2015 News

This is the text I sent out to members of my mailing list - if you're not on it, you're not "on it"! In January I shot some scenes in J.A. Bayona's film adaptation of Patrick Ness's wonderful novel A MONSTER CALLS, playing a teacher. The trailer is now online and I think it's going to be a quite extraordinary film. I turned up on TV in MAN DOWN (as a man with big ears) and in BRILLIANTMAN! (as a man battling a pea). (That's all the manly news.) MISS YOU ALREADY, in which I played a nurse, was released into cinemas in September. Next year I should be spottable in DR THORNE, an Anthony Trollope drama for ITV, and THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM, a Peter Ackroyd adaptation. I wear top hats in both. Because I am tops in a top hat. I took my most recent show Each of Us to Italy in April and December, performing it in English (with Italian surtitles) in Ostia and Brescia and it was super. The Italian touring production of Three Wishes (Tre Desideri) was wonderful too. In June I performed at MJ Hibbett's Totally Acoustic night, reading a creepy story called FLEUR, a bit from Each of Us and a section of my new work in progress, currently titled Who Here's Lost? Here's a section: Walking had been my only option and, what with the rain and my bad shoes, I now had one wet foot. I watched a thread of cars sew itself into the main road, stitching the night with head and tail lights. On the pavement in front of a Georgian terrace, more peeling than painted, was a muzzled sapling; even the young trees had attitudes round here. Scattered on the pavement were the contents of a no-care package – a cigarette packet (empty), a vodka bottle (empty), a yellow polystyrene chicken takeaway box (mostly empty), a copy of the Daily Express (empty). In the sky hung a moon so large and bright it looked like an advert for moons. I'm hopeful I'll be developing it further in 2016, either here in the UK, or maybe in Italy - stayed tuned! The Idler is relaunching its magazine and I have contributed a piece about Frisbee Tree Golf for their first new issue. In the summer I updated and refurbished my website - it's still HTML though as I am totally old school. Should you have some spare book tokens, why not pop along to somewhere like Bookseller Crow or The Idler Academy (other local bookshops may well be available more locally to your locality) and treat yourself or someone with equally brilliant taste as you with something excellent. My favourite books of this year have been: Risk Wise by Polly Morland The Driftless Area by Tom Drury One Year Wiser by Mike Medaglia If Then by Matthew de Abaitua Shakespeare's Journey Home by Julian Dutton Each of them is full of heart and brain and wonder and joy and they should all be bought many times. Books. My favourite films have been weird ones that feel like 1980s VHS movies like Turbo Kid and The Final Girls and It Follows. Musically, you need some Suns of the Tundra in your life - their BONES OF BRAVE SHIPS LP is every kind of essential. So is GALACTIC NIGHTMARE from Trunk Records. My other musical highlight was A Monster Like Me, Norway's Eurovision entry - ooh, right? And that's almost it for another year. Just to say, be excellent to each other this month and every month. Being excellent is always excellent. Please accept my (prompt) compliments for the season and wish you a terrifically fun and frabjous 2016. love and peace! benMOOR