Anthony Richardson Writes Stories That Are Funny, and Sometimes Melancholy

My name is Anthony Richardson. This is a picture of me trying to get the exact facial expression of the jolly Senagalese infantryman who fronts the French cocoa-based drink Banania:

These are all my short stories, and some of my poetry. I am a writer and stand up comedian. I’ve performed on stage and on TV throughout the UK, Australia and South Africa. My fiction has been published in various magazines, and recently I was shortlisted for the Franco British Council Short Story Prize.

The BBC said I have ‘Good Jokes, and a pretty face.’ They’ve also said that I am ‘Hilarious,’ that I am ‘Consistently funny,’ and that I am ‘Woefully Inconsistent’ (at different points in my career).

Please find on this site stories about a man on a date with a character from a French GCSE text book (’Hexagone’); a man who has an affair with a common house spider (’Tagmata’); a girl that communicates by free kicks (’She had that funny way of talking’; and domestic violence amongst crockery (’And jugs they beat their children but there’s nothing we can do’).

I hope you find my stories as consistently funny and woefully inconsistent as the British Broadcasting Corporation do.

Paint my Album episode 6

Would you believe it? It seems only yesterday that Paint my Album episode 1 hit our screens. Now we’re on episode 6. This one manages to offend men with crab hands.

more from http://www.paintmyalbum.net

Second episode of Paint my Album

The second episode of Paint My Album has just been put up on Youtube. Watch it. Leave comments and stuff. It features a new comedy catchphrase that I’m trialling, called ‘Where’s this Baby’s testicles?’

Not really anything like buses

I haven’t posted for ages and now I have two things to add. This is not like buses in any way. Buses aren’t lazy at posting on blogs. Buses get caught up in traffic and have disparities in the amount of people they pick up.  I have been filming the tv show of ‘Let’s redo Classic Album Covers Using Microsoft Paint.’ I will put a clip here.

Also, I wrote a poem about my relationship with poetry and how difficult I find it. It’s called, funnily enough, ‘ars poetica,’ and you can find a link to it on the right hand side.

 

Please do get involved with this project. Go on Facebook and type in ‘Let’s redo classic album covers using microsoft paint.’

Week 11 – Another novel extract

Here is another extract from my novel. It’s rough round the edges.

It’s on the righthand side – The Birds Only Sing When Nobody’s There

Writing a novel

I’m writing a novel. I’ve been writing it for ages. It’s about a group of homeless people that live underground. They make TV. Leni has lived underground for a while. He’s 17 and a half. Neil has just come to live underground. Leni has been told by the others to give him a tour. Neil thinks Leni is mental. Leni doesn’t think of anything, but he does like TV

Here’s an extract, about 20,000 words in. Please let me know what you think.

it’s under week 9 – novel extract.

Prose Poetry

Prose poetry seems to me to be stories that are too short but you still want to get them published in poncy magazines.

Week 8 – You don’t know John is exactly that.

Andrew was in this Coma

I’ve just written this story called ‘Andrew was in this Coma.’ It’s about a man in a coma and his wife. Please read it. It’s pretty strange. I do hate it when people say ‘This is strange.’ It always isn’t. But this is. It’s strange, all right.

Success: My let’s Redo Classic Album Covers Using Microsoft Paint facebook group and worldwide phenomenon celebrated its 200th album re-doing the other day.

Partial disappointment: The 200th album was a crude drawing of a man’s flaccid cock. Thank you Clodagh Dunne, from Manchester.

Week Four

I had this idea about Helicopters and Where’s Wally but when I wrote it the thing only came to 60 words. So I indented it a bit and made each line of equal length and it turned into a poem. That’s basically what Poetry is. The Poem is called ‘This is only a Poem Because it’s Short and Each Line Begins with a Capital Letter.’

If anyone can communicate with Free Kicks, It’s Jay Jay Okocha

I was sorting out my videos, which meant watching each tape to see if it was worth keeping, when I came across an old recording of Match of the Day. Tony Gubba was commentating on a Bolton game and Jay Jay Okocha smashed a free kick around a poorly constