CURRENT MISSION

Treat your life like its a science experiment

ABOUT ME

I'm a stand-up/performance poet and play shows and run workshops in schools. I'm a multiple slam champion, have played four Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, the Cheltenham Literature Festival the Bristol Poetry Festival, the Glasgow Comedy Festival, toured Canada and performed in Australia, New Zealand and America. This utterly informs my lifestyle, and there is nothing I would rather do than travel the country/world playing shows, visiting new places and meeting new people. I run poetry workshops, mostly in schools.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I'm still relatively new to this, let's see....

Interests

Travelling, writing, performing poetry and stand-up, music, books, living a disposable lifestyle, football.

• writing
• books
• literature
• poetry
• performing arts
• festivals
• running
• clubbing
• traveling
• music
• soccer
• science

Music, Movies, and Books

Films: Predictable everyman favourites like Shawshank, Star Wars, American Beauty, Fight Club, Blade Runner, Amelie; Jack Nicholson films of the 70s particularly Chinatown; Lives Of Others, Arlington Road, LA Confidential. Wow, I'm quite stereotypically blokeish! Better add in some Elvis Hawaiian cheese, The Sound Of Music (The Goat Song followed immediately by Adelweiss- has cinema ever produced a more thrilling scene-shift than that?!), Volver even though I thought it was only ok, and, ooh lets say some tender but suicide-inducing Hungarian film about romance in a bakery. Oh, and in all seriousness, the first half of Life Is Beautiful before the concentration camp- truly the most beautiful and inventive ode to love.

Music: Led Zep, GNR, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Muse, Rufus, Jeff Buckley, Aretha, B.B, White Stripes, Bell X1, Nick Cave, Live, The Black Crowes, The Black Keys, Grandaddy, RATM, Martin Grech, Hendrix, Robert Johnson, late 80s/early 90s glammy stuff I should probably be embarrassed about but am defiantly not, Longpigs, Tim Buckley, Arcade Fire, The Stones, The Doors, Nina Simone, The Decemberists, Queen, Chuck Berry, Kate Bush, Soulsavers, The Beta Band, Skynyrd, Otis Redding, TV On The Radio, David Bowie...oh anything that's got a bit of heart and passion

Books: Catch 22, 1984, er..anything with digits in the title, A Confederacy of Dunces, Choke, anything by Martin Amis or Douglas Coupland, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (film good but book blitzs), The Time Traveller's Wife, Life Of Pi, anything by Mark Leyner (particularly Tooth Imprints On A Corndog), Carol Ann Duffy, The Raw Shark Texts, Simon Armitage, Murakami, Bukowski, a big thick dictionary and a hefty thesaurus.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I've done a tandem parachute jump in Australia (the first chute failed) climbed Uluru (though I perhaps shouldn't have done...bad karma may have resulted in me breaking my arm later that same day!), snorkeled on the Barrier Reef (no mishaps this time), cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge, I've performed stand-up comedy to 600 drunken freshers and been introduced onto stage by Frankie Boyle, lived in lots of places including New Zealand, Edinburgh and Bristol, visited South Korea, Hawaii, Finland and Fiji and was once a ballboy for Notts County Football Club!

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Fiji, Finland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom