100 Things About Me, Version 3.0

01 The first book I remember being read to me as a kid was The Midnight Folk by John Masefield.
02 My favourite time of day is the night.
03 I've stopped biting my nails.
04 For various reasons I can't drink either alcohol or caffeine. Fortunately, I've discovered Rooibus tea.
05 I'm disappointed if I haven't done at least one new thing each day.
06 I have hazel eyes.
07 I'm a bit of a loner.
08 My birthday is 31st October which makes me a ...
09 ... Scorpio. And everything you're heard is true. Even though I don't believe in any of that.
10 I don't wear jewellery. It just looks wrong.
11 My Dad is a retired watch maker and can always tell the time off the top of his head. I can as well, but I always seem to be five minutes out...
12 My five favourite films are When Harry Met Sally, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Seventh Seal, In The Bleak Midwinter and Star Wars. Some of those always change.
13 I'm happy if you're happy.
14 I don't smoke.
15 If I see people holding a map and looking bewildered in the street, I always stop and ask if they need directions. In Liverpool. I haven't a clue about anywhere else.
16 I can't say 'Honey'.
17 My keyring still has a key to every house I've ever lived in on it (except for the ones I've had to give back) and key fobs in the shape of the TARDIS and the Eiffel Tower. I carry the Doctor Who story City of Death around with me.
18 I have two hundred and eighty eight friends on Facebook. I’ve even met some of them.
19 I've never been further from marrying anyone than I am right now.
20 I don't own a smart phone. I have a Samsung "burner" and an ipod so that my web addiction has to take a rest whenever there isn't a wifi signal.
21 I've almost completely stopped going to the cinema. The prices. The audiences. The quality of the films.
22 The first poem I ever wrote was about a MouseSnail. I still don't know what one of those is. But in my young head it could swing through trees.
23 I haven't seen the girl I had my first kiss with since two minutes after it happened.
24 Four things I'd eat on the last day of your life: Fish and chips; Spaghetti Bolognese; Christmas Steak; Tesco Chicken Korma.
25 I'm not religious in the slightest but still awed by cathedraks.
26 I studied Information Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University which makes me a qualified librarian.
27 Some personal philosophies, beginning with: 'Wherever you go, there you are.'
28 'This life has been a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received actual instructions on where to go and what to do.'
29 'Be yourself. No matter where you go.'
30 'Time is a great dealer.'
31 'I can't hurt to help.'
32 'But sometimes it can hurt to help.'
33 I didn't hear Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven until the age of 28.
34 Even at my age, our small family still shares as many presents as we did when I was a child.
35 I took part in One and Other, Anthony Gormley's contribution to the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
36 My writing is always better when I'm working from someone else’s ideas. I'm not really that imaginative. I don’t think.
37 I can recited the whole of the first episode of ‘Friends‘. Still can't get REM's ‘It's the end of the world..’. Yet. But I can talk my way through Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘That Day’
38 I've visited every major public art collection in the north-west of England.
39 The first film to make me puke was ‘Annie’ (I was in a theatre in the bottom of an Isle of Man ferry in particularly choppy waters). The second was ‘Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan’. The third was ‘Switchblade Romance’
40 I spent a year commuting to Manchester University for an MA Screen Studies course. I miss the reading time on the train.
41 Wendy & Lisa's Closing of the Year always makes me cry. So does Nizpoli's The JCB Song.
42 My first teenage crush was with an older girl from a different school and I'd get the bus one stop to outside my school so that I could smile and wave at her each day and she'd smile back.
43 I have the same name as the big bad demon in the 'Hell's Bells' episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
44 My favourite colour is electric pink.
45 I have a leaving card from a job and I can't for the life of me remember who any of the people were and what the job was.
46 There's no justification for ignorance, racism, homophobia, sexism or misogyny. If you think there is, you're a bad person too.
47 I once owned a rabbit called Dunk after the character from the Wheetabix commercials.
48 My first job was at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
49 One of the best jobs I've ever had was volunteering in the Media Centre at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games. For some reason I cared more for it than for jobs I've actually been paid for.
50 For a time my voice was used on Liverpool City Council's automated telephone system. It's my voice you would have heard if you were paying a parking ticket. Sorry.
51 No 42 nearly said "I never can get the hang of Thursdays", until I thought of something else.
52 Love Actually is rubbish.
53 I always wear odd socks. If it's job interview this differences can be very subtle. I once wrote a manifesto for odd socks wearers on a post-it note. I don't have this any longer.
