Welcome to the Boy Band Family Tree

Boy bands. Where would we be without the curtain-haired, squeaky-voiced, smooth-abbed, white-teethed, non-sexed, freshly-pressed, short-lived torrents of snot?

Bright Club returns to Manchester next week. Hailed as the 'thinking person's variety club', it presents various experts waxing lyrical about their field of expertise, hopefully in an entertaining way.

The theme this time round is 'family'. And so, on Thursday December 16th, 7.30pm at Nexus Art Cafe, you'll hear talks about families of particles, attachment and the early years, families of galaxies, and biotechnology and familes, and entrepreneurship and families.

Then there will be me. Talking about boy bands. They have no idea I'm an imposter. They haven't the first clue that I am, basically, a dribbling fat man ranting through a haze of crystal meth at an imaginary image of an axe-wielding zombie corpse of Thora Hird.

My Boy Band Family Tree will take the entire history of pop's most steam-cleaned phenomenon and bottle it through a fictitious family tree. All in eight minutes.

Of course, I haven't written it yet. I'll probably start scrawling some notes about five minutes before I'm due on stage. It worked with my last appearance when I presented my Gospel According To Aphex Twin.*

While I'm updating you on my whereabouts, it seems right to let you know about a couple of internet things. My increased activity in the wonderful world of fiction is being taken off this blog, and instead you can catch updates on Bionic Matthew's Pen Of Doom. This is a secret blog that I'm now making public. It contains a fair whack of poorly written material from the past.

I'm also keeping videos off this site. Instead, you'll find them at my third blog, Fat Roland's Oozy Bleeps.

So then. Fat Roland On Electronica. Fat Roland's Oozy Bleeps. Bionic Matthew's Pen Of Doom. Three in one. The internet trinity. The holy family. Maybe I should have done a talk on that.

*this is called false modesty. It's at least ten minutes.