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Articles by Jimmy Andrex
How social media is ruining us - part one
Once upon a time, back in some Eden-like, prelapsarian state, around 2010, I remember starting to use social media to keep in touch with ‘flesh-and-blood-yes-I’ve-actually-met-them’ friends and to publicise events I was putting on, and it was brilliant. I used Facebook and Twitter and could reach about 400 people every time I posted, who were, crucially, the people who might be interested. And, guess what: They turned up to events. Now, it’s just there to make you angry. That’s how it works.
Bylines Network poetry competition to announce winners
From the Book of Genesis, to greetings cards, therapy and even abusive notes pinned to a workplace door, poetry is the ultimate human expression. You don’t need equipment, facilities or collaborators and it’s cheap. At times of trauma and grief, we turn to poetry. When we’re looking for meaning or truth, we turn to poetry. When we’re trying to sell breakfast cereal, we turn to poetry.
Super League shake-up: haven’t we been here before?
If social media is to be believed, rugby league is on its deathbed – and only the Australian National Rugby League (NRL) can save it. Pundits and commentators (all of whom work for interested parties) are unanimous in their view: unless there is another shake-up, along the lines of the original Super League in 1996, “the game will die”. Again.
Hamlet Hail to the Thief
You’ve got to feel sorry for Shakespeare. A writer so gifted and celebrated that everyone ever since, especially directors, has felt inspired to put meaning into his words rather than letting the meaning of his words come out. So, it’s with a mixture of feverish excitement and trepidation that one approaches this mixture of The Bard and Radiohead.
Pie of the Week 2025: Thirsk Garden Centre
Why is this a story about pies? Shouldn’t this piece, celebrating five years of Bylines, be a thoughtful polemic about Trump, Brexit or Nigel Farage. Or, more fashionably, shouldn’t I be reducing debates about public spending, geopolitics and culture wars to an AI-generated meme of Keir Starmer as Fred West wielding a chainsaw? Or something. The answer’s simple: pies unite us. Veggie or carnie, gay or straight, left or right, there’s comfort and joy in something warm in a pastry crust.
Things Meta’s algorithms think I’m interested in…
Bernard Manning. Formula One. Spanish Football. AI articles about Tycho Brahe having a false nose. People jumping off things. Indians accidentally setting fire to themselves. Aircraft taking off and landing some of which aren’t real. Formula One, again. Classic military aircraft. Football fan banter. People nearly having accidents. More military aircraft. Cancelled military aircraft. Former World War Two Cold War Transport aircraft. Old photos of towns nowhere near me.
Ark: United States v Laurie Anderson
“When my father died We put him in the ground When my father died It was like a whole library Had burned down.” OK. You’re a 77-year-old widow faced with the dread that comes with climate crisis, AI, threats of nuclear destruction, genocide, Musk, Trump and fascism? How do you respond? If you’re Laurie Anderson, you throw yourself fearlessly into and at the technology and create until you make something beautiful out of the chaos.
The Boggarts: Give Peat a Chance
What’s poetic about a bog? Surely they’re damp, unattractive and have you up to your knees in ‘interesting’ liquid? Well, not so, say some of the North’s top writers as they seek to challenge that stereotype. Give Peat A Chance will be an anthology of prose and poetry by some of the country’s top writers including Amy Liptrot, Alys Fowler, Pascale Petit, David Morley and Rob McFarlane.
Small music venues: from sticky floors to champagne supernovas
Oasis? Ticketmaster? Dynamic pricing? You can keep it, suckers. Yesterday, I walked into my local record shop, paid SIX QUID, (yes, six quid, probably less than the booking fees for a stadium gig), and then popped into town to see as good a gig as you could ever want. And I was home by 10:15pm. Result.
Barbecue in a thunderstorm: canvassing for Labour in 2024
At least, it is in Ecclesfield. Formerly a rural village that got eaten by the Industrial Revolution, this North Sheffield suburb is again, constitutionally at least, considered a rural village. Lumped into Penistone and Stocksbridge by whim of the Boundary Commission, it’s something of a bellwether seat for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
Things can only get better as Sunak announces general election
A wet nerd in a wet suit drowned out by protesters, saying stuff no one can hear that doesn’t make any difference. I wish I could think of metaphors like that. Drowning in more ways than one; no one could hear but they’d heard it all before anyway. Thank God for portable PAs, I say. Without the Benny Hill theme and Things Can Only Get Better, we’d be left with just bots, prats and publicists. we had a good run at Downing Street but both and amplifiers got soaked and blown.
