The Bat Tattoo by Russell Hoban
I’m not sure why, but my respect and love for his work is much greater than my memory for him. When I think of my favourite writers, or the best living British writers, he seems not to leap to mind, but he should[…]

Poor Richard

The Camera Always Lies and The Camera Always tells the Truth –
Raymond Neilson
Avedon is dead, and I think now, a special kind of photography will go with him – he was the one that played both ends against the middle. The on[…]

Further to Tom’s note about horror comics. Here is Stephen Grant on why horror comics are not scary (and therefore why horror comics are not horror comics at all.)[…]

Freaky Trigger Top 25 Scariest Things
no. 25: Spiders
I see no dishonour in confessing to a fear of spiders. But let’s get this in proportion: I’m no arachnophobe, and am happy to take on the gentleman’s burden of deporting 8-legged[…]

Weltmeister 2006
The organising committee of the next World Cup have put a selection of posters to a vote in Germany to decide the official poster. Sadly, there’s little to be done about the logo, but my favourite was this one:

but the winner[…]

Woebot on MP3 blogs: I did some thinking about MP3 blogs for that article I wrote earlier in the month. One of the things I thought – which didn’t make it into the piece – was that MP3 blogs don’t post enough tat. It’s l[…]

Gutterbreakz on Dr.Who novelisations – plus MP3s and a terrific photograph of Malcolm Clarke looking mental as he (I fondly hope) composes the music for “The Sea Devils”.[…]

NOT FOR THE NERVOUS! – lavish website devoted to Scream!, IPC’s 80s attempt at a weekly British horror comic. I did not buy Scream as I thought (wrongly I suspect) it might be frightening: I was a timid child. The comic only lasted fiftee[…]

Sports of the future!: bit of a missed opportunity this since the only advances the BBC seems able to imagine involve robo-referees of one sort of another. As we all know real actual future sport will involve jetpacks and be called something like &#8[…]

Yesterday I started sneezing. Fair enough, I have a cold after all. But every time I start sneezing I always remember those poor children who would appear on Record Breakers having sneezed uncontrollably for weeks, months or even years. How could the[…]