Welcome to I Dare Say
And thanks for taking an interest in my writing.
I haven’t been at this Substack lark for long, but it’s already proving to be a great place for thinking aloud, nostalgia, debate, connecting with other writers and general whataboutery (the good kind). I’m really glad to have you along for the ride.
Make yourself comfortable, browse the archive or just tut at the photo thumbnails and move along. I live to serve.
A bit about me: I started writing at *cape swish* the turn of the century when I arrived in London with a shiny face and quite empty pockets. Life was simple then. I lived on cottage cheese sandwiches and chased my dream of working in television.
After about two years, it became apparent that working in television wasn’t as dreamy as I’d hoped and my attention drifted to emailing friends to tell them how bored I was. (I was not employee of the month.)
Those emails lead to my writing being thrust in front of a very open minded editor at the Guardian who started to offer me the occasional scrap of work, previewing TV for the Guide. (God rest its beautiful soul.) I learned to write there really, absorbing (copying) the boldness of some of the brilliant and much more experienced writers I was published alongside.
I decided to take writing seriously, so I trained as a sub-editor at the London College of Printing in my spare time and worked as a film and TV extra to pay the rent. (I promise I will write about this some day. It was quite the ride.)
Cut to twenty-blah years later and I’m a freelance writer and broadcaster (plus podcaster but that’s everyone on earth) living in London. I’ve written for The Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Stylist, Mother & Baby, Red Magazine, Pilot TV, The Mirror, Evening Standard, Noble Rot, The Big Issue, iPaper, TV Years, Cosmopolitan, Easy Living, Film Four, Radio Times, Newsweek and probably some other I’ve forgotten. Twenty years is ages.
I love writing even when I don’t and I’ve just finished writing my first novel.
What I love most about Substack is how surprised I am by what I write here sometimes. The TV reviews, rants about comedy and thoughts about predatory men in showbusiness (sorry, there are quite a lot of those) have been interspersed with some quite personal stuff that I didn’t know had been brewing.
I literally don’t know what I’m going to say next. The freedom is dizzying.
Thanks so much for signing up (if you did) and please consider one of the paid subscriptions if you’d like to support (my) independent journalism. But it’s good to have you here, either way.