Copy: The National 12/01/12 >> Really enjoyed Great Expectations on the BBC over the Christmas break, not least because I was intrigued to see how they decided to end it. Would they go with Dickens’ original, or the revised, ‘happier’ version, or their own? In the end...

Copy: Monocle December edition >> When I started out as a videogame journalist back in the late 1990s, I probably wouldn’t have predicted that 13 years later I would be travelling to the factory which makes the iconic black cab. In Coventry. But this was where Tyler Brûlé’s...

Copy: Creative Times 08/11/2011 >> I spotted a retro videogaming night in the Lass O’Gowrie pub in Manchester recently. A good idea – but an event called Get Into Gaming takes the notion of social videogaming one step further. Also in a pub, this time in Leeds, the idea is to...

Copy: The National, 2/11/11 >> The outpouring of grief surrounding Steve Jobs death was interesting. Was there the same public display of affection when John Logie Baird, inventor of the television, died in 1946? And with plays in New York and Los Angeles based on Jobs and Bill Gates,...

Copy: The National, 29/10/11 >> Here’s a suitably monstrous story for Halloween. Hoxton Street Monster Supplies in London has been running for nearly a year now, selling jars of Thickest Human Snot, balls of Fang Floss and, best of all, tins of Escalating Panic to ghoulish...

The annual festival in Liverpool seemed particularly timely this year, with the Arab Spring cropping up in nearly every conversation. Here’s a nice little snapshot of my time there, in The National. “I’d love people to come away thinking a bit differently, and that perhaps,...

Ed Vaizey’s talk at Cornerhouse recently reminded me that it wasn’t so long ago that the Arts Council made their hugely important funding decisions. And, as this piece explored, that was more painful for some organisations than others. “Over the years, we’ve had to be totally...