54 Last winter this spread to my hands. I've been wearing odd coloured gloves.
55 The first holiday I remember is a wet week in Polperro.
56 The one thing I always remember about my Eighteenth Birthday is faux-Russian dancing with a girl I'd had a crush on for years to the dance version of the Tetris music by Dr. Spin. At that same party someone tried to request The Smith's Girlfriend in a Coma.
57 If I could live anywhere in the world it would be New York.
58 Anywhere in the UK, it would be Edinburgh.
59 Anywhere in England it would be London.
60 Anywhere in Liverpool it would be the city centre.
61 I didn't drink alcohol until the age of 20. My first drink was a bottle of Carlsberg at a Jazz Festival in Leeds.
62 Before my hernia operation I was told to lose weight. I lost five stone. I've since lost more. Some people don't recognise me.
63 I probably know more about the mechanics of US politics than the UK. At this point in time I'm glad of it.
64 My favourite play by Shakespeare is Measure for Measure. Unlike most of everything else, the ending isn't certain and takes an unexpected turn, a bit like life. My second is Hamlet, for obvious reasons.
65 I only ever need six hours sleep. If I get any more, I feel sleepy for the rest of the day.
66 I'm a pretty fast five finger typist. I can touch type just about.
67 I'm in all the crowd scenes at the end of the film There's Only One Jimmy Grimble.
68 We have a real Christmas tree every year.
69 I've never taken drugs.
70 At various times I've owned or borrowed an Acorn Electron, Commodore 64, Sinclair Spectrum+, Acorn A3000, Camputer Lynx, N64, Nintendo Gameboy, 286, 386, 486 Pentium etc, Sega Master System, Sony Playstation.
71 The little finger on my left hand is much smaller than on my right. It's like Danny DeVito to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins.
72 The first weblog I ever read was Rebbeca's Pocket. It took me a while to notice other people were doing the same thing.
73 My favour Doctor is Paul McGann.
74 The bell alarm clock I received for my 18th birthday still works. I only ever replace anything when it breaks.
75 I still hate computers. It's pity they can be so damn useful. We can't live without them now.
76 My last holiday was to Stratford Upon Avon in 2009. Not really being able to afford to go away, I'm currently having a monthly day in London.
77 I don't tend to favour a particular period of art, but I'm more impressed if the artist has technically put the work in.
78 When I was kid, I wanted to grow up to be Zoologist. Then I saw a documentary in which an animal was put down and I cried for days and gave up that ambition.
79 I've never been very good at science or learning languages.
80 I tend to know a little about everything. Sometimes. It depends.
81 My handwriting is atrocious due to years of typing everything.
82 I have no interest in football. I fell out of love after crying for hours when Man U beat Everton in the FA Cup Final.
83 I voted Green in the last election, but I'm considering the Lib Dems again. I'd be a Democrat if I was from the States.
84 I have no tattoos.
85 I've never stolen anything from a shop.
86 I was once at The Albert Dock in Liverpool with a friend and momentarily distracted Alan Bennett by doing Beavis and Butt-head impressions.
87 The first time my name appeared in print was because I won a "Be an Interplanetary Spy" book from Secret Wars comic.
88 The only time I visited a magazine office was Zzap! 64 in Ludlow. It was very small and similar to a telesales place I worked at for a week on very low wages.
89 I always include my middle name because I'm the only Stuart Ian Burns around. It gives me some measure of anonymity online as well as none at all.
90 There are very few famous people I'd want to meet. Never meet your heroes, they're likely to disappoint you.
91 I'm a very slow reader which means I have to really commit myself to a book. I don't read a lot of books.
92 I once called up a radio station in the middle of the night to make the important point that Harry Enfied isn't that funny. I wasn't drunk. IN 2007 I asked a question on the Radio Four programme, 'Any Questions?'
93 I once walked through a Macdonalds drive-in to get a burger with the cars. I wasn't drunk. I just didn't realise there was a pedestrian bit.
94 I don't need to get drunk to do weird things.
95 When I was training for a job once, I had to say three things only one of which was the truth. I said I'd had an album out, I'd had a book published and that I was in a film. They all thought it was the book, which is quite flattering.
96 I've now been in the same job of ten years.
97 My favourite podcasts are This American Life, Wittertainment and FiveThirtyEight.
98 My favourite superhero is Spider-man.
99 I had a nursery teacher called Mrs Kilgallen. She used to call me the banana boy because I used to eat banana butties for lunch every day.
100 I've left some really embarrassing stuff out of this list (and arguably left some really embarrassing stuff in).

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