AWOPBOPALOOBOP AWOPBAMBOOM

Awopbopaloobop awopbamboom. It should be written in the wildest most ridiculous font imaginable. One much more bonkers than any I have access to here. In that phrase is encapsulated the whole joyous movement from polite cocktail pop to the raucous freedom of rock and roll. The phrase - exciting enough even when just written down - expresses all the vigour, all the abandon and all the the sex of a whole new way of being. It means spare us your lectures daddio - the kids are moving in. Taking over. It's as subversive as Fight The Power, Relax and Anarchy In The Uk. As blatantly sexual as Je'Taime and with a better tune than any of them.

Awapbopaloobop awapbamboom - I can't stop typing it -These are the first words, the first noises of Little Richard's fantastic album Rockin with Little Richard. The opening lines of the war cry which is Tutti Frutti. With this track began the whole process of liberating an entire generation from the careful restraints of their parents. After Tutti Frutti (Covered by others of course, including Elvis in a version that's good but colourless when compared to the original) the kids had a whole new way of scaring their parents shitless.

Little Richard was vivid, sexually ambiguous and black. He also wasn't a kid. He was 29 when Tutti Frutti was released. He'd been around the juke joint block a few times and learned the ways of the carny. How to whip up a crowd.

Tutti Frutti is more than just a wild refrain. Awopbopaloop alopbamboom is the sound of a man responding to a sexual emergency. A man coming (!) to provide urgent relief to a nation just waking up to its hormones. In this song Little Richard seems to be in the grip of an unstoppable musical Tourettes. His whoops and whistles and yelps are all the sound of a man compelled to try an escape his band in just the same way that the new post-war generation is trying to get out from under the stifling feet of the squares.

Little Richard is way, way out there a standard bearer for the generation that didn't fight in any wars, the first generation of American youth with pockets full of spending loot and access to cars, clothes and records. A generation that had TV. That could take a date to the movies and make-out in the back seat of a ragged Ford.

This was a generation that had no need of the gentle courtship notions of Mom and Pops. And no patience with their hypocrisies either.

And that impatience is the core of this album. Tutti Frutti is an impatient song, a song propelled by a pounding secular, sexual evangelism. Awopbopaloopbop alopbamboom is like a pentecostal speaking in tongues, only at a teenage orgy after the drive-in rather than in the wooden shack of a rural church. It has the same kind of ecstatic revelation contained within it. No wonder adults hated and feared Little Richard Penniman. No wonder the teenagers loved him. No wonder they literally ripped up the cinemas during showings of his first film The Girl Can't Help It (Both the title track and Otis Blackwell's Rip It Up are contained here too).

I got Rockin with Little Richard out of Hebden Library four weeks ago and I've just been renewing it ever since. It's been a constant companion on the car stereo. Tutti Frutti is followed by Long Tall Sally, Lucille, Good Golly Miss Molly, Slippin and Slidin and other early rock and roll classics that take you over and out of yourself like an orgiastic mugging. The sexy, saxy, thump and jump of the tight little band just about keep up with their manic, sexually hyper active vocalist.

Little Richard's songs are all about celebrating the moment and they - along with the more considered and witty storytelling of Chuck Berry - did more than anything to create the iconography of rock and roll. Little Richard, Berry, the young Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis these are the guys who created the mythology of their own genre, but no-one did it with more outrageous panache than Little Richard.

How surprising it is then - upsetting even - to find that Rocking with Little Richard is catogorised by Calderdale libraries as Easy Listening. This music, the sound of authentic sexual revolution, was partly responsible for tearing down the bedroom walls between the white kids and the black kids. The parents, rightly feared that this music with its explicit calls to 'ball', would lead to miscegenation in the dancehalls. Easy Listening? White middle America didn't think so. And neither do I.

Within a year of the 1956 release of this album, Little Richard had become the Reverend Richard Penniman and put his voice and personality at the service of the Lord. For a few years after that Little Richard only made gospel records before rock and roll proved more powerful even than the voice of God and dragged him back to the dark side.

Sometimes Tutti Frutti comes on the stereo when I'm whacking the boxing bag at the gym. And I always hit a little harder for it's two minutes and 11 seconds. Actually I smack that goddamn bag a lot harder...

Essex Boy

IT would, I guess, be easy to hate Luke Wright. In fact I once heard someone describe him as having 'the most punchable face at the Edinburgh Fringe.' And when you think just how fierce the competition is for that particular title... it's a bold claim.

