If you've enjoyed this blog, please consider making a donation using the PayPal button. All money received will be used to make short films, podcasts, documentaries, comedy sketches and more. In return for your donations everything will be available to enjoy for free. Thanks in advance.

Friday, 17 October 2014


It must have been the sea air at Saltburn that gave me one of the best night’s sleep I can remember having. I stayed in Middlesbrough last night with my mum and stepdad, but had my mum to myself for a while giving us a good opportunity to talk. They both left the house this morning giving me a key and the code to the alarm system, and I made the classic error of going back to bed with a cup of tea. Just before twelve o’clock I woke up with a cup of cold tea next to the bed, and rather than having a shower and breakfast, I packed my bag and left the house.

I posted this tweet in the morning, just to draw a line under a little wind up I had attempted to stage yesterday.

When I arrived in Middlesbrough yesterday I posted this…
Throughout the day I tweeted a handful of posts referring to the fact that David Bowie was playing a secret gig in Nottingham last night. Although some people immediately knew I was talking bollocks, I did manage to pull a few people in. it was risky but I had to mention a venue at some point, so I nominated the Rescue Rooms and ‘announced’ that it started at half past ten and that it was forty pounds on the door. It would have been cool if the venue had played along with this wheeze, but apparently they had already started telling anyone who phoned that it wasn’t true, which prompted me a little further…

Feeling mischievous, I managed to concoct a fictional commentary about how I had managed to wangle a lift in a helicopter from Teesside Airport, (I didn’t even realise that Teesside Airport was renamed Durham Tees Valley Airport in 2004 until I tried to Google it, but nobody pulled me up on it) and would be landing at East Midlands Airport at half past nine to catch the Skylink bus into the city. All the time I deliberately didn’t reply to anyone on Twitter or Facebook as I wanted to try and keep things slightly credible. It wasn’t until I received a text message from Adam Clarkson asking if it was true that I texted back to say I was trying to start a rumour, that I decided to up the silly a little bit…

There wasn’t a single report in the newspaper about this potentially huge event, so I doubt that too many people actually bothered to take my ‘news’ seriously. A part of me hopes that at least one person turned up at Rescue Rooms hoping to see David Bowie; if they did then my work is done. This morning I read back through my Twitter feed and replies, and spotted that some people had been slagging me off on Facebook for doing this kind of wind up before. Mandi told me that I have cried wolf, considering that I achieved my Warhol-allocation of worldwide notoriety a few years ago when I convinced the world that Adam West was going to be in The Dark Knight Rises.

On the plus side, if Bowie ever does do a secret gig and I find out, nobody will believe me and I’ll have a private show.

===
My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)
Listen to The Sunday Alternative here

All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.
Labels: , , , , , ,