English Teacher: Young, gifted and Tykes
Showered with 5-star reviews, Leeds’ finest produce, English Teacher a Northern classic that looks forwards in a retro-facing world. The album release of last year, so the lumbering press juggernaut would have had you believe, was the Rolling Stones Hackney Diamonds. Reviews were favourable, given the coffin-dodging antics of the Glimmer Twins, Jagger and Richards, and the passing of their well-loved drummer, Charlie Watts.
In schools, wokery works: who knew?
The school where teachers never shout at children. You can imagine the reaction across certain sections of the Express-reading/GB News/anti-woke demographic upon reading that headline. I will leave the ‘what kids need today …’ conversation to your imagination because you’ll have heard it many times. Thing is though, I was a teacher for 34 years, most of it in schools in some of Britain’s more challenging postcodes.
Steve Pottinger: Postcards from the Fall of Home
It’s a great title, though I’m not sure I like it. It gives off a clever-clever vibe out of kilter with the emotionally intelligent content. But first, to declare my interest. I’ve liked Steve Pottinger and his work for years, so what follows has to be seen through a filter of pre-existing admiration. This is his seventh collection of poetry to go along with the three biographies of Midlands 80s punk survivors like Tezz Roberts of Discharge and Ross Lomas of GBH.
Huddersfield does a Proper Job of Beowulf
What! A puissant female Beowulf? A torchlit procession? A live longship bewildering down the nave? Epic is the only epithet. And you’ve missed it. What! One of the oldest words in our language. An expletive ejaculation often used in medieval verse to quell the crowd and command attention. What! It’s also the opening word of this epic production by aptly-named theatre company Proper Job.
Wonky Animals will save the world!
This may be an exaggeration. However, it’s a good one. This Thursday, to celebrate National Poetry Day and World Animal Day, Candlestick Press will be launching their Twenty-One Poems About Wonky Animals pamphlet in a superb online event. An exceptional line up of award-winning poets including Jane Burn, Clare Shaw, Caleb Parkin, Linda France and Kathryn Bevis will be reading their wonky animal poems in a special online event.
Roger Whittaker: godfather of punk?
“EYZASHIPLAHZRIGANREDDYINAH-HAAABOOOOO!” Free & Easy night in a club in the 1970s. Anywhere north of Leicester Forest East. The waves of cigarette smoke. The organist paid in ale. John from the cricket club is leaning against the wall by the organ. His chin in his chest, he gives murderous vent to the week’s travails at British Ropes in his weekly assault on Roger Whittaker’s The Last Farewell. Whittaker died this week aged 87 and his passing was largely unheralded.
Painting Over Suella Mouse
I have a dream that one day all the food banks will be gone: The lost souls supping by Chantry Bridge will have support Or collect trolleys in Morrisons to a hero’s welcome; There’ll be a school recorder orchestra in every former sink estate driving the parents mad playing a quarter tone flat; And people will come out on Wednesdays to clap carers, bus drivers and that lady with the lisp in the Coop who labours; I have a dream today; a tatty thing with feathers, I have a dream.
By-election notebook: the ‘hopefuls’
There’s nothing like a by-election. Activists get excited and take off into nearby constituencies like biddies on a Saga holiday. Media outlets send posh boys into sink towns searching in vain for Red Wall savages and pubs that Guy Ritchie would reject as too clichéd. Best of all, the ‘independents’ come out from under whichever rock they’ve been hiding and, in the sunlight of public exposure, manage the neat trick of making a £500 deposit disappear overnight.
Poetry for the people by Jezza and Len
Well, I didn’t see that coming. What are we to make of the news that Jeremy Corbyn and Len McLuskey are launching a poetry collection? First, the facts. On 15 June, The Guardian reported that Jeremy Corbyn and Len McLuskey – the dynamic duo – were to publish “an ‘accessible’ poetry collection” on 14 November.
What’s happened to BBC News?
