Blake Morrison Spills the Beans on Memoir Writing

Blake Morrison Spills the Beans (SA/2026)

(Photo of Morrison by Charles Moriarty) 

 

 

The poet and author Blake Morrison is perhaps best known for three works of memoir: And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993); Things My Mother Never Told Me (2002); and Two Sisters (2023).  

 

To be honest, I've not read any of the above and as I have an instinctive aversion to Morrison - even though he is a great champion of Lawrence, particularly Sons and Lovers [1] - I don't suppose I ever will.  

 

I have, however, ordered a copy of his new book published by Borough Press: On Memoir: An A-Z of Life Writing (2026), as this genre of writing is of increasing interest to me, even whilst it's one I remain somewhat suspicious of and hostile to.  

 

And, funnily enough - if a recent essay in The Guardian is anything to go by - Morrison himself has a few doubts himself about memoir writing in the age of Substack and digital self-publishing: 

 

"What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre (politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers) is now open to anyone with a story to tell - 'nobody memoirs', the American journalist Lorraine Adams has called them." [2] 

 

Still, whether written by nobody or somebody, candour is the key to memoir writing; "no matter how fraught the consequences". In a post-Maggie Nelson universe, it doesn't pay to be shy and, as Morrison goes on to note, shocking revelation has long been "an integral part of memoir [because] sometimes the facts are shocking".

 

To be honest, I'm not sure I like such explicit (often brutal and ugly) openness. I do think an author can overshare and that there is such a thing even in confessional writing as too much information. I would like to know, as a reader, how a writer feels about the death of a parent; I probably don't need to know they recall masturbating in the bath on the day it happened. 

 

Whether "the divulgence is sad-fishing on Facebook, curated self-glorification on Instagram or out-there revelation in a memoir", I'm afraid that I'm one of those readers who feels irritated and affronted by exhibitionist authors who figuratively spill the beans whilst literally inviting us to watch them jerk off. 

 

As Morrison acknowledges, it's not essential for writers to reveal all; they should be able to write "on their own terms and in control of what's committed to print". It's often a mixture of laziness and narcissism that causes a writer to indulge in bean spilling and oversharing. Even in the age of social media, discretion can still be a virtue. 

 

But, on the other hand, says Morrison, discretion is not such a virtue when it becomes a form of evasion driven by dishonesty or fear of how others will react:

 

"There's no point in telling a personal story if you censor yourself and hold back too much. Be brave [...] it's your version of events and if people close to you object, never mind - let them write their own memoir." [3] 

 

Having said that, like the exercising of discretion, the expression of candour requires technique: "It needs compression, structure, the right tone of voice. The task is to set down what happened, not parade extremes of feeling." 

 

In fact, I would go further than that and say the task is to reimagine what happened, not just record like a machine; to fictionalise and transform life into art. Ultimately, the best form of memoir is called a novel. But writing a novel is difficult, whereas - as we have noted - nobody and anybody can write a memoir. 

 

Clearly, Morrison and I disagree on this point: 

 

"Truth-telling is the measure of memoir, and it's not the same as autofiction. Readers will allow an author wriggle room, for comic exaggeration, say, but where there's knowing fabrication they'll feel cheated, even outraged." 

 

To which one can only ask this Easter weekend: What is truth? And repeat: memoir that doesn't become autofiction is merely poor writing - or what Deleuze describes as dead writing [4]. 

 

Morrison says that readers want to be able to trust writers. But here he forgets his Lawrence, who sagely advised us to trust the tale, not the teller and reminded his readers that art speech is essentially a form of telling lies, but that, paradoxically, "out of a pattern of lies art weaves the truth" [5].    

 

But it's not the kind of truth that most people want to hear: it's the truth that Oscar Wilde declared to be anything other than pure and simple [6] and which Nietzsche described as a convenient fiction or a forgotten lie [7]. 

 

Finally, what of the argument that readers want more than blogs posts or fragments and snippets of text on Substack; that when the story is interesting and the writer is good, then they are justified in demanding a full-length (professionally published) memoir and that ultimately only such will serve and satisfy ...

 

Obviously, I don't agree with that. I think the best way to illuminate a life is in a series of lightning flashes; thus I privilege the glimpse over the detailed portrait [8].

 

But Morrison defends the latter against flashy short-form writing:  

 

"For myself [...] I think published memoirs have plenty to offer that social platforms can't, not least the rewards of a full-length story with a narrative arc, a set of characters, and an approach that doesn't depend on sensational self-exposure, allowing room for reversals, surprises, digressions, complications and a tussle between adversity and reprieve. At their best, memoirs develop with a subtlety unavailable in a short extract [...]" 

Morrison concedes that published full-length memoirs can - "when the author is a bumptious blabber or a catastrophiser" - be "as much a turn-off as online snippets". But, he says in conclusion, "where the self-disclosure is nuanced and the writing compelling" nothing beats a book (how very arborescent, as Deleuze would say). 

 

But then he would say that, wouldn't he? 

 

Some might see this as a hard-working and highly respected professonal author defending the traditional art and craft of writing. But one can't help interpreting Morrison's remarks also as a form of gatekeeping; i.e., safeguarding the elite world of serious literature and those who belong to such - editors, agents, critics and publishers - from the barbarian content creators and bloggers such as myself who are not looking to turn memory into memoir and memoir into money ... 

 

 

Blake Morrison Spills the Beans (II)

(SA/2026) 

     

  

Notes

 

[1] See Blake Morrison, 'Sons and Lovers: a century on', in The Guardian (25 May 2013): click here. 

 

[2] Blake Morrison, '"Enough of this me me me": Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing', The Guardian (4 April 2026): click here. 

      All quotes that follow in this post are from Morrison writing in this article.  

 

[3] Interestingly, Morrison goes on to write: "Readers are no less sensitive than they ever were, just sensitive about different things [...] Push it too far and there might be a social media storm and public backlash. [...] Writers can't afford to ignore the moral climate of the times. But they don't have to kowtow." 

      Again, I take a rather more aggressive line than Morrison. For me, it's not just a question of not being subservient; a writer worth their salt should stand against public opinion and challenge (transgress) the moral climate of their age (move beyond good and evil, as Nietzsche would say). 

 

[4] For Deleuze, writing is not as an attempt to impose a coherent and conventional linguistic form on lived experience. Above all, Deleuze wishes to stress that literature should not become a form of personal overcoding, which is why any form of writing that is exclusively reliant upon the recounting of childhood memories, foreign holidays, lost loves, or sexual fantasies, is not only bad writing, but dead writing. Literature, he says, can die from an excess of truth-telling, just as it does from an overdose of reality. 

      See Deleuze's essay 'Literature and Life', in Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael E. Greco (Verso, 1998). And see the post 'A Deleuzean Approach to Literature' (30 Aug 2013): click here.   

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 14.

 

[6] Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). It can be found in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (HarperCollins, 2003).   

 

[7] See Nietzsche; On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873). This essay can be found in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Humanities Press International, 1990), pp. 77-97. 

 

[8] See the post 'I Shall Speak of Geist, of Flame, and of Glimpses' (29 Sept 2021): click here.  

 

 

An Easter Message: Britain Must Go Pagan!

Image based on a photo from the Vivienne Westwood Archives

Instagram: @thewestwoodarchives (10 Jan 2023)

 

 

I. 

 

Some people are continuing to choke on their chocolate eggs that King Charles - Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith - has not shared an Easter message this year, despite wishing Muslims a blessed Eid at the end of Ramadan.  

 

With a mixture of outrage and insecurity, they protest that this is yet another sign of the Islamification of the UK and the erosion of Britain's Christian culture; its history, heritage, system of values, etc.

 

These are often the same people obsessed with flag waving and playing identity politics who tie their ethno-nationalism to Christianity; assembling beneath the Cross of St. George like modern day crusaders wearing replica football shirts. 

 

Where this will lead, is anybody's guess - although I think we all have a pretty clear idea ...

 

 

II. 

 

The argument seems to be that if you wish to counter the rise and spread of one virulent religious ideology, then you need another equally fanatic faith that preaches One God, One Truth, One Way.  

 

In other words, one must fight fire with fire and respond to a challenge by adopting the same methods, tactics, and weapons as one's opponent. 

 

It's a fundamentally anti-Christian philosophy, but ironically, it's one that far-right militants who call themselves Christian frequently fall back on in the belief that such a strategy is necessary to ensure not only the victory of Good over Evil, but their survival as a people.      

 

 

III.  

 

Personally, as an anti-theist, if the last thing I want to see is the submission of the English to Allah, then the second from last thing I wish to see is a resurgence of Christianity. Indeed, I would echo Vivienne Westwood during her late-1980s early-90s phase and declare: Britain must go pagan ... [1]

 

Whether that best takes the form of Ancient Greek aesthetics combined with classic British tailoring - as Westwood envisioned - or of a retro Anglo-Saxon heathenism, in which the English finally wake up to the fact that Christianity is itself a foreign import and the imposition of a Middle Eastern deity upon a people who have forgotten their own gods [2], is debatable.

  

Notes

 

[1] Click here to watch a short video on YouTube in which Westwood discusses her idea of neo-paganism in relation to her design aesthetic. 

 

[2] Without wanting to delve too deeply into English religious history, it's worth remembering that Christianity only became the dominant faith in England in the 7th century. Before that time, polytheistic religions were practised, including Anglo-Saxon heathenism, which encompassed a heterogeneous variety of beliefs and practices, with a good deal of regional variation. In was in many ways very similar to the Norse paganism practised by the Scandinavian peoples that would later be introduced to England by the Danes.

      If I were an ethnonationalist, it's this Early Medieval period that would excite my interest and inform my politics; it would be Woden and Thunor I'd worship, not Jehovah and Jesus.    

 

   

Delicious Poison: The Final Taste (1986-88)

Kirk Field downing the dregs 

of his most Delicious Poison 

 

'Waves form to break and suns rise to set ...'

 

This post is a continuation: to read part 1 - 

Delicious Poison: The First Sip (1981-85) - click here. 

 

 

I.

 

By early 1986, Kirk and I both found ourselves living back in Leeds ... 

 

The year started quietly (some might say ominously) with Delicious Poison playing a set at Haddon Hall to a virtually empty room. 

 

Their following gig, however, at a club called Adam and Eve's and promoted in the Yorkshire Evening Post, was one of their best: "The band gave a very loud, energetic, and much angrier performance than usual. No frills just the thrills, as people like to say." [1] 

 

Nevertheless, despite the band's slightly harder edge and the brilliance of new songs such as 'New Sun Rising', I found my enthusiasm for the project was waning - and I was growing tired of the entourage of losers that seemed to follow them everywhere; the Bromley Contingent they were not.   

 

Another birthday gig took place at Haddon Hall on June 7th, for which I had gifted Kirk a hand-painted 'New Sun Rising' T-shirt and which he wore on stage that night. Gordon [2] approached me after the show, offering £25 plus material expenses to outfit the rest of the band with similar shirts. 

 

I was slightly wary of getting too entangled in the band's inner workings again, but Kirk showed up at my door the following morning, and his persuasion won me over. I spent a whole day working on them, including a punky-looking unicorn design for guitarist Nick Ramshaw with the Delicious Poison slogan and song title (borrowed from the book by George Melly) 'Revolt Into Style' written underneath.  

 

At a time when the UK average wage was nearly £4 an hour, I should have asked Gordon for at least £50, but, I suppose, this is what's known as a labour of love, or an act of friendship. 

 

 

II. 

 

By the late summer, Kirk and I had relocated to London once more, for another assault upon the capital. 

 

On August 17th, we met up at the house he shared with the band in Tooting, not far from where they used to film on location for Citizen Smith [3]. That evening, fuelled by a bit too much whiskey, Kirk and I renewed vows of friendship and decided that we were, after all, two of a kind. Sadly, however, as the year wore on old differences resurfaced and our relationship remained somewhat fraught.  

