I’m helping my old friend Charlie Peverett with his new solo project Swan Steps, which has some beautiful songs. We recorded his first track ‘I’ll Be The Line’ live in Firle Village Hall and I made a lyric video, so here it is.

It’s shot on iPhone 4,  done in a single take, on the local train line between Norwich and Great Yarmouth, across the Broads.

I’ve added a new Tumblr feed called Bingo Memes, as a home for any stupid jokes (mostly political, mostly rude) that I throw onto the interwebz. A couple of them have already really taken off, especially this pic comparing Maria Miller to Caroline Lucas which went extremely viral (100k shares in 12 hours) a few weeks ago, just before I went on tour.

I guess it’s mainly an exercise to learn how to make them as good as possible, ahead of next year’s UK General Election.

Anyway here it is. I hope you enjoy
Bingo Memes

I’ve started a new art-based Tumblr photo feed called Art In The Open. I enjoyed running the daily feed for the Royal Pavilion & Museums last summer, so while I was touring I wanted to find a way to continue that process of noticing. So this is random pieces of public art and street art that I spot around the place.

Art In The Open

Obviously it’ll be more often updated when I’m on tour, since we cross paths with a lot more of that stuff when we travel. I hope you like it. If you do, please subscribe and share it.

Feels like the end of an era, or at least completing a weird personal journey: I’m done publishing loo photos. From Jan 1st 2010 to New Year’s Eve just gone, every new loo I went in (for whatever reason) was photographed, catalogued and published to Twitter and I still have no idea why. What started as a fun, daft project, quickly became a compulsion and in year three began to weigh like a burden.

Now, with no need to publish, it’s actually tough to stop myself taking the photos anyway. I admit both new loos I’ve been inside in 2013 are captured in my iphone. Perhaps deleting them will be the final closure on the project.

Anyway, today I finished constructing the final annual A YEAR IN LOO PRINT, collecting my 72 favourites from #loo2012. The prints were a spur of the moment idea that have become disconcertingly popular. Turns out there’s a nuts market out there for pictures of toilets and the first one sold out (an edition of 253) in a month. Then last year’s print would’ve sold out too, except for the whole box I lost (!) and 10 prints ruined when some guy leaned on them on the merch desk, with a camcorder (!!).

So here’s the new one. I have no idea if you still have appetite for toilet photos but this one is all British, slightly more greenish than previous prints and includes the original inspiration for the loo project, Gypo & Jo’s legendary loo on the Isle Of Man. It also features the first human; a cameo appearance from the mighty Jim Bob. You can order it in the SHOP.

Even now I’m not entirely done with loos: I’m currently running this daily Tumblr feed of loos in films and on TV. But obviously that’s not so personal and I feel significantly less invested.

OK, I honestly have no idea why this happened.

Summer 2012, from June 1 to August 31, I’m finding an image of a giraffe, photographing it and posting it via Instagram to Twitter (and now Facebook). The hashtag is #giraffesummer and quite a lot of other people have joined in, which is ace.

The giraffes won’t ever be prints or sold in any way and I won’t do it again, it’s just for fun and just this once.

In fact I’ve been deleting the images in my phone once they’re posted – because obviously many of them are actually other peoples’ creative work, I’m just snapping them. Anyway, you can find #giraffesummer on Instagram and Twitter. Enjoy.

I’ve made a new LOO PRINT which is on sale now in the shop and has sold about 33% already. Last year’s print was scarily successful and this one’s even slightly better – I’m well proud of this. It’s the same format, an A3 card digi-print showing my 72 favourite loos from #loo2011.

Just as last year, the new print is on uncoated 300gsm card in a signed, hand-numbered limited edition of 253. It’s slightly brighter coloured than last year – I guess I just found brighter loos through the year. And this time it also comes with an A4 printed b/w sheet identifying each loo – much more fun when you know where they are. Buy it in the shop now for £20 (including postage and packaging), while stocks last.

Meanwhile #loo2012 is picking up speed. I’m very pleased that recently I finally photographed Gypo and Jo’s loo in Port St Mary on the Isle Of Man, because that was the original inspiration for the loos. I’ll publish a whole series of photographs from that one loo next month.

In January 2010, I began taking a photo each time I went in a loo; posting them to Twitter with the hashtag #loo2010. At the end of the year I wanted to stop but hadn’t done enough trips overseas, so felt I had to keep going (new hashtag #loo2011) until I’d at least captured some European and North American loos. I caught 180 loos in 2010.

The original inspiration was the loo of my friends Gypo and Jo, in Port St Mary on the Isle Of Man. They decorated the walls and ceiling with countless little plastic trolls and also made a musical toilet roll dispenser. It’s a fantastic room, in fact their entire home has been so stunningly beautifully decorated in a mash-up of psychedelia, folk-art and kitsch, it’s like no other. Frustratingly I haven’t been back since I started, so it’s not been captured yet – but I will.

The vague rules are:
(1) Photos are usually the toilet itself or the cistern but (2) if there’s something more interesting, I’ll snap that instead. (3) There’s no connection to what I’ve been doing in the loo: often I’ll go in a loo not to use it, for example changing clothes in venues without dressing rooms, or washing hands. (4) I only capture a loo once; the first time I visit it, (5) unless it receives a major overhaul.

I can’t tell you why I started, or why I have to keep going, hopefully I’ll be able to stop at the end of 2011. I made a limited edition A3 card print – A Year In Loo – of 72 loos from 2010. It was an edition of 253 and there are a few left HERE. Partly this is to raise money to fulfil my dream of a loo photo book. I’ve taken a lot of ‘support’ photos nobody’s seen as well, of different details in the loos, so there is a lot of material.