Thing is he's young, he's tall, he's good-looking, he's funny. He has his own slot on Radio Four's Saturday Live. He packs theatres and arts centres up and and down the land. And he gets to programme Latitude. And he's generous and energetic and conscientious and - let's not shy away from the N-word - he's Nice. Really properly, trust him with your wife, your sister and your wallet nice. And now he has a lovely family too... 

He's so great that he's even had an unauthorised tribute act. He was plagiarised so mercilessly and so frequently by some shameless cunt, that Luke had people accuse him of plagiarising the plagiarist. people accused Luke of pretending to be the real Luke... (and I've seen the Youtube clips of the Pretend Luke performing - he clearly has no idea what the work he's passing off as his own even means. But that's how good Luke's stuff is - it can withstand a mangling by an illiterate thieving psycho and still sound amazing...)

So of course the Right Luke arouses a lot of negative emotions. He could hardly fail to. Anyway, punchable face or not - I find him inspiring. He's always writing, always pushing himself, never settling for the routines and tropes his audiences expect. And now he's had a proper book published. He's intent on conquering page as well as stage. And I applaud him. As long as he doesn't start writing novels. That would make me nervous...

Luke's first book is Mondeo Man (Penned In The Margins) and features the political satire and the wit we expect, but it also has its moments of pathos and heartbreak too. Anyone who unthinkingly disparages Essex should read it. And shameless plagiarising cunts should have someone read it to them and explain the big words.

He's a great bloke. It's a great book. Read it. 

And in the meantime read this - I asked Luke some questions and he answered them with wit and honesty and verve. Not to mention generalised all round niceness. The bastard.

Hello Luke, give us your autobiography in exactly 50 words (not 49, not 51...)

 I'm London born and Essex bred. I've been hawking my poetic wares around arts centres, theatres, pubs, school halls, comedy clubs, music festivals and car parks since 1999. I founded Aisle16. I've made six solo stage shows and one proper book. I also programme the wonderful poetry tent at Latitude. 

Which writers and performers do you admire?

 Larkin, Betjeman, John Cooper Clarke, Martin Newell, Tim Turnbull, Evelyn Waugh, PG Wodehouse. 

As a performer I have been influenced by comedians such as Russel Brand, Stewart Lee and Eddie Izzard.

Should all poets be able to perform their work?

Not literally perform - a poet should be allowed to toil in peace and solitude. But poems are performative, even if they stay on the page they are little performances, they should dazzle, no matter how subtly. 

In what ways are you an Essex Man?

As Martin Newell said - "Man of Essex, thoroughbred / lead in pencil, gear in shed / always kept his ferrets fed / found him dead in the barmaid's bed / good ole boy they quietly said / found him dead in the barmaid's bed." 

That's the eulogy I want. 

One of the things I admire about your work is how you write a whole new show every year... will you ever do a Greatest Hits tour?

I make sure I write a new hour every year. But these days when I tour I'm starting to do 90 mins a night so a few old ones ( and even brand new ones) get an airing too. I much prefer doing a set than a show, keeping looser and reacting to an audience. That said I will always keep writing new stuff. It's what I love most. 

This is your first 'real' book? What on earth took you so long?

I've been biding my time. I wanted it to be really good. Most of the poems have been written in the last three years. I don't think I was up to it before then. 

In what ways as fatherhood changed your writing?

I'm generally more emotive and empathetic. It's made me grow up, that's reflected in my writing. I also value my time more which had meant I write more. 

What's next?

New show - Essex Lion - all new stuff, the loose theme is "seeing what we wanted to see." My parents have moved in the last year, cutting my links with Essex so I'm focusing on Essex a bit too. 

Then more of the same - touring, radio, and putting together a new book. 

What would the 30 year old Luke tell the 18 year old Luke?

The stuff you hate is good, the stuff you like is shit. Read more books, do more writing. Make the most of the pills, it'll stop being fun soon. 

Tell me something I don't know?

I'm having a Pot Noodle for my lunch, as a treat. 

The Golden Age

'AGE is an issue of mind over matter. if you don't mind, it doesn't matter.' Mark Twain said that and he knew a thing or two.

So, I'm talking to this reporter and her killer question? It's this: How old are you? Apparently it's what the readers like to know.

Is it? Really? 

It's about the least important thing about anyone isn't it? And in the context of my books the reporter is probably really wondering how I - a man of middle years - can hope to write convincingly about a nineteen year old boy.