 

A September set at the Rock Garden felt shaky; the band seemed nervous, perhaps intimidated by the London crowd. A few weeks later at a club in King’s Cross, the stakes felt higher. Gordon was talking about a potential Janice Long session [4], but the gig itself was another hit-and-miss affair. The room was mostly empty, save for a few friends, and I could see Kirk's frustration boiling over. I felt for him; despite all his hard work, something wasn't clicking [5]. 

 

For me, the breaking point came during a meeting with Kirk and Gordon at the GLO offices in October. As we discussed the band's image, the irreconcilable differences between my vision and theirs became impossible to ignore. At one point, for example, the idea was floated for Kirk to adopt a matador look. I suggested it would be far more provocative (and pagan) if he came out wearing horns to embody the spirit of the Minotaur instead. 

 

Neither Kirk nor Gordon seemed particularly amused by this. To break the silence that followed, I pitched an idea for a new song based on the story of Ariadne and of how we might incorporate Picasso's artwork. This, however, was rejected by Gordon as being a little too clever for the desired fanbase. 

 

The year ended with two more shows: one on December 6th at the Polytechnic of Central London and one six days later at the Fulham Greyhound, a pub renowned for its live music gigs. Let's just say that when Delicious Poison were good - as they were at the latter - they were very, very good; but when they were bad - as they were at the former - they were very, very bad. 

 

At the PCL gig the band looked tired and uncaring and were besieged by various technical problems to do with sound and lighting (which, to be fair, were beyond their control). If I hadn't felt a bond of loyalty to Kirk, I would probably have walked out. But I stayed - and even watched ten or fifteen minutes of the band they were supporting - the Blueberry Hellbellies. 

 

Not bad. And, as I noted in my diary (with echoes of Miss Brodie), for those who like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing they like. 

 

The Greyhound gig - the band's 50th - was much more fun and it was nice to see Kirk having a lot of fun (and being funny) on stage. He really should have been a stand-up comic rather than a singer and I remember once he suggested we form a comedy double act with the name Norfolk 'n' Good.    

 

 

III. 

   

1987: my new year's resolution was to try and keep my mouth shut as far as possible. 

 

Kirk, meanwhile, had decided to detoxify the band's name by making it less poisonous. From now on they would simply be billed as Delicious. They had their first gig of the year under this new name at the Marquee on 14 January and Kirk was excited about that - and about the emergence of what he called new pulse music that would set the future dancing to a different beat.

 

Retrospectively, I can see now that Mr. Field was remarkably prescient and that my failure to understand what he was talking about showed my own ignorance of (and fundamental lack of interest in) the direction in which youth subculture was moving. Almost ten years after the event, I was still obsessed with the Sex Pistols and Mclaren's great rock 'n' roll swindle. Kirk, however, was looking forward rather than back and the shortening of the band's name to Delicious was the first step in shedding the punk past for something more neon and euphoric. 

 

The Marquee gig was okay, but only okay. Despite intuitively sensing that old school rock as a guitar-driven band-oriented genre that involved songwriting and live performance was about to be superseded by house (i.e., electronic dance music characterised by the synthetic sounds of the Roland TB-303 and continuous DJ sets), for now Kirk was sticking with the boys in the band.   

 

 

IV.  

Didn't see much of Mr. Field for the next couple of months and when we did meet up for dinner at his place on March 7th, we didn't get on. No unpleasantries, but we bored one another. 

 

Despite that, we sat up talking until after 3am and Kirk confessed that, for the first time, he was making plans for a possible future post-Delicious (indicating that he felt Nick and Colin were holding him back). Perhaps that explains why the next gig - again at the Marquee (7 April) - was so appallingly bad ...

 

I wrote a scathing review in my diary afterwards, describing their sound as Americanised rock and their performance as tired, desperate, and clichéd. Left the venue feeling sad and disappointed and hoping that Kirk would call time on the band, remembering Malcolm's words from the Swindle about the need to put a dying horse out of its misery. 

 

Wrote a letter to Kirk telling him all this and received a reply a couple of weeks later essentially agreeing he had to make radical changes. Then, out of the blue, Colin Dodsworth (the bass player) rang me and asked if he could come over for a chat, to which I agreed. 

 

Unsurprisingly, he was less than happy with how things were going for the band and voiced a series of complaints not only about Kirk, but about the manner in which his own role was minimalised and marginalised. 'No one', he said, 'likes to feel that they could be replaced by a monkey'. Which, I suppose, is true. 

 

Didn't really know what to tell him (and, to be honest, didn't feel it was my place to advise him). It was clear he'd like to develop his own ideas in the future and so I simply wished him all the best (not mentioning that Kirk too was thinking of either quitting the group or sacking the other members of the band).    

 

Somewhat surprisingly, Delicious were still together for Kirk's 25th birthday gig on June 7th, at the Rock Garden - and, actually, it was a lot of fun. And they even had a couple of new songs! 

 

The thing that pleased me most, for Kirk's sake more than mine, was that a couple of members of the Porn Squad had made the journey down from Ulverston. They, along with several other old friends of Mr. Fields, formed the fan base of his punk band back in the late 1970s, Initial Vision. 

 

I think it tells us something significant when a person can command such love and loyalty and, it has to be confessed, Kirk's charm is such that even though I first met him over forty-five years ago - and even though I've not seen or spoken with him for almost thirty years - I still feel a lot of affection when I think of him or record these events here.         

 

 

V. 

 

Monday 3 August: another Delicious gig at the Marquee. By this point, there's not much more to say: it was very much just another show. The flyer the band produced to advertise it is reproduced below, alongside a Delicious Poison postcard from back in the day that I have kept all these long years.  

 

At the end of the month Kirk had decided the best thing for the band to do was release a single themselves (something he had previously long resisted doing). 'Delicious' b/w 'New Sun Rising' on a GLO financed label - Temptation Records - was originally scheduled for release in early November (1000 copies), but then put back to early in the new year. 

 

As far as I know, this never came to pass (or, if it did, I never received a copy). 

 

The year ended at the Limelight (22 December): it was a good night with new friends, but Delicious were like a group of strangers on stage, playing unknown (and unliked) material. Didn't get to speak with Kirk afterwards and the next time I saw him was in January 1988, in Mayrhofen, Austria, at the Scotland Yard pub, where he, Nick and Colin were now performing as the in-house band.

