David Stubbs
David Stubbs began working life as a freelance journalist in 1986, contributing to Melody Maker, whose staff he joined in 1987. As well as helping revive the music coverage of that weekly, alongside colleagues like Simon Reynolds, he became the author of the "Talk Talk Talk" section, formerly the gossip pages, which he turned into a comedy/satirical section, in which he lampooned the various pop and rock stars of the day, from the highest to the lowest. He also created the vituperative along long-running Mr Agreeable character (who still makes the occasional appearance on The Quietus website), whose popularity was commemorated on t-shirts and souvenir mugs.
In the 1990s, Stubbs also wrote scripts for a young Alan Davies and Bill Bailey on the former's Radio 1 show. He also wrote extensively for Goal, the football magazine - an essay of his on Eric Cantona appeared in the book The Pick Of The Season: The Best Of British Football Writing 1995-96. Moving to NME, he co-wrote the Thrills comedy page. Now freelance, his work has appeared in Arena, Uncut, The Wire, The Guardian, Spin, The Times, The Sunday Times, Men's Health and football magazine When Saturday Comes among others.
His first book was an appreciation of Charlie Nicholas, the ex-Arsenal footballer. (Stubbs is a keen Arsenal fan). He has since written books on Jimi Hendrix, Eminem, the Ace Records label and also a humorous study of the former BBCTV show Tomorrow's World. He is a regular contributor to the satirical Hard Sell column in The Guardian. He also contributed an essay to the bestselling volume The Atheist's Guide To Christmas, which also featured Richard Dawkins, Derren Brown, David Baddiel and Charlie Brooker among others.
David is an established zerO Books author - his first volume was entitled Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen, which was the subject of an item on the Radio 4 Today Programme, an evening of lectures at the Tate Britain and a full-length piece in The Sunday Times.
In 2006, Stubbs began writing reports on all the major England international fixtures for the When Saturday Comes website, in the guise of the "Wing Commander", covering their ill-fated World Cup campaign, followed by their calamitous failure to qualify for Euro 2008. These proved extremely popular with readers and so Stubbs augmented these with further characters, including a high-minded aesthete and Arsenal supporter, a Self-Righteous Liverpool fan and a broadsheet correspondent forever pining for the more hardbitten footballing days of yore. Praise lavished has included "genius", "the funniest things I have ever read anywhere" and, on numberous occasions, "these should be compiled in a book." So now they are.
Follow this author: