Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 407

The London I Don't Know So Well

My friend Jennifer uses a running gag about me, lifting a quote from a review that said 'Christopher Fowler and the London he knows so well' – well, I was reading this morning that there's a row about how the gardens set up as a memorial for the thousands of merchant seamen who died in [...]

Music For A Saturday Morning

I've not been a huge fan of Antony & The Johnsons, but hearing 'Fistful of Love' on the soundtrack of 'Les Petits Mouchoirs' made me realise what a great song it is. I don't post mix tapes, but we haven't had a song for a while – stick a kettle on and mellow out to [...]

The Perfect Gentleman

I first met George Baker because I was doing a TV commercial about Santa Claus. I had this silly idea that a top people's Santa would have handmade red suits and would not come down a dirty old chimney but arrive in a Rolls Royce, so I had a very expensive suit handmade for him [...]

Concentrated People

Last year, I was in Brick Lane when a young woman called Jessie Brennan was preparing an art project. In the project she asked volunteers to sit opposite her and we would each draw the other's face under the table, so we couldn't see what we were drawing. A few minutes later we compared our [...]

Grand Guignol Comes Back With A Vengeance

Over the next two months, eight plays – that's two lots of four – are being unleashed on unsuspecting Londoners. At the Soho Theatre there will be another four tales of terror by well-known authors at Terrorfest. This is in its third year – the first was great, the second terrible, so we're hoping this [...]

Re:View – 'Little White Lies'

Actor/ director Guillaume Canet has clearly set out to beat Hollywood at its own game. First he made a French version of the US thriller 'Tell No-One', and now he has effectively rewritten 'The Big Chill' (and John Sayles"The Return of the Secaucus Seven') for Gallic audiences, relocating the idea of a bunch of friends [...]

From Brighton To…Corby?

Whatever else one can say about FantasyCon this year (and there's a immense amount of controversy about the awards themselves – check out the message boards) the one thing we know is that for writers of horror, SF and fantasy, the move to Brighton was a gigantic success that propelled the event out of its [...]

Sugar Rush

This is a Choccywoccydoodah cake that could kill you a/ if you tried to eat it alone, b/ if it fell on you. The extraordinary Brighton cake-makers build towering sculpted beauties that can feature just about anything – I've got my eye on their fantastic Hallowe'en skulls – from a one-person cupcake to a 300-portion [...]

Something Smells In Soho

It's fairly common knowledge that there's a large nose sticking out of the wall at Admiralty Arch purporting to be the hooter belonging to Nelson, and that members of the armed forces always touched it for luck, but now it transpires there are seven more noses hidden on buildings around Soho.

So far I've only found [...]

How London Nightlife Works

I needed a Venn diagram to work out the social circles last night. During the launch of 'Bryant & May and the Memory of Blood' we had Sunday Times astrologer Shelley Von Strunckel talking to Time Out editor Paul Burston about pole dancing, novelist Laura Wilson exchanging gossip with crime expert Barry Forshaw, actors Neil [...]