Half-introvert/half-extrovert with a fondness for the absurd.

My favourite thing is sitting in real pubs talking for hours with broad-minded contrarians about subjects high and low. Usually subjects low if I'm honest.

Joint favourite thing is watching a band doing something new in a sticky-floored firetrap or maybe my beloved South Bank/Barbican.

I love exploring unfamiliar parts of London on foot, enjoying all the glorious old and new buildings, and...catching a glimpse of people's lives as I pass their windows.

I love women who are secure enough in themselves not to invoke the feminine mystique. But if they do invoke it I usually end up loving them anyway!

Working in (an unglamorous section of) the media, liking my job but basically working to live, blowing my wages on records, gigs, films, pints, holidays and eating out, none of which I feel bad about apart from eating out, because who's going to use up the kohlrabi from the organic veg box while I'm out cavorting, eh? All the while wondering whether it's time for a major-ish to major change.

Probably that I'm staring into space and chuckling to myself.

Books: Novels by George Eliot, Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov. Plays by Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett. I love writers who can raise non-fiction to the level of art like my hero George Orwell. I'm also obsessed by Daniel Clowes. Oh, and Calvin and Hobbes!

Movies: Almodovar, Michael Haneke, Mike Leigh and a whole load of other arthousey stuff. Always on the lookout for a good comedy, and will even check out a romcom if it's not completely terrible, although...

Music: I am music crazy and listen to all kinds. Particularly like stuff along the lines of Magnetic Fields, Pogues, Afghan Whigs, Bonnie Prince Billy, Erasure, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Arab Strap, Joanna Newsom... I listen to a lot of folk/country and scuzzy garage bands.

TV: Love sitcoms along the lines of Peep Show or Larry Sanders and I worship Chris Morris. Usually find TV dramas kind of feeble, although I love a lot of HBO's stuff. Also like Question Time and Storyville. I think it's almost impossible to overstate the brilliance of The Simpsons.

Food: All kinds and plenty of it.

Gumption, vim, elan, spunk, poise and chutzpah.

Funny things my friends have said, records/gigs, Soviet history, Maru the Japanese Scottish fold, metropolitan public transport systems (oh god), how to make the world better without accidentally making it worse, lovely food, looking forward to spending more time with my parents when my dad retires, architecture, Tina Fey.

Making the same mistakes as last Friday.

I find it all but impossible to think about death.

I have a bit of a thing about Kirstie Allsopp.

All of the above doesn't strike you as a load of total nonsense.