Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit.

News

  • Alex will be appearing at The Big Moo Fringe Festival 11th - 13th July 2008. This is a HUGE festival with loads of lovely things to do and see with over 250,000 people attending. No excuses, just turn up and have the best day you've had for ages - and all for free!

  • Once again Alex will be appearing at MK Poetry Kapow July 2008 at The Madcap Theatre to see if he can miss the last bus home. Come along and hear a wide range of poets with a broad selection of styles. (p.s. the wine is cheap and the biscuits are free - come on!)

  • The web site is due for a Spring clean and this will take place during May 2008. We're going to revamp the look to make it a bit brighter for the summer as well as to add some new sections for prose and arty bits. We're also adding the ability for you to HEAR the poems recited the way they should be and to SEE them read out too, woo hoo!

Alex Sykie - Biography

Alex Sykie was born in desparate times during the 1970s as a product of the breakdown of the marriage between his grand-parents.

His mother and father, although both male and physically sharing the same body are intellectually very different and have rarely been on speaking terms since the year before they both left school.

Alex has an unusual family pedigree which contributes somewhat to a romantiscm which in the past has been found very attractive to ladies albeit in a rather unhealthy manner. He is, geographically, an Englishman with Welsh, Irish, Gypsy, Jewish roots. His great-grandfather was a hawker (trans: an itinerant who went from door to door selling goods also known in England, perhaps unkindly, as a "rag and bone man") who spent virtually all of his life as a bare knuckle boxer and would win what were in his day considerable amounts of money fighting in travelling events like the Appleby Horse Fair. He squandered the only shred of respectability by chance when he lost a modest greengrocer's shop he owned in a game of cards forcing him to return to his horse and cart plying his trade from street to street.

With this kind of family folklore to prop up the early part of your childhood it's surprising that, so far, Alex has managed to remain out of prison and away from mental hospital although on some occasions it has been a quite narrow escape.

Intellectually Alex is a pastiche of many cultures and disclaims religious beliefs in favour of a whole world view which is most closely aligned to buddhism whilst being nothing at all like buddhism. Put simply; live and let live, do at least one good thing every day - just because you can. Tell no-one you did it.

Alex has an unhealthy penchant for absinthe which he mixes with many types of soft drink but can recommend coconut, lime and pineapple juice with a dash of Angostura bitters. Please ensure that if you attempt to do the same you only purchase genuine absinthe containing sufficient quantities of good quality Thujone or you are never likely to attempt to cut off your ear in the style of Vincent Van Gogh whilst singing "Vincent" (by Don McClean) out loud very badly at 2am accompanied by your ukelele, all of which Alex does regularly.

Worryingly, all of the above autobiography is entirely true.


Ian Barker, 14th July 2007.