To understand the existence of 'Orrible, we need to recall the weird early 2000's national obsession with gangland criminals. This was the era of Lock, Stock and Snatch; of cockneys in football manage...
2019-09-14 07:19:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Wakehaven - a mystery in eight parts.
2019-09-12 08:12:56 +0000 UTC View PostSeeing as I spend my time on here tearing apart other people's bad old content, I figured before karma comes for my head, I'd better tip out the bones from my own closet.
This magnificent comic is my first eve...
2019-09-03 23:07:21 +0000 UTC View Post
The opening titles to The One Show make way more sense with subtitles on.
2019-08-25 11:47:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Over the past year, Noel Edmonds has become the suspiciously-dark-bearded ghoul that hangs over my work. Though I worry my compulsive references to the man will eventually drive every Patron away, I just can't help myself...
2019-08-25 08:24:35 +0000 UTC View Post
I cannot stress strongly enough how much I love The Karate Kid. Along with Ghostbusters, it's my all-time favourite film, and I was flooded with excitement and terror when Youtube announced the original (survi...
2019-08-15 08:10:14 +0000 UTC View Post
When last we saw Chris Evans, he'd been wahey-ing all over the Big Breakfast cottage, be...
2019-08-05 08:38:17 +0000 UTC View Post
In his heyday, the name Jeremy Beadle was national shorthand – settle down – for exasperating situations; synonymous with life throwing you a random, terrible curveball that must be a prank. If your plumbing burst ...
2019-07-26 08:51:15 +0000 UTC View Post
To save the suspense on whether Tagteam – self-styled as a single word – is any good, it's with a heavy heart I must report the biggest missed opportunity since every participant in James Corden's Carpool Karaoke f...
2019-07-16 08:00:37 +0000 UTC View Post
It's hard to convey just how ridiculously famous Mr. T was in the eighties, and how fast it all happened. His breakout role of Clubber Lang in Rocky II hit theatres in May of 1982, with The A-Team debuted the ...
2019-07-05 23:11:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Down in the trenches of a British comprehensive school in the mid-80s, it's every boy for himself. But it helps to have a friend.
Scramblehead – a story in four parts, coming soon.
2019-06-30 23:01:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Having previously covered Noel's House Party, it was inevitable that I'd eventually tackle The Big Breakfast, which puts us at the dawn of that baffling period when the nation was bewitched by Chris Evans. Yet...
2019-06-25 23:01:19 +0000 UTC View Post
This is the only known footage of Colonel Spokes, also known as the Rumble Tumble Man, or Ernie Tattles. A familiar sight to motorists of West Sussex throughout the 1970s and '80s, local legend puts him as the only survivor of a terrible car accident which took his entire family. As a result, he never got behind the whe...
2019-06-23 15:09:03 +0000 UTC View Post
A group of giggling kids loudly ask Siri if Yoda's circumcised.
I'm out walking a dog, and on our retur...
2019-06-22 18:38:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Long-running shows often get defined by their endings, good or bad, which retroactively colour the perception of a series as a whole, like The Sopranos' cut to black, or the denouement of Lost, which was gener...
2019-06-15 23:01:50 +0000 UTC View Post
Another of those series perennially sat on the worst-of lists, Come Back Mrs. Noah was a Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft joint; the pairing that brought us Are You Being Served? and 'Allo 'Allo. Airing i...
2019-06-05 23:11:06 +0000 UTC View Post
If you've been following my work for a while, you'll know that my Charles Manson novel, Charlie and Me, was *the* big project for me, which took up years of my life, so I was pretty bummed when it virtually died on release at the end of 2017. At the time, even the idea of a story based on an infamous murderer didn't get a gre...
2019-05-28 20:41:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Even today, ITV's Heartbeat is so bonded to its placement dead-centre of Sunday Night Dread, that on hearing its theme tune, I instinctively started getting a tummy ache in creeping fear of school tomorrow. A partial c...
2019-05-26 23:08:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Writing this latest piece about terrible cartoon spin-offs unwittingly dredged up a litany of embarrassing memories. Around the age of seven, I became fixated on Rambo; the lead character in a series of movies I'd yet to even s...
2019-05-16 23:02:56 +0000 UTC View PostTo save everyone scrolling back through dozens
2019-05-11 18:52:51 +0000 UTC View Post
There's a man swimming in the sea. The sun's quite warm when it breaks the clouds, but the water looks cold. When he wades back onto shore, he pulls open the front of his trunks and peers down, as though checking it's all...
2019-05-09 13:23:55 +0000 UTC View Post
One day, I turned on the telly, and watched Bob Mortimer beat Les Dennis in a boxing match. No, that's not a dream you've gotten stuck listening to me drearily describe right into your ear on the bus, but a thing that actually ...
2019-05-06 23:07:19 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been rooting around in a few old notebooks, looking for Beach Diaries scraps I never got around to posting. Here's a selection, and hopefully I'll be able to get out more this summer and gather some new material.
... 2019-04-30 12:51:38 +0000 UTC View Post
On Good Friday of this year, the area's local churches got together to perform a public Walk of Witness through the high street, recreating the capture, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus. In what would be my first public performa...
2019-04-26 23:04:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Contains spoilers for last night's Game of Thrones (Season 8, Episode 2)
2019-04-22 20:28:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Since starting the Shitcoms series, I occasionally get suggestions tweeted at me, and Slinger's Day has come up more than once. I'd never seen it, and at first glance, it didn't seem like it would be that bad. It's not...
2019-04-17 07:47:20 +0000 UTC View Post
I knocked up this quick highlight reel, because it's impossible to convey in print Chuck's sheer level of boredom and terrible diction.
2019-04-07 09:12:42 +0000 UTC View Post
For me, Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos is the perfect Venn diagram intersection of dual fascinations, sitting in that sweet spot of 'cartoons featuring real people as themselves' and 'weird as Hell 80's karate guys'. I...
2019-04-07 09:00:37 +0000 UTC View Post
The WWE Hall of Fame sits at the start of Wrestlemania weekend, as the one evening a year when the carny-ass business that proudly rolls around in shit for the other 364 mops up the sweat and gets classy. Essentially, this is w...
2019-03-28 00:01:23 +0000 UTC View Post
