The story behind the story

In 1991 I was recruited by the Bristol Evening Post, a regional daily newspaper, to be part of a two-man team in its ‘district office’ in   Weston-super-Mare.

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My colleague, and ‘partner in crime’ was Andrew White. While he was, and forever will be, 20 years my senior chronologically, we seemed to share a similar mental age and defiant refusal to grow up.

He was blessed with a natural gift in witty wordsmithery and was a huge influence on me, which meant that when I discovered he had written many amusing verses, I was inspired to have a go myself.

I had a made a few token efforts at poetry prior to this but it wasn’t until I started working with Whitey that I felt empowered to unleash my full poetic prowess.

This book includes some of my first verses, penned when I was about 16-years-old. But if you can endure these earlier efforts, then you’ll hopefully enjoy what follows.

Some of the pieces in this anthology are accompanied by some brief contextual notes, to help the reader fully recognise and   appreciate their literary worth.

Part Two of this book – ‘Personals’ – were written specifically to mark birthdays or weddings, and feature many ‘in jokes’. However, I’ve included some of them here because I remain quite proud of their poetic and humorous (I use the term advisedly) content. Besides, I reasoned that since I am self-publishing this anthology, then I can afford myself a little ‘self-indulgence’, if you will.

In addition to being inspired by my workmate, Whitey, I should also acknowledge the American comedian Steve Martin. In his film, The Man With Two Brains, his character, Dr Hfuhruhurr, and Dolores (played by Kathleen Turner) discuss John Lillison, supposedly England’s greatest one-armed poet, whose notable works include In Dillman’s Grove and Pointy Birds, which Dr Hfuhruhurr recites. Martin revisits Pointy Birds in his later film LA Story. I was amused by the style of this verse and unashamedly applied it to many of my own shorter pieces.

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I have not been as prolific with my poetry as I would like to have been because, unlike Whitey, or other such amusing scribes as Pam Ayres and Brian Bilston, the comic writing doesn’t flow naturally from me, it is something I have to work at. But having had some   fairly positive feedback from those I’ve shared some of works with, and having even raised a few smiles,

I’ve been encouraged and  inclined to commit them to print.

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Poetry and song lyrics are similar forms of prose, and with one of my first-ever albums being one of comedy parodies by the great   British band The Barron Knights, I also started writing comical songs, some wholly original and some – in the style of the Knights –       parodies of well-known numbers.

Since I hadn’t written enough poetry to fill a sufficient number of pages in this anthology – despite me waiting decades to publish - I decided to throw in some of my silly songs, too, in Part Three.

That concludes the mitigation for the defence, your honour.