And the answer is because I stayed nnnnnnnineteen longer than anyone I know. Far longer than the solitary year that most people get. Up to about the age of 12/13 I progressed through the days much like everyone else. But I got stuck in early adolescence for several years until suddenly a girl happened and I rejoined my peers at 19. And I stayed 19 through college, through my many years of answering the phone and photo-copying and all the various other deadening facets of assistanting. I stayed 19 through the birth of my first child, through my journalism training, through my first teaching gigs and my first book. I was 19 pretty much up until I'd finished writing Life! Death! Prizes! And by that time I was into the period you humans call your forties. 

Finishing that book seemed to push me on  a little, and I was able to move forward to my current age. Which is 29.

Yes, I'm 29 and I think I may very well stay here for quite a while. I like it here. It seems okay. I can run, jump, skip. I can take risks. I can still leap into things - but I just might look at how far the drop is first. 

See - as someone must have said - the tragedy of getting old is not that we age, it's that we stay so young. Many - most - older people are trapped in a body becoming unfamiliar to them. A body that is becoming the wrong body. Fuck  Wallace and his pitiful Wrong Trousers, most of us have the Wrong Legs, the Wrong Head and the Wrong Bits are getting Wronger. 

We had to do Thomas Hardy at A level and I remember these lines resonated with me 'I look into my glass/And view my wasting skin/And say 'would God it had come to pass/My heart had shrunk as thin...'

Something like that anyway (I'm not being so middle-aged as to check). Now my old English teacher, the inspirational Mr Jones, is not around to ask - but I think Tom Hardy is saying that we don't get old. Our skin gets lined and muscles begin to sag, we begin to ache in the places where we used to play - but still we are surprised when we catch ourselves in the mirror. Shocked even. 'Who is that old fucker staring at me?' we wonder. 'That strange looking geezer. The bloke who, now I come to look a little closer, looks scarily like my dad. What does he want with me?'

But one of the great things about writing is that you can be whoever you want to be. You can still fall in love with any guitar, any bass drum, any girl. The space-time continuum has all the meaning it was meant to have, ie no meaning at all. It is a piece of fiction itself. A scary fairy story to frighten us into buying pensions and insurance. A scam.

Don't ask me how old I am. Because the honest answer is I don't know. Just at the minute 29 seems to suit me fine, and I think I'll rest up here for a while. And in my head the guys at the top of this blog page are still guys I know, not ghosts. I could still go hang out with them at any time.

Adrian Barnes

THE world has had a rough night. No one has slept. From China to Chelsea, India to Indiana, Austria to Australia, from sea to restless, insomniac sea - the whole world has been laying awake counting the hours till morning. And that's just day one of a global phenomenon that moves very quickly from a 'well, that was weird.' to full-blown psychosis. Imagine it: a sleepless world, a world without rest. That's going to be a world all fucked up big style in short order. And, actually, you don't have to imagine it, because Canadian writer Adrian Barnes already has in his terrific debut novel Nod.

This is a book with explosive narrative propulsion. Nod is not for the squeamish - not being able to sleep turns the mildest people into monsters (ask any parent of tiny sleepless babies)-  but it is also a book with huge heart as well as linguistic daring. The hero, Paul, is a one of the few Sleepers in this new world (a fact he very quickly learns to keep quiet) and is also a professional lover of words and everything from the title on resonates at a variety of levels (Nod - for instance, is the land where Cain fled after he was expelled for killing his brother). Of course Nod is a metaphor for the way the frenzied activity of mankind is mostly pointless, and often dangerous - but it's also a damn fine terrifying helter-skelter of a modern horror story. The sort of thing John Wyndham might appreciate, or HG Wells. And Adrian is coming over from British Columbia to promote Nod (a book I fully expect to cause stonking hard-ons in Hollywood film studios - it has 'potential blockbuster movie' written all over it) - and I asked him a few questions... And he is, I think you'll agree, a thoughtful, intelligent bloke. Now go and buy his book.

Can we have your autobiography in EXACTLY 50 words, please? (not 49, not 51...)

First poem, in grade one: "A mother's a mother/Skinny or fat/She shouts loud and long/All through the day/But I like her that way". Got a reaction and thought 'hmm'. From there it was Dr. Seuss then comic books then sci fi then punk rock then Dante then Dickens then NOD.

Where did the story for NOD come from? (are you an insomniac for example?)