 

Without telling me any of the details, Kirk informed me that Delicious had officially broken up as a band (and that he wouldn't be having any future dealings with Gordon Lewis either). An inevitable ending and probably for the best. But I could tell Kirk was hurting, despite the brave face and the spin he was so good at putting on events. 

 

I noted in my diary with a mixture of envy, admiration, and amusement that Kirk 'planned to stay in Austria for as long as possible; hanging around with the ski bums; drinking hot chocolate, walking in the mountains, seducing the local girls, and only thinking about where to go and what to do next when he absolutely had to ...'  

 

It was a plan that, within two years, would lead Mr Field into a whole new world of adventure and he went on to become a defining voice of the UK rave scene, documenting and playing an active role in the very revolution he'd sensed coming back at the Marquee. 

 

Today, Kirk is a celebrated author and public speaker; his critically acclaimed memoir Rave New World was a tremendous (and much-deserved) success and I'm happy to know that, in a sense, the world has finally recognised the star I always knew him to be.  

 

 

 

   

Notes

 

[1] Quoted from an entry dated 24 Jan 1986 in The Von Hell Diaries 1980-89.  

 

[2] Gordon Lewis was effectively Kirk's manager. As mentioned in part one of this post, as the founder of the Gordon Lewis Organisation (GLO), he produced some of the most memorable pop videos of the period. By the end of the '80s, Lewis had opened a number of stylish café bars and clubs in Soho, London. 

      Today, he is perhaps best-known as an author; his book Secret Child (2015) was a Sunday Times bestseller and made into an award-winning short film in 2018, dir. Yewweng Ho. I still think he should have paid me more than a pony for the shirts. 

 

[3] Citizen Smith was a BBC TV sitcom (1977-1980), written by John Sullivan, and starring Robert Lindsay as Wolfie Smith, a would-be Marxist revolutionary and leader of the Tooting Popular Front. I was half-tempted to suggest that Kirk should adopt his look and start wearing an Afghan coat, Che Guevara T-shirt and black beret.   

 

[4] Janice Long's early evening Radio 1 show was well-known and respected for promoting music by indie and alternative bands.  

 

[5] To be fair, a second gig at the Rock Garden on 31 October - supporting Geno Washington and his band - went very well; a short, tight set with the brilliant new song 'Beautiful Friend'. Kirk was much more relaxed and made me laugh with his King of Siam impression, telling the crowd 'When I clap, you shall clap. When I cheer, you shall cheer. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!'  

 

 

Readers who enjoyed this post, might want to check out his book, Rave New World: Confessions of a Raving Reporter (Nine Eight Books, 2023), or his latest, Planes, Trains & Amphetamines: Clubbing Holiday Confessions (Velocity Press, 2025). Both are available in bookshops, via Amazon, or from Kirk's website: click here. 

 

 

Delicious Poison: The First Sip (1981-85)

Kirk Field of Delicious Poison 

 

'The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; 

the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!' [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

In an interview to promote his entertaining 2023 memoir, Rave New World, Kirk Field reflects on his failed attempt to find '80s pop stardom with the wistful fatalism of a man who almost caught the bus: 

 

'My band Delicious Poison played The Marquee, supported some big bands and played over 100 shows, but it wasn't meant to be ...' [2]

 

As someone who was a friend of Mr. Field's during this period, I would like to share a few observations recorded in diaries from the time, as well as some retrospective thoughts. 

 

If I get a few things wrong - misremember or misinterpret events - hopefully Kirk (and other individuals mentioned in this account) will forgive me; it really was a long time ago now and I've never been anything but an unreliable narrator (even of my own life).     

 

 

II. 

 

Let me start from the beginning, just to provide a bit of context ... 

 

I met Kirk at the beginning of October 1981, in the student bar at Trinity and All Saints College (Leeds). 

 

My initial impression was of a flash young punk with pixie boots and a quiff, who liked to pose and play with a yo-yo. He asked if I played guitar and fancied being in a new group he was putting together, with him as frontman. 

 

As a matter of fact, I didn't play guitar and didn't want to be in his band. But I liked him; he was smart, funny and fast-talking and although it wasn't immediately obvious we would form a close relationship - he could be irritating - that's what happened.  

 

The first time I saw Kirk on stage was the following year at the TASC Cabaret. I was impressed by his cover of a Soft Cell number, although noted that he was - as a drama student - more of an actor than a singer; one who couldn't quite carry a tune, but was able to give a convincing impression of someone who can. 

 

In other words, he was a skilled performer, rather than a virtuoso vocalist.     

 

It wasn't until Feb 1983 that Kirk and his new band - The Hound Dogs - made their official debut. 

 

More mockabilly than an earnest punk band, they offered an entertaining mix of covers and original numbers like 'Teenage Vampire'. One gig, in December of '83, I remember in particular as a riot of fun involving flour and water à la King Kurt and everything played at a 1000 miles per hour, including a version of 'New Rose' that even The Damned would've been proud of.   

 

 

III. 

 

In the summer of '84, Kirk and I graduated and left Leeds for London ...

 

Almost overnight, everything changed. It was less a smooth transition and more a violent rupture of some kind and, sadly, our friendship became increasingly strained; partly for personal reasons, partly because we were heading in very different directions, artistically and intellectually. 

 

As I had noted in my diary a few months earlier: Kirk and I are fundamentally different. Ultimately, he's career-driven and wants to climb the ladder to pop stardom, whereas I want to knock over the ladder.    

 

I was working as an assistant press officer (and McLaren mole) at Charisma Records [3], but wanted to escape the music business as fast as possible so I could become a full-time writer. Kirk, meanwhile, was working at GLO and being mentored as well as financially supported by Gordon Lewis [4].   

 

Kirk had decided it was time to get serious with his musical career and so began adjusting his look and sound accordingly: no more Hound Dogging. 

 

His new group, Delicious Poison - originally called Torpedo the Ark [5] - was intended to be the vehicle via which he would find fame and fortune and, to be fair, things looked very promising; not only did Kirk seem to be in the right place at the right time, but, in Gordon Lewis, he had serious backing. And, it should be said, some of the new songs he was writing were fantastic.