What has happened to the BBC News? And I don’t mean the usual bias thing for all the Twitter trolls out there. This is worse. I mean, once upon a (revisionist) time, TV news featured the head and shoulders of a posh white bloke, often without hair*, sternly intoning headlines with the occasional photo in the top left background. If the photo were of a union leader, he’d have his mouth open and be jabbing a finger to emphasise a point.
Directions to the Sunlit Uplands
Get a better paid job, get a second job, wear an extra jumper, eat for 30p, swim in shit, live with Covid, don’t call an ambulance, live without fresh fruit and veg, stop buying lattes and Netflix, live with your parents, stop talking down Britain, stop ruining Brexit and shut up. Get a better paid job, get a second job, get a third job, wear four jumpers, eat turnip peel, swallow Twitter sewage, forget Covid, what’s a hospital?
Save our Stories: good teenagering at East Leeds’ Chapel FM
The place is so busy, it’s hard to park. The Chapel FM arts centre is clearly a venue with a difference. One, it’s FoodCycle night: free meals made with supermarkets’ discarded food for local consumption and social cohesion. Upstairs, locals of all ages are in the final stages of rehearsal for Save our Stories, a community play celebrating Seacroft’s ‘Home From Home’ spaces. The premiere is a week away and when you walk into the rehearsal several things strike you as unusual.
Gary Lineker: when did speaking the truth become a sackable offence?
In an ever-changing world, at least there are some things you can rely on: Suella Braverman frames breaking international law as merely “a novel interpretation of the law”. Conservatives believe that immigration will win them the next election. A government minister thinks a freelance presenter working for the BBC shouldn’t express opinions about anything except football.
Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists: Whose Round Is It Anyway?
REVIEWER HEALTH WARNING: I already love PPP (Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists). Seeing their previous show at Edinburgh in 2017 was a life-changing experience. Three stars of the spoken-word circuit assembled a greatest hits show linked by the conceit of three friends talking about life in a pub. It was an object lesson in how to take spoken word to another level of audience engagement. Sort of like Mamma Mia with poems only with no Pierce Brosnan messing it up.
An attempt to make sense of a brutal murder
One Sunday evening, with overwhelming Monday in prospect, Vera, for once, couldn’t talk down the gun-toting suspect. Instead, he denied everything, lawyered up, all poker-faced And his counsel tore apart the largely circumstantial case. As a result, his daily Tik Tok woke conspiracy message Made him a hero for incels and boys groping for rites of passage.
Yorkshire poet puts words into action on Ukraine
On 12 January, the Hebden Bridge writer, whose fourth collection of poems Towards a General Theory of Love was published last year by Bloodaxe Books, is organising an online show to raise money for Artists in Exile. This small voluntary organisation seeks to place Ukrainian artists with UK hosts. Also on the bill of poetry notables are George Szirtes, Roy McFarlane, Samar Shazad, Dr Golnoosh Noor, Horatio Clare and Sasha Dovzhyk.
Think tank economists could learn from Wakefield’s entrepreneurs
Austerity bled wealth out of us for a decade, Trussonomics haemorrhaged prosperity like blood in a splatter movie, and Rishinomics … well, best hide behind the settee. However, in Wakefield, people who actually work for a living and run businesses are finding better motivations to try and turn a buck and create real prosperity. Wakefield entrepreneurs do things differently Alan Nutton runs Wah Wah Records, a vinyl shop in Wakefield.
The Ethical World Cup Guide
In protest at the dubious morality of awarding the FIFA men’s World Cup to Qatar, Jimmy Andrex has been pointedly ignoring every second of the football matches which have been on his TV this week. Watching the World Cup with a conscience You know what? Whatever you’re thinking, you probably have a point.
Tofu-Eating Wokerati worship at the Marina Hyde altar of sanity and wit
I know it panned out badly with Gary Glitter, but I still want to be in Marina Hyde’s gang. During the Q&A she asserted that “Satire never changed anything. We don’t have revolutions in this country, just jokes”. So what’s the point? Marina Hyde: What Just Happened? The Grauniad’s satirist-in-chief was in Sheffield last night to promote her new book, What just happened? (published by Guardian Faber). The audience, about a 60/40 female/male split was mainly older and greyer.
