This weekend I will be heading up to Manchester for my second BlogOnMSI.
As well as attending, I’m doing a presentation on promoting and advertising your blog. Assuming I ever finish my slides, that is.
Whether you come to my session or not, do pop over and say hi if you see me during the day. I’m not difficult to spot in the crowd!
Anyhow, here’s me in 20 questions – or 20 answers, I suppose.
Share a recent picture of you.
I don’t have many photos of me. This one’s a couple of years old but it was taken just round the corner from MSI, in a lift in the Hilton Deansgate. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to looking like James Bond!
Describe yourself in three words.
Blogger, podcaster, parodist.
I regularly write and perform – I can’t sing! – parenting-based parodies of pop songs. Here’s one of my favourites …
And you can find my full back-catalogue of parodies here.
How long have you been blogging and what made you start?
I celebrated my ten-year anniversary earlier this year, during which time I’ve set up seven different blogs. I’ve always felt an urge to write ever since I was a teenager who wanted to be a TV script-writer, so starting a blog was a natural progression.
What was the inspiration behind your blog name?
It’s a riff on a line from a poem The Second Coming by Yeats (yes, I’m that pretentious):
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
What is the best thing to come from your blog so far?
From both this blog and others I have written, the thing that will stay with me the most is the friendships I’ve formed, both with people I’ve only ever chatted with online and those I have gone on to meet.
Your most remembered thing from your childhood.
It’s a bit random, but sitting in a baking hot hospital waiting room in the summer of the great drought of 1976. I can remember the smell of stale sweat, the whirring of a wall-mounted fan and the faint sound of a radio playing The Real Thing’s You To Me Are Everything. It was the day I first met my baby brother.
Something interesting you might not know about me is . . .
Aged 11, I was a team captain on a children’s TV quiz show called Finders Keepers. Not the 1990s ITV show but an early 80s version based on the game of Battleships. We won!
Which social media platform best describes your personality and why?
Google+. Been around for a while and wants to be popular but fails miserably.
What is your happy song?
Too many to mention and mostly from the mid to late-1980s. Walk Like an Egyptian, Raspberry Beret, Love Shack, the list goes on.
My kids’ current favourite is Can’t Stop the Feeling, which always makes me smile too.
What is your favourite alcoholic drink?
Red wine (especially pinot noir) or anything that involves a cocktail shaker. No umbrellas, please.
What is your favourite cake?
Does cheesecake count?
What is your favourite takeaway dish?
Anything Thai – a green curry or maybe a pad thai.
Where is your dream holiday destination and why?
Sydney. We’ve been there twice – on honeymoon and to celebrate New Year – and I would go back there in a heartbeat. Perfect climate, cosmopolitan lifestyle and so laid-back.
What would your superhero name be?
Punctuation Pedant – standing up for misplaced apostrophes everywhere.
If you had a magical power, what would you want to have and why?
The ability to silence certain people’s tweets at will: Katie Hopkins, Piers Morgan, the entire cast of TOWIE.
What one weapon would help you survive a zombie apocalypse?
Can I have Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Handy in a fight and we could while away the days trading pop culture references.
If you could send something into space, what would it be?
Katie Hopkins, Piers Morgan, the entire cast of TOWIE …
What would you have on your gravestone?
Scribo ergo sum – I write therefore I am. (I did say I was a bit pretentious, didn’t I?)
You make headline news around the world in two years’ time … but for what reason?
For being the first person Donald Trump has ever apologised to on Twitter.
If an EMP wiped out all mechanical forms of transport, how would you get to BlogOn?
An EMP would wipe out all electronics, so I’d still be able to ride a bike. Sorted. Except for the fact I can’t actually ride a bike, that is.
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