today, I looked at pre-written stuff – what was happening ten years ago.

I kept a diary on my computer.

These are brief extracts from 2002.

My mother died in Clacton in 2007. Comedian Malcolm Hardee drowned in Rotherhithe in 2005.

Sunday 1st September – Borehamwood

I have a rather snotty, flu-y thing which, together with exhaustion, made me even dozier for most of last week after getting back from the Edinburgh Fringe.

My mother had her plaster off on Friday but is in agony when she puts any weight on the foot. She is seeing the doctor again in a fortnight. She has a sort-of bandage-stocking thing she has to put on and remove daily, doubled, which is a bit of a problem if you only have one hand, as she has.

Monday 2nd September – Clacton

My mother’s 82nd birthday. Although together, it felt when we sat together that we were both cold and solitary.

Tuesday 3rd September – Kensington

At 4.20pm, on the platform at High Street Kensington tube, the tips of the middle and third finger on my left hand started vibrating – tingling – from within.

Thursday 5th September – Fleckney/Higham Ferrers

I went to see comedian Charlie Chuck in Leicestershire; he seemed internally sad. And mad inventor John Ward in Northamptonshire; he seemed internally frustrated.

Friday 6th September – Borehamwood

Very depressed. I slept through until 1430.

Saturday 7th September – Clacton

My mother’s cousin Sheena has got glaucoma.

Sunday 8th September – North London

The woman who runs criminal AAAA BBBB’s website e-mailed me:
I am off to the hospital now, my ma is having a brain scan tomorrow to see if she is brain stem dead. If she is I guess it’s not good.

I went round to comedian CCCC DDDD ‘s home. He told me he believes in God, is a Christian and prays every day. He has a 3ft high brass Buddha in his fireplace.

Monday 9th September – Soho

I had a chat with someone who told me about EEEE FFFF, whom I used to work with at a TV station. She says that, after I left, he was bullied by his boss. As a result, he took a drugs overdose and was found by police just about to jump into a canal. The police talked to him and found out why he was going to jump – they can investigate and press charges without a complaint being made. It was assumed they were going to prosecute. The boss resigned from the company before being sacked. There were also tales of him allegedly drugging teenage boys for homosexual acts, but she did not know the details.

The woman who runs criminal AAAA BBBB’s website e-mailed me:
Been at the hospital. I have popped home to get changed. Ma had the brain scan and we do have brain activity, although the seizures could be confusing the issue. She is having a seizure about every 45 mins. They are going to lighten her sedation and try to remove the breathing tube to see what happens, which is what they did last week and we had to have her resuscitated which scared the shit out of me and my dad.

Tuesday 10th September – Ealing

Had tea with comedian GGGG HHHH at a health club in Ealing. His eyes were emotionless. Malcolm Hardee had told me GGGG HHHH’s marriage was rocky because GGGG HHHH had been sleeping with other women on an epic scale, although you could not call him handsome. He has always seemed – and still does – a quiet, rather shy and insecure man.

Wednesday 11th September – Clacton

I am heavily depressed at the moment and have been for two or three years – especially since watching (and listening to) my father die last year and looking at his eyes at the instant of death. Now, when I come to see my mother, I have more depressive layers poured on top of the existing ones.

Thursday 12th September – Southwark/Pimlico

I went to the Old Kent Road to talk to comedian IIII JJJJ about the Sit-Down Comedy book. As soon as I came out of the station at Elephant & Castle, there were posters about guns in Southwark. Turn the gunmen in. Guns are no way to live.

IIII JJJJ is 50, clearly not wanting to live long. He says the guns are used by the Nigerians who run the local drug trade.

Then I went to meet Malcolm Hardee and the editor at Random House for a meeting about the book. There were various marketing/PR people there. Difficult to know what they made of Malcolm, fairly quiet and ramshackle.

Friday 13th September – Clacton

I took my mother to Clacton Hospital for a check-up. There were lots of people sitting on chairs in corridors throughout the hospital, just waiting to be seen.

Saturday 14th September – Enfield/Rotherhithe

Malcolm wanted to buy a second duck as a mate for the one he already has (as a surprise for his partner Andree). Charlie Chuck and I went and bought the second duck for him at an animal ‘hyper’ shop in Enfield. While waiting, there was much alarmed quacking when a cockerel decided to mate with a startled mallard duck. The cockerel gave up eventually, which was a relief both to us and to the mallard. Back in Rotherhithe, Malcolm’s female Indian Runner duck was even more startled to see a male Indian Runner emerge from our cardboard box.

Sunday 15th September – Borehamwood

Immensely depressed and despairing. Maybe men aged over a certain age don’t care about anything any more because they know nothing matters – they have a clear sight of mortality. All that really matters in life is pleasure, relationships and the money that allows both to function freely. I realised this too late.

Monday 16th September – Borehamwood

This evening, Malcolm’s female duck jumped over the side of his ship in what he said was an assumed suicide bid – possibly alarmed at the new male’s attentions – and Malcolm spent about 45 minutes trying to retrieve her with a fishing net.

Thursday 19th September – Rotherhithe

I went to Malcolm’s Wibbley Wobbley pub. His two ducks Crispy (the original) and Charlie (named after Charlie Chuck) had been let out and he successfully tried to catch them again – running along a wooden pontoon, a single long-poled fishing net in his hand. Andree has not been able to eat duck since the first arrival.

Comedian KKKK LLLL arrived, looking relaxed and confident but I know he is in big money trouble.

Friday 20th September – Borehamwood

Back to the depression.

Saturday 21st September – Borehamwood

The tips of the middle and third finger on my left hand were vibrating – tingling – from within.

Sunday 22nd September – Borehamwood

I went to bed at 0200 and got up at 1510. I didn’t want to get up even then, just to stay in bed. Late at night, there was a 4.8 Richter Scale earthquake in Dudley (on the outskirts of Birmingham)… I felt it in Borehamwood (in Hertfordshire).

Monday 23rd September – Clacton

On ITV,  Anglia News reported that a woman from Peterborough had phoned in to say that, during last night’s earthquake, her pet bird was thrown off its perch.

I got an e-mail from someone I went to school with; he is now in Israel:

Are you now, or have you ever been…… the John Fleming who joined Ilford County High School for Boys in 1961, and left considerably earlier than the rest of us, in what I have always viewed as a blaze of glory? I have found myself, at odd moments over the intervening 35 years, wondering, not a little enviously, whether the John Fleming I knew continued to live by his high principles of artistic freedom. As for your splendid website, that is how I found you, and I must say that what I read there did not disappoint. It sounds as though you are doing what you want to do,

In fact, I took an overdose of paracetamol, aspirin and codeine and, slightly later, ran away from home. All over a girl. Hardly a blaze of glory. Hardly anything to do with artistic freedom. How strange how others view our lives.

My mother’s stomach was more painful than normal today She took 2 paracetamol at teatime and was holding her stomach while sitting in her chair during the evening.

Tuesday 24th September – Borehamwood

My friend Sandy in Italy e-mailed me:
Earthquakes of course were a monthly occurrence in Japan. I survived a 6.9 one… Oh, the tales I shall tell…

I replied:
Earthquakes are not such a threat to the Japanese as they are very small and thus don’t have so far to fall if they get knocked over.

I felt a circa 5.8 one in Manchester in the early 1980s (its epicentre was in North Wales); at first I had thought it was a couple having sex in the next room… And there was a distinct shaking in a hotel in Las Vegas when I was there in 1979. We at first thought this was an earthquake then realised it might be an underground atomic bomb going off in the Nevada test area.

Wednesday 25th September – Borehamwood

Extract from an e-mail from my friend Lys (who lives in Oxfordshire):
I forgot to say but, yes, the earthquake woke me up too.

I had a meal with comedian MMMM NNNN and a long-time male friend of hers at the Groucho Club. She says she feels more secure there because people don’t look at her.

Thursday 26th September – Borehamwood

I slept from 6.10pm-8.50pm and I don’t know what or how to describe it, But something seemed to snap when I was asleep. My ability to cope with reality. My ability to cope with anything. When I woke up and got up, I felt even more adrift and separated from Life.

