Episode 40 - Interview With Iain Parke

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd today we have with us

ian park from bad press inc all the way

from the uk

ian glad you could join us

so uh thank you sir thank you thank you

for joining us

uh we have appreciated you being here

for the last

hour while we waited on the wolf to show

up so we could actually do this podcast

and i'm kind of regretting the fact to

invite the wolf to this because now i

realize

i'm gonna be on a podcast with two

british people and y'all are gonna start

talking about all kinds of british stuff

that i'm not gonna understand

the funny thing is you moved into the

other room but i can still

literally hear you because you're

talking so loudly well

it it's just like the typical americans

we had to get away from you people we

had to go find somewhere else to be

because yo you're just being so mean to

me

so as a typical american that works out

well yeah i i went and and stuck a claim

over here and now this is my new little

territory

well asean will tell you we can't was

ian will tell you like

it was the same thing with europe we

gave it a little bit of a test and then

they had to bugger off so because

we're not really happy with anybody

after a beer

yeah we're a quarrel yeah yeah we're

just like

it's it's funny because um like over

here obviously

in in america you know you have college

rivalries

all this type stuff but like in england

you pick a quarrel where somebody lives

the other side of the street from you

it's like you're too you're too

organized and you're quarreling and

arguments in america it's like oh my

gosh yeah they went to this university

so they're our rivals and stuff but

yeah you could end up having a punch-up

at the bus stop

you know in england just because

somebody came from a different side of

the street different postcards

yeah yeah different postcards oh look at

that wanker from there from cb4 for uq

wrong side of the river is the problem

yeah yeah

well uh ian you're a author

you're a publisher uh you have bad press

inc

lead us through what got you into the

author

game insanity mainly

yeah so i started writing

uh i went and worked for about two and a

half years out in east africa

uh and i started writing there as an

aide to sanity to just try and

put down some of the stuff i was dealing

with at the time

and then came back to the uk and forgot

all about it um having written about 180

000 words of deathless prose

and then i got made redundant at one

point and

i was didn't have anything to do while i

was between jobs for about two months

and i thought well i

wrote this huge thing i might as well

get it finished

um so i finished it off and then decided

or tried to get it published by going to

agents etc and

played rejection slip bingo for about a

year and then thought

i'll go and do it myself um so i

self-published it eventually

and then thought i'd quite enjoy doing

this so i then started to write some

other stuff

or looked around for what i was going to

write next

and i was always into i was always

fascinated by the biker life i'm a biker

but i was always fascinated by the sort

of the one percenter lifestyle

read a lot about it and and followed it

in the papers and

whenever whenever it's portrayed on the

tv

or in films or whatever it always was

tape was shown as sort of

almost a joke um you had sort of the

clint eastwood films every which way

you had bikers appearing in in things of

sort of comedy villains

and i thought this is a serious

lifestyle why isn't anybody writing

anything serious about it

and i thought well if nobody else is

going to do it i'll do it

um so i started and wrote a one-off book

heavy-duty people which was about a guy

getting involved in a one percenter club

and what that meant for him and his

relationships and the choices he had to

make et cetera it was just going to be a

one-off thing

and so i wrote it and again couldn't

find anybody who wanted to

touch it with a barge bowl so

self-published it thought no more about

it for about a year until two of the

two of the characters met up in my head

one day and had a meeting

which was chapter one of the second book

heavy duty attitude

and they were just off and i was just

along for the ride to be honest

um they just took the took the thing and

went

and all i did was followed on behind

just writing down what they did

and that's it went on from there so i

got to eventually i'd ended up

having written six books in the trilogy

um and i've been stuck on book seven

for about three years now because book

seven i've got a plot for it but it'll

probably draw a lot of things together

and it'll sort of bring it to an end if

i can give you any advice from the star

wars franchise thank you episode 7.

[Laughter]

