SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

Every day tales of a winging-it creative

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about

I’ve written bits and pieces on BBC Radio 2, 4 and 5 comedy shows, worked in the script team for two series of Channel 4’s comedy-drama ‘Shameless’ and am currently working with The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool as part of their script development programme. I am also a songwriter with songs on all major platforms.

Category: Ambition

  • WHEN CHANGE FEELS SCARY AND SCARY FEELS GOOD

    Forgive me WordPress, readers and bloggers, it is two months since I last posted. I have no excuses, but I do have reasons. First off, I didn’t have anything to post about, but I knew you’d muddle along without me. Given the sporadic nature of my posts, I wouldn’t think you’d probably even notice. But…

  • HOW NOT TO FEEL OLD IN A MUSIC WORLD DICTATED BY THE YOUNG

    Yesterday at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in Hope Street, Liverpool, between the city’s two iconic Anglican and Catholic cathedrals, I attended the Music Career Industry Festival. The festival, being organised and run by Sentric Music, a music publisher founded and based in Liverpool but also with an office in London, is mainly for people planning…

  • THE SAD BUT IMMORTAL LEGACY OF THE BRONTE’S HOMETOWN

    As this weird period of my year continues in my sisters spare room, waiting as the legal palaver grinds on and on for my new property 130 miles away, I try and find new ways daily to fill the hours. As I have been here in Cumbria since June 27th (94 days if we’re counting)…

  • TRYING HARD TO RECOGNISE THE AMERICA OF MY DREAMS

    My grandfather Gordon Ariss from Birmingham UK, boarded the ship HMT Rohna on the 25th November 1943, along with 1,981 American soldiers. The next day the ship was attacked by a wave of German aircraft. They appeared to have weathered the attack until they were hit by a recently devised radio controlled bomb. It proved…

  • HOW SONGS STUMBLE SLOWLY AND NERVOUSLY INTO THE WORLD

    Any creative process can be a question of trial and error, and that includes blogs. Not many of us write a piece in one flow, make a little tweak before considering it good enough to go and excitedly click ‘publish’. Well some may, but they have clearly made a pact with the devil. Or they…

  • Hurdles To Glory #WordlessWednesday #Photography

  • HOW THE HOLY GRAIL GOT SQUEEZED OUT BY THE MOP-HEAD

    I recently came across a blog I published on March 5th, 2014. It was my first blog and one of just three I published under the umbrella of ‘The Loneliness of The Long Distance Scriptwriter’. Within days of publishing the blog I began working for a charity for the next decade and gave up script-writing…

  • WHO NEEDS CREDIBILITY AND COOL WHEN YOU HAVE PASSION?

    I have just finished reading the enlightening and entertaining autobiography ‘Lightening Seeds, Football and Cosmic Post-Punk’ by Ian Broadie, the songwriter, lead singer, producer and beating heart behind Liverpool based band The Lightening Seeds. The Lightening Seeds had several excellent and memorable hits, mainly in the 1990’s, such as ‘Life of Riley’ and ‘Pure’. Broadies…

  • THE SONGWRITING SHARKS WAITING TO EAT ME ALIVE

    Down in the overcrowded shallow water of songwriting, which is where I exist, no-one really takes any notice. On any given day, between 60,000 and 100,000 songs get uploaded onto Spotify alone. That’s a lot of songs, and your own, no matter how much you believe in it, can easily be swamped and forgotten almost…

  • JOURNEYS WITH OLD MEN AND YOUNG HEARTS

    In his early 60’s my father, who had lived most of his adult life working as a lorry driver driving the length and breadth of Great Britain, discovered the blues. The blues of the deep south, people like Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker (below), BB King and Muddy Waters. Having spent most of his life…