Recently the Beeb asked Keith Telly Topping to put together a pen picture of his very self to use on their RaW website to advertise The Book Club.
He did a short version but he also did a long version too which, because it'll never see the light of day elsewhere, he thought he'd share with y'all here. See, bloody ego the size of Rwanda:
HE’S AN URBAN GUERILLA HE MAKES BOMBS IN HIS CELLAR
A full-time survivor, dandy highwayman, bon vivant, raconteur and all round decent chap Rockin’ Keith Telly Topping is an extremely freelance author, journalist and broadcaster who first stumbled across Buffy The Vampire Slayer, quite by accident, in 1997 whilst he was still working as a mild-mannered Civil Servant by day and attempting to kick-start a pathetically underachieving writing career by night. To say that the series changed his life is, frankly, the under-statement of both the Twentieth and the Twnety First Centuries.
Keith Telly Topping's bibliography includes over forty books. He was the co-editor of two editions of The Guinness Book of Classic British TV (1993 and 1996) and has written or co-written books on television series as diverse as The X-Files, The Sweeney, Star Trek, The West Wing, The Avengers, 24 and Stargate SG-1 as well as volumes of music and film critique. He has authored four Doctor Who novels (including the multi award-winning The Hollow Men, co-written with Martin Day) and a novella (Ghost Ship). His books include two editions of the acclaimed West Wing guide Inside Bartlet’s White House, A Vault Of Horror: A Book Of Eighty Great (and not-so-great) British Horror Movies 1956-1974, Do You Want To Know A Secret?: A Fab Anthology Of Beatles Facts, A Day In The Life, High Times, Triquetra, The Complete Clash, Beyond The Gate, Shut It!: A Fan’s Guide To Seventies Cops-On-The-Box (with Martin Day: ‘Book of the Month’ in Loaded magazine) and X-Treme Possibilities and Doctor Who: The Discontinuity Guide (both with Paul Cornell and Martin Day).
He is also a regular contributor to numerous TV and genre magazines, including TV Zone, Xposé and Shivers and was a former Contributing Editor of DreamWatch. Keith Telly Topping is widely considered to be one of Britain’s foremost experts on the bewildering complexities of US network television. No, he has the faintest idea why either.
Notoriously articulate, erudite and a right wow with the ladies (allegedly), Keith Telly Topping was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne in October 1963 on the very day that his beloved United lost 3-2 at home to Northampton Town. Things haven't improved much since.
Keith Telly Topping is the presenter of the monthly Book Club and a bi-weekly television review slot - Keith Telly Topping & His Tip TV Tips - on BBC Radio Newcastle. He has contributed to the BBC television series I ♥The 70s (albeit wearing a particularly nasty green shirt for which he wholeheartedly apologises to viewer). He has also written for Sounds, the Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times Culture Supplement and many other magazines and periodicals.
Keith Telly Topping writes, and occasionally performs stand-up, and has written radio comedy, an (unproduced) stage play and a TV pilot that is, currently, stuck in 'Development Hell.' A failed pop star at the age of fourteen as bass guitarist in (the never-legendary) Slime, he lives, works and occasionally sleeps on Tyneside. His favourite six movies are The Godfather Part 2, Almost Famous (Untitled extended cut), The Usual Suspects, Apocalypse Now, A Matter Of Life & Death and Dr Terror's House Of Horror. Though not necessarily in that order.
He much prefers 'Can You Dig It?' by The Mock Turtles to 'Can U Dig It?' by Pop Will Eat Itself, and Joy Division's 'Atmosphere' to Russ Abbot's 'Atmosphere'. Perversely, he considers The Talking Heads' version of 'Take Me To The River' to be the definitive one, and not the Reverend Al Green's. But then, Keith Telly Topping was always weird like that.
And, he still dines out on the story of how he and three friends once stalked George Harrison down the entire length of Oxford Street.
The ultimate tragedy of Keith Telly Topping's life is that he would love to write the definitive Elvis Costello biography but knows he never will.
Keith Telly Topping's hobbies include socialising with friends, exotic foreign travel to wild and outrageous locations, loud guitar-based popular music, trashy SF television and even trashier British horror movies of the 1960s and 70s, football and cricket, tasty chicken and king-prawn curries from his favourite takeaway - the Kam Ming on Monkchester Road, military, social and local history, archaeology, wondering whatever the hell happened to both Nutz and Arthur Two-Stroke & The Chart Commandos and, most importantly, irking the purists and winding up the pseudo-intellectuals, the boneheads, the school bullies - especially those in their thirties - and the clowns and watching them squirm.
His autobiography, I've Had Her, will be published posthumously.
Self-indulgence, eh? It's what makes the world go round.