yeah that's probably good advice

absolutely but the trouble is i keep

getting i get getting grief on facebook

because i get every time i go onto

facebook somebody sends me a note saying

what are you doing on here get back to

writing a book because when's the next

one coming out it's like

once once you're on to this you it's a

bit of a treadmill isn't it really

oh it most certainly is so uh ian

for those people out there that don't

really follow the

biker lifestyle the the biker world

you've used the term one percenter

uh explain to us what a one percenter is

a one percenter is somebody who's a

member of

one of the outlaw motorcycle clubs

um there was famously uh an american

uh motorcycle federation spokesman after

uh the hollister riots i think was back

in 1947

who said well 99 of motorcyclists are

law-abiding good upstanding people

a number of people then decided well if

that for 99 i'm going to be the one

and self-identify as as the outlaws um

so

a one percenter is somebody who is a

member of an outlaw motorcycles

club essentially i actually thought max

said placenta there so that kind of

confused me for a little bit

but i mean you know obviously growing up

in england myself i mean

motorbiking wasn't really a big thing i

mean

you know most bikes in england were like

street bikes you know

i didn't know of any gangs i didn't know

of any clubs

you know you saw somebody on a bike and

you know that was it you didn't really

think about it that much and i

you know i wasn't aware of any culture

and you know i left

england when i was like 30 but you know

i wasn't aware i mean it's a very

underground culture as opposed to here

in america where it's a very prominent

and very i guess in your face culture

everybody knows you know there's

motorbike clubs over here but in england

i mean you didn't really

know about it it was a different it's a

different culture

in in the uk it's it's an interesting

mix i think because you had the

sort of rocker culture from the 60s and

then you had the

the outlaw biker culture which is a very

american phenomenon

but the american clubs once the american

clubs became

famous people started to follow the same

lifestyle

in the uk and elsewhere overseas and

formed independent

groups or independent clubs that were

similar to the american ones

and then the sort of the big brands if

you like of the

the the larger more well-known

motorcycle

outlaw motorcycle clubs have been

expanded worldwide and absorbed the

local

many of the local clubs so you have

in the uk you have a number of the sort

of the

worldwide known outlaw motorcycle club

brand as it were you still have a number

of

independent local locally established

outlaw motorcycle clubs

and then you have the wider variety of

the motorcycle culture which is

everything

from you know your mom and pops are in

who are riding harleys and are members

of the the hog

the harley owners group through to sort

of loose associations of mates who just

go up for a ride on a saturday

um so you do have quite a wide range of

bikers and bike the biker community in

the uk

now how does the you know police treat

it over there because like over here i

mean obviously

you have established clubs which have

been around for decades

unless there's something going on like

heavy

you know drug dealing or something when

the fbi get involved i mean they're

normally left to the rounder

prices as such i mean i'm sure max you

know chef knows

way more about that than i do but like

over in england you know i mean it's a

very nanny state in terms of like you

know as soon as you kind of do one thing

remotely wrong they try and close the

whole thing down so i mean does it come

automatically

with this like i don't know maybe maybe

i guess precedence of like oh they're

bikers

and so let's keep an eye on them let's

get you know

everything they do i mean earlier on

this year where about three or four

people were i think

actually actually probably more than

about half a dozen people were convicted

of basically going around and beating up

a smaller club

um because they didn't want to merge

with a larger one it's relatively low

level it's it's not

in your face you know we don't have the

sort of the waco type situations over

here

yeah that are the big news the last the

last time

anything like that happened that was

really big news would probably have been

about 30 or 40 years ago

and that's the thing i mean you talk

about the scale you talk about

relativity i mean over here

i mean if like three or four people get

shot

you know even within like about 10 miles

of us

you know it might or might not you know

make the news

you know and it might be like gangs of

any type but

you know it just doesn't make the news

whereas you know obviously i remember

when

you know i lived back in england you had

anything like that it'd be you know the

top story for like three four days on

the news

but here it just doesn't you know a lot

of um

associative crime just kind of goes

unnoticed a lot of the time but they

still have

bad rep over overall here you know like

biker gangs as they think

you know it's these people who are just

going around causing trouble

and a lot of the time i mean just like

you said you know it's like

just like in england you know a bunch of

grey-haired people who just want to go

for a ride with their mates

you know the weekend and that's how it

really is for the majority of people

here as well you know it's just a bunch

of people who

you know they go out buy a harley and

especially you know here in the states

and here in texas

you know you've got so much open roads

so many places you can go and ride

and people just want to do it you know

and have fun

but it's got so this is associative like

imagery with it

where people just think oh right yeah

they're out there to cause trouble but

you know you've got

some ex-insurance agent or real estate

guy here he just wants to get a ride

with us you know

his mate at the weekend you know from

the police's point of view

you know if you're in the police you

need people to police

you need targets to investigate you need

you know

an enemy almost to be to be looking at

and

well it's easy now because you're not

wearing a mask mate they could knock on

your door any moment

right now yeah well most of the time i

do wear a musk you know so you know

i'm saying to max it's really weird yeah

yeah yeah yeah

to go into the post office i've never

i've never

got round the fact of like uh

identifying people by their eyes

but now it's having to be a kind of oh

that's who that is you know and we can't

see the bottom half of their face

but it's it's it's it's weird from that

point of view over here at the moment

now it's um

it is a weird thing in terms of you know

we have a lot more asians

over here and for whatever reason they

kind of bring that part of their culture

over them so i've

i've seen i mean i lived up in the

northeast for quite a while when i first

came over here to the states and so i

was used to

you know when i used to go into like you

know new york like

going to manhattan like two three times

a week you know i'd see a lot of asian

people wearing masks i mean they were

germaphobes

a lot of the time and so it wasn't super

bizarre

obviously in england i think you know

unless somebody was operating on you you

never saw anybody wear a mask

no until

i think the first the first time i

noticed somebody wearing a mask was in

march

and i was at a trade fair and two people

came round this trade fair wearing this

is right the beginning of march just

before it really hit over there

two people came around wearing masks and

we're all standing there thinking

they're overreacting a bit aren't they

right yeah

a month later you know it's it's mask

city everywhere so

yeah i mean it's a bizarre thing but um

yeah kind of as the chef probably told

you we kind of drift off topic a little

bit sometimes

yeah know um yeah um

you should hear some of our expert

science uh

topics if you haven't listened to any of

our podcasts on very specific science

topics you need to listen to some of

them because

you will learn everything and nothing

about the topic well that's typical with

any of our podcasts

yeah we we obviously learned that having

uh

you know three of us on a podcast that

we still have to sit in different rooms

and then

you know i don't know we're gonna have

to listen back because i think we might

have lost some of this because i forgot

to bring my hot spot into the other room

so uh we'll just have to figure that out

when we get there

but we but we also for the first three

weeks had our microphones turned the

wrong way around so

that is true a little little known fact

when we first started the podcast we

bought

some microphones and everything and no

kidding we had them turned around

backwards for

what whatever it was like the first few

weeks and we couldn't figure out why the

sound was so bad and

so we finally decided hey let's ask

google and sure enough we had the

microphones backwards uh the

little dynamic bikes that hang down once

we turned them around all of a sudden

hey this sounds a lot better

now it's in still with us because it's

not on the screen

oh you're still here all right you just

spit from the screen because otherwise

the shepherd might as well just come

back here and sit opposite me if you

like you've gone

yeah i know uh i'm not going to sit that

close to you

well it's it's it's the smooth

professionalism of it all yeah

it's just really impressive it is it's

like uh it's like the bbc when it had

some credibility

um now in what i did want to ask you i

mean

how do you market your books do you now

i mean obviously with social media

because

you know again like you know 10 years

ago 15 years ago there wasn't

this ability to be able to easily

