Monthly Archives: November 2014

I am sitting in a dressing room with tea and chocolate, mulling over possible humanism for an interview. this is where I have got to so far…. Why are you a humanist? am I a humanist? I suppose it is probably the -ist tag … Continue reading →

I wrote this to release the homunculus in my skull which was trying to stop me breathing. Oh, Coventry Station, you have failed on intelligence, ingenuity, imagination. And Virgin…well, here we go again. Another hopeless night on the railways. I … Continue reading →

This evening, I have to make a speech to some school leavers. I am rummaging around my head, working out what I want to say to the young and hopeful that may be of any importance whatsoever. I am not … Continue reading →

Last night, I was kept wake by the smell of mince. The smell of mince had first come into my day as I approached lunch at the BBC cafeteria. It smelt liked mince cooked in an armpit. Once it was … Continue reading →

We all have different thicknesses of carapace. With performers, some have carapaces of tensile steel, they possess a certainty which means that even the ugly gig or awry performance can be shrugged off. I have seen some who have almost … Continue reading →

When it came to toys, I was the luckiest child. I didn’t have a Six Million Dollar Man doll or an Action Man tank, there was no Stretch Armstrong or Mousetrap, but I did have a real sheep’s skull, with … Continue reading →

I have two recurring thoughts that seem to be a daily event. One, is while staring out of a train window, I look at all the trees and think about the remarkable variety of life on the planet. I look … Continue reading →

Standing on the last off-peak train, cunningly disguised as peak due to the nose to hairline to toe to elbow to toe again proximity of the humans aboard, I made a rough headcount of my carriage. Somewhere between 100 and … Continue reading →

One of the more disturbing, intriguing and enlightening concepts I learnt about from BBC4 this year was the idea that dolphins could kill themselves. I nearly typed ‘commit suicide’, but I have learnt from making Radio 4 documentaries that ‘commit … Continue reading →