Yes, I'm something of an amateur insomniac, which has given me time to reflect and consider how insomnia may well be the defining metaphor of our era and not just my own life. 

In what senses is Nod a Canadian book do you think?

I think Nod contains a trust in nature that's very Canadian. The problems in the book are all 'First World' as the kids say, and fairly universal, but the solutions are all out there waiting in the woods. Canadians love nature and even rely on it as a corrective to civilization. That confidence in nature stops Nod from going completely over the edge in terms of despair. I have a thousand kilometres of unbroken forest right behind my house. It's got my back.  

Nod possesses huge narrative propulsion, and it's also graphically violent at times. Did you surprise yourself in writing these scenes?

No. I pretty much just inhabit what I write and don't think about it too much, if that makes sense. I didn't realize Nod was so intense until others read the ms and said so. Odd because I've never written violently before and have no plans to do so again...but it is about an apocalypse, so no one can say it's gratuitous!

The hero of Nod loves words - indeed, he is a professional explorer of forgotten and ancient words. How far do you share his fascination?

On an amateur level. I teach English and will often stop a class for fifteen minutes and talk about the etymology of 'okay' or 'cool'. In the same way that metaphor adds depth to words, so too--I think--does knowing their histories.

What's the next project?

I've recently begun working on a comic novel titled "Dickensian" which is about a sort of post-modern uber-hipster who finds his life slowly transformed into a Dickensian orgy of the emotions.  

Who - in life or writing - do you most admire and why?

I admire people with the guts to tell the truth and not gussy life up too much. Most of my heroes were musicians when I was younger: John Lennon, Morrissey, Bob Dylan, Joe Strummer, even Paul Weller. Those who dug right through the bullshit around fame, which is a form of mental illness for most famous people--and for society as a whole. In a literary sense that translates into George Orwell, GB Shaw, Noam Chomsky, and Socrates. In a personal sense, my father's mother and my mother's father as well as both my parents, who've always striven to be honest people.

Anyone you despise? (and why?)

No one. I can't despise because I'm too despicable to be qualified. Ask Jesus or Buddha, maybe!

World getting better or worse?

Both. On the one hand, I judge society by how it treats the marginalized--and on that front we're way ahead of the Middle Ages: gay people can now often live freely and in some places openly; people with mental and physical challenges are increasingly welcomed into society; women are now, at least in our part of the world, mostly masters of their own fates. That's progress. On the other hand, our governments and corporations are nightmares and we're headed for a big fall unless--and I can't in good conscience put it another way--there's a revolution.

Tell me something I don't know...

Two things. 1. For every year a coke dealer gets sentenced to in the US a crack dealer gets 100 years. Yes, 100. 2. Barack Obama defines as 'enemy combatant' anyone within drone strike range of the 'terrorists' he unilaterally sentences to death each morning over coffee. That includes many, many women and children.

Nod is published by Bluemoose tomorrow (october 31)

Taxi for Emmerdale

I NEARLY laid down my life for Emmerdale. It's unlikely, absurd even - and entirely true. just a few weeks into my - very short - stint as a storyliner for the show (which is celebrating it's ruby anniversary with a live show even as I type!). I was mugged on my way to Leeds station. Two lads after my laptop, on which were copies of all the new storylines. If I lost them to these hooded weasels we would have to do them all again and the prospect was a horrific one. Clearly I wasn't going to go through all that again, so I shouted, I roared, I kicked out and most of all I kept a stubborn grip on the strap of my lap top bag.

I'm no hero. I'm not tough. But a middle-aged man needs very little excuse to go nuclear these days. Over 40, it needs almost nothing to send us off into a scary, volcanic murderous rage. Losing your glasses can do it, a dodgy mobile signal can do it, never mind a kid laying his ferrety fingers on your Lenovo. And in any case I think these boys were probably junkies and, as we well know, heroin is not a performing enhancing drug. Not for street fighting anyway - if you are recording A Kind of Blue or Exile On Main Street, it seem to work rather better.

So, the fight was a short one. And they ran off to ring their probation officers or whatever, to complain that the nasty shouty man wouldn't do the decent thing. And left me to have palpitations about how it could have turned out. A stanley knife in the guts, the family turning off the life support with me locked in by own body, and unable to tell them that I was still alive... and then the grave-stone. Here lies the grave of Stephen May... Died So The Sugdens and The Dingles might live.