connect

with groups or the like mindset but now

i mean obviously you go on instagram you

go on facebook twitter whatever and you

can find these groups of people and it's

like really there's that many people who

like you know

taking squirrels out to eat in a

restaurant but i mean

it's a much easier way to find your

audience now and and it's

you know in terms of how you market your

books i mean what route do you go

given i think it's easier you know i

think it's easier to find

identify an audience to market to but

actually i think it can be more

difficult in some ways because there is

just so much noise out there

and there's only so many times you can

put out a tweet that says buy my book

it's brilliant

before people turn off and what you've

actually got to do is you've got to

engage

with an audience and you've got to be

talking to that audience and you know i

don't know

i don't know about max but i mean

basically i started writing because i'm

anti-social and just like being on my

own and shutting the door and telling

the world to sod off

you know and then suddenly you've got to

convert yourself into this social animal

that goes out and sort of

talks to people and that's you know as a

writer that's really not what i do

um so there is a there is a bit of a a

dichotomy

in what writers have to do i think quite

often right

but you have to engage you have to get

out there and engage with them

with an audience and build a

relationship with them

and that takes a lot of time and a lot

of doing to be honest

much more time than writing the bloody

books right and i think

you know it's the same issue with you

know when you look at

music right you used to have to have a

representative you had to have a record

label and now anybody can release a song

on itunes

and the problem is it's not you being

able to get a platform the problem is

that you're merged in with a whole bunch

of people whose stuff might be crap

and now your issue is how do you get

people to actually realize your stuff is

good

and like you said it's not just noise i

mean you can

you might be the 90th person you know

within a month to say hey i've written a

book about

you know motorcycle clubs or whatever

but how do you differentiate yourself

in this platform now given anybody can

literally just write it down on a piece

of a4 paper

and be like hey yeah i've published a

book you've got to get you've got to

have

it's visibility they have to be able to

find you

and then once you once they've found you

it's got its credibility

so you have to have um a professionally

produced product

and you have to have the social proof of

people leaving reviews etc so when i

when i first published my book uh the

heavy duty people you know i did a

homemade cover

whack whack oops you know big mistake so

now now if you go to buy it's got a

professionally produced cover that's

been

created by a professional book designer

because you're

you know you're on amazon you're

competing against all the other books

that have been written by everybody else

uh and you get that

if you can persuade somebody to get to

or lead them to your

page on amazon you know they're gonna

see a picture of your cover which is

about yay big

they're going to see about four lines of

the blurb and they're going to see how

many stars it's got in terms of reviews

and that's it you know that's that's the

decision on which potentially they're

going to make a decision is this worth

me

even looking at the what's inside and

reading the first couple of pages or not

well you've got to be as professional as

possible about that yeah

well i had a book published about a

hedgehog who lived in a burnt out

car who went on raves at the weekend so

i mean i know it's not

hard you know to kind of get a book

published but

it's a weird scenario that there's now

so many avenues of distribution all

these different channels of a

distribution but it's

almost harder than it used to be maybe

20 or 30 years ago because

again you're competing against these

people who just put out crap and it's

the same thing like the tv

you know you you used to turn on the tv

you know you might like a show didn't

like a show whatever

but now there's so many channels and so

much crap it's like

you know you put out something quality

how do you get it noticed

i mean if you think about i i had

somebody call me up

last week for a chat it was son of a

friend and they they were asking me so

how do i make a career writing

and i said well i've got three bits of

advice for you one is one is get writing

the second is get marketing and the

third is get lucky and

but you can make your own luck by what

you do in terms of promotion

yeah but if you if you if you think

about people people's questions the

follow-up question was then well

yeah um how do i sell my books how do i

make sure my books sell i turn that on

its head and say okay

what makes you buy a book there's i

think there's probably about five

different things that would do that

what makes you buy a book it's by

somebody you've read before and you

liked it so you're going to buy the next

one

you might even be gagging waiting for

the next one to come come out

but you know so you've got to become an

established author and build that fan

base and then it starts to work for you

you might see a review in the papers

that gives oh that sounds interesting

i'll have a look at that

you might see something that's a that

has been made into a tv show or a film

and you think oh i enjoyed that i wonder

what the book's like

or you might pick it up in a bookshop

because you like the cover

oh the blurb sounds interesting i'll

flick through the first few pages oh

that sounds engaging i'll go and buy it

but you've got to get into bookshops for

that to happen

and the fifth way the fifth reason and

the one that i think is probably the

most powerful

is because you know max here says

oh i've just read this book i think

you'd enjoy it you ought to read it

and that word of mouth yeah yeah one

some somebody you don't know talking to

somebody else you don't know saying you

ought to read this book

that is the most powerful but it's one

of the most difficult things to actually

get to happen

you know organically i mean like do you

have

um i guess a breakdown of demographics

because i guarantee you like people here

you know the states reading the stories

about british

you know biker clubs and stuff would

find it very interesting because there

are a dime a dozen here

but they probably think oh it doesn't

happen overseas you know you don't have

you know biker clubs and all that i mean

have you had i mean i don't know sales

wise

you know you have all that information i

mean has it been very successful kind of

more overseas than

kind of domestically it's it's i would i

was

yes you get the stats because if you're

publishing through a platform like

amazon you get the stats about books and

kindle sales etc so you can track you

can actually track it now quite

accurately which is quite

useful and i i get probably about

equal sales between the us which is

obviously a much bigger market

and the uk which is my domestic market

but yes so i do get

a reasonable number of sales in the us

and canada and

you could you can see if you go on to to

amazon you'll see that sort of numbers

of reviews

across the us and and the uk are

relatively similar so i'm getting the

same sort of feedback and traction

so and and it's it's interesting some of

the some of the feedback and reviews

from the states are oh yeah it's

interesting to see what's happening in

the uk in terms of club scene

or god i bet it's bloody cold riding a

bike

um so it's it's and i get feedback from

sort of club type members in the states

every so often which is quite

interesting

i've had more i've had more feedback

from

people in the life in the states than i

have from the uk and it's it's weird

sometimes where the demographic comes

from i mean

one of our most successful podcasts has

been

from a lady who works at our local

library and she's almost got like twice

as many views on youtube

for that episode as all the other

episodes we've done

and some of our other ones have been

like absolute classics but for some

reason we interviewed this woman from

the local library

and yeah she's she's currently like

twice as many people

viewing it but i think sometimes there's

that

if it's a little bit out of the ordinary

you know

people kind of like they like what you

do and it's a little bit out of the

ordinary but all right yeah

this is going to be a little bit weird

but i'll listen to it and that and like

i said that's why i thought that

probably you know maybe your audience

over here

from you know americans where biker

clubs are not

you know a big thing or it's not out the

normal i mean probably everybody here

knows somebody in a club

you know it would be kind of wow like

in england they have like bike clubs and

stuff because i mean you know

i mean you go on a day trip here right

and it takes

it can take you 13 hours to go from one

part of our state

to the top part of the state whereas in

england you know you drive six hours

you're going to be like getting wet

pretty quick

you're driving in the ocean um and so

it's like and also the roads i mean

you know there's not that many back

roads non-congested roads and stuff in

england i mean what

what type of um routes do people in

england go i mean

are there kind of like general routes

they go on which are like

biker routes in england most most

areas most areas will have

the place that the bikers go on a

saturday or sunday for a run

so i live up in the northeast of england

so if you are a biker from newcastle or

sunderland the city is on the coast in

the northeast

if you're going out on a saturday sunday

you will bloody geordies and mackins

[Laughter]

