Sketch Diary: Creepy Krakow

You know you're having an unusual holiday when someone switches the light on in the youth hostel at 5am and a man you've heard trying to molest your friend turns out to be a mad German pensioner in his pants.

Click on the image if you're man enough.

Sketch Diary: Orthopaedo

An attractive blonde physiotherapist calls me into her office.
Hmm...she's nice.
She orders me to take my clothes off.
Ooh...interesting...
She has really cold hands.
Oh.
She assesses how enfeebled my shoulder joint has become and prescribes some light rotator cuff exercises.

Sketch Diary: Facebook

Hey, why's that chap holding his book right up to his face in Archway's finest Irish booze-nest, The Mother Red Cap?

Is he: a) reading the most engrossing book ever; b) so long-sighted he has to feel the words with his eyes to read them; or c) cunningly hiding the fact he is totally pissed up and asleep?

Sketch Diary: Disclocation, dislocation, dislocation

Like Guido Fawkes' confession signature, this drawing was forced out in pain, and with my wrong hand. The things I do for you anonymous web-sods.

I have dislocated my shoulder, for the third time. Unlike the previous times, I was given gas, morphine, and a wheelchair, all fairly quickly. But, despite my protests, I was also fully conscious when they squelched my humerus back into my body.

Sketch Diary: Speedo Muncher

July: I had a lovely holiday in France. Unfortunately my enduring memory is this mulleted speedo-Nazi enforcing his 'speedos-only' rules on the poor speedo-clad freaks of Grenoble (i.e Speedo-land). He actually chucked me out of the swimming pool for wearing swimming shorts, the fucker. All because my genitals weren't packed into a little Lycra sac like his.

Click on the image for the full-fat effect.

Sketch Diary: Tiny Tom and The Angry Scot

Here is an artist's impression of how small I felt after being told off for not helping a very elderly woman struggling with a huge suitcase.

"Ye wouldne even lift your feet up, for an auld lady?" her husband bellowed at me.
I had been daydreaming, wondering if she was going to topple over. It was actually someone else's legs that were in the way, but I felt awful.

"He wouldne even lift his feet up," he boomed, to the whole carriage. "For an auld lady."

"Sorry" I squeaked, but it was too high-pitched and quiet for anyone to hear. It took me until lunchtime to return to normal size.

Sketch Diary: Real Arse Festival

Here's a sketch of an unintentionally hilarious auction on stage at the Great British Beer Festival in Earl's Court.

Two walking stereotypes, pregnant with ale, flogged assorted junk to around 100 drunk students and fat nerds. One provided the banter - a mixture of misogynistic jokes and anti-Budweiser preaching - the other just held up the items, and scowled at the crowd.

Memorable items included:

A bag of 100 beer mats, assorted brands
An untested Grolsch bar light without a plug
A used beer towel, 'needs a rinse'

One lunatic was even mad enough to bid for 'a night out in Horsham with me and Phil for some beer, some more beer, and then possibly even more beer.'
Oh yeah and I spewed on a train on the way home. Damn them and their stinking 7 per cent filth.

Sketch Diary: Thou shalt stop shaving, and be mad

Hello, like, freakazoid alert!
This man has been wandering up and down Hammersmith Road for a couple of days, solemnly displaying a peculiar spiritual message. I advised him that he really should rethink his communication strategy. His message could reach a far wider audience using social networking websites, such as Facebook, or Twitter, rather than scrawling on a cardboard tray.

I didn't really! I crossed the road to get away from him.

SKetch Diary: Gym Junkies

I have taken advantage of a government scheme designed for fat diabetic crack whores and joined a gym. Luckily it appears to be a lame person's gym, full of other people walking round pretending to stretch and scratch and do anything except lug the huge heavy iron blocks up and down. There's even people just standing there having their buttocks vibrated for them by a big machine.

Sketch Diary: Is One Year Old

I drew this while vibrating slightly on a long hot train journey so it's not bad. And those are meant to be moles on my face, not splodges of poo or skin cancers.

It's been about a year since I started the sketch diary, and about six months since I chucked it all online. It's been an overwhelming success - the pages of the sketch diary have been viewed 1,805 times. That's more than the number of metres in a mile!

I've received at least several emails from fans and don't at all feel like I'm clogging up the Internet with pointless pictures of my own face. I'm guessing the anniversary of the sketch diary is likely to be celebrated by Time Magazine, but they haven't confirmed anything yet.

Sketch Diary: Zonked up Zooty Boy

I stumbled across this joker at 7am, all pale and yellow and apparently dead, in the middle of the pavement in Archway.

