Local Boys Done Good

In November 2008, five members of poetry collective Aisle16 - Tim Clare, Joe Dunthorne, Chris Hicks, John Osborne and Ross Sutherland set off on a tour of the towns we grew up in. We each did a poetry gig in our home towns. This is the documentary showing what happened. The live show was recorded at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club.

















The Local Boys:
Ross Sutherland was included in The Times’s list of Top Ten Literary Stars of 2008. His debut poetry collection, Things To Do Before You Leave Town, was published in January this year. His one-man poetry/comedy show, The Three Stigmata of Pacman, debuts at the Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington in January 2010.

Tim Clare is a writer, stand-up poet and musician. His autobiographical book about having one last shot at your dreams, We Can’t All Be Astronauts, won Best Biography/Memoir at the East Anglian Book Awards 2009. It is out now from Ebury Press. He has written for the Guardian, the Times and the Independent, and has appeared on BBC2, Radio 1, 2, 4 and 6.

Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea. His debut novel, Submarine, won the Curtis Brown prize and was shortlisted for the Bollinger Wodehouse prize for comic fiction. It's been translated in to six languages.

Chris Hicks is the finest legal mind in poetry, and is far heavier than he looks. Imagine somebody his size, carrying somebody much smaller, and you get the idea. It’s probably his neck, if you can even call it a neck.
‘…white’ The TLS

‘…white’ The Scotsman

‘…white’ Camden New Journal

‘…white’ ThreeWeeks

‘…white’ The List

‘…white’ The Metro

‘…black’ TimeOut

‘…gold’ Scotsgay

John Osborne is the author of Radio Head, Radio 4's Book of the Week. He has had poetry published in the Guardian, the Big Issue and the Spectator. His second book, The Newsagent's Window is released in April 2010.

Compare my Radio

This is a clever new site called Compare my Radio. Type in the name of a band and it tells you which radio statons plays it the most often. Also shows most played songs of every radio station.

ABCtales.com

This week the Big Issue is guest edited by Tony Cook, founder of ABCtales, which is one of my favourite websites. I first joined in 2004, I had just starting taking writing seriously, and the site was perfect for me. Over the years it has been a place to upload pieces of writing, to get feedback, and read the work of other ABCtalers. It's a real community, and I'd recommend it to any new writer. This week's Big Issue features poems by ABCtales regulars, as well as articles by Joe Dunthorne and Tim Clare, who introduced me to the site in the first place.

Tony Cook reads every piece that is submitted, and without him the site wouldn't exist. I'd be gutted if I logged in one day and it wasn't there any more. It's been a really useful way to learn how to edit, rewrite, produce new work.

There is a bi monthly ABCtales online magazine, and I'm the guest editor of the September / October issue, which you can download here.

Radio Quotes

TV is prose. Radio is poetry. Simon Armitage

I like doing radio because it's so intimate. The moment people hear your voice, you're inside their heads, not only that, you're in there laying eggs. Douglas Coupland

In case you're wondering who this funny old bloke is, I'm the one who comes on Radio 1 late at night and plays records made by sulky Belgian art students in basements dying of TB John Peel presenting Top of the Pops for the first time.

We've had a flood of e-mails... actually, no - more like an incontinent trickle John Peel

Richard Herring

When Radio 2 didn't commission a new series of his comedy show That was then, this is now, Richard Herring had a pretty interesting resposne. He realised that if he booked a Leicester Square theatre, charged £10 admission and filled the venue he would have a bigger budget to work with than Radio 2 would ever have offered. It's an innovative approach, and makes sense, Herring has a big following through the daily blog he's kept for the last 6 or 7 years, podcasts that ride high in the itunes chart and continuous touring over the last 20 years. The podcast of As it Occurs to Me will be available for free the next day via itunes and on his blog.

Herring's a regular of the Edinburgh festival, and by his own admission spent a few years never quite hitting the heights, and then in 2008 he found his show was regularly selling out and receiving five star reviews. His popularity over the last couple of years has run parallel with the podcasts he's been doing with Andrew Collins since 2008. Some material for that show, and for 2009's Hitler Moustache was developed during the podcast, which is consistently good quality, and the nature of it means Collings and Herrin don't have to control their language and are able to discuss themes without censorship, creating a pretty unique radio experience.



Richard Herring has done shows on most of the big stations, most memorably for me the Lee and Herring show on Radio 1 in the mid 90s was one of the shows that made me really excited about radio. All of their shows, as well as Fist of Fun, Lionel Nimrod and thousands of hours of Lee and Herring related audio can be downloaded here. It's still great to listen to, and makes you aware of the decline of Radio 1 since the days of Lee and Herring, Armando Iannucci and Mark and Lard.

Details of As it Occurs to me can be found here



Radio Head, up and down the dial of British Radio can be bought here

Weds 26th September, Bethnal Green Working Men's Club

Last week was the penultimate Homework. This month's headliner was Tim Clare, reading from his new book We Can't All be Astronauts. And after special guest appearances over the last year from Kate Nash and Tim Key, this month we had support from the amazing Jon Ronson, and we're all big fans of him, especially the stuff he does on radio. His film The men who stare at goats is out next month, so was really good of him to come down.

and here's a clip from a pretty special interview he did with David Shayler



Next month's is the last of the current season, and is a full show, the 9 1/2 Commandments of Aisle 16, with support from Tim Clare, Joe Dunthorne and me.

Community Radio

There is currently a petition on the Prime Minister's No. 10 web-site calling for adequate funding in support of Community Radio. Community Radio provides plurality of voice in local media and wide-ranging opportunities for volunteering and community involvement. If you think Community Radio is a good idea,
please sign this petition.

Community radio is really important, the more homogenised commercial radio gets, the more import it is that community radio exists. Check out the London arts station Resonance FM if you've never heard what community radio can be, it's incredible. Those involved in Resonance FM include Stewart Lee, Kevin Eldon and Simon Munnery. You can listen online. Another pretty special community station is the ever expanding Future Radio in Norwich. Community radio is not for profit, and offers training and experience to people who wouldn't otherwise get the chance, as well as those interested in gaining radio experience.

Radio Head, Up and down the Dial of British Radio features a chapter on community radio, and is available to buy here.