Ukrainian musicians tour UK to spread awareness and raise money
Ira Lobanok is one half of Krapka; Koma, an electronic pop duo from Lviv. I met her five years ago via the nationwide EMOM (electronic music open mic) movement. Back then my initial impression was entirely aesthetic: smart music from interesting people. Their website was full of quirky t-shirt designs. They looked like people with a slightly wider vision than simply getting up on stage.
Deeper down the rabbit hole of Liz Truss poetry
At the end of August (remember, when it used to be a slow news month?), I did a piece about some bizarre pro-Truss poems that were circulating on that internet they have now. I proceeded cautiously, as I’m no fan of punching down at people who can’t spell or understand data. And because, this being that internet they have now, nothing is real except fakery. In doing so I descended not so much down a rabbit-hole, as a portal into dark underbelly of the human psyche. So you didn’t have to.
Has the emergence of Liz Truss stimulated a new type of poetry?
Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong. I went there so you don’t have to. Poetry’s greatest strength (and weakness) is its accessibility. Anyone can do it. Anywhere. Anytime. You can probably see where this is going. The only artform comparable to poetry is standup.
Pie of the Week: Lightfoot Wines, Wentworth (AKA: Levelling UpTM for idiots)
Whilst Conservative members (at least the few who live in the UK and any who’ve registered abroad), are busying themselves with satanic rituals in woodland clearings to decide who this news-cycle’s PM is to be, the rest of us will be seeking relief from the traumatic doomscroll-yourself-to-depression times in which we live.
Wakefield by-election journal: volume 4 (tech, lies and video crews on the trail of Wakefield Man)
Andy Burnham in a cardie! Ed Miliband in a t-shirt! Wakefield has a Labour MP again! For those who campaign in various ways against it, bringing down the Johnson government is like trying to destroy the Death Star with Weetabix. So, after the weekend after the by-election before, where are we now? Too many people make rather obvious statements that are so unprovable and/or undeniable that I found myself turning, as a poet should, to the power of word and poetry.
Wakefield by-election journal: volume three
I’ve not been out much in this election. Two weeks of Covid-19 plus a week in the Lake District have rendered me an even more marginal presence than usual. However, it’s six days before polling day as I write this, it’s 33 degrees, I’ve skipped breakfast and I’m leafleting in Wakefield Rural. This is a mistake. Not politically: as revealed last time, this election seems to have been decided elsewhere.
Wakefield by-election journal: volume two
I missed my chance. The moment’s passed. Opportunity knocked but drove off in a rented Micra. Back in April, I canvassed an estate in Wakefield Rural ward that I last visited during the 2019 election. For various domestic reasons, I haven’t canvassed much this year, so what I found was a shock. Support for Labour in Wakefield Back in 2019, canvassing only the ‘promise’ vote (people who’ve previously said they’d vote for you), about one in four said they’d vote Labour. Brexit had done its stuff.
Wakefield by-election journal: volume two
I missed my chance. The moment’s passed. Opportunity knocked but drove off in a rented Micra. Back in April, I canvassed an estate in Wakefield Rural ward that I last visited during the 2019 election. For various domestic reasons, I haven’t canvassed much this year, so what I found was a shock. Support for Labour in Wakefield Back in 2019, canvassing only the ‘promise’ vote (people who’ve previously said they’d vote for you), about one in four said they’d vote Labour. Brexit had done its stuff.
Wakefield by-election journal: volume one
This week on Levelling Down Street: kicking off the Wakefield by-election, the Adam Smith-quoting vent-act parachuted in to be a Johnson nodding-dog MP turned out to be a predatory sex-offender. Meanwhile, the constituency Labour party executive committee decided the best way to confront a cost-of-living crisis on behalf of the struggling masses was to stage a pointless gesture at their own hustings which Johnson’s Conservatives can use in their election leaflets.
Carry on spaffing: why did the chicken cross the road?
Ooohh missus, a funny thing happened to me this morning on the way to the all-party committee on equal opportunities. I saw that Imran Ahmad Khan: is he still an MP? Ooohhhhhhh! Behave! Why did the chicken cross the road? To avoid being interviewed by GMTV. Why did the chicken cross the road? I’d rather wait until the final report is produced. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because woke lefties won’t let police-drown black immigrants any more. Why did the chicken cross the road?
