Yes, I know. It is the most horrific picture on here – and without any public warning whatsoever. I should be ashamed of myself. But please do make the 
most of it. When you have a photogenic rating as low as mine, you make pretty darn sure you don’t pose for pictures too often. This one taken outside of the Blackpool Combined Association’s Banquet and Ball at the Cliffs Hotel in 2009 is, I promise you, a rarity.
I won’t bore you with a complete life history going back to the war years and my birth in southeast London in 1943, nor tell you about my enlightening public school days spent in Winchester. It is suffice for me to reveal my life has throughout always remained just as unpredictable and explosive as those war years. Throughout my varied life I have always found the time to write, but only in my early years did I ever do it for the money, and sometimes by necessity under a whole host of fictitious names.
Fictitious names? Yes, in those days it was often the only way a man could get published in women’s magazines – a good source of revenue. Besides, what woman would buy a particular brassiere from a write-up by a man, even a gay one?
Since those early days there have been books published and countless articles written under my own name. Some of these, political ones, recently appeared online weekly under the title: ‘The Bitch!’ between 2001 and 2008 on the million hits a week website: ‘AstaBGay’ and themselves attracted in excess of 100,000 readers a week on site with an additional unknown number wherever it was syndicated.
Retiring to Blackpool in 2001, I continue to write. I enjoy writing – but lazily. Mostly these days I potter about doing various things to keep my mind occupied. I find pottering is enjoyable, and really it is a skill that is only attainable to any degree of perfection once one becomes a pensioner. At last! Maybe I have acquired a skill.
With All Best Wishes . . .
Michael.
