The Bath Comedy Festival originally took me by surprise, when it kicked off several years ago. For a while, I felt like I was the only person in the city running any kind of local comedy scene, with The Unrelated Family sketch shows (there was Mirth Control, but this tended to be very catholic stand-up…
2014: A Hitchhiker Odyssey & ENDPAPERS
2014: A STRANGELY ADAMSIAN YEAR. This year has had one overwhelmingly apparent theme for me – it was the year that I all-but unwittingly became the official Douglas Adams biographer, and raider of the Adams archives. The honour of this will probably hit me a few minutes before I die. But I was far from…
THE FROOD: Fit The Fifth
THE FROOD – Fit The Fifth First things first – come along to a very special BFI DOUGLAS ADAMS & HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE RETROSPECTIVE on Sunday 14th December! There shall be rare material and cosplay and Trillian and GargleBlasters and fun! More details follow... One of these froods is hoopier than the other – me and the…
THE FROOD: Fit The Fourth
THE FROOD: Fit 1 Fit 2 Fit 3 GETTING THE HANG OF THURSDAYS 15 months is a long time in publishing. It's an excruciatingly long time in politics. And is also quite a bit of a wait in the fields of medicine, confectionary, and professional equestrianism. For me personally, it's the time between sitting down to suggest to…
I Don’t Have To Believe It, Farty-Breath
I'm really sorry if anyone thinks it's just too bloody soon to be posting this – but the truth is, writing it is the only thing I can bring myself to do right now, and once it's done, I can turn off the computer and just get utterly wrecked while watching the best comedy ever…
THE FROOD: Fit The Third
A VERY VERY FROODY TOWEL DAY, EVERYONE! Update on The Frood? To quote Sir Guy, "GETTING IT READY FOR YOU NOW." This article made a rather good point yesterday, that Douglas Adams would probably have been more bemused and befuddled by the concept of folk all around the world celebrating his work via bathroom linen than…
UNREHEARSED THEATRE
MAKE YOUR OWN ENTERTAINMENT. Having spent most of my life showing off on stage in some form or other, from Ludlow to Aberystwyth to Brighton, London and Edinburgh, to Bath and Bristol et cetera – and having expended endlessly more sweat, currency and love on every evening's entertainment than was probably logical... Well, frankly, in recent…
Magazine Scraps #2
It is slightly worrying to note that it's exactly a year since Magazine Scraps #1, but then I have written an entire book in the ensuing time. Of which more anon... But here are two or three utterly random snatches from my 20-odd years in magazine publishing – or certainly, my many years of active videogame…
Blackadder & Nicola Bryant: An Annoying Apology
In the early hours, my first indication after 17 months that my brother had read The True History of The Black Adder came with a text, pointing out that, although the great Nicola Bryant had been properly credited in the Appendixes, in the text itself I had passingly called her 'Nicola Bradbury'. He then went…
THE FROOD: Fit The Second
The more the need to write this blog intensified, the more the ideas which pinged into my head straightened themselves out as material for the book's actual introduction. And as I'm duty-bound to steer my course on this pretty concentrated odyssey through the galaxy of The Hitchhiker's Guide, the need to keep on tapping away…
Jem Roberts 