Luckily his brain wasn't oozing sticky crimson gunk after a bike crash. His fed-up looking mate was explaining to passers by: 'He's just had too much to drink,' while texting something - possibly:

Daz tk 3 zootie beans n is MONGED up BIG TIME on cressida rd. Wat a dick. come n look LOL

Sketch Diary: Primrose Hill Ponces

I sometimes envy the trendy indie kids of London, always looking resplendent in their tight bohemian costumes from Topman.
Then you realise the trendies still have to wear the tiny jeans and weird shiny clogs on a lovely hot day, and they look like stupid preening sissies because they can't kick a football or bend their legs properly.

Sketch Diary: The Doors of Perception

I saw this unfair but amusing reflection of myself as I came home from work, a bit boozy, on Friday evening. Click on the image to make it larger. Please, come on, click on it.

PLEASE!

Actual Diary: Mega-stardom, at last

I've been given the opportunity to illustrate a short story and contribute to alittlepoison.com. It's a pretty little site for a bunch of people in London who, like me, ooze creative slime and would like a place to smear it.

Here's my first illustration for them: The River of Life

Sketch Diary: Smoking Bin

Here's evidence of Hammersmith's nicotine-addled office workers, hundreds of whom simultaneously dump their burning death sticks into a bin by the tube station as they rush home. It reminded me a bit of the smoking thing that mental Pope dude waves about.

Sketch Diary: Greenway is.. Grap

Sorry about the considerably lower standard of drawing here.

This is my 'refreshingly honest' marketing campaign for the Greenway Walkway that runs from Hackney to Newham.


Newham's Mayor, Sir Bobby Spittle, says:

"Come to Greenway, a dead-straight tarmac path cutting through Newham's overgrown industrial wasteland and scrap yards. Try and escape the heavy stink of sewage as it follows you down the path's six, long miles! When you get to the end, you'll find yourself in a field, miles from anywhere, with some horses tied up, and wonder why it is advertised as a nice walk on the Walk London website. See you there!"

Sketch Diary: Poopy Time

I abseiled down a 100ft castle turret as part of a birthday suprise that was so fun, I won't be able to make my usual sneering, cynical, miserable little comments about how crap everything is.

I doubt I actually looked this scared as I lowered myself through the medieval trapdoor of doom, but you get the idea. Poopy time.

Sketch Diary: Park Tavern

Here is an incoherent old drunk from one of the grimmest pubs in my area, the Park Tavern.

Instead of telling him to shut up, I've drawn an unflattering picture of him and posted it on an obscure corner of the Internet. That'll teach him. Although I can't imagine him doing anything with a computer other than just shouting: "Karmo' ya cunt" at it.

He was the landlord apparently.

Sketch Diary: Gonad Bay

Studland, Dorset. Passing through the famous nudists' section of the beach, you may see the odd flesh-coloured figure lying in the bushes, enjoying the breeze on their balls.
Trying to find a shortcut to the car, I got lost in the sand dunes. There roamed a different species of naturist, popping up occasionally on small vantage points above the heather. They wear T-shirts, sun-hats, backpacks. But no pants. They are slightly creepier.

Go on, click on the image, you might find a willy.

Sketch Diary: G20 Riot

A pathetic two sketches in the whole of March and then... Woo hoo! Civil unrest and police brutality come along on April 1st.


I went along to the G20 Meltdown protest after work and got close enough to see a guy get his head smashed against a police van, which deep down was kind of why I went I think.

With hundreds of other curious office workers and some posh stoners, I explored the outer perimeter of the police 'kettle' and ran away every time the terrifying riot police came anywhere near me.

I'd love to do a big sketch to capture the whole exhilarating scene around the Bank of England but I can't be arsed.

[Update] Actually I can.

Sketch Diary: Like A Sex Machine

It's mid-afternoon on the Victoria line and this odd chap gets up, shows me a thick wad of a dozen or so condoms in his wallet, and flashes a dirty smile. I don't know which facial expression to select, and I just look into his eyes, blankly. Then he's off, he's gone.

Pretty weird stuff, even by Finsbury Park standards.

Sketch Diary: Sorry

Nothing sketch worthy at all this week. I'm testing out some new fancy pencils with a drawing of a man I see every morning, who organises the bus chaos in Hammersmith station. He is noteworthy only for having a very evil face. Like an Aphex Twin remix of Jim Rosenthal.

He seems like quite a jovial, nice guy, I should add.

Sketch Diary: The Umpire

BEHOLD! A fat girl in a puffa jacket, on an umpire's chair.



No, not more conceptual art. Some local yoofs have discovered that the table tennis/squash area of Finsbury Leisure centre makes an excellent hangout to eat chicken and shout at each other.