The woman who runs criminal AAAA BBBB’s website e-mailed me:
My mother has had a total of about 18-20 strokes and she is due to come home into community care Friday as there is nothing else a hospital can do. They might try and find her a private rehab centre but places are few and far between so I am thinking it over. Private rehab is £1,800 per week which is a very expensive. We will see.

Saturday 28th September – Clacton

My mother and I sit mostly in silence. My mother’s wrist is very thin, very boney.

Sunday 29th September – Borehamwood

My friend Lynn (who is also the executrix of my will) told me that, last night, she dreamt about my death. It was not my body lying on the floor yet she knew it was me.

I met my friend OOOO PPPP in London. She was puffy-faced, yet with no lines on her forehead. Maybe the anti-cancer drugs have puffed her face up.

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February 12, 2026 · 9:25 pm

Enigmatic artist AI teases me about MELT IT! THE FILM OF THE ICEMAN

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Anthony Irvine, The Iceman, in Wolverhampton (Photo by Spencer Wakeling)

Anyone who read my blog of a month ago (this means you, my loyal readers in Guatemala) will know that Melt It! The Film of the Iceman – the new documentary film about British performance artist The Iceman aka fine artist AIM aka Anthony Irvine – was due to be premiered in Wolverhampton last weekend.

It happened but I was unable to attend.

However, I asked the enigma that is The Iceman / AIM / AI / Anthony Irvine to tell me what happened.

As he revels in being an enigma, this is what he told me :

The week-end was great. People liked the film.

2 Nightingales came to the cinema. I mean the band, not the birds.

I made a horizontal entry into the Q&A session after the screening, with Robin Ince and (director) Mark and (co-producer) Rob and tried selling my new tea towels live.

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The Iceman (left) and Robin Ince, trying to flog tea towels (Photo by Spencer Wakeling)

I also gave each of the production team their very own Iceman block. Inside each block was a duck including the Prove It! one from the Southampton hotel.

I have no idea any more than you what any of this really means, although I think the last mention of the duck refers to the occasion when I booked The Iceman onto an ITV show called Prove It!, recorded in Southampton, and a yellow plastic duck mysteriously disappeared from the hotel in which The Iceman stayed.

When he sent me the message above, he was on his way to Portsmouth for reasons unknown.

After he reached Portsmouth, he sent me a photograph of what look to me like crabs, for reasons equally unknown.

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Enigmatic Portsmouth crabs

I am told there will be a London premiere of Melt It! The Film of the Iceman at some point. I will ask the enigma that is Anthony Irvine / AI  to explain more when that happens. Watch this space, although The Iceman’s enigma runs deep.

Deep.

Apparently the 2 Nightingales are “Katie and Emma, professionally trained performers bringing authentic 1940s entertainment to weddings and events across Surrey and the Home Counties…”

And I have just realised that the word ENIGMA is an anagram of AI G-MEN.

But I have a fairly high level of confidence that this is utterly irrelevant to almost everything…

…which seems somehow appropriate.

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January 30, 2026 · 6:22 pm

A mouth-dropping new song and video by a British author/journalist…

Forget the open-hearted autobiographical lyrics and the music (really great production)… This is a cracker of a video by British author/journalist/singer/songwriter Ariane Sherine…

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January 25, 2026 · 8:19 pm

Burns Night, Lions, Russian bombs in Kiev and the Red Hot Chilli Pipers…

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(Photograph by Geralt, via Pixabay)

Tempus fugit, according to Virgil, and increasingly so.

13 and 14 years are either a short time or a long time or both.

So it goes.

It’s Burns Night tonight (25th January 2026) and Russia continues to bomb Ukraine every night – Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Both (or all three of) these things reminded me of blogs I posted in 2012 and 2013. When Kiev confusingly celebrated Burns Night in March.

Maybe it’s worth reposting the blogs (or maybe not) as memories of what Ukraine was like 13 and 14 years ago – before the Russian invasions.

Importantly, note that the President of Ukraine mentioned in one of these blogs is Viktor Yanukovych not the current President Zelensky… Yanukovych was in power 2010-2014.

