Ever heard this one? Question: What’s the difference between a poet and a pizza? Answer: You can feed a family of four on a pizza. Not true for the winner of The Arvon Poetry Prize this evening. Unless the pizza costs £5,000.   more »

I get between three and five hours of sleep at night. This is not because I am an alien but because I have sleep apnea. Last week the hospital wired me up for a night to check heart rate breathing patterns pulse throat. I looked like someone out of a science fiction novel. Ming the mongy man.   more »

Damn my head hurts. I’ve got a thumping hang over. A herd of rabbits are running on sheets of steel inside my head. Spoke to Francis at Canongate books today who have just bought a new Charles Bukowski manuscript. Yes. You heard it here first. A new Charles Bukowski script will be published by Canongate Books!   more »

I can’t remember who came up with the line but I came across it on tour with Henry Normal and Johnny Bramwell. Henry is the brains behind Steve Coogan, the comedian and executive producer of Babycow productions and Johnny Bramwell is the lead singer of I am Kloot.    more »

Today, Saturday, while writing I received this email. I have taken out the identifying details.   more »

There's nothing to sharpen the morning senses like a car crash. I wake get ready and leave the apartment and then call into the town hall to get an I love Hackney badge, cause I do. As I am walking towards the town hall I hears a blood curdling screech..   more »

I think there was a rasta at Apple HQ and a colleague of his lost Apples latest prototype The POD. Only two were in existance at that point. But the designer lost one and was panicking. . He goes to his rasta colleague who is building the next supercomputer "Hey Ibrahim, you sure your Pod is not my Pod" and this is when Ibrahim the hardware designer coined the term. He'd been here before - things go missing people look at the guy with the ddreadlocks right. But he's cool "nahh man this is I pod". And so the phrase IPOD was born.   more »

Here’s a hotel tip. Never settle for the first room that you are offered. Never be impolite at hotels. Simply look at your room and then go back to reception and ask if it is possible that you can see another room. You’ll be surprised about what you learn. I have an aversion to the hotel room that faces either another hotel room or a wall. I need light. Hotels are giant cash machines and you are the cash. Though I don’t pay for my hotel rooms I’ll be damned if I’ll be squeezed into a shoebox room so small that when I open the mini bar I fall out the window.   more »

We are in the studio. I am amongst actors and it’s all good. Love being around actors and artists. David who is playing the Rabbi talks in the green room about Woody Allen whom he met recently while acting in his latest film. This story followed Adjoah Andoh who was with Maya Angelou recording With Great Pleasure at The Late Paris Studios on regent st. Now there’s a conversation right there. And next they were going to be reading my piece on the radio THE QUEENS SPEECH by Lemn Sissay. Not many times you get to hear that on the BBC in your lifetime.    more »

And it is written and it is so freakin emotional. And now Eoian is getting the actors together. I have pitched two actors – Adjoah Andoh as The Queen and Carla Henry as the child in care. And both can do it! In minutes Eoian is onto their agents and booked them both, plus two other actors – David Horovitz playing the rabbi and Anjali playing the muslim woman.   more »

I've been awake at five am every day this week. I do what I love and I love what I do. Things like appearances and readings and stuff, they pale into insignificance when it comes to the pure excitement enjoyment and internal celebration that is simply writing.   more »

"I'm not saying she was crazy" said the taxi driver "but she said if you leave me I'll cut off your legs and sew them back on the wrong way so every time you try and leave, you come back".   more »

There is an irony isn’t there? The entire Wold service and its home is called Bush House. It’s what george would’ve wanted.   more »

What is Fact to Fiction? It is this; An artist – me for example – listens to the weeks news at BBC and writes, within that same week, a poetic text which is recorded on Friday of that same week and broadcast on Saturday and Sunday. Pressure is on. The producer of Fact to Fiction at BBC Radio Four which I’m writing throughout next week, has dropped out. I got the call about the producers disappearance from Eoin OCallaghan , the executive producer. He is now going to be producing my show. This is when your mettle is tested - not when everything goes smoothly, but when things like this happen. I am chewing my knuckles and standing on a ledge. I am sending this via text. It may be my last message.   more »

This is a message to the hundreds of people whom from around the world have written to me as a result of the article on the world service. Firstly I must apologise for not having written individually but I couldn’t answer many of the queries. Many of your compassionate and heart felt emails brought me to tears. Those and many others also gave me a sense of triumph and support.   more »

This is an unusual posting and not one that I would normally do. A few blogs ago Elizabeth Kelly Sloane sent me a question. It is there in the blog Antidote To The Winter Blues. It has taken me a while to answer. So here I include both her question and my reply. It's the first time I have done this and may intrude on my developing style of blogging but I think her question merits it. I will begin with her comment and my answer will follow:   more »

I’m in a car – not driving it – but in it. The driver is driving it which is good because otherwise I’d be sat in an empty car going nowhere. It’s 9am. The sun is shining in East London. It is pouring through the beech trees of the park. It’s weight causing leaves to fall – large lush leaves that make me wish leaves where fruit. They are brown and large and are the shavings of Autumn. Winter is ebony deep grained smooth in its darkness. Autumn is the wood cutters floor.   more »

I enter the glass façade of The Channel Four Buildings. Russel Brand the wunderkind of channel four is in reception looking tall and gangly like a younger version of punk poet John Cooper Clark. He’s the presenter equivelant of my publisher Jamie Byng. Jamie is a soul as old as The Chair of Edinburgh and a spirit and visibility with the same presence. They, Brand and cooper clark, were definitely separated at birth. In fact there is a great table Jamie, Russel Brand and Cooper Clark. I’d serve that table. The reception is laid out like a pack of cards spread. I pick a gorgeous queen of spades. And she simply glances to someone who looks the part.   more »

I put it to you, your honour, that to spend a day with a friend is a thing of beauty. Exhibit number one, the friend, is Whitney McVeigh and exhibit number two, the thing of beauty is ofcourse, me. Actually it isn’t me, it’s Rodin whose exhibition we attended at The Royal Academy of Arts.   more »