 

My role - inasmuch as I had a role - was to provide the band with ideas and artwork and help out with press and promotions. I had certain reservations about this but, nevertheless, agreed to collaborate at some level with Kirk's Delicious Poison project, particularly when it took a more pagan direction. 

 

Thus, for example, I hand-painted a number of T-shirts for them to wear on stage and produced material for an official fanzine - Poisoned - which had an image of Snow White being handed the poison apple by the Evil Queen on the cover, along with a strapline also taken from the 1937 Disney film: 'One bite and all your dreams come true!' [6]

 

 

IV. 

 

The band played their first gig on Sunday 9 December 1984, at the Bierkeller, in Leeds. Gordon drove up from London and seemed very pleased with what he saw. An exciting set included several new songs, such as 'Skyclad'. 

 

This gig was essentially a live rehearsal for a show on the 18th of December at Le Beat Route - a seminal, subterranean nightclub located at 17 Greek Street, in Soho, London, which served as a major hub for the New Romantic subculture in the early 1980s (or, as I described it in my diary, 'a shithole full of dreary people serving overpriced drinks'). 

 

Again, despite certain reservations, I agreed to introduce the band on stage. Unfortunately, despite the excellence of the show nine days earlier - and all my bullshit as MC - the performance was flat and disappointing and the year ended on a low.       

 

 

V. 

 

Throughout 1985, the band continued gigging, writing new songs, and trying to land a record deal. But I saw very little of Kirk as our paths diverged still further. The fact that he lived in Barnet and I lived in Chiswick certainly didn't help matters (literally being miles apart only reflected the fact we were figuratively miles apart also). 

 

I did travel up to Wakefield, however, for a Delicious Poison gig on Kirk's 23rd birthday (7 June); another really good show. And I saw them as well the following month playing at a club in North London and noted in my diary (6 July) that Kirk was infinitely preferable to Bruce Springsteen, who I had been dragged to see earlier that day at Wembley. 

 

However - and this is perhaps central to why, as Kirk says, it wasn't meant to be - they still seemed like a pretend (or simulated) rock band for some reason - cf. The Wedding Present, for example, whose first single I was helping to promote [7]. David Gedge and the boys looked and sounded and acted like an authentic group that knew exactly who their audience was and what they wanted. 

 

Delicious Poison was never really more than a backing group for Kirk and Kirk couldn't quite decide (at this stage) who he wanted to be and to whom he wished to appeal - other than his own reflection perhaps; it was always telling, I think, that one of his favourite tracks was the Gen X hit from 1980, 'Dancing With Myself' [8].   

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This famous tongue-twister is from a 1955 musical comedy starring Danny Kaye; The Court Jester (dir. Norman Panama and Melvin Frank). Click here to watch the scene on YouTube. 

      I include the line here as it seems apt and, also, both Mr Field and myself were fans of Danny Kaye; he would sometimes sing the song 'Inch Worm' and I had been told by Malcolm McLaren that he was related to the American actor and comedian (I don't know if that's true).      

 

[2] Kirk Field, interview with Urban Rebel PR: click here.

 

[3] Charisma Records was a famous independent record label based above the Marquee at 90, Wardour Street, Soho, soon to be swallowed by the Virgin shark. For several posts written on my time and role at Charisma, please click here. 

 

[4] The Gordon Lewis Organisation (GLO) was founded by Gordon Lewis in 1980 and it produced some of the most famous pop videos of the period, for bands including Soft Cell, The Cure, Bananarama, and The Pretenders. Readers might be amused to know that Kirk even appeared in a video for the latter, directed by Tim Pope, dressed as a polar bear: click here. 

 

[5] Torpedo the Ark was a phrase borrowed from Ibsen. The band recorded a four-track demo under this name in March '84 and Kirk secured a meeting with Arista on the back of this demo on June 1st, but, sadly, nothing came of it. 

      Later, in November of this year, Kirk decided to change the group's name to Delicious Poison; a phrase taken from Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra (Act 1, scene 5). It was intended to sound a little more seductive and less nihilistic than Torpedo the Ark. Later, in an attempt to detoxify themselves, the band would simply go by the name Delicious. For the sake of convenience, I refer to the band as Delicious Poison throughout this post. 

      Ironically, the American rock band Poison would find global fame in 1986, having changed their name from Paris. 

 

[6] In a diary entry dated Sat 1 Dec 1984, I recorded how I spent much of the day working on Poisoned: 'Produced half-a-dozen sides of material: a bit of a mish-mash to be honest, but just about hangs together and there's a good deal of humour in it. Not sure what Kirk will think; full of his lyrics, but a lot of the ideas are mine.'

      The fanzine was never printed, but I think one or two photocopied issues were distributed. If the original artwork still exists, then I'm not sure where it is. Just for the fun of it, I've produced a digital version of the cover from memory which can be seen at the foot of the post.

 

[7] The Wedding Present's self-financed first single - 'Go Out and Get 'Em Boy!' - was released in May 1985, through their own label, Reception Records. The first pressing consisted of just 500 copies. I loved it - and, more importantly, John Peel frequently played it on his show, thereby helping establish their reputation as an exciting post-punk indie band. 

      My involvement - which, let me stress, was minimal - came about because I knew the bass player, Keith Gregory. I tried to convince Charisma to sign them, but was told that high-tempo guitar bands were old hat. The Wedding Present, of course, then went on to have eighteen UK Top 40 singles and their debut album George Best (Reception, 1987) is critically acclaimed as a classic. Fronted by David Gedge, the band has maintained a dedicated global fanbase for over 40 years and continues to tour and release new music.

 

[8]  'Dancing With Myself' is a track which so easily might have been a Delicious Poison number and, in the absence of any tracks by the latter being available to link to, here's Billy Idol at his best. One is almost tempted to describe Kirk as a cross between Billy Idol and Robbie Williams; the latter's sad clown persona mixing knowing irony, self-deprecation, and fluid masculinity was anticipated by Mr Field over a decade before Williams found a way to make this combination work.    

