J.W. was born in London in 1979 and has never quite gotten over it. He was educated in St James C of E Primary School which furnished him with a horror of long division and the kind of muddled existential guilt complex psycotherapists refer to as ‘easy money’. On leaving St James he took a tour of educational establishments in London and surrounding counties before giving up on the whole ‘school thing’ all together. He then spent a delightful year sitting around eating toast and failing to get his GCSE’s, in penance for which he was sent to Walthamstow.
He attended Sir George Monoux Sixth Form College for three years and received five GCSE’s (including one in Information Systems which still baffles him) and three A-Levels in Sociology, Philosophy and English Literature. He also became involved in amateur theatre where he was noted for his comic renditions of posh people, a skill he has since found about as useful as an A-Level in Sociology.
Following a gap year in which he drank wine and ate more toast he ended up in Liverpool, uncertain as to why, but studying English Language and Literature. He spent three years there pretending to study but actually devoted his time to drinking wine and eating toast. Aside from that he directed The Bacchae and Measure for Measure and tried to get off with a girl called Sou-Sou and occasionally her best mate Emily.
Buoyed by his artistic achievements, on leaving University he immediately became a school teacher, a move he remembers as ‘quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, with the possible exception of that incident with the cauliflower which I don’t like to talk about’. After a tiresome year of this he came to the sound conclusion that he fundamentally disliked children so he quit, even though by this point they had given him a board rubber of his very own. Since this he has been bumming about and accomplishing very little. He directed another play which finally cured him of the desire to be involved in theatre and has been fired from a bewildering array of dead end jobs including that of exam marker and bookshop attendant. He is currently residing in North London in the vague hopes that his luck will change. He seriously doubts it.
J.W (1979 - )