My blog from Kiev in 2012 was:

The new Wild West of Eastern Europe and its new stag party capital of Kiev

My blog from Kiev in 2013 was:

A spectacular Lions party in Kiev with sword fights and Red Hot Chilli Pipers

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January 17, 2026 · 11:13 pm

The Iceman (Part 2) on laughing and crying audiences and angry ice blocks…

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Anthony Irvine outside the National Theatre in London…

My previous blog was the first part of a chat with Anthony Irvine AKA performance artist The Iceman AKA the fine artist AIM.

The Iceman’s performance art involved melting blocks of ice. AIM’s visual art tends to be about him melting blocks of ice as The Iceman.

He was talking to me partly to publicise Melt It! The Film of The Iceman – an upcoming documentary about him, premiering in Wolverhampton next month.

Now read on…

JOHN: You told me once that you worked in the National Theatre.

ANTHONY: Well, I worked at the National Theatre in the Green Room as a barman, serving drinks. I knew that all the actors regarded me as rather slow, but I met all the greats. 

JOHN: Such as? 

ANTHONY: The lot.

JOHN: Laurence Olivier?

ANTHONY: Not Larry; my Green Room work was more recent. I remember actors like Brian Cox who were doing shows there. And the playwright Alan Ayckbourn. 

I once served a drink to Harold Pinter.

JOHN: Did he say very much? 

ANTHONY: No, he came back and said the wine was too warm. 

JOHN: Were there lots of pauses? 

ANTHONY: There were many pauses.

JOHN: You never performed on stage at the National?

ANTHONY: No. But I went back to the Green Room much later on, after I’d given up the job, and I got slightly inebriated.

I took a wrong turning and I was suddenly at the entrance onto the Olivier auditorium’s stage. A play called The Visit was on with Lesley Manville in it and it did cross my mind… I thought This could be an opportunity… and then I thought better of it, fortunately.

A number of actors were about to make their entrance and they looked at me aghast and I think Security got involved. It was a very memorable moment because, you know, the lights are so bright but I could actually see the front row of the audience. 

JOHN: You should have gone on stage and said, “Oh, I’m just visiting…” and then gone off again.

ANTHONY: Have I told you that it’s sold out?

JOHN: What?

ANTHONY: The screening of the film next month. Melt It! The Film of the Iceman…

JOHN: Do you like the finished film?

ANTHONY: I’ve only seen little bits of it so far. 

JOHN: Are you actually in it? They could have cut you out of a documentary about you just for a laugh…

ANTHONY: (LAUGHS) That would be funny, yes. It’d be like me going to see Funny Bones, where I did three days filming and they cut me out of that, more or less. I was one of the sort of music hall people. I was being the Iceman with his block. I think you only see him for a second up a ladder or something like that.

JOHN: But, in the new documentary film about you…

ANTHONY: There’s interviews with various people who did comedy in my day, like Jo Brand and Stewart Lee and Simon Munnery and they all have their interviews. Robin Ince. Mark Thomas. They just say little things about the Iceman. And so, it’s just like in the book, Melt It! The Book of The Iceman where the foreword is Simon Munnery talking about block 125 and kind enough to use the phrase “absurd, beautiful art”.

JOHN: So is ‘absurd, beautiful art’ your ideal description? 

ANTHONY: I do quite like that. I think it’s quite accurate. I like people to laugh and cry when they’re in front of my paintings as AIM. Sometimes it even happens. I put a lot of feeling into them.

JOHN: Why are they crying? 

ANTHONY: Because they sense a human condition in an unexpected form. There’s always a human figure. And there’s always the block of ice.

So I think the combination of the block and the man is quite evocative. 

JOHN: Because? 

ANTHONY: Because the whole idea of melting ice is… 

JOHN: Ephemeral? 

ANTHONY: Yes. It conveys the passing of time and the struggle and also moments of joy, of course, as well. So that’s why there should be laughter as well.

JOHN: But why would they laugh and cry at a two-dimensional image? Or feel emotion? 

ANTHONY: Because it evokes something. Because it’s painted with such glee and care… (LAUGHS) and speed. 

