2025

 2025

Yeah, so what happened this year? 

Well, I got fatter. That happened. Same as last year. Next year, I'll attempt to lose weight. I'll also make renewed attempts to learn the guitar. It was going well, but then I broke a string and did nothing for six months. My brother Barry, came all the way from England to re-string it for me, which he did in about a minute. He then taught me how to play a G chord, wrote out the guitar tab for "Spiritual" by Spain and was on his way, like ginger guitar Santa. 

In 2026, I shall be a slender guitar slinger. I'll be Earl Slick. I've been threatening to dye my hair blue for years. 2026 might be the year I go full fool. Not Blake Carrington/Mrs Slocombe blue. Stupid blue.

  This year I finished another novel. I think it's very good. It's called How Ghosts Affect Relationships. It won't be out till 2027. 

I wrote it. In case that isn't clear. It's my next novel. I will probably re-edit it at some point, but it's very close to completion. As much as anything is. Like I say, I think it's very good. And I have taste. 

I published another memoir, Spine, in June. It's the story of my bad back. I mean, there's more to it than that. But, substantially, its about lumber with my lumbar. And that time some white-coated professionals laughed at my shattered knee while I sat in an examination room in my pants, with a sobbing teenage girl and her unhappy-about-my-proximity-to-her-daughter mother. It's a cavalcade of comic humiliations, like the rest of my life. 

I wrote a treatment for a film I think could be beautiful. Maybe next year I'll write it as a full screenplay. Still not sure to do with film scripts. There must be a mechanism by which you can get people who make films to read them, but I've never found out what it is. I'm still smarting from the indignity of my night at Bafta. Like waking on Christmas morning to find Krampus has shat in your sock drawer. 

I re-wrote and recompiled the "book" - the script" - for a musical. It might do something next year. That one is slightly out of my hands. 

I started writing a book called, Old World about being old. It's supposed to be the endgame boss of my Teeth and Spine style books, but its already twice as long as them and I'm still writing. If I can get the balance and tone right, it will be very funny indeed. And sad. And thoughtful. All the stuff I do. 

I'm writing two novels. One is called either Like Nobody's Watching or Nobody's Watching. I can't decide which. I'm favouring the former today, but it chops and changes. It's the final book, I think, in my loose "Lonely Boys" trilogy, with Fine and How Ghosts Affect Relationships. Another first person book with an as yet nameless protagonist. It's currently at 41,000 words, but I think a lot of those words may go. It's a book that's being built, sculpted in a way that I haven't done before. It's slowly revealing itself, like a statue stepping slowly out of marble. It may take some time. 

I didn't realise I was writing books about the male loneliness epidemic. It was never my intention. Eight million men in the UK feel lonely "once a week", with three million feeling lonely every day of their lives. Men can't cope with being men any more. They haven't been able to make the leap into conversation, into not being hidebound by patriarchal societal expectations. A lot of them blame women for this. They can't talk about being sad. They can't express grief. If they're upset they get drunk, or they lash out, or they climb a lamppost and attach a Union flag to it. 

My characters aren't flag-shaggers, but they can be creepy, alienated, socially awkward or socially unpractised. They tend to learn valuable lessons about themselves as the stories continue. They are usually better off, no matter what they find out. Because its fiction, and that's what I want to happen. 

The other novel is The Battle of the Flowers. It's the story of an elderly rock star receiving death threats at a hotel in Jersey. Who would want to kill him? Everyone he's ever met. This one is a labour of love. I get to invent an entire band, their back catalogue, their breakaway pop hit. I position them in post punk history, work out who their fans would be, which magazines they would have featured in and why (NME, not Melody Maker, The Face, not Blitz, much to the singer's chagrin). It's the most fun I've ever had writing anything. It's like upturning a dressing up box and trying stuff out. It's play. This protagonist isn't a lonely man, though he is alone. He's self sufficient and he's focused. Someone wants to kill him and he's going to track them down before they track him down. Am I writing a murder mystery? I might be. It's a mystery to me. 

In the last year, Ben and I recorded, I think, six songs for the Ebbing House album. We're classicists, so that means four more to make up the ten song album. The songs are very good. They're not quite realised. But we'll get there. They deserve it. Our song writing has never been stronger. These things are straining at the leash. 

I curated and introduced a series of films at The Harrison (Chambers of Distinction). Just a list of some of my favourite films. That was the through-line, no broader thesis. I wanted them to be largely accessible, nothing too weird. You never know what's going to land. This was a space where Night of the Eagle was far more popular than Franju's Les Yeux Sans Visage or De Palma's Sisters. People. You couldn't make them up. Even though I regularly do.  

I'm on the board of an American magazine. A contributing editor, no less. My mum would have told everybody she knew. One of her favourite things was working for Hearst publications in the early 60's when she lived in New York. It would have been the best thing I'd ever done. Books Schmooks. I'm on the board. 

I did some illustrations. My style has moved in a slightly different direction. Sadly for me, that direction is painstaking and labour-intensive. I wish I could knock 'em out, like Sempe. That's true artistry - being great in seconds. It takes me days to make anything that's even recognisable. If you want good, well, you're looking at a week, followed by my massaging my arthritic claw for another couple of days. Still, it stops me writing, so that's the main thing. Anything that can do that HAS to be good.    