Except that you don't know who the Sugdens and the Dingles are do you? Or, if you do, it's a distant folk memory like the way people who have no conscious knowledge of George Formby still somehow know the words to 'Leaning On a Lamp Post' or 'When I'm Cleaning Windows'.

During my time on Emmerdale I rarely met actual fans of the show (and I include the cast and crew here). In fact I rarely met anyone who admitted to watching it. I used to hear 'My mum watches it.' or, most hurtfully of all, I once got 'My Nan used to watch it.'

Which, to be fair, was more than I did. I can admit it now. But don't tell anyone.  The whole time I worked on Emmerdale I didn't watch a single episode. Not all the way through. I couldn't actually bear to. So it wasn't much wonder that my storylines weren't much cop. Amusing things for the old people to do with chutney, that was what I found myself tasked with. This is the TV soap equivalent of being made to clean the toilets with a toothbrush. Punishment detail.

But there was one storyline I - sort of - came up with. A big one. Now, it's possible that other people will claim this didn't happen. That I am suffering from false memory syndrome. That they came up with this story. They have their truth, and this is mine (to coin a phrase) and bear in mind the adage about success having many fathers while failure is an orphan. And it's true that in soap storyline writing you are often working in groups so the contribution of one individual is hard to measure. Except in this case. Because in the case of the Paddy\Chas story the authorship is - to my mind anyway - completely clear. It came from a Hebden Bridge taxi driver.

Now because you don't know who the fuck Paddy and Chas are (you're now singing When I'm cleaning windows and playing air ukulele) I'll tell you. Paddy Kirk (brilliantly played by Dominic Brunt. It is a strange fact that some of the actors on Emmerdale are amazing. Dom, Mark Charnock -the guy who plays Marlon and - especially - the guy who played Eli Dingle, whose name I forget.  And Jane Cox who plays Ma Dingle. All superb actors.) Paddy Kirk is the village vet. An amiable, good-hearted, permanently flustered oaf. Unlucky in love and a bit of a buffoon. Chas is the village vamp. A tart with a heart (Chas is short for Chastity. Ho and, indeed, ho.) Chas has chequered sexual history. The streets of Emmerdale are littered with the hearts she's broken... Nevertheless she walks in hope that one day her dark prince will come along. Someone who can tame her...

Anyway, one night on my way home from a hard day on chutney duty, I took a cab. I mentioned what I did and the taxi driver went into paroxysms of joy. She WAS a fan. She LOVED the show. In fact she loved it so much she knew what should happen... And what should happen was that Paddy - amiable idiot that he is should get entangled with Chas.

'Really?' I said

'Yes, really.' She said. And went on.  She told how Chas, fragile after her the wreckage of her latest doomed romance, will - one desperately lonely night - bestow on her favours on Paddy. And the scales will fall from her eyes and she'll see the honest virtues of Paddy are far better than the dubious charms of the self-absorbed shits she's been falling for up to now... Plain, good-hearted, sturdy yeoman Paddy he's the man. Paddy - sure his heart will be broken if he falls for Chas - resists. But she is determined. She woos and wins him and finally convinces Paddy that she's serious. That she loves him Goddamit. That the self-absorbed shits are a thing of the past, that it's only good-hearted vets for her from now on. Paddy has never been so happy. Except that... Chas can't help herself and, having reeled Paddy in, finds she still has a thing for Carl - the bad boy haulage company owner and her former partner. She has a for old times sake fling with Carl. And breaks Paddy's heart.

And which point she realises that it really IS Paddy she loves and has to work to win him back a second time and of course he's doubly watchful, doubly resistant... It's like one of those 19th century French novels. Like something out of Zola or Flaubert. And genius... And she succeeds 'And then they're an item for a long time' concludes the tax driver.

So the next morning I'm in to those offices on the Kirkstall Road and I'm saying 'You know what should happen? Paddy and.... Chas should happen.'

And they're all scoffing  'Really? Paddy and Chas... '

And I'm all 'Yes really...' And I begin to explain, just as the Hebden taxi driver explained it all to me. I was the girl with the golden straw, she was Rumpelstiltskin - and she didn't even want my first born daughter in return.

And that my friends is the story of how Paddy and Chas came to be. Other people will claim the credit, other people will tell you that it wasn't like that... but we - you and I - we know the truth...

Like we all know the rot set in when they stopped calling it Emmerdale Farm...

The First episode of Emmerdale Farm was broadcast Oct 16 1972. The same year Ziggy Stardust came out... 


 .