JOHN: How long does it take to paint an average one?

ANTHONY: Well, sometimes they’re quite quick. But I never do one without a lot of thought – before committing to canvas.

JOHN: Your recent ‘paintings’ have not really been paintings. They’ve been a sort-of collage of ink drawings and Polaroid pictures and fax paper..

ANTHONY: I find the ink drawing quite interesting because I look at the Polaroid quite carefully before I do the ink drawing. And the Polaroid provokes some kind of path to the painting. For example, even the shape of the block or the audience members you see in the photo or the structure of the support system or the funnel or the lights.

So the actual Polaroid, funnily enough, does influence the painting. For example, the number of copies I might make for the fax machine. Of course, the fax machine was quite a big old-fashioned one I used.

I do acknowledge that I wasn’t literally faxing. I was using the fax machine to make copies on fax paper. 

Do you know fax paper? I love the actual quality of the fax paper and the printing on it. 

JOHN: You were talking about the shape of the block. Isn’t the shape of the block a given? Otherwise it wouldn’t be a block.

ANTHONY: Well, the block receives a shape from the container, really. Even if you use the same container, different water will freeze in a different shape or come out in a different shape.

JOHN: How do you make your blocks? In the last 30 years, have you had a little box or something? 

ANTHONY: Well, I had freezers all around London and the home counties. More difficult further afield. I didn’t have one in Glasgow.

I basically usually froze them myself. Occasionally, if I did what you might call a bigger show, I would get a commercial block. And that was always a different phenomenon because you had to ‘get to know’ your block whereas, with the blocks I made myself, I knew them already. Do you see the difference? 

JOHN: How did you get to know your block? 

ANTHONY: Having a short moment to commune with it – or a long moment if possible. Talk to it, receive information from it.

And, of course, when it appeared in public, it began a life of its own. 

JOHN: What information did you get back from it? 

ANTHONY: That’s a good question. I think it’s difficult to put into human language.

JOHN: Put it into ice language. 

ANTHONY: A sense of what it was. 

JOHN: It was a block.

ANTHONY: A character. 

JOHN: Different blocks have different characters? 

ANTHONY: Yes.

JOHN: Understandable in a human way? 

ANTHONY: Yes. I mean, for example, the famous Noel Edmonds Christmas Show when The Iceman went mainstream. He came out of an exploding fridge.

JOHN: An exploding fridge?

ANTHONY: An exploding fridge. There’s film of it somewhere.

But on that occasion I had more than one block. I had about a mountain of blocks. Big blocks. I mean, I had to use a wheelbarrow to move them. So that was a fascinating interaction of different blocks together. And me. 

But I don’t want to sound pretentious. 

JOHN: Oh, go on.

ANTHONY: There is a sort of ambience which results from the specific characters of the blocks. 

JOHN: Have you met a psychopathic block of ice? 

ANTHONY: I don’t think I’ve ever met a psychopathic one. I’ve had angry ones.

JOHN: Why are they angry? 

ANTHONY: I don’t know, just in a mood. Probably didn’t want to be made. 

JOHN: Are they trying to revolt against this by refusing to melt? 

ANTHONY: Well, yes, everything revolted against The Iceman because, as you know, the system always collapsed as soon as you put the block in the structure.

So there was always struggle, always an element of struggle. The funniest block I remember, at Battersea Arts Centre, was a block that jumped – literally jumped – back into the bucket from where it came. I promise you.

JOHN: How did it do that? 

ANTHONY: I don’t know. The audience thought it was a stunt, but it was supernatural. I promise you, I got the block out of the container, put it on my structure, I put the container on the floor, some distance away, and the next moment, the block, as it were, ‘flew’ into the container, upside down. I do not exaggerate. I was gobsmacked. 

JOHN: Imagine how the block felt.

ANTHONY: I was amazed and the audience saw my genuine amazement. 

JOHN: What did the therapists say? 

ANTHONY: They said, “Keep melting! This helps you. It gives you a path through life. It gives you a reason to be. It helps you put all your angst and joy into something that you can share with the public. And you can do big TV shows”- like the one with John Fleming – Prove it! with Chris Tarrant.

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