Oh, and I'm a DJ now. Yeah, I know. Laptop DJ, too. What can I tell you - we play music people actually like. If that's a crime you can slip the bracelets on right now. 

That's music people like WITHIN REASON. Nothing from this century. No Britpop. No Oasis. No Mr Brightside and, as it turns out, no Footloose by Kenny Loggins, because people DO ask. People. 

I think I've liked one New Record This Year, and it was Luminal by Brian Eno and Beattie Wolfe, which sounds like an old record. Suddenly is one of the loveliest songs I've heard for years, and I listened to it over and over like a teenager in love. 

Fashion-wise, I'm all M&S: pants, jeans, linen shirts. My socks are usually from Socktopus. My Adidas Gazelles have been replaced by Chocolate brown suede desert boots, which were promptly discontinued by Clarkes. Cheers. I'm still wearing obscure T Shirts from Above The Lore (today's features the Tigon logo, none of the twats at Bafta even recognised it) and I think I need a "Hairy Holidays" one in the new year. I bought two cagoules this year, which I consider a personal defeat, but I'm flying in the face of Northern Ireland's climate continuity. It's still always raining, even when it's dry.  

My dreams for 2026? I want to remain healthy, or get healthier. I want to earn some money. The respect of my peers would be nice, though I'm not sure who my peers are. They keep themselves to themselves. I'm the one with my head over the parapet, riddled with lead, bleeding ideas. The plan is to keep doing exactly what I'm doing except more and bigger and better and more lucrative. And to be thinner while I'm doing it. No books out next year. That really bothers me. I should always have a book coming out. I write enough of the buggers. 

These are the best Books I Read This Year. Hardly any of them are new, and some of them are not even new to me. One was written by me. But my book, Spine, appeared on precisely no one's books of the year lists, so fuck y'all, it's going on mine. 

My Theatrical Event of the Year is easy. Stage/Fright at the Oxford New Theatre. It's one of the best things I've ever seen in a theatre, and the fact that it got better in real time as I was watching it is practically sans pareil. And I've seen Basil Brush live now. Yeah. 

Restaurant of the Year: we had an obscenely expensive dinner in Ox for my birthday. Incredibly expensive. But the food, the wine, the service and the space were absolutely perfect. The cost though. Bloody hell. 

Advert of the Year: Still the Pepto-Bismol one. It's a classic, old skool, proper advert. A catchy song, dancing, bright colours and, in "Diarrhoea - HA!", a breakaway, memeable moment. And it wasn't about winning a house in the Cotswolds/paying for my own funeral/sponsoring a sad donkey, like all the other adverts I've seen this year. Still worried about the name Pepto-Bismol, though. It's been around for well over 100 years and the name relates to the ingredients: Pepsin (no longer in it) and Bismuth Subsalicylate which, as a heavy metal, is banned in France. But Pepto-Bismol is one slight vocal mince away from "Pooped? Abysmal", which does nothing to instil confidence. 

Film of the Year: Er. Did I even go to the cinema? I think it has to be Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man because I did actually see it in the cinema. And, you know, it WAS pretty good. I've liked all of the Knives Out films. He knows what he's doing. I think there were some really good films out this year but I haven't seen any of them. I liked the look of Fantastic Four: First Steps. Thunderbolts was mostly good. Two Disneys and a Netflix, John. I thought you were the doyen of art house indie horror. Weapons, Sinners, Bugonia, The Ice Tower and One Battle After Another are all supposed to be great but I didn't see any of them. The local theatre claimed they were putting The Ice Tower on at my request and I STILL didn't get to see it. 

Yeah. 

My Pop Song of the Year was made in 1978. It's called Andy and is by Colleen. Colleen is Colleen Nolan, before she was in The Nolans/Nolan Sisters. Andy is the former Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, who was 18 in 1978.

 It's a weird thing. It's a literal love letter to Prince Andrew and is delightfully mundane, all watching the telly together or checking the harnesses on his parachutes, that sort of thing, and is set against woozy synths and laser noises and Colleen's breathy, high pitched voice. It's a strange souvenir of another time, coming out just after the silver jubilee (Colleen refuses to swap her jubilee poster for a David Soul one) and the royals were probably at the zenith of their popularity, so it must have looked like a money spinner. Obviously, because of all the things that have happened, it seems to be in remarkably bad taste now (Colleen was about 13 when she sang it). But I don't like it cause it's so bad it's good, or because omigodit'ssocringe or however guilty pleasures have been rebranded. I just like it. The same way I love Sugar Me by Lynsey de Paul, or space disco, or Joyce Kinney's Baby, Can I Kiss You or Sniff 'n' the Tears Driver's Seat, even. It shares those sounds, that sonic bedrock, simultaneously guileless and cynical, occasionally clumsy and jarring but coasting on charm and four on the floor. That's not all the music I like. But this might be my sweet, sugary spot. 

Goth of the Year: Still Robert Smith. He's playing in Belfast in 2026, I think. I'm not going to go and see him, obviously. But I approve of him. Saw Budgie in conversation and he seemed like a nice guy. Bit damaged, but in surprisingly good nick. Not keen on the ex.  

2026. I'd say do your worst. But don't. Please don't do your worst. 2025 wasn't exactly treading water.