The Art of Smoking

Are you a cigar, tab or rollie man then?
Smoking a cigar is like smoking a thin turd. I’m a Marlborough light man.

So what made you decide to instigate six degrees of smoking then?
Being a smoker, you find that you always lend your lighters to people and they disappear, but then at the end of the night you’ll end up with other random lighters in your pocket. I was in Venice and lent my lighter to a Finnish girl who was flying back the next day. I didn’t get it back and I started to think about the journey the lighter had made. England, to Italy, to Finland and with the possibility that it may find it’s way back to me one day. Hence the numbering and labelling of the lighters to track their travels.

What’s the furthest away that one of the lighters has got to?
Quite a few have made it to America, some to Korea and a couple making their way across the Middle East!

Has anyone you know been passed one back in a pub?
Not yet, but that would be a great conclusion to the project, and one of its main purposes. We’ll see….

Any interesting cigarette anecdotes?
One time when I was living in Nottingham I was in a club trying to impress a bird. I went to spark up and started toking at the wrong end of the cig! But she still came back to mine later! How is the bogeyball (literally a ball of two years worth of Ford’s nose guff)? Bogey Ball is sitting in a box on top of my wardrobe, waiting for the time when its crusty mucus appearance will truly be appreciated.

Are you still practising the occasional House Gymnastics?
Occasionally, but its more admin stuff and up-keep of the website now. Actually, the other day a Spanish education publishing house contacted me for some house gym photos because they wanted them in their latest learning book, which is to teach Spanish kids to read English! What!?

Tell us about a couple of your other current projects?
General Carbuncle is still slowly progressing (transforming a secondhand Capri into a British version of the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard, using thousands of toy cars). But my newest work is called Fruity Flies and Megasorearses, which is paintings and drawings of flies having sex for fun and dinosaurs being gay (which is why they died out). There’s also a selection of poems to accompany the works. Here’s one for LeftLion:

Ode to the Megasorearse
Eye spy with my reptilian eye, Dinosaurs thrusting until they die.
Could this be the reason they became extinct?
For if he’s potting the brown, He’s missing the pink.

Cheers for that! So are you still visiting Nottingham regularly?
Nottingham is like a haven to escape to from the smog and skank of London. I visit at the drop of a hat.

Do you think you could fight Robin Hood?
Robin Hood had some serious bow hunting skills, but his tights made his pecker vulnerable. One swift kick and he’d be crying like girl.