Websites

I have recently (autumn 09) begun working on a podcast with my friend Roo Reynolds. It's a geeky, silly thing with interesting guests, foods and chats and we're putting it out every other week. We've had some great guests already, including the producer of The Thick of It Adam Tandy, comedy legend David Schneider, podcasters Helen and Olly from Answer Me This! and Morrissey-baiting writer David Quantick. You can find out more and subscribe at Shiftrunstop.co.uk.

I launched ATR in spring 2007 to give an official name and format to a blog that had taken on a life of its own. I'm very proud of what it has become. We've had writers from The Guardian, The Independent and The Sunday Times, interviews with TV stars, well known bloggers, comedians and authors. But I'm more excited about the non-household names that have been given some sort of platform through this. I started it because I wanted to see whether it was possible to create a valid, interesting lifestyle publication which wasn't supported by advertising or promoting an aspirational way of living. And I think it's succeeded - although by its very nature it'll never be mainstream.

ATR is humorous and kind of nerdy, it's "the magazine for everybody else" and "the most accidentally-read magazine on the internet" due to its amazingly generic name. I like to think that it has an old-school punk ethic of taking pride in your creative outputs and I like the idea of using the internet a bit differently. I need to believe there's something between blogging and unfunny scribbled biro comics.

Worry Friends started out as a list of funny ideas and suggestions on a website I was running a few years ago. It got longer and longer as my friends started contributing suggestions. My partner Tom built the current website earlier this year, and it caught the eye of the guys who run the nerdy newsletter "Need To Know". Within weeks it was all over the web, and I was getting dozens of contributions - for the first time from complete strangers - sent to me every week. A couple of months later Snowbooks approached me with the idea to make it into a book. At the time of writing, my first book How To Worry Friends and Inconvenience People has been out for 8 months. Until recently it was in the top 100 Amazon humour anthologies. Rhodri Marsden from The Independent said I make him "simultaneously jubilant and deeply envious"... Gamesmaster's Dominik Diamond thinks I am "very fit actually, in that posh way." Time Out were more taciturn, with a brief but accurate "Sardonic mottos" (you can tell they love it though)

Through the second half of 08 I edited the Shiny Media women's site, Dollymix. The Shiny bosses wanted it to be a bit more light-hearted and fun, so they called on me! Sample post: "The latest batch of superhero and fantasy movies got me thinking... what's in it for us red-blooded females? As ever, Dollymix brings you the answer we're all thinking but aren't really allowed to say: warped crushes. Who is much improved by the addition of fur or supernatural transformation? Hop overleaf to read my top 5 half-man half-monsters and remember: none of the characters are all that attractive as regular people... it's only when they've got fur and horns and stuff. And now the air's cleared, let us never speak of this again.
1. Ed Norton as the Hulk. Hell, I haven't even seen the film yet. But I have a strong feeling about this one, and my feelings are seldom wrong. I should stress, though, that it's not the gurning CGI-faced green monster we're considering fancying here, it's the guy with the potential to become one. Subtle, I know.
2. James McAvoy as the fawn in The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. It's not terribly current, but the new Narnia film made me nostalgic for the days when McAvoy was a cute fawn. As a regular human, he does nothing for me. Nothing.
3. David Kessler as the American Werewolf in London. Not much to look at ordinarily, but man, so much more attractive once you know he's got a giant dog inside him. Just ask Jenny Agutter. I bet she's had a... Christ what am I saying?
4. James Nesbit as "Jekyll" in the recent TV interpretation of the Robert Louis Stephenson story. Beetle-browed nerd turns into a hyperactive mentalist and becomes inexplicably irresistible to women. Not my cup of tea, but it's an improvement.
5. Jim Carrey in Mask. You think it's about an introspective loser who finds this magic mask that turns him into a socially and sexually precocious cartoon-featured monster. In actual fact you're wrong. Mask is a probing essay on introversion and social mores. Yes, it's fair to say that a lot of people don't realise just how clever Mask is. Any more for any more?"

I'm currently working as the editor and principle writer of a reality TV blog, Available for Panto. Panto is produced by Shiny Media, who asked me to stay on after hiring me to do live Big Brother updates in the summer of '07. Writing a regular blog has been great practice and reading the tabloids all day, I've learned a huge amount about C list celebrities. Something most of us can only dream of. Typical entry:

"I'm a Celebrity: David Gest to hold huge auction

His time in the jungle, he says, made him 'less materialistic'. Which he must find ironic, since it's made him loads and loads of money. Seriously though, it must be tough to be David Gest. Every time he realises he's made some more money he has to go down to Natwest and draw it all out of the cash-point, which takes ages, then climb all the way to the top of his mansion and throw it out of the window. Still, keeps him fit I bet. This in mind, presumably all the dosh he makes from this auction will go straight charity? Oh no, wait, he's just pocketing it. Or throwing it out of the window. Yep, according to The Daily Star, who are never wrong about these things, oh and The Independent, if you have time to read their mega-long interview, Gest will be flogging £1million worth of his pop memorabilia. He just can't stand objects. Abstract wealth, apparently, is fine."

UPDATE! Panto has now been absorbed by TvScoop.tv. UPDATE UPDATE: I wrote for TVScoop until November 08.

I was the sole contributer holding up Startrip, another Shiny Media production. Under my rules, it's sort of a funny version of Heat. Startrip is updated twice a day. Typical entry pasted below:

VIVIENNE WESTWOOD HATED SEX AND THE CITY MOVIE
Seriously, what a cow. Startrip found the Sex and the City film to be all he/she/it hoped for AND MORE, so it's a bit ungrateful of Viv, for whom the movie was essentially one gigantic advert. I thought Sex And The City was supposed to be about cutting-edge fashion and there was nothing remotely memorable or interesting about what I saw," she said. "I went to the premiere and left after 10 minutes." Huh! That's the last time I shop at Vivienne Westwood. Or listen to the radio broadcasts of her son, Tim.

Startrip is now an automated web feed. It is faster and more accurate than me, but lacks my wonky charm. It is Queeg to my Holly.

Websites

Shift Run Stop

All The Rage

Worry Friends

Dollymix

Panto

Startrip