Some sympathy please for Jeremy Forrest

So Jeremy Forrest is guilty of child abduction. He's got five and a half years. Juries are generally sensible and I haven't been following the court reports that closely - but here's something I wrote about it when the story first broke back in October...

A TEACHER I know asked her Year Ten class 'So what do you think of this Jeremy Forrest thing? You know the maths teacher guy who ran off to France with a student?' The response was instant and predictable.

'He's a paedo, miss!'

'He should be castrated, miss!'

And then she asked them if any of them had ever had crushes on teachers. After a pause, about eight raised their hands. My friend the teacher twitched an eye-brow. There was laughter, and another eight hands went up. Sixteen out of a class of 25 fifteen year olds. Makes you think.

And of course, this Jeremy Forrest, this man, this maths teacher, has stepped over a line. He has - whether consciously or not - abused the power relationship between student and faculty.More specifically, he has, in the words of another friend of mine, 'been a complete twit.'

But desire, love, makes twits of us all. Makes complete fucking arses of us all. Who hasn't made a dick of themselves because of desire? Who doesn't, even now, suddenly feel a hot rush of shame at the thought of something we did or said to the wrong person because love - or what we thought was love - had seized the driving wheel of our psyche.

Here's a sum - the average maths teacher teaches twenty classes a week. Most groups he will see three or four times in that week, so he's working with 100 different kids each year. In a ten year teaching career that is a thousand different pupils. In that time it would be staggering if a young, handsome, personable, clever teacher didn't collect a fair few admirers. Some of them passionate, some of them wily, several of them very beautiful and very smart themselves. No surprise that maybe with some of them he makes a real live adult connection. No surprise that feelings grow, especially if he's hired by the parents to give extra maths tuition. Especially if the school apparently turns a blind eye when he sits holding hands with the girl on the way back from a school trip to the States.

And of course, he shouldn't act on these feelings. Of course he should be responsible. And if he can't control himself,  he should be sacked, no question. But should he be in jail? Should he be branded a paedo? Should he be on the sex offenders register for life?

Interesting that he ran away to France, where the age of consent is fifteen. Where, in fact, he has committed no crime and where he and the student could, if they chose, live together openly and have children and lead an entirely respectable life. In five years time Monsieur and Madame Forrest could be on the PTA committee of their own kids' ecole.

I guess that won't happen though. I guess that he'll be destroyed and the relationship will fall apart pretty quickly - it almost certainly would have done anyway, but what relationship could withstand the pressure this one is getting now?

And I'm willing to bet that in ten years time Jeremy Forrest will still be avoiding the eyes of strangers, fearful that he'll be attacked as a nonce, while in another part of the world, over a few bottles of chilled Pinot Grigio, the girl might well  be telling this amazing story of how she once  ran off with her maths teacher. And after she's told it, most of her audience will chime in with stories of how they themselves once kissed their teacher, or almost did, or wanted to.

And, just in case, you were wondering, I was a teacher for ten years. And, no, nothing like this happened to me. Not really. But then I was already 30 when I became a teacher. And teenagers - with their rubbish music and their dodgy fashions and unformed opinions never really did it for me - but it is an occupational hazard and silly not to acknowledge that every now and again in a long career you might meet a sixth former for whom - if you weren't their teacher - you might have made an idiot of yourself over.

Women as well as men by the way. Just this week I had a conversation with another ex-colleague who told of a kid who had a crush on her, who was, in the end, expelled for various idiocies. 'And thank God he was.' she said. 'Because everyone in the staff room knew he had a  crush on me - and they all joked about it - but what they didn't know, was that I had one on him. He was 14.'

And my former colleague is the best teacher I've ever met.

Anyway, if you want to read more you should look at my novel TAG -- because one of the slightly annoying things about this whole Jeremy Forrest thing is that the two of them seem to have lifted chunks of my book to inform their escape plan...

Bastards.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tag-Stephen-May/dp/1905614373/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349153096&sr=8-1

Why I will never self-publish

A time-slip story. It is 1962 and in a studios in London a band are auditioning for Decca records. It is The Beatles, a combo popular in Liverpool and in Hamburg but unknown nearly everywhere else (though bizarrely, they have just done a one off gig in Stroud). This audition does not go well. The band are disconsolate until somebody (probably Paul - it would be Paul) says 'Never mind, guys. Let's put it out ourselves.'