Still, it's better than a hut in the woods, where I used to hang out when I was her age. (Boo Hoo)

Sketch Diary: Shit-Art: shit art.

I don't want to sound like the kind of person who says 'all modern art is rubbish,' but within a fortnight I've seen two video installations that feature people rambling incoherently and actually eating shit.

What I find most interesting is all the people who shuffle in, pretend for a few seconds to feel something other than total bemusement, then walk out again, reading the impenetrable guff in the leaflet, looking thoughtful.

Click on the image to see the filth close up, which I quite enjoyed drawing.

Sketch Diary: Silly Billy

On Saturday morning I woke and thought it would be nice to run the 0.77 miles to the shops to get a paper. It was an idiotic decision. I soon remembered I hate jogging, and I'm never doing it again. Then, later, I broke my brand new £2.49 Dunlop Tournament Pro table tennis paddle. I still feel physically sick with grief and fury.

Sketch Diary: The March of The Miserable

Clibbetty cloppetty, clibbetty cloppetty.


This is a sketch of my daily trudge out of the clammy, flourescent funk of the Underground, toward the icy orange drizzle of the evening. We all want to get home, but can only coordinate this painfully slow shuffle towards the buses.

I often contemplate whether the destruction of the entire world would be such a bad thing at this point in my commute home. But only for a few minutes! I'm fine by the time I get home, after I've had a little cry.

Sketch Diary: Huge Jeep, Headbutt, Headache

My ten-minute jolly to Tesco Metro Hammersmith at lunchtime has sadly become the most fruitful time of the week for sketch diary material. On Wednesday, I slipped and smashed my head into a parked Range Rover.

Ok, Snow and Ice, we had fun, but it's been three days. You can fuck off now.

Sketch Diary: The Great Blizzard of '09

In direct contrast to the last post, this looks exciting, but wasn't really . The tricky bit was keeping the sledge moving above that crucial speed called 'not moving at all'.

Sketch Diary: Sport and Leisure

Not even a sexy angle and some keerrraaaazzy perspective can make table tennis look exciting, but it is.

Sketch Diary: Idiot head

I'm still chuckling to myself about this guy. Well, not now. I'm talking to myself on a blog about chuckling to myself I mean. I had to document what was quite possibly the worst haircut I will ever see. Presumably he had just come from a poncey photo-shoot, or maybe even walked straight off the end of a catwalk, without questioning what the fuckers had done to him.

And all of a sudden I forgive London again. What twat-tastic treats you give us.

Sketch Diary: The Corpse Museum

On Saturday I just totally lost my mind and skinned some bloke. I stood up his slimy cadaver and positioned it so he was holding up his own skin and looking at it. Then I masturbated.

Not really. But a German professor called Gunther von Hagens has done pretty much exactly that (the wanking bit is unconfirmed). In fact he's been skinning people, messing around with dead babies and pickling cocks since 1975. He's not even been put in a mental home or anything. I paid £14 to go and have a look at some of his work/victims at the O2 Arena in Greenwich.

Sketch Diary: Drums of Death

Shoreditch, London. Chubby Scottish DJ 'Drums of Death' (Colin Bailey) shouting in a pseudo-american accent over dance music, with his 'trademark' 'wacky' facepaint.

When your in my hut/ HUH!/ you know whats up!/
You know the urge I'm feelin'/ I've got the things you're needin'/YAAAOOWWW!!!!

Technoplebs in the crowd absolutely loving it.

Me, despairing, resenting all humans. All of you.

Sketch Diary: Orthodox Badgers

In the great human fauna of London, these guys are like badgers. Funny-looking, and always a bit exciting to spot. On Cazenove Road in Stoke Newington, I was lucky to see many of its large Torah Jewish community hanging around after a sesh in the Synagogue. This guy was just staring into space, maybe daydreaming about wearing a baseball cap backwards and running amok.
There are lots of Muslims living there too, and I tried to think of something poignant to say about the current situation in the Middle East. I couldn't, but soon got to my friend's flat in Clapton to watch Man U batter Chelsea 3-0.

Sketch Diary: The Dawn of 2009

MERRY STUFF AND HAPPY NEW THINGYS! WOOHOO! LOL.



I stumbled out into the dazzling morning sunshine of 2009 mute drunk (not blind) and utterly dependent on my friends. Somehow they seem to like, know where we are and stuff...and how to get home...(Belch).
I probably would have found a skip to die quietly in without them.

This was the intimidating view I took in as I realised I'd been on a labyrinthine council estate in Bethnal Green since the early hours of the morning.

Look at my excellent use of perspective and the painstaking detail. Shame the flats actually look quite nice, too, 'cos they were fucking horrible.