What is more frightening, the fact that we are are in the eighth month of the year or that I will be firmly in my forties when the month ends? My birthday is the 27th so an ideal present would be to hit that PayPal button and help me to produce top quality entertainment that in return for your generosity will be released into the wilds of the Internet completely free of charge. Maybe you would like to theme your donation around my birthday, for example 41p (a penny for every year I have been alive), £4.10 (10p a year), £41, or even £410 or if you really have money to burn and a philanthropic nature then £4,100. The more money goes in, the higher the quality of my output but I am willing to chuck free stuff at you at no cost to you or myself like this joke.
Another birthday present you could help me with is with Twitter. By recommending me to your followers I might finally get to remove the word 'underfollowed' from my bio. I am a good example of what a Twitter user should be - a mixture of recommendations, jokes, amusing pictures and comment and so I am bemused by my low numbers.
As we get to the time of year where I take stock of my life, this year has been good and bad regarding work. The Random Sessions continues despite the fact that some of Nottingham's more established musicians think they are too big to appear, a lot of them are quite forgetful when it comes to the person who first played them on the radio both in the UK and on American radio. However, I am discovering new musicians this way who have the talent to perform totally unplugged and raw. The new generation coming through seem able to respond to messages and not be too twatty so there is hope for the Nottingham music scene after all and it might not disappear up its own self-congratulatory arse. The Sunday Alternative Podcast is still going strong every week, in fact due to the way things fall I will be releasing an episode on my birthday AND the day after because it is a Bank Holiday, my work ethic surely is worth a donation?
To replace my daily written blog I have started to do an irregular video diary on my YouTube, these are knocked up on my phone so I don't expect these to generate donations, but they are interesting and will lead to better things once you have watched them.
At the moment I am laying the groundwork for a documentary about breakfast, an area that regular readers and followers will know is an area of my life I am very fond of. This may or may not lead to a regular series of reviews, which I might as well do due to my invisibility to the mainstream media in Nottingham meaning that I don't seem likely to be offered a paid gig doing this. (Or true to tradition, they will get someone to do it who knows nothing about it, a bit like when the local paper wants an opinion relating to music and they ask Mark 'literally' Del). Also in the pipeline is a series about proper pubs that I am going to present with my dad, which will be fun to do as he is the ideal person to go to the pub with and shares my disdain for the ridiculous when it comes to food and drink.
These things will be done on the cheap, but hopefully your enjoyment of them will encourage a donation to pay for more ambitious projects. There are still a lot of things waiting to be made that you are holding up so please give generously. Did I mention that it's my birthday soon?
Also, although it is happening slowly due to conflicting schedules I am about to help co-write a political comedy drama pilot and even more slowly film a half hour comedy sketch show.
Don't forget to share this newsletter on your social platforms and follow me on the below ones. Most of all though, thank you for reading this and thanks in advance for your generous birthday gift.