And so they do. Because this is my story and not a true story, my version of the 1962 Beatles are able to convene around a lap-top in Paul's bedroom and record their first album. No George Martin producing and with Pete Best on drums. It's a more or less faithful rendition of their live set, only not as good because they don't yet know much about capturing sound in the studio. Also Pete Best is very, ah, limited as a drummer so the time-keeping is erratic.

But the album comes out, their friends and family all love it. Fans buy it at gigs and it sits there in this strange 1960s internet I've just invented, available to everyone to download at will. Which is a shame, because all four members of the Beatles will have cause to regret rushing out their first album. A producer called George Martin hears it and decides he'll pass on what sounds to him like just another rough and ready beat group. Eventually Paul gets a day job in PR, George goes back to the electricians apprenticeship. Pete gets that civil service post working in a Liverpool job centre, where he regularly sees John. Because John is actually unemployable and so is always in the Job Centre.

And now back in the real world... the thing is, the Beatles needed rejection in order to get good. It was as vital to their development as the hours spent playing to drunken sailors as the warm up acts for the strippers in Hamburg. And even when they were ready for greatness they needed the special midwifery of a producer, plus the distribution of EMI, the PR guy, Brian Epstein.They needed a team of people that loved them, would fight for them and would also challenge them. They needed talent yes, but they also needed resilience.

Knock-backs are part of the process. Who was it said 'if you don't get rejections, it just means you're not trying hard enough'. Someone smart anyway.

We, of course are unluckier than the Beatles. We are unlucky because we live in a place where it is possible to have a rejection free artistic life. Because it's emphatically not a good thing. Musicians, writers, we can - if the knockbacks get too bruising - just stick our stuff out there. We can skip the whole tedious business of rewriting, reworking, redrafting, reshaping, arguing about plot decisions and character. We don't need agents or editors. we don't even need copy-editors - who wants to argue about commas, when they could be having fun, fun, fun. We can do it all ourselves and put it up on the internet and sell our work for 10p. Because anyway what is the point of trying to get published the old-fashioned way, everyone knows the traditional publishers only want nubile women or their mates from Oxbridge don't they?

Well, no. The rest of us, can with talent, luck and perseverance can still get proper deals. And I say that as a balding, greying middle-aged man living in the North who only ever went to Cambridge to see my dad, who was a porter in one of the colleges there.

Publishers often get it wrong. Maybe they even usually get it wrong, but at least you know the gateway was tough to get through. For a book to arrive in a bookshop it has been pretty thoroughly road-tested and interrogated. As a reader I find that comforting, even if it's annoying as a writer.

And if your book is too edgy for the mainstream? Well, there are dozens of eager indies putting out good stuff. And making a success of it. Sandstone, And Other Stories, Cargo, Bluemoose, Peepal Tree, Tindal Street, Cinnamon... and those just the ones I've thought of off the top of my head this second. And they accept unagented manuscripts too.

And the other thing that puts me off self-publishing? It's the zealots who advocate it. They are so angry. It's like publishing is a girl who inexplicably rejects their advances while blatantly flirting with some less worthy bloke from down the road. She likes someone else. Get over it. Maybe she'll see your worth another day after the pointless affair with the lesser writer burns itself out.

And it's not like the self publishing ebook authors are at the vanguard of some youthful revolution, because you know who really values the printed artefact? Young people that's who. In a world where anything can be 'published' on the net, then it has no real value. But if someone has invested time and money in making a real Thing, and then that Thing is transported from printers, to warehouse, to shop. Where people have browsed and chosen your Thing over all the other shiny Things they could buy. Well, that is really worth something...

So if you're considering self-publishing on the internet or anywhere else I would say wait. Ask yourself if you are really a skilled enough editor, copy-editor, publicist, designer and marketeer to do it all yourself. And even if the answer to those questions is yes. Then still wait, because maybe you are The Beatles in early 1962. Maybe you are just not quite ready. You need to get rid of the inner Pete Best that is holding you back. And you need to find your George Martin. Of course you can BUY the services of editors, designers, marketeers etc but actually that's my other big beef with the self-publishing industry...

Self-publishing, indie publishing whatever you call it, is one of those things that sounds democratic but is actually anything but. Is the opposite of that. It sounds like it is one of those games anyone can play but actually the indie authors who are most visible are generally the ones with the deepest pockets. If you're skint how will you afford all the help you need to publish properly? If indie publishing were ever to become the norm (and it won't) then how will the marginalised voices ever find a way to be heard?