The competition my publishers set up to celebrate the publication of Vroom by the Sea in the UK closes on August 31. So if you fancy a trip to the Amalfi Coast you’ve got three days to do something about it. Luckily, it’s dead simple to enter. Just visit this website and fill in your [...]

It’s funny where the web takes you. One minute I was dropping by Jens Lekman’s website, next I’m downloading songs from a tape put out by some crazy street performer dude from Ghana called Onipa Nua. I’d never heard of Onipa Nua. And I’m not sure that Jens Lekman has either. But Jens had posted [...]

I stuck pins marking where I’d been on my giant poster of the UK the other day and noticed a Yorkshire-shaped pin-free zone. Then, out of the blue, I got an email from Mandy Williams inviting me up to her new bookstore, Bohemian Books, in Castleford. I, of course, interpreted that as fate. That’s why [...]

Last week I spent the day with a paparazzi chap. The idea was to get a different perspective on London. One you don’t get from Lonely Planet. There weren’t too many A-Listers about. Most were off sunning themselves in the south of France. So we had to make do with harassing a Chemical Brother, ignoring [...]

Just had a great weekend ‘oop north, taking in a game of rugby league, eating a pie in Wigan and wandering along the most impressive parts of Hadrian’s Wall. The only blemish was the trip back. The Virgin Pendalo was an hour late. And my carriage was full of braying upper-class twits returning from a [...]