 

 

The second part of this post - Delicious Poison: The Final Taste (1986-88) - can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

More Musings on My Time in the Music Business

 

The World's Most Flexible Record Label 

Original logo design by Chris Morton 

 

I. 

 

The independent record label founded by Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera - Stiff Records - is revered by many people fascinated by the British music industry in the mid-late 1970s and early-mid '80s.  

 

Indeed, one will often see it described as legendary - mostly because of its impressive roster of artists that included The Damned, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Ten Pole Tudor, Motörhead, Madness, and The Pogues, but also because of the sleeve designs produced by the graphic artist Barney Bubbles [1].

 

My memories of it, however, are mostly shaped by the few miserable days I spent working there in the spring of 1987 ... 

      

 

II. 

 

By this date, Riviera was long gone following a series of disagreements with Robinson [2].  

 

A collaboration between Stiff and Island Records in 1984-85 had not worked out as planned [3] and, after the deal collapsed, Robinson regained full control of the newly independent label. 

 

However, underlying problems - mostly of a severe financial nature - meant that Stiff was forced into liquidation shortly after I turned up at their west London offices as a kind of exterminating angel ...  

 

 

III.  

 

Out of the blue, on St. George's Day, I got a phone call from Roddy Forrest, who had (briefly) been the  general manager at Charisma Records back when I was Jazzing it up at 90 Wardour Street [4]. He asked me to come and see him at his office the next day, at Stiff, as he wanted to offer me some work. 

 

So, the next morning, wearing my hand-painted Pagan T-shirt, I set off to Portobello (not my favourite neck of the woods; seedy and threatening, as I noted in my diary). 

 

Roddy was friendly and I was happy to see him again. But I did not enjoy my first day at Stiff:

 

 

The Von Hell Diaries: Friday 24 April, 1987 

 

Awful day. So glad I quit the music business when I did. It's a horrible industry, basically overseeing the production of shit. 

      Met a few new faces, including Dave Robinson - the boss - very Steve Weltmanesque in several respects, as Roddy pointed out, but, if anything, more intense. Did not like him. I think the only person I found attractive was the Irish girl, Sharon, working on reception.

      Roddy asked me to listen to some songs and give him some feedback. But my main task is to promote new releases with a number of record stores across the UK - i.e., make a lot of phone calls to people I don't know and try to sound enthusiastic. Boring. But it's only for a few days.    

 

 

I was in a far more positive frame of mind by the following week, however:

 

 

The Von Hell Diaries: Monday 27 April, 1987

 

Another day working at Stiff. Surprisingly, it didn't go too badly - went well, in fact, and I even enjoyed it at times. The people are friendly. But Robinson is bad tempered. 

      Rang 14 stores on a list of 19. Had to go to Sarm West Studios as well to pick something up. Owned by Trevor Horn, it's the studio where Duck Rock was recorded - and the Band Aid Christmas single. Bumped into Anne Clark, who I used to vaguely know, and we had a nice five-minute chat. When I got back to Stiff, it turned out someone had just been fired - I don't know who and I don't know why. 

      Roddy invited me to his place in Maida Vale for dinner (living with an Anglo-American woman called Maxine and her five-year-old son). Very tense atmosphere, but the food was okay. Roddy kindly gave me a selection of records (which I sold the next day to Reckless Records, apart from The Ramones album, Animal Boy, which I kept).

 

 

IV. 

 

By the middle of May, I'd had enough: the work was dull and the atmosphere increasingly unpleasant. 

 

And so, on the 14th, I went into the office one last time to collect the money owed and to say goodbye to Roddy. Woke up relieved the next morning knowing I didn't have to go to Stiff and stuff any more envelopes, make any more phone calls or photocopies, nor feign interest in the music business, etc. 

 

Shortly after I left, Stiff also reached the end of the road ... 

 

For despite success with artists like The Pogues, the label was drowning in debts of almost £1.5 million. After going into liquidation, ZTT moved in and purchased the remaining assets for a reported £300,000. They didn't attempt to resuscitate the label, however, rather, they placed it into a state of suspended animation for the next twenty years.

 

As the UK record business transitioned towards corporate ownership, small independent labels like Stiff and Charisma Records - run on an unconventional business model, staffed by eccentrics, and prepared to take a risk with signings and releases - were simply no longer able to survive [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I should point out that none of these acts meant anything to me and I didn't buy any records produced by any artist signed to Stiff. I can't in all honesty say I'm a fan either of work by the tragic figure of Barney Bubbles (sorry, Paul).    

 

[2] Rivera left to form Radar Records in late 1977 with Andrew Lauder (formerly of RCA) and took several Stiff artists with him, including Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello. The label folded in 1980. 

 

[3] In 1983, Stiff mistakenly sold a 50% stake to Island Records in order to alleviate debt. Ironically, however, this partnership backfired when Island itself ran into serious financial trouble and Robinson ended up having to fund the deal himself, further straining Stiff's finances. 

 

[4] Forrest's (shortlived) appointment as GM at Charisma was announced in Music Week (26 Jan 1985) - along with Steve Weltman's promotion to managing director at the label. Roddy had previously worked for Arista Records as artist development manager and at Phonogram Records as product manager. 

      I was associated with Charisma for a few weeks in 1983 and between July 1984 and October 1985. For posts written about my time there, click here. 

 

[5] In December 2017, the Universal Music Group acquired ZTT and Stiff Records.   

 

 

In Memory of Noelia Castillo Ramos

Noelia Castillo Ramos (2000 - 2026)  

 

All she desired was the brief experience of a life free from suffering 

so that pain is forgotten in the eternity of an instant ...

 

 

I. 

 

The tragic case of Noellia Castillo Ramos - the young Spanish woman who died at her own request, aged 25, earlier this week - is one that has attracted significant public attention and roused a good deal of emotion. 

 

 

II. 

 

The facts of the case certainly make for grim reading ... 

 

Taken into social care as a young teen, Noelia was diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder. She remained in care until she was eighteen. 

 

Following a sexual assault by a group of three males at a nightclub in 2022, Noelia attempted suicide by jumping from the fifth floor of a building. She survived, but was left paralysed from the waist down and suffered chronic physical pain and severe psychological suffering as a result. 

