Well, we’re off. It’s happening. 2024 is all go. People have started to frown and look disappointed when I say “Happy New Year”, and rebuke me by saying that I now need to come up with something else to say. We are passed the point of no return. I’m having a nice one, so far. […]

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a delightful Christmas and saw out 2023 in style. Here’s to a happy and fruitful 2024 for all of you. To celebrate the New Year, it’s that time again to delve into the Word For The Year initiative, which Miranda introduced me to when we first met. […]

Father Christmas awoke with a start. There was somebody moving around downstairs. Still only half-awake, he swung his arm wildly out over the bedside table, let it come thudding down like a wrecking ball on the assorted odds and ends he stored there – the book he was currently reading (Sedaris’s latest), his deodorant, his […]

Right back at the start of the year I shot a short film which at the time was going to be called Good Boy (it is no longer called this, for reasons I’ll explain). It had emerged out of some work-in-progress script readings at a monthly scratch night called Dinner Time that I was running with Ben Target and Miranda […]

Warning – this newsletter has nothing to do with elves. But Christmas is coming, and it IS about selves, so the title was inevitable, really. Anyway. On we go. They got me onto The Now Show to pretend to be Jeremy Clarkson and a Dalek and Boris Johnson and Professor Brian Cox, among others. I had such […]

I was working in the cafe of a large public building. I had just met my dad for lunch. We had been trying to find an Italian restaurant we had eaten at a few years before, but it was no longer there, so instead we ate a fry-up at a very nice greasy spoon on […]

Mea culpa. Mea culpa. (This means “My apologies” in French). It has come to my attention that last week I used this newsletter to announce EGGBOX, a night of comedy short film screenings and script readings I’m organising at King’s Place in early December, and failed to actually specify in the body of the email what the […]

“I’m back!” he cried, tumbling out of his spaceship with gleeful abandon. “Did you miss me?” All around him, people were smashing in the windows of Games Workshop, of Curry’s, of Gregg’s, of Gwen’s Nails (a fancy nail parlour he didn’t remember being here before takeoff), of every place that had a window to be […]

Thank you all for your responses last week about the possible expansion of this newsletter into a two-tier system, one for free subscribers and one for paid, and your ideas for the various different things you might like to see in an “evolved” version of what this newsletter offers for you all. It was lovely […]

First up, thank you for all the lovely feedback on last week’s Tape! I don’t usually experiment with a more narrative approach to this newsletter, and I really enjoyed it and might write more entries like that going forwards, alongside the more regular “Here’s what’s on my mind this week” entries. With that in mind, […]

This week I got my hair cut, which is something I do periodically in order to make myself look slightly less shit. For this particular haircut, my barber wordlessly summoned a nervous-looking young man to his side, to which he stuck assiduously for the entire duration of the process, never once tearing his eyes away […]

Hail, friend! Well met! (I didn’t receive a single piece of negative feedback in response to my opening last week’s newsletter with the phrase “Well met!”, so I intend to continue doing it for at least another week, until I think of a different phrase I could use. If you strongly object to my continued […]

Hello, old friends! Well met! (This is a thing I’ve heard people say, I’m trying it out. So far, I don’t think much of it. Sounds a bit silly to me). Hope you’re all doing well! Apologies for the lack of a Therapy Tape last week – things got a bit busy. I’m back this […]

Those of my readers who follow the news about the creative industries, specifically film and TV, will know that everything feels quite perilous over in Hollywood at the moment thanks to the total stalemate over the WGA and SAG-AFTRA writers’ and actors’ strikes. For those not clued up, in a nutshell – writers and actors […]

I’m back! I had such a nice break. Thank you for all your warm wishes! I feel refreshed and creatively engaged and on top of the world. Nice feeling! Anyway, while I was away I read Roger Kneebone’s excellent book Expert: Understanding The Path To Mastery, which is about the psychological process of becoming an expert in […]