SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

Every day tales of a winging-it creative

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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: Art

  • ANOTHER LIFE, ANOTHER TALENT GONE FOR NO REASON

    Earlier this week the death of song-writer Tala Riley was announced, following a fatal stabbing at his home in East London. It has been a terrible period recently in the UK for stabbings, a couple which have been seized upon by opportunist politicians to increase division and hatred no matter what the violent consequences might…

  • 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 THE BURDEN OF SORTING MEMORIES BECAME A VIDEO TRIBUTE

    In the last few months I have had the unenviable task of working through a huge pile of old family photographs and items that needed to be either kept or thrown away. Anyone who has ever been in this position knows how the responsibility can weigh heavily. This can be extra difficult when you are…

  • Daffodil Days #WordlessWednesday

    All photos by Paul Ariss. No AI used in production of any images.

  • 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 DAY I DISCOVERED JAMES DEAN HAD BEEN STAYING IN MY SPARE ROOM

    For about 15 years a painting by Alice Dalton Brown hung on the wall in front of me in the small bedroom where I did all my writing. The painting is called Tomorrow Morning. It is a large print, 24” wide and 84” long,  and with a nice frame that was of course slightly larger…

  • Cross If You Dare To #WordlessWednesday

  • THE EMBARRASSED CONFESSIONS OF A HIGHLY IMPRACTICAL MAN

    I often wonder when gripped by one of my regular feelings of severe inadequacy whether there are two types of person in this world -those who can do DIY and those who can’t. I’ll take it further; is it possible that there are those who can do ‘stuff’ ,such as build a garden wall, fix…

  • JANE AUSTEN AND THE THEATRE BY THE LAKE

    Jane Austen was born 250 years ago in Hampshire and is regarded by many as England’s greatest female author. Writing in an age when women were not considered to have credibility in the arts she had to fight a society seeped in misogamy and had written both Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice by…

  • 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…