Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 226

A Load Of Tripe

I am addicted to Very Silly blogs as an antidote to an increasingly serious world. While drifting through the interweb the other day I discovered this. It turns out Bill Tidy isn’t the only man obsessed with tripe (see columns passim). Bill Blunt, journalist, is just such a chap. I mention him after stumbling across […]

How We Sound (And Why It’s Funny)

A good actor can make an ordinary line sound better than it reads. Years ago, I worked with Kenneth Williams, who kindly sat with me for a while to discuss how to get the best out of words. He was meticulous about the crafting of sentences and where to place intonations, but it clearly came […]

You’re Invited to ‘The Burning Man’

One reader points out, ‘You’re running an authors website, how about some book news?’ Fair point well made. Okay, first out of the gate for 2015 is ‘Bryant & May and the Burning Man’, which inconveniently launches on my birthday, March 26th (inconvenient because it turns out there was a secret restaurant booking made some […]

Blog From The Bog: Meeting Galton & Simpson

In this occasional series I revisit past blog entries with further comments. Recently I read Graham Mccann’s ‘Spike & Co’, about the working life of Associated London Scripts, a company that included Eric Sykes, Johnny Speight, Spike Milligan and Galton & Simpson. As I get older I appreciate those last two more and more, especially […]

London: Destruction & Reinvention

I try to be upbeat about the Mayor’s transformation of London into an Oligarch Moneypit, but sometimes it’s hard. After more cyclists were maimed on London roads last week, the half-hearted new cycle lanes that peter out after a few metres, forcing riders into traffic, feel symptomatic of what happens when government planners step in […]

Modern Days: All Work & All Play

Being an occasional diary entry reporting something I’ve done or seen which may result in the inspiration to write. I needed to get out. It had not stopped raining – no, not raining, sifting – in London for a week. Sifting is what London in February does best, a blackening soaking mist of arrosage that […]

Timing Is Everything, Even In Films

When a film fails, it’s amazing how often the distributor or producer says that it couldn’t find its audience because the release suffered from poor timing. Interestingly, this proves not to be the case with Clint Eastwood’s ‘American Sniper’, a smash hit in the US which reaches screens just as Chris Kyle’s murderer goes on […]

Small Objects Of Desire

To escape a week of dim blackening drizzle, I’ve hied myself back to Barcelona, where the upcycling craze continues unabated. The quiet low-key barrio of St Antoni has suddenly transformed into a trendy new hotspot full of artists’ cafes and funky galleries, where I found this little gem made from a tray and – well, […]

London After Dark

My friend Michele alerts me to some evocative photographs of London after (very dark) darkness falls back in the 1930s, when there were fewer health and safety concerns about lighting and neon was not used to outline buildings. The link takes you to […]

The Key To A Great Mystery

When it came to filling in the Crime Writer’s Association form for which sub-genre of crime I wrote in, I had to stop and think for a minute. I suddenly felt like Hamlet and the players discussing types of play; comedy-pastoral-allegorical and so on. What was I? Not procedural, that’s for sure, not cosies either, […]