 

And so, invoking the provisions of existing Spanish law [1], Noelia formally requested the right to die in 2024. 

 

After a protracted two-year legal battle, during which her father had argued she was incapable of making her own judgements due to her mental health problems and that the state, therefore, had a duty to protect her, Noelia was granted her wish and exited this world on 26 March, 2026 - wearing her prettiest dress and looking beautiful.

 

In a final TV interview, Noelia said that she didn't want to be a role model of any kind; that her decision was strictly a personal one. Despite this, many condemned her actions and those of the doctors who carried out the procedure [2] which involved the intravenous administration of drugs that induced deep sleep and subsequently caused her heart and lungs to cease functioning. 

 

Despite her mother wanting to be present, Noelia chose to die alone.   

 

 

III. 

What, then, are we to make of this case?

 

Well, without wishing to simply repeat what I say in a previous post discussing the case of Ellen West [3], it does seem to me that the case of Noelia Castillo Ramos has echoes of the latter, in that it also centres upon a young woman's agonising struggle to die at the time and in the manner of her own choosing.

 

Both women may have been prone to obsessive-compulsive behaviour and struggled with other mental health issues, but both strike me as remarkably lucid and single-minded when it came to the question of terminating their own lives.

 

And both cases demonstrate that, sometimes, only voluntary death brings freedom and fulfilment and there are times when non-being takes on a desperately positive meaning. 

 

Of course, not everyone will agree with my interpretation. The writer and atheist defender of the faith, Bendan O'Neill, for example, argues that Noelia's 'state-sanctioned killing' is a wicked act that shames Europe: 

 

"The supposed 'gift' of death for those in pain or anguish is in truth a grotesque betrayal of the virtues of the civilised society. [...] Under the regime of euthanasia we sacrifice our human duties at the altar of 'merciful death'." [4]

 

And just in case he hadn't made his moral opposition clear enough, O'Neill adds:

 

"The idea of the worthless life, a life so awful the state might help to destroy it, is the very essence of dehumanisation. It tells the ill they might be better off dead, and it incites the anguished to pursue that final exit they dream of. It demeans those who want to live and tempts those who want to die. It is inhumanity in the drag of mercy." [5]

 

To which one can only say: Keep your hair on, Brendan!  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Spain legalised physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia for those suffering from terminal illness or living with unbearable permanent conditions, in 2021.  

 

[2] A spokesman for the Church - José Mazuelos Pérez (Bishop of the Canary Islands) - declared that the outcome of the case was another step towards a culture of death (which is a bit rich coming from a man who wears a crucifix around his neck).

 

[3] See 'Sein zum Tode: The Case of Ellen West and the Work of Ludwig Binswanger' (18 May 2025): click here.

 

[4] Brendan O'Neill, 'There's nothing merciful about Noelia Castillo's death', in The Spectator (27 March 2026): click here.

 

[5] Ibid. 

 

 

More Tales from Charisma Records: Memories of Steve Weltman and Shelly Clark

 

First Floor, 90 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1. 

Tel: 01 434 1351 

I. 

 

Charisma Records was a small independent label founded in 1969 by the ebullient figure Tony Stratton Smith and is mostly remembered today as the home of a few old hippies and prog rockers [1] and for releasing various novelty records, which, depending on how one views these things, may or may not include Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock (1983). 

 

For me, however, Charisma is a place I remember fondly not so much for the artists and acts associated with the label, but the equally talented and, in some ways, equally eccentric cast of characters who were running the company during its final years after it was bitten (and eventually swallowed) by the Virgin shark [2]. 

 

 

II.

 

These characters, for example, include Steve Weltman, who had left RCA to take up the role of Managing Director at Charisma in 1981, where he had previously worked in the early '70s and so understood the ethos and history of the label.  

 

I didn't have a personally close or even particularly fond working relationship with Weltman [3] and, as far as I remember, he only twice called me into his office for a serious chat.

 

On the first occasion, it was to warn me against visiting McLaren's office on 25 Denmark Street, as, due to ongoing legal wranglings between Charisma and McLaren, any and all future contact would be construed, he said, as a breach of trust (I was essentially accused of being a spy and of passing on confidential information) [4]. 

 

Needless to say, I didn't heed this warning. For one thing, I wasn't technically an employee of Charisma, so didn't feel under any legal obligation to do so and, obviously, my loyalties were very much to Malcolm, who had placed me in the Charisma press office in the first place. 

 

On the second occasion, it was to advise that I could, if I wanted, have a very bright future working in the music industry and that I should seriously consider my options and seize any opportunities that came my way. 

 

Again, needless to say, I didn't pay any attention to this careers advice and, in October 1985, with £1000 stuffed in an envelope, and carrying more books than clothes in an old suitcase, I set off on a bus from Victoria coach station to Madrid, with the intention of becoming a novelist and poet [5].    

 

 

III. 

 

Another Charisma character that I remember well (and with rather more affection) was the young woman heading the A&R department, Shelly Clark ...

 

Although I was primarily Lee Ellen Newman's right-arm in the Press Office, occasionally I'd be asked to help Shelly deal with the ever-growing backlog of tapes that were sent in by hopefuls and wannabes all aspiring to become successful recording artists. 

 

These tapes, rather sadly, were kept in a number of black bin bags, as if in anticipation of their fate. And to be fair, most were rubbish. It often surprised me to see the lack of care many people took with their submissions; sometimes forgetting even to include a return address or phone number, let alone a brief bio and photo [6].

 

Shelly was, I think, a generous soul. She did once throw a cup of coffee over me [7], but then, on the other hand, she gave me a big hug and a kiss on my 22nd birthday and we shared a couple of bottles of wine in her office listening to various outtakes from Duck Rock. We even once went to see a band together - The Opposition - at Camden Palace (25 June, 1985), on the orders of Steve Weltman.   

 

Unfortunately, I think she was a little ground down (or bored) by the job. And I'm not sure Shelly really knew or cared very much about music. I liked her though and think this photo taken of the two of us by Holly Fogg, the Charisma Secretary, shows that we enjoyed an affectionate and playful relationship: 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Historians of the British music industry tend to view Charisma in three distinct phases: the first phase between late 1969 and July 1975; the middle phase, from August 1975 to August 1983; and the final phase from September 1983 until Charisma's full assimilation into Virgin in 1986-87.  