It’s not cricket, Jacob
“You can’t have a show without Punch”, my Dad used to say. With the Conservatives in tatters, defending the indefensible, tortuous apologism trotted out daily to try and minimise the scale of moral corruption at the heart of their government, it would have been surprising had JRM not popped up with another patronising homily to remind us to know our place and stop carping.
The Great British Rail Sale
This week, whilst the world burned and people couldn’t pay their bills, Grant Shapps the transport minister made a promotional video for a PR stunt that benefits nobody and shows just how desperate the Conservatives have become. Oh goody goody goody Grant Shapps in a hoodie Tory Boy’s in a wacky advert I’m struggling for breath WTAF But at least it distracts from their perverts. He says “Take a trip!” “These fares are a snip!” It’s an outtake from Nathan Barley.
Imran Ahmad Khan: predatory coercion, unintended comedy and a routine conviction
If only everything in life was this certain. To anyone following the trial of Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan, the jury’s decision, after only a couple of hours’ deliberation, came as no surprise at all. Brexit may have propelled Ahmad Khan into parliament after his last-minute selection (only three weeks before the 2019 election), but it couldn’t save him from a guilty verdict at Southwark Crown Court.
Can Yorkshire’s forgotten game-changing gameshow give culture war clues?
You can’t say anything nowadays can you? So runs the mating cry of culture warriors everywhere, it seems. But is there any truth in it? If you want to use racist language unchallenged and without consequences, maybe there is some truth in it.
what does this actually mean?
What do you actually mean by that? If you see an adult with a metal detector, you know that something’s terribly wrong. If you hear a Tory on about statues, you know it won’t be long Before we’re mentioned… We’re The Woke Mob, apparently, the cause of all your problems. We don’t have chants or banners, we just hum fey indie anthems.
Yard Act are selling albums in a Leeds car park. This is how you get to number one, apparently
Is this the corporate machine? Or Hemsworth Market on a Wednesday? Given that the albums sold from cardboard boxes in the Brudenell car park last week could propel Leeds indie band Yard Act to No1 on the UK charts, it’s probably a bit of both. Bias Alert: I love Yard Act. I normally hate everything from Leeds on principle. It has a lot to answer for – terrible beer, naff 80’s architecture and Jimmy Savile takes a lot of living down, despite giving us Jacob Kramer, M&S and Alan Bennett.
Dominic Cummings is never wrong
When you see a nurse run, you know something’s up. The Audiology department, even mid-pandemic, hums: Hearing aid batteries by return of post, An appointment in a couple of days To fix your brittle tubes and then they do that clever thing with the little pliers While asking about your weekend. Five minutes later you’re on your way. When you see a nurse run, then point outside to a colleague, You know there’s something up. On his blog, Dom goes on and on About how right he is.
I Went To A Marvellous Party…
(With apologies to Noel Coward) I went to a marvellous party With Carrie and Dilyn in private. It was in the fresh air And we went as we were And stayed as we were: I deny it. The staff were all boozing till midnight Until they were sprawled on the floor We told all the plebs that they couldn’t But I just think rules are a bore. I went to a marvellous party, Or rather “”a working event” We all got to do What was banned by the rules, But naysayers are fools Because rules aren’t for us but for them.
Pie of the week: lomo saltado at Taste Peru, Doncaster Wool Market
Q: When is a pie not a pie? A: When it’s a stereotype-busting glimpse of a better North Jacob Rees-Mogg. Mark Francois. Nigel Farage. Dominic Raab. Your boys just took one hell of a beating! You know what? You can take your levelled-off-erectile-dysfunctional-flat-cap-crumbs-off-the-table-flag-toting-backwards-looking slogans about powerhouses and eat ‘em yourself, because this is Doncaster.
Pie of the week: National Coal Mining Museum, Wakefield
Look, I’m not addicted to pies. I can turn one down whenever I want. I took back control in 2016. Really. I did. However, our best books of 2021 piece had attracted the attention of antivaxxer bots. I needed comfort. In addition, a festive season dampened by the wet blanket of the Omicron surge had left me with a sense of frustrated anxiety like damp Christmas socks on a New Year stroll. What might lift the spirits? Comfort food may help with depression, says unscientific study Beans and chips. Yeah.
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