Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
was already a frustrated books and music journalist,
collecting my first rejection slips from UK
magazines. My break into writing for real came
in the form of the formidable Polly Marshall, who
ran the spectacular spoken word club Do Tongues,
which got in everyone from Ken Campbell to
Helen Zahavi to Will Self to Tony Benn. She also
was the Literary Editor for Brighton’s version of
Time Out, Punter magazine (now The Latest). I
started writing book reviews for Polly, and was
given the phone numbers of numerous book publicists
at the major publishing houses who I then
plagued for review copies and author interviews
for the next couple of years. Back then, explaining
the idea of a literary website was hard work, and I
thank every long-suffering publicist who took me
on faith and sent me books. Special thanks goes
to Karen Duffy, then at the now defunct Harper
Collins imprint Flamingo, who provided a lot of
encouragement and good humour.
Spike quickly gained momentum thanks to the
contributions, both written and pub-inspired, of other
friends in Brighton, especially Chris Hall, Nick
Clapson, Jason Weaver, and Stephen Mitchelmore.
Steve posted a lot to Spike’s blog Splinters and became
a bit of a mentor as well as he introduced me
to some of Europe’s most fascinating writers, particularly
Maurice Blanchot and Thomas Bernhard.
Perhaps most importantly he introduced me to The
Day Today. Steve continues to blog today at This
Space. As Spike grew, contributions came in from
scores of writers from all over the globe. Many of
them I have sadly still yet to meet in person, but
fond memories of seeing REM at Stirling Castle
with Spike contributor Gary Marshall and several
huge nights out in Melbourne with Antipodeanexiled
correspondent Jayne Margetts makes me
wish it happened more often.
In December 2002, I decided to leave the UK
and go travelling in Australia for six months.
Eight years later, I’m still travelling around Asia,
and I’m now based in Bangkok, Thailand. I write
mainly for scuba diving magazines, and run the
travel websites Travelhappy.info and Divehappy.
com. There’s a coffee table book on the way that
I’ve written with my friend and ace photographer
Jez Tryner called Thailand’s Underwater World.
If any Spike contributor makes it out here to
Bangkok, dinner and drinks are on me.
As I’ve become more involved with scuba diving
and traveling, whilst being virtually cut off
from the UK literary scene, I’ve spent less time
004
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