Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 427

Love Dies

Andrew Lloyd-Webber's staggeringly awful Phantom sequel 'Love Never Dies' is coming off, thus freeing up the theatre for something watchable. We hope. Now we just have to get rid of 'The Mousetrap' and 'Blood Brothers'.

Greenwich Takes A Tumble

In Sketches by Boz (1836), Charles Dickens says 'we were a constant frequenter of Greenwich Fair, for years,' describing it as 'a sort of spring-rash: a three days' fever, which cools the blood for six months afterwards'.

He describes arrivals in my home London borough by every mode of transport – 'Cabs, hackney-coaches, 'shay' carts, coal-waggons, [...]

If You Want To Know Someone, Look At Their Bookshelves

If that's true, I'm so screwed. According to the Independent, the home library will easily survive the onslaught of the ebook because we like to use it to signify our personalities:

'There aren't many purchases which, once used, would be placed on proud display in our living rooms, considered a vital part of our identity [...]

Forgotten Horrors

My friend Anne Billson reminds me of a great forgotten horror film of the seventies, 'Eye Of The Cat', written by Joseph 'Psycho' Stefano, and starring beautiful Jacqueline Bisset and strangely-attractive-in-a-neanderthal-way Michael Sarrazin, an underrated actor whose career path somehow went horribly wrong. They were a real-life couple, and here Michael plays a man trying [...]

My Secret Project Revealed

For several months this year I worked on a secret project I couldn't talk about, but the project has just been unveiled in the US, and I can now tell you a bit about it. I was approached by Paramount to write 'War Of The Worlds' for them as a videogame for the XBox 360 [...]

Lady For Sale

Lady Penelope, the Thunderbirds agent with the whispery voice and vulgar accessories, is being flogged off by Bonhams the auctioneers. She's expected to fetch a few bob, being an icon and all. Tragically, Working Title ballsed up the film version, having had years to get the thing right, but to some of us she will [...]

Gruesome In North London

While I was hanging around on the Holloway Road, waiting to do my panel at Islington Central Library last night with the lovely crime writer Laura Wilson, I spotted this full-sized 30s mannequin in a shop window. Rather odd, as one features heavily in the short story I'd been writing that day! The chopped-off willy [...]

The Soho Devil Takes Flight

Artis Keith Page has just finished the first Bryant & May comic with me, and now we have to choose some publishers. We've had a lot of interest in 'The Casebook of Bryant & May 1: The Soho Devil' and hope to get deals in place in time for the next novel.

I started by [...]

Broadway's Biggest Losers

There was a sad piece tucked away in the US papers recently as South Park's admittedly clever 'The Book Of Mormon' swept the Tonys. It beat a labour of love created by the frequently experimental writing team Kander & Ebb.

Back in 1976, lyricist Fred Ebb and composer John Kander set a new record as the [...]

Unlikely Londoners

After the Edgar Allan Poe bash in London, I checked out more unlikely Londoners. Here's who I came up with, just from memory;

Voltaire in Maiden Lane – he lived here for three years and was chased through a street by a London gang.

Gandhi – law student, Baron's Court

Vincent Van Gogh – Arrived in 1873, Bedford [...]