local people

I keep catching this programme on Resonance about 'sound poets'. All that is required of sound poets, it seems, is the ability to stand in front of a mike and generally act like a retard. But what do I know? I didn't even know that Henri Chopin, one of the greats, and a friend of William Burroughs, used to live in Ingatestone, just down the road. Judging by the wordless spluttering, snorting and gabbling going on in this programme, it seems unlikely that the people of Ingatestone would have held him in high regard. One can't imagine a yearly festival in his honour, for example. Still, this is by far the most interesting thing I have ever heard about Ingatestone, and now I want to know more. But this endlessly repeated programme keeps promising that that next week's edition will be a Henri Chopin special. And next week never comes.

In the meantime I turn on Paul O'Grady to find former schoolmate (three years below me), friend of the family (my Mum knows his Mum) and old mucker (me and Justin and Kevin and Chris were on the periphery of the group he used to hang around with) Stephen Emery (now Moyer) sitting there on the sofa, reading out the name of a competition winner from Wigan. Weirdly, this seems to confirm his celebrity status and - simultaneously - to bring him right back down to earth.

He isn't really on earth any longer, of course: he lives in LA, and is now an immortal vampire (in the series True Blood, at least). Having gone from 'jobbing actor' to star, he has now 'passed over' into that other realm. I am not in the least envious, preferring to have success on my own terms, terms which, to the casual observer, may suggest something a little closer to 'failure'. But now it's time to start 'recovering' those youthful memories of S. Moyer, which I suspect will materialise in the form of tabloid exclusives. Serves him right for raping my goldfish in 1987.

But that's another story. Twenty-five grand to you.