      Whilst it is the first phase that is traditionally of most interest to historians and record collectors - this being seen as the golden period during which Charisma released records from artists such as The Nice, Genesis, Lindisfarne, Van Der Graaf Generator, et al, it's the final phase that interests me here and which I was a part of. 

 

[2] Stratton Smith sold Charisma to Richard Branson's Virgin Records in stages. A special relationship, which included a distribution deal, was agreed in September 1983 and this was (inevitably) followed by a full sale of shares in 1985. By the end of the following year, Charisma had been fully assimilated and ceased operating as an independent label; the last new release with the Mad Hatter logo appeared in October 1986.

      Sadly, Stratton Smith died shortly afterwards, of pancreatic cancer, aged 54, in March 1987. On the few occasions he and I ever spoke, he invariably misremembered my name - calling me James rather than Jazz - though he did once say he admired my 'lateral thinking'.   

[3] Having said that, Weltman did invite me to his birthday party on Saturday 1 June 1985, at his house in Esher, Surrey (one of the most affluent towns in the UK, popular with bankers, lawyers, corporate executives, celebrities, and so on). 

 

[4] Ironically, but also to his great credit, it had been Weltman who - undeterred by Mclaren's troublemaking reputation - had insisted that Charisma sign the latter and pay him an advance of £45,000 in order to make the album fusing "contemporary urban black sounds with world music" known as Duck Rock. 

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 494-95.  

 

[5] See the autobiographical fragment on my move to sunny Spain in October 1985 (18 Aug 2020): click here. 

 

[6] Just as surprising was the level of naivety displayed by those who sent in tapes containing a full album's worth of songs; did they really think anyone would continue listening beyond the first 30 seconds of the first couple of tracks? 

      More irritating, however, was the defensive arrogance that occasionally accompanied a submission: If you can't hear the musical brilliance of these highly original songs then please return them without delay.

 

[7] As recorded in a diary entry dated Tuesday 5 February, 1985. The coffee was thrown playfully, rather than in anger or with malice.

 

 

On Being (and Not Being) Leonard Zelig

Stephen Alexander and Leonard Zelig 

(SA/2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Zelig (1983) may not be my favourite Woody Allen movie, but it's the one that philosophically most interests and also the film that most closely resonates with my own experiences. 

 

The title character, Leonard Zelig [1], played by Allen - who also wrote and directed the movie - is, paradoxically, a man without any fixed character or distinguishing features; someone who, out of a pathological desire to fit in and be liked, takes on the personal traits of those people around him. 

 

Our friends the psychologists refer to this with the term environmental dependency syndrome - although some see it as an actual disorder that compromises individuation and prevents personal autonomy [2].  

 

Made as a fictional documentary, Zelig uses archival footage, faux-newsreels, and interviews with real-life intellectuals - including Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow and Bruno Bettelheim - to chronicle the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig in the 1920s and '30s, humorously exploring themes of identity, conformity, and celebrity. 

 

It's an almost flawless film and certainly far more than the one-joke technical novelty that some critics dismissed it as at the time. To enjoy a short theatrical teaser trailer, click here.  

 

 

II. 

 

Rewatching Allen's film, it struck me that, in some ways, I'm a bit Zelig-like, in that I have the knack for being at the right time and place and of appearing to fit in, even while secretly remaining on the outside of events and somewhat indifferent to what others think of me. 

 

For unlike Zelig, I don't need to be loved; I just need to be close enough (and invisible enough) to watch the chaos unfold; more an amused observer rather than an active participant or paid-up member of an established scene.  

 

 

III.

 

For example, when at Charisma Records in 1984-85, I was both employed and not-employed; at the heart of the music business whilst never really belonging. I hadn't applied for a job in the press office and had no ambitions of building a career. 

 

Rather, I just found myself placed there thanks to the machinations of Malcolm McLaren who wanted me to act as a mole, letting him know what was happening behind the scenes during a very turbulent period when the Virgin shark was in the process of digesting Charisma, having swallowed the label in 1983.     

 

Then, in the 1990s, whilst doing doctoral research at Warwick University, I was both a member of the philosophy department and not quite part of it. Registered as a part-time student, I was based in London rather than resident on campus or living nearby. I was also co-supervised by a professor in the English department and that made me a bit suspect to some in the philosophy department.

 

I knew (and quite liked) Nick Land and even produced some artwork for the magazine Collapse at his invitation, but, again, was never really one of Nick's gang or involved with the CCRU as they accelerated off into the future.        

 

Finally, and by way of another example, between 2004-08, I spent a good deal of time at Treadwell's, in Covent Garden, seemingly a key figure on the pagan witchcraft scene, presenting over thirty talks at the store during this period on subjects ranging from thanatology to zoophilia - as noted by Gary Lachman in an article for the Independent [3].    

 

But, once more, despite my ability to look at home in an esoteric environment, I always felt like an enemy within (just a little bit too sceptical, too cynical, and too insincere to ever really belong).   

 

IV. 

 

In conclusion: I am and I am not Leonard Zelig. 

 

Whilst he transforms physically to fit in, I'm more of an intellectual chameleon: in other words, he has no fixed look; I have no fixed ideas. 

 

In our own ways, however, we both haunt cultural history by being everywhere and nowhere at once, reflecting the mood and the madness of the times. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] The name Zelig is Yiddish of Germanic origin, meaning 'blessed' or 'happy' and has historically been associated with individuals considered to be favoured by a higher power.

 

[2] EDS is often caused by frontal lobe damage, often resulting from strokes, tumours, or degenerative diseases like dementia. Those with the condition not only copy the gestures and mannerisms of others, but also often use objects inappropriately; unable to resist the impulse to interact with their environment. Such behaviour, as one might imagine, can lead to awkward social situations and, in severe cases, can have serious consequences. 

 

[3] See Gary Lachman, 'Pagan pages: One bookshop owner is summoning all sorts to her supernatural salons', Independent (16 September 2007): click here.