For anyone who may still check this site from time to time – I adore you mein freund.

News: I’m doing a reading on 25th March from the Cabala anthology, published by Doghorn Publishing. At Waterstones, Deansgate, Manchester. 6-8. You’re all invited.

More news: The submissions deadline for Sein und Werden / Magnificent Monsters is 20th March. Get on it! http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/next_issue.html

And this just in: I have a fondness for Lady Gaga. I can’t help it. So burn me at the stake if you must. I always loved Madonna. She was my idol as a young teen. And now Gaga is, of course, an idol for the next generation. Still, Gaga takes Madonna to a whole new level. Madge had two means of communication through her art – sex and reinvention. It can only go so far. Lady Gaga uses theatre, which means she’ll never come to a point where she asks – where can I go from here?

Yes, she steals image, music and pose left right and centre. But didn’t Madonna use such inspirations as Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis? I love the new Gaga song – Born This Way. I love that it is an homage to Madonna, taking slices from the Express Yourself, Vogue and Pappa Don’t Preach videos, even down to that last gap-toothed shot. But I also love that she has embellished it with her own creepy humour, her theatrics and her fright night get-up.

I pronounce Lady Gaga to be Madonna’s sinister doppelganger, her weird sister. Or perhaps, more aptly, her demon child.