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Although I’m a musician, I haven’t performed in public for 15 years. It’s not about lack of opportunity; even if you aren’t in a band there are plenty of open mic nights around if you want to grab an instrument and play. It’s mainly because of crippling stage fright, something I used to address with [more]
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This, by artist Alison Wilgus, is wonderful and terribly sad at the same time. It’s a comic about “mourning the versions of ourselves that will never exist.” There’s a narrative you hear a lot about people who come out: they always knew. And that’s true for many, but not all. Some of us take a [more]
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Writing in Bella Caledonia, Caitlin Logan describes the current backlash against trans people as evidence of widespread media failure. In Scotland, the conversation on trans rights started out as distinctly civil in comparison to our counterparts in England. Women’s organisations stood alongside LGBT campaigners in explaining why trans people can and should be included in [more]
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As Twitter continues to ignore calls to ban nazis from its platform, a leak provides one explanation: fear of collateral damage. Twitter fears that if it were to ban white supremacist hate speech, that might mean banning some US republican politicians. Politicians such as, er, the President of the United States. That fear only appears [more]
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Newspaper and internet scaremongering is so commonplace now that we’re numb to it, but we shouldn’t be. Some of this misinformation kills. The mainstreaming of anti-vaccination lunacy by newspapers such as the Daily Mail and later, idiots on social media, has seen vaccination levels drop and infection levels soar. In the UK, more than half [more]
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I haven’t linked to a good literary kicking for a while, so here’s Anna Leszkiewicz giving Bret Easton Ellis both barrels in The Guardian. There are too many good bits to quote them all, but these are some highlights: like a recently dumped partner ranting about their ex for 90 minutes before adding that they [more]
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Yesterday, the anti-trans group For Women Scotland accused publisher Laura Waddell of running a “misogynist blocklist” to prevent Twitter users from reading and replying to her posts. Like other claims the group makes – this is the same organisation that accused a cat of sectarianism a few weeks back – it wasn’t true. Like many [more]
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Greta Thunberg, the young woman at the centre of the current climate change protests, has been vilified by the usual suspects on social media. Brendan O’Neill of Spiked, reliably wrong about everything all the time and editor of a magazine funded at least in part by the climate change-denying Koch brothers, mocked her voice (she [more]
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There’s a deeply worrying article in The Guardian about the rise of child labour on the internet. Making videos of your kids might not seem like work, but it is: as one interviewee puts it, “it’s not play if you’re making money”. Child performers are subject to laws designed to protect them from exploitation not [more]
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I’m taking part in a special event to remember my friend Billy Samson on Saturday night (27 April). It’s at The Old Hairdresser’s in Glasgow and will feature many of Billy’s musical friends, me (and my glamorous assistant Kenny, bass player in our band) included. Entry’s free but we’ll be shaking buckets for the Help [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
