Happy Easter to you. I wanted to say a quick thanks for the support lately; it means a lot. We’ve seen a surge in sales for the Ossie Clark book over the last few months, and that is down to you lot spreading the word.
I’ve always put more stock in a personal recommendation than any flashy advert. Word-of-mouth is everything in this game.
I’ve been buried in books myself lately. If you’re looking for a deal, there are some proper bargains on Kindle Unlimited at the moment. I’ve been using it...
Blog
Thirty thousand miles. It sounds like a made-up number when you say it out loud, the kind of distance you fly over while watching crap films and eating stale plane food. But Stephen Aslin is doing it on a pushbike—every single...
I stood outside the General Penitentiary on Tower Street and let the heavy reality of the place sink into my bones. You smell the salt from Kingston Harbour mixed with the sour tang of old, sunbaked concrete. The British built this fortress back in the colonial days to warehouse people with low incomes, and they did a proper job of it. They wanted to cut the costs of their empire, so they threw thousands of working men into a stone box and locked the...
I just finished reading a book that demands your absolute attention and refuses to let you look away. It is called Fu...d Up in Dubai! One determined Welsh mother's real-life nightmare: a memoir about love, sex, drugs and life in a Dubai jail. Yes, the title is a proper mouthful. Emily Brook earns every single word of it, though, across 432 raw and unfiltered pages.
From the Valleys to the Desert
Brook comes from a tight-knit...
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Your Party
Dear readers .
The US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran has set the entire region ablaze. Innocent people, like the girls whose primary school in the Iranian town of Minab was obliterated, are paying the price.We want no part in this illegal war. Your Party’s initial statement, published hours after the bombing began, zeroed in on the issue of British military facilities and resources being...
TELETECH
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Drumsheds Tottenham: Inside the UK's Biggest Superclub
Forget everything you remember about dragging...
We are bringing a massive new sound to the stage. Expect a heavy live set packed with 80% original tunes that bridge the past, present, and future.
The Details
- Date: Sunday, 26th April
- Venue: Jazz Train, Shoreditch
- Doors: 2 PM to 8 PM
- Live Band: 4 PM to 6 PM
The Lineup
- Guest Vocals: The brilliant KJ Anita and Louisa stepping up to the mic.
- DJs: Prince Fatty, Russ Jones,...
Back up North in Warrington, the only time you catch a mob of blokes roaring a chant in unison is freezing on the terraces watching The Wire. I never pictured myself spending a Wednesday night standing in a room full of Welshmen in London. I am not exactly from the Valleys. My only real connections to Wales are my friendships with two absolute legends. The first was the late, great drug smuggler Howard Marks. The second is Rob...
The Gwalia Male Choir
'The Welsh Male Choir '
Cor Meibion Gwalia
A welcoming Welsh male voice choir based in London since 1967.
We began as a breakaway group from the London Welsh Choir. Since then, men from the Welsh community and far beyond have joined us. If you love to sing and enjoy good company, you will fit right in.
What We Sing
Our repertoire moves across styles and moods.
• Traditional Welsh hymns
• Folk tunes
• Opera choruses
• Spirituals
• Pop songs
• Broadway favourites
One night you might...
The Daddy: Scum, Winstone, and Full Circles
' I’d already served two terms in Borstal by then. I knew the smell of those places and the taste of the fear. Then Scum came out. It hit the screens like a sledgehammer'.
eople talk about gritty realism, but for some of us, it wasn’t just a film. It was a mirror. Ray Winstone played the lead, Carlin, and he didn't just act the part. He inhabited it. He captured the raw violence and the hierarchy of that life in the 70s perfectly. He played a...
I can’t stand the stuff. I got smashed on it as a teenager. My birthday, October 16th. I blacked out and woke up in my girlfriend’s mum’s front room, covered in sick. Then I remembered I had a court date.
The smell still makes me gag. It brings it all back. Like that morning standing in the dock for shoplifting. I didn't do...
Teacher’s Pest
Why do we drag certain memories up from the past? In my case there’s nearly always a nasty twist waiting at the end.
I was always involved in sport at school. I played on the football and rugby teams and ran athletics. But alongside my sporting achievements, I stood out as a disruptive boy. They didn’t call it defiance disorder back then. They just called you a nuisance.
I picked up some bad habits along the way. Smoking occasionally and my wheeling and dealing landed me in...
I dangle from a rusted hook in the corner where the damp smudges the plaster. One dodgy frayed lace. That’s the only thing keeping me off the deck.
The air reeks of ammonia and sweat soaked into the bricks before most of these kids were born. It smells of stale piss and failure. It burns the throat. I stay in the dark. We don’t need to talk about it. I am done.
I used to be proper kit. Oxblood red. Stiff cowhide. I stank of the tannery and I hurt people. I was built for a ruck, built...
Our Kid
Only a fool thinks of death all the time, but you’re a bigger fool if you never think of it at all.
I learned young: you don’t back down, you don’t show fear, and you don’t fucking cry. Not even when they break your nose and your eyes start to water. Men don’t cry.
You push it down. Turn your head. Hide the pain. You head to the bog, turn on the tap, and take yourself anywhere they can’t clock you blubbing. If the tears fell in the playground, you were a mardarse. Mates took the piss....
High everyone,
It's January 2026, new term's just kicking off, and I'm sitting here in London thinking F..., how did I end up doing a degree in Creative Writing at Birkbeck? If you'd told the younger me, the one laying bricks in the 80s or dodging trouble across the world, I'd have laughed in your face. But here I am, a mature student, fourth year in (started with the Foundation Year back in 2022), chipping away at modules and actually enjoying it most days.
Let me take you back a bit. Life...
I have always believed in destiny.
Not the fairytale kind where everything works out because it is meant to. I mean the harder version. The kind that drags you through places you would never choose, then drops you somewhere unfamiliar and expects you to stand up and carry on.
Fate pulled me through a Jamaican prison and dropped me back onto the streets of Notting Hill.
I stood up.
I stayed standing.
From Jamaica to Notting Hill
For more than twenty years I...
A raw interview back in 2017 with Tommy Kennedy IV on boxing, family, and staying real in a fake world. No polish, no PR. Listen to the exclusive audio here.
Listen to the Interview above on YouTube with a picture of the sea and a tree.
They say writing is a lonely game.
You sit in a room.
You stare at a wall.
You give the page a bit of blood and hope it gives something back.
Life does not work like that.
Life comes at you swinging.
This interview pulls me away from the desk and drops me back where...
Reading Nightmare in Jamaica alongside Ossie Clark
Both Nightmare in Jamaica and Ossie Clark examine what happens to identity when the environment turns hostile. One confronts physical danger inside a Jamaican prison. The other traces psychological collapse within the glamour and pressure of the fashion industry. Despite their surface differences, both books ask the same question. How does a person remain intact when the world they inhabit begins to...
I go back to Birkbeck next week, Monday 12 January. It is also my brother Anthony’s birthday. Before I travel in, the family will raise a glass in his memory. Then the day continues, because that is how it works.
Returning after the Christmas break always sharpens things. Time away strips the noise down. You come back knowing what matters and what no longer deserves space. This year, that clarity carries weight.
Returning...
I was at Whatton Detention Centre in 1974 and 1975. Long before slogans hardened into policy. Long before politicians had a neat phrase for it. The violence was already there. What later became the “short, sharp shock” didn’t start with Margaret Thatcher. It was baked into the walls from day one.
Whatton Detention Centre: Discipline or Fear?
Whatton, in Nottinghamshire, was sold as a youth detention centre focused on reform and discipline....
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