you know because hey here i i knew this

was going to happen the british guys are

just going to go off

it took only 30 minutes before you start

talking about stuff i have no idea what

you're talking about

but yeah honestly i thought it would be

a shorter time

we'll provide subtitles yeah yeah

please send me like a little you know

decipher

script so i know what y'all are talking

about yeah

um but it's like the the people from the

cities on the coast they will go

there used to be a a cafe right on top

of the hills on the north pennines

that people would just descend upon on a

saturday sunday

where i grew up just south of london

people would go to box hill

um which is down towards stalking and

then you know every so often there'd be

a big ride from there down to brighton

on the coast so there are there are

places where bikers go together because

that's where other bikers are

and you can get a decent bacon buddy now

where do people go

um biking in the northeast because i've

been there plenty i actually dated a

girl from uh

walker in newcastle you know where that

is yeah that's a rough part in newcastle

and she was a rough girl to be honest

but um yeah where did people go biking

up in the north

as i say they they'll go up to the north

pennines austin

people from middlesbrough will go across

the um the north york malls

and if you'll if you're up for riding

further afield

um there's a thing called the north west

500 now which is a route

that goes all the way around the north

coast of scotland um sort of basically

up

from loch ness and just goes all the big

tour around scotland

and it's absolutely beautiful yeah yeah

and there are some

you know quite well deserted roads up

that way so yeah now

i mean i mean i know obviously the

climate's crap but

you know up in a scotland i would think

there might be some nice

kind of places i mean i know the

weather's horrible but

i mean that in scotland i would think

there might be some nice kind of

secluded places you can go

you know at least a little bit of

variety you know a little bit

mountainous

and stuff i mean yeah yeah

there's some beautiful roads up in

scotland to go yeah i mean it's hard

trying to explain

scotland to americans because they kind

of like said they don't know they're

different between scotland and ireland

they think

and whales and stuff they think it's all

like jammed into one little

kind of circle um but well no scotland's

where they wear kilts all the time

that's pretty much what americans know

24 7 24

7. yeah okay yeah that's how you

recognize scottish people they're not

wearing a kilt they're not scottish yeah

and the irish people are drunk right

that's 100 facts okay see

we studied history over here

yeah i mean you gotta stick with what

you know basically but um

no i mean it's you know it's hard

because i

i got a sports car when i was pretty

young because i was playing soccer you

know i played professional soccer and

they stupidly gave me a bunch of money

and so i went out and bought

you know a really expensive sports car

but then

mg [ __ ] no oh well it should have been

because the roads in

england is so narrow it's actually

perfect for bikers

because you know you've only got like

two feet either side of you

but i just didn't have places to go and

drive it and get up to a speed and it

was just like driving a regular car and

you know built up neighborhood and so

you know you think with bikers you know

again as i was saying to ian earlier

like you know even in texas here in

north texas i mean you only have to go

here there like 10 miles one direction

and you've got beautiful open roads you

just don't

have that in england but there are

certain parts of you know the use

we have a thing called benz yeah yeah

it's

yeah we quite enjoyed bloody romans

blame the bloody romans for that stuff

because they were supposed to make

straight roads didn't always happen

but um no but i mean depending i mean i

can't imagine like growing up in

birmingham

birmingham and joining a bike club

because there's not really anywhere to

go on that

partly gonna have to catch a train for

like two hours to go

somewhere and like go on a good ride

[Music]

i lived in birmingham for a while we

found places to go yeah i mean it's

but it is more difficult i mean there

aren't you know there aren't

really kind of the open roads or

straight roads and places places we can

get away with like

driving at like 90 miles per hour like

here

you can do that literally within 10

minutes like in england

there's not that many places you can go

out and be like all right i'm just going

to put my foot down on the gas and i'm

just going to go for it yeah

it i mean the uk is obviously a smaller

country

than the u.s and there is less space it

is more built up but there are still

nice nice places that are remote to go

to and to ride

um and you know british biker culture

with the rockers was and still is i

suppose

quite an urban thing in some ways you

know cafe races

uh racing between cafes on a roads uh

and

your british motorcycling culture is

much more

focused on you know the twisty bits the

bends

and the variety of riding rather than

just blasting a long distance

in a straight line and so there's not

there's there's quite a big

a lot of the biker culture over here is

around sports bikes rather than cruisers

for example yeah

because it's about you know having fun

around the twisty bits right

yeah now did you have um

i know uh you know obviously growing up

in england but like not many americans

know about the whole thing you know

about the mods and the rockers because

you keep talking about the rockers right

there bikes but

you know there was a huge thing for

maybe three decades with the mods and

the scooters

and you know they'd go obviously on

these you know day trips especially in

the south of

england you know that and that part of

culture i don't think i've ever ever

heard over here

in in the states but i mean it used to

be a big thing

over there in the uk you know the mods i

mean yeah on one of my

in one of my books i do i have a story

which is set in two time periods

and one of those time periods is the 60s

and it's around

rockers and mods and the sort of early

days of

club type culture taking root in the uk

and then the modern the modern era is

somebody

investigating something that comes out

of that so it was really quite

interesting to go and

do some research into the mod rocker

culture and all the issues around

fighting on the beaches of bank holiday

weekends etc and

do some digging into the reality of that

because i think the reality of it is

actually quite different from the public

perception of it people didn't grow up

in a mod town and suddenly meet somebody

who'd grown up in a rocker town you know

these were people who went to school

together

and you know some of them go into modern

some of them go into you know yeah

west side story yeah well so

so help the american out here what's a

mod town what's a rocker town

right so okay so mods mods and rockers

were two

youth cultures in the 60s in the uk so

rockers

were essentially bikers who were

interested in

american music they'd be wearing black

leather jackets they would ride

motorcycles mods

were um people who were very interested

in

in fashion who dress smartly were

interested in european styles they would

wear suits

um and they would ride scooters

and they would generally have where

often wear parker's over their suits to

protect the smart

clothes they were wearing and they were

into sort of european culture and blues

music

and speed uh in terms of the drug

and so there were two youth cultures one

quite sort of american

bikery orientated and one european smart

culturally orientated and they famous

famously in the uk um there were a

number of

battles at bank holiday weekends where

mods and rockers would have fights at

the seaside and if if you've come across

the film quadrophenia

that's that's the classic film about

that scenario soundtrack by the who it

was um

and that's the thing i mean shepard mod

came from the word modern

right and that's what insane yeah they

were very kind of cosmopolitan

and stuff but you know like bands like

the who and the jam

and the stuff i mean really

well i mean earlier than that but i mean

you go to small faces everybody else i

mean there were

there was actually a music scene which

these different bike groups would

actually adopt

you know and they would follow it and i

mean it was a weird thing

um i know you know they see him but like

with the mods and on their scooters

for whatever reason somebody come up

with like how many

wing mirrors can i put on my bike and

you would you would have these like

mod skaters and it would have like 14

mirrors on it and it's like where did

this come from because the biker thing

you could understand because they were

copying another culture

but the mod thing came up and it was

like you know i know it came from

i guess copying the stuff from you know

like

mainly venice in italy and some of the

parisians in france and that's where the

whole scuba culture came from

but all of a sudden it's like yeah i'm

just going to have 14 mirrors on my bike

you see how that goes you know yeah

because nobody nobody likes driving into

the sun because you can't see but when

you have 14 mirrors it's like

it's no worse even driving away from the

sun

if you you have you have the same sort

of i can see the same ethos in the

dresser type culture because there are

you know there are subsets of the biker

culture which are all about decoration

and dressing the bikes etc

yeah so it's just one of these things

that's became a sort of fetish and then

sort of

grew and grew and grew yeah for some

strange reason the other day i thought

this do you um

how old are you ian you announce it

56 right well i'm younger than that

but do you remember that um david essex

movie uh silver dream machine

oh god i have a dream silver durian

machine

that was that was the first uh

single i bought that silver dream

machine

thing and that was actually the first

movie about i know it was about

you know he was you know a biker and

going all these races and stuff but that

was actually the first time

you know i was aware of like oh my

goodness so people actually buy these

and actually go on races is actually uh

you know i think because here we don't

we don't really have bike races in

england i mean it's a bigger thing

than it is here i mean which is

surprising but we don't have you know

the kind of f1

equivalent of bike races you know

whereas in england you you would have

that you know

what was it like barry sheen was he's

the bigger

boy with a bike racing yeah so you were

in uk you've got again you've got you

have a cafe racer culture

and it has a natural interest in bike

racing so yeah there is a big bike

racing scene

and then culturally we have the tt

over in the isle of man right um so

you know a week two week long festival

of road motorcycling road racing

on roads and people doing extraordinary

speeds

around yeah ordinary roads you know past

brick

you know brick walls and yeah absolutely

terrible

hairpin bends on that stuff yeah i've

watched those tt

rhythms on the isle of man it's like oh

my goodness it's like

you better have some belief in god

because yeah the speech they get up to

going around those things now

shepard you're still online mate yeah i

i'm

still here just still sitting there in

the toilet yeah

yeah here in the back room was there

ever kind of any

racing culture that you grew up with

when you started

you know riding bikes and stuff was

there a racing culture

no not really i mean you you do have

some of the

you know what we call the slant bikes or

the crotch rockets basically

you know they like to go out and they

like to pop wheelies on the

interstate and and do all that and there

is a little bit of

motorcycle racing culture but not like

it is

overseas uh it's it's more

you know the asian bikes you know the

suzukis the hondas the

yeah well that was just that was the

same in england it was the yamaha

i mean i think ian is that still over

there now like yamaha and suzuki like

the main

i mean the the japanese have come to

dominate

you know make the production of bikes

um so they dominate um the the racing

scene as well

with with some exceptions so i think um

bmw's been quite successful at times um

you've got

triumph having a go every so often

somebody brings out a new norton and

there's a go with that

um but yes the japanese they've just got

the muscle these days

yeah well it's the cost as well i mean

like you look at the bmw i mean basic

street bike compared to like buying a

entry-level yamaha and it's like a third

of the cost i mean

and that that was always the case i mean

you know if you had a teenager wanting

to buy a bike

you know go out and buy a you know

yamaha

you know here it's um you know you have

like harley davidson

and it's like yeah if you you know buy a

harley you know you're

kind of you know you got this kind of

prestige in england you didn't really

have that

you didn't really have a bike label that

people knew that like oh yeah i've got a

bike and people would ask oh what type

of bike is it and it'd be

you know a classic type bike i mean

because

again most people just had the crutch

rockets had the yamaha they had all

their stuff but

yeah when i when i was growing up you

had the

you had the sort of brick sheet versus

jack crap um so yeah

you had the the it was towards the end

to be honest it was towards the end of

that

because you didn't meet many people who

had british bikes because they were all

sort of

the manufacturers were basically on

their last legs

and the structure of how you how you

could get a bike so

you could only get a moped at a certain

age and then once you got to to

17 you could get a 250 and then once you

passed your test on that then you could

get something bigger

the problem being that the only people

making the 250s and the mopeds etc were

the japanese so everybody effectively

was starting out on japanese

and then kept going on japanese because

you couldn't yeah you weren't going to

get a 250 harley davidson

they just didn't exist now i don't know

if the shepherd knows what a moped is

i do i do know what am i no it's like

it i think the very definition of a

moped should be

if you can actually cycle faster on a

mountain bike

manually than you know

a moped i mean the mopeds in england

like when you got them

i think they had a top speed like

between 18 and 22 miles per hour

which is why anybody could buy them i

mean you could literally

pedal a bike faster than a freaking

moped and that's why

it was really easy when they

they they did get up just being able to

do a speed of about 50 miles an hour

yeah because they fell off a cliff

then they brought in a restriction and

they they were limited

so they would only do 30 miles an hour

and so when i was 16

i got a moped and it would do 30 miles

an hour yeah

so i decided the really bright thing to

do would be i go long distance touring

on it

so i i packed all my stuff onto the back

of it and i went from london down to

cornwall on this thing

on a tour nine days

just about i mean it's like it's like

300 yeah

250 300 miles each way yeah that does

looking back it was slightly painful

yeah well that was always the thing

about how did you get the top speed out

of a moped it was like push it over a

cliff i mean

if it reached terminal velocity that was

a stop speed

but yeah i mean the good thing about it

was i mean you know when we have people

over there

you know still buying it when they're in

school you know they're like oh they've

got a moped and they're driving it

around but then you know i'd

be peddling on the bike and i'd be like

overtaking them

[Laughter]

well moving on from bikes ian uh

you know it we could probably sit here

and talk about bikes for hours

obviously tristan who doesn't have a

motorcycle right now

is much more enthralled with it than i

am asking all the questions but that hey

that's fine that's fine but

still a guy max said for him by the way

yeah i know i do

well you forced me into the back room

here you were being lazy

typically it looks good they don't okay

ian do you like that logo

yeah it looks fantastic we paid somebody

five dollars to make that logo so

two two pounds fifty

pennies to make that little logo and

they did it for us

i can i can see where the money's gone

in this production yeah yeah yeah it can

be and it's like

wait wait wait wait wait ninety percent

of our budget

on the block yeah and as long as you

don't as long as you don't zoom into it

too much [ __ ] still looks really good

yeah but once you start zooming into it

even those circles like get a little bit

fuzzy but

yeah just a little bit yeah so uh bad

press inc uh other other than your bite

or your books and uh what what all's

going on with bad press inc

what what about what you got going

okay so bad press so i i set up my own

publishing house to publish my stuff

which was

i called bad hyphen press dot co dot uk

and and i had in order to just

publicize stuff i'd put some stickers on

the back of my car

um with the logo and we were sat

my wife and i were sat at a roundabout

waiting to pull onto a roundabout

one day to go into stores to go shopping

and there was this bang on the window

and there was this guy who was

black long hair tattoos everywhere

banging on the window and my wife ran

around the window down and he said

are you a publisher i said well yeah

sort of

and and we proceeded to have this

conversation out the window with this

jack who then

we ran into in the car park when we when

we were going into the shops

and he's um he was a uh or he is

an ex punk goth glam glam punk rock

singer um

who who ran a band called um spit like

this

and uh was was very successful in sort

of that

that that field and had written his

autobiography which seemed to be doing

quite well and got onto the bestseller

list

in amazon and his girlfriend who's in

the band

and we just started chatting about

publishing and

having been involved in producing books

for quite some time

you know i knew a fair bit about how the

publishing industry works and you know

how you got stuff

produced to be uh so it could be sold

through shops etc

and my wife pat is a professional copy

editor and proofreader which is always

handy to have in the background frankly

but neither of us felt that we were

particularly good at the marketing side

of it i mean i'm you know i've made a go

of marketing my own stuff but not so i

would go out and sort of sell myself as

as as a marketing guru whereas this guy

and his girlfriend have come from being

quite successful in marketing themselves

and develop developing a following as a

rock group

they also both run internet-based

companies that sell so internet trading

companies so marketing etc

and eventually over various chats we

decided well actually yes

why don't we pull together a publishing

company to publish stuff that we would

like to read that nobody else seems to

be publishing

so we set up bad press.inc

and then started to look for people who

had weird and wonderful things that we

could publish

so we're up to five five published

authors so far we've got another

three that are coming out uh over them

over

the first part of 2021 and we've got a

follow-up to one of our authors books uh

so a second in a series that's going to

come out

um towards the back end of 2021

and we're just having a ball it's quite

it's great fun

is it still hard over there to do stuff

like that because like here

you go online you spend like 9.99

you've got a publishing house you've got

this and that is it still really

difficult over there to kind of do

things or is it now easy to set up

like it's it is easy to set

up but you i come back to what we were

talking about before if you're going to

do it

you have to treat it as a business and

you have to produce

a good product so um

you know we are you know when we sign

somebody up

i am committing us to spending

several thousands of pounds on

producing a decent book and marketing

and promoting that book

we have a retained pr professional that

we pay

who is out there networking to bloggers

etc to try and get reviews for books you

know

at the moment it's just a huge money pit

to be honest yeah yeah

in which we just pour ever-increasing

amounts of money

um but you know it's great fun and

what you're doing is you're building a

portfolio of books

and a portfolio of authors and it's a

bit like being a venture capitalist in

some ways

or being a record producer you're sort

of you're looking for artists

who have got something that is good

that you think will have a market

and you're looking for artists who you

think if i support them

they can go out and sell their product

etc but again

it goes back to what you were saying

earlier about you know that kind of

lucky thing

you know when somebody gets noticed i

mean you never know

you know who's who the lucky client is

going to be

and how they hit that niche and yeah so

we

so of the of the first four we published

so the first one was a sort of comic

horror

thing which i thought was quite

commercial i thought it was

it was potentially something that would

hit sort of stephen king and

and terry pratchett type fans so we we

put out that it's called the axe and

grindstone

and it's sold all right but it's not set

in the world on fire

um the second thing we put out was a was

a book called clear

which is in some ways it's quite a

literary thing it's it's

it's a sort of almost a prose poem about

the cd underbelly of london and i think

it is absolutely brilliant

and about half a dozen people around the

world have bought a copy

so you know it's it's fun i think it's a

great book but just getting it to market

and getting people to engage with is is

very difficult and then the third one we

put out

is called while nobody is watching and

it's a book

by an irish woman who was in the irish

army

and served in peacekeeping forces in

lebanon

and she's come back to the uk has gone

back to ireland

and she's written a book based in cork

where she lives

and it's about somebody who comes back

from from the wars

with ptsd and it's a great little

psychological thriller

and that's really doing very well so

that's been picked up by an american

publisher so it's going to come out in

the states

by an american publisher in april

um we've got a um she's right she's

written

or halfway more or less written um a a

follow-up

using the same character so we're

starting to potentially build a series

she's she's networking like a gooden you

know

i'm waiting to find that the irish army

has ordered one for every soldier in it

and because that's the way that's sort

of trying to happen

um she's but she's in with the irish

army's pr department who are talking to

her about

you know she goes on things to talk

about i was an ex-soldier and here's

what i'm doing

and we're in negotiations uh

there's a there's a couple of tv

producers who've picked it up

and we've have an initial what's called

a shopping agreement signed which is

allows them to go out and see if they

can find the funding to do tv property

full tv development on it so

that one as a little project potentially

is

is a gem but you you you're you have to

treat them as a portfolio

right and realize that you know you're

looking for the hits

the hit or the hits that are really

going to pay yeah but you have to put

money into a number of things that you

know

may not work yeah and you have to you

have to work with the authors

as to how they are going to get their

marketing you you you talked about

marketing early on it's what you keep

going back to with publishing so

we've got um we've got a thing called me

and the monkey

dot co dot uk uh which is a story

about a monkey who is essentially the

spirit of chaos

uh and he's into smoking cigars drinking

jack daniels and

as much heavy firepower as they can get

his hands on and we're publishing that

as a daily

essentially a daily blog and it sounds

like i wrote to be honest yeah

so come back every day on facebook and

every day on twitter

you'll see a bit about me and the monkey

yeah and then

people can subscribe to get a weekly

update and then in due course

um there will be a book produced which

is essentially the whole story that's

being told through this blog

and we have then uh a follow-up that's

being done from that et cetera

so now if you try to go hang on now not

just

anything but uh me and the monkey kind

of looks

like the wolf yeah you never met him

until today

but that's actually kind of creepy if

you look it up it it

the me and the monkey kind of looks like

the wolf i i got

outside of the wanking i don't think we

have anything in common

but um one of the things i was going to

actually ask you in

like i i mean i know we did you know

obviously touch upon martin and stuff

and

you know the over saturation in terms of

anybody

can push anything out there

have you tried like i don't know because

we interviewed like a guy

we really didn't know i mean he

it was a guy who got a couple of amazon

shows

and stuff a guy named jay davis really

funny

fantastic dude and you know he started

doing like

cartoons and stuff he had this animation

just to kind of

hit all these different avenues so when

you kind of

you know putting something out there

which like

you know you know you're going to come

up against all this drafts but sometimes

getting your head upon the drafts it's

like hard because

it it's hard to kind of get something

quality out there so i mean

have you looked to i don't know maybe

like

other ways to just try and

get things out there i mean because i

said there's so many different mediums

i mean you know if you really want to

push something

i mean it it's both easy and hard

because you look at some of the stuff

which is successful when you're like

i would not pay one cent for this but

then you look at some of the stuff which

is

not successful and it's like brilliant

but like

it's almost an accidental

discovery sometimes when you find some

brilliant stuff you know

yeah it's it's it's i mean we

we spend we spend money on

um making sure we've got a good product

so the monkey for example so we have a

professional cartoonist who is doing the

illustrations to that and

there's a new illustration every week

illustrating you know a theme

a an event that's happening in it um

in terms of getting it out into the

marketplace and

and spreading the message i've dabbled

in the past with video i've dabbled in

the past with

you know just blasting stuff out i've

doubled in the past with

doing paid for advertising um

you can spend a lot of money doing

stuff and not getting much of a return

and i think you also have to do the

stuff that

works for you it has to be something you

enjoy

and that you will be able to commit to

and carry on doing because you enjoy

doing it

because otherwise you'll do it for a bit

and then it will just

fade away yeah um so we we look to work

with our authors and say okay so what is

going to work for you as an author

so michelle for example she is much to

her surprise

she is very good at networking so

fantastic network like billy

go and see all your local bookshops um

you know talk to the irish army's pr

department

see if you can get onto the into the

irish army's internal magazine etc

andy who is um who writes the monkey

book

he is he is um a designer by trade

um he does sort of animation type stuff

in his

ordinary work so he's experimenting and

doing stuff on instagram

uh and pinterest and youtube to to

to create content to try and uh market

it and then obviously we've got to say

we've got our professional pr guy

who is out talking to the bloggers he's

talking to the press

but you know it's very difficult to get

into the mainstream press but it really

works if you can do it

yeah i mean on my my books i got i

managed to get one mention for about a

paragraph

in the guardian one year and off the

back of that

i got sales my sales went up by about

four or five hundred percent for two

months

and off the back of that i then got

um three inquiries about the film rights

right

one from one from a director and two

from two production companies

and eventually ended up getting getting

optioned off one mentioned in the

national newspaper

and i've never managed to get mentioned

in the national newspaper since now now

if you've

now if you looked at in terms of like

getting like an

adaptation as such or just like getting

somebody to do like

either a tv or because again it's like

we go back to

obviously when you and i grow up and we

only had like three tv channels and then

channel four came in which wasn't much

better

but now there's so many tv channels do

you think

that like maybe getting an adaptation of

your work if you could find somebody to

do it and put it into a

yeah well that kind of format would be

that they would be great uh and i'm in

year six of development hell

or is it year seven year seven i think

of development hell with um

with the the biker books because they

they got options for tv so

they got option for tv by by a

production company

[Music]

the development funding was funded by

one of the big channels

so they went through a three-year

process to develop

a pilot episode script a series outline

etc

you got to the end of that process and

the channel that had put up the money

for it said

nah we will pass so then there's been a

sort of three year period where

the screenwriter who had been hired to

do

this has then been out trying to sell

the project into other pub into

other tv companies um i mean

you've got to remember well so i i think

that the

i think the network put up somewhere

around 50 grand or so to do the

development piece that they understand

just walked away from

it was being developed as an eight-part

one-hour tv series and the rule of thumb

i was told at the time

was for every hour of tv time you see

the budget is about a million quid so

what was being asked was for somebody to

write a check for eight million quid

to make this series yeah and commit to

that level expenditure

which is why i you know i'm not

completely surprised that a lot of

things fall away because you know

you've got to be pretty sure it's going

to work before you write your check for

eight million quid

so if you see if you go into this final

trilogy

what are you going to do differently i

mean knowing knowing for me first

bunch of books what you're going to do

differently going into these

last three books if you write the spinal

trilogy

well what are you going to do i've

written so i've written

i've now written six books in this

series so the first three

are a sort of self-contained set they

turned into

the next three are books that are set in

the world or have some of the characters

but

each standalone type stories and the

last one

that i want i've got a plot for

effectively

picks all of those up and brings them

all together and meshes them all

together

so you have something that that answers

some of the questions that have been

hanging around since the first one

and the problem i've got really is as i

say i've tried writing it about three

different times

and i've got stuck each time for

different reasons and i'm starting to

wonder whether i don't really want to

write the seventh one because i don't

want it to be over

well when that point i mean when you get

you know that especially the topic

you're writing about

there's not really an end game is that

there is an evolution i mean when you

talk about

biking i mean there's an evolution i

mean there's you know

biker clubs and keep going and blah blah

blah there's not really an end game to

anything

so when you whether you invent specific

characters or whatever you have to have

i don't know i mean

just something where you're going to

kind of like come to a combination of

like

look this is what life is like in this

environment

and it was yeah i mean the reason i say

the reason for writing the first one

was i was interested in the subject and

i felt nobody was writing anything that

took it seriously so i thought

i wanted to write something that

explored you know why somebody might get

involved in that sort of

environment what it might mean for them

and then

then the second one was very

character-led because you had a couple

of characters who came out of the first

one and interacted and they went and did

things

and then the characters that had come

into the second one

carried it along to a to a natural

conclusion

so you were following individuals as it

were or i felt i was following

individuals when writing it

and then when i when i came to do the

the first one that was sort of out of

series

i was interested each one of the other

ones i've been interested in something

specific

and sometimes it's about you know why

how do you know who to trust

or why do you believe something uh or

why why would you believe one of

authority and another authority and and

the characters

that i've the characters sort of help me

ride a ride through that and leave the

story through it

but once the story started the

characters are off and running

and none of the other books have ended

up where i thought they were going to

end up

because the characters have started to

do it and the character's own logic and

how they interact with other people have

just taken them in places that yeah

i wasn't expecting um so

it's a bit difficult for me to do too

much planning about what i'm going to

write because

i don't know how i don't know what

they're going to do which is

sounds a bit weird i know but that's the

that's the reality of it

now i mean you know avoiding the whole

fast and the furious

type timeline

it's again it's hard to go

somewhere without over explaining

i can't remember the name of the word

now but

you know you can explain the lifestyle

of say like a biker

you get to a point it's like this is for

you already for it's not because like

over here like as

i said earlier right people get to a

certain age it's like i'm gonna buy a

bike i'm gonna go on the open road and

it's not

necessarily even a lifestyle it's just a

kind of

parkside hobby whereas you know in

england

it it is something a little bit more

because it's harder to get into

it's harder to you know affiliate with

like people who

you know into this lifestyle and stuff

and it's harder to get i think

the one the one percent the one

percenter lifestyle is i mean

i say it's a very serious lifestyle it's

not something you right

pick up and drop by accident exactly

here it is

and that's why i think it's uh i think

your story there

is far more interest than it would be

here because here

it's not one percent in here people can

just like do it on a weekend and it's

like oh

there are a lot of people who like are

not bikers but they go buy bikes right

so they're not bikers yeah yeah we have

what we call the weekend warrior

over here yeah to be quite honest i mean

that's what i was i i was in a club but

it wasn't a one percent club by any

means i enjoyed riding my harley still

enjoy riding my harley now

but i i wasn't wanting to get into that

mixed up world because you know i had a

wife and a family and everything else i

i just wanted to ride my bike and have a

good time drink some beers with some

people

you know play some shuffleboard play

some pool and

and have a good time and that was it i

didn't want to devote my life

to that whole world but there are people

that still

even in this you know even in the u.s

and

when uh how what was the the tuttle

family you know the

american biker whatever show that was

when choppers were real

big and all of a sudden you know there

was a waiting list for harley's and

everything you know

that time has faded in the u.s

bikes are kind of going by the wayside i

mean you still see them

but harley-davidson they're suffering

not

not as many people are buying bikes the

you see fewer and fewer on the road and

you know there's too many other things

like

boats or or whatever else that somebody

wants to go do

that the bike thing is pretty much dead

now

it's still a wild hogs type thing it

really is

it really is like that smoothie you know

yeah in

that was kind of my outlook on it too i

i liked the

biker part of it but it was never just

enormous for me uh i i like doing it i

like my bike i love riding my bike but

the camaraderie is good but it

that whole aspect has faded off

in the united states over say the last

10

15 years it's just not as big as it used

to be

yeah it's the same over here it's it's

to say it's an a it's an aging hobby for

people

and i think coming back to your point

about the seriousness or the point about

the seriousness of the

club lifestyle i think it's interesting

that

there's a lot there seems to be quite a

large contingent who are ex-military

who have come out of the forces and are

looking for the same sort of

very strong camaraderie that they

experience in the forces as a

substitute family and i think there's a

lot of that happened

with the initial clubs those guys came

back from war they were looking for that

excitement they were looking for

something that

would get them away from the just drab

part of everyday life and hopping on a

bike going 80 miles an hour with

somebody

two foot away from you next to you and

another bike two foot away from you

behind you and

screaming down the highway that was

exciting and

it's hard to do now because you got

states over here in the u.s that say oh

well

you can go ride a bike but you got to

wear a helmet and you got to do this

and i think california is one of the

only states where you can lane split

even though i do lane split in texas but

don't arrest me but uh you know it

the excitement of motorcycles is just

about gone and there's so many people

that

look at you when you ride a motorcycle

and you say why are you doing this

unsafe thing

you know why aren't you in a cage uh you

know cage being a car

for the the non-biker type but you know

i i

know a guy no kidding he rides a

motorcycle i see him once a week on

thursday mornings

and he gets on me because i don't wear a

helmet

while i ride my motorcycle thank you so

you don't mess your hair up but

um actually one thing in um you have

beautiful hair

yeah i don't have any hair um

one thing i actually wanted to ask you

in is uh over here

bikers are absolutely

renowned with patriotism right they're

like

a lot of ex veterans you know a lot of

like very patriotic people

um you know in england i mean what tends

to make up

the majority of biker groups i mean they

kind of

patriots very anti kind of eu

are they you know very crusader oriented

i mean what

what what is their kind make up

politically um

i think if it's a wide church

you've got you know a lot of a lot of

the

the the older guy the older guys who are

writing a sort of japanese machine or

a bmw on a saturday or a sunday

you know they're a real cross-section of

of

older blokes basically yeah if you see

somebody riding a harley

or you see somebody who is you know

looks the sort of american biker type

um you you that all that sort of imagery

a lot of those are and a lot of those

not not just the outlaw bike clubs but a

lot of the sort of more organized bike

clubs

that are that are shading towards that

um

there's a large amount of x-forces

people in there

um they will tend to be

on the sort of the the patriotic

nationalistic side i mean a lot of the

people in my i

um obviously i'm connected to a lot of

people who are fans of the books

i would say a large proportion of those

are x forces a large proportion of those

would probably be

quite happy about brexit etc yeah um

you know you you see the imagery that's

being you know i'm

i get things in my post about veterans

and support for ptsd etc

there's quite a strong military

exercises vibe

amongst the community and and they would

have the politics you'd expect from that

really

all right well before we go because i

just have to explain this to shepherd

why is your name spelt i a i n instead

of

iron because one of my favorite stories

i tell people over here

is um

[Music]

oh what was his name i can't remember a

straight name now but some guy

oh jaws holland he had a guest on

and he was talking about his pets and

george was

said uh i once had a guy who had a cat

named

ian it's like it calls the cat in but

yeah i don't

i iain i haven't seen that very often

it's a name don't give me too much grief

no it's not it's it's a it's a scottish

it's a scottish spelling variant yeah so

i did that i did actually know that i

just want to give you one time

to be honest

hey and

what part of england are you from again

uh i don't think

cambridge okay so so ian uh

before we go i need you to make fun of

somebody from cambridge

you can't because it's partially noise

i doubt that he comes he comes from

south london though don't you

south london south london sarf

south london yeah yeah now he comes from

the fence

if if you notice when he takes his shoes

off he'll have webbed feet

yeah i do have two toes which like

abnormally connected yeah that they said

it's a natural adaptation for you

i can swim good

well without one foot because it's all

on one foot so basically just swimming

around in circles

give me six

well ian uh we certainly appreciate you

uh tuning in and joining us on this and

uh give us uh just a quick set of links

uh

how to find you on social media how to

find uh your publishing company

all that uh give us a nice little plug

before we end here

well the the publishing company it's bad

press

dot inc oh

oh that that's the one felony oh excuse

me matron

yeah yeah that

um yeah so bad press.ink is the

publishing company um

my books um my old publishing um

email address is um

oh now see when she listens back to this

yeah you're gonna say hey i was trying

to finish up and you kept bothering me

yeah it's just rainbow like so it's

banging again

so bad hyphen press dot co dot uk is

where you find me

and all my links and stuff are there and

yeah check it check out the books

i'm gonna have to get that absolutely

much trouble yeah okay thanks for tuning

into this episode of the wolf and the

shepherd we appreciate your support and

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