Arthur Machen - February 2007 Rejected Piece - February 1st, 2007

The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction pictures Albert Camus smoking a cigarette on the cover, and struggles to define its terms. A cult writer should have died, ideally in mysterious circumstances, leaving behind one seminal work and a whiff of wasted potential. The obscure Welsh mystic Arthur Machen, (1863-1947) almost qualifies as a cult, but…

LONDON LIFES 2 – PETER TASSELEDBAT - January 2007 What's On In London - By Stewart Lee - January 30th, 2007

Peter Tasseledbat is the head of Endemetriol Productions, the London based production company responsible for a host of hit Channel 4 shows including Teen Street, Street Slag, Shit Street, Teen Shit, Street Teen, Slag Shit, Teen Slag, Slag Teen, Street Shit, Shit Teen, Slag Street, Shit Slag, The Friday Night Project, Big Brother and Celebrity…

LONDON LIFES 1 – DAVE MARSHY - January 2007 What's On In London - By Stewart Lee - January 23rd, 2007

Dave Marshy lives in N16 and works for Foxley’s, a large estate agent with branches all over London. He is 29 years old. Every morning I go down to Starbucks for a coffee and a tiny biscuit. It used to be a second hand bookshop, but we hiked up the rent and sold it to…

John Martyn - January 2007 The Sunday Times - January 21st, 2007

John Martyn’s 70’s, folk-fusion experiments with the echoplex guitar pedal have led to the lazy byline, ‘godfather of trip-hop’, but this is to damn him with ludicrously feint praise. The Don’t Look Back series of concerts, in which artists perform an album from beginning to end, encouraged Martyn to revisit his finest hour, 1973’s Solid…

Hawkwind & Lemmy - January 2007 The Independent - January 11th, 2007

On a silent Sunday afternoon, fourteen years ago, I was waiting for a bus on Kings Avenue, Brixton, South London. In the bus shelter, a shaking man with a Special Brew can met my eye. I’ve always been someone strangers feel entitled to talk to, but few of my long conversations with racist pensioners in…

Political Correctness Gone Mad - January 2007 The Guardian - January 1st, 2007

As usual, this year’s British Comedy awards were not a hugely useful barometer of where comedy is at, based as they are on public polls of magazine readers largely unaware of how the art form may be flourishing beyond their TV sets, or influenced by the lobbying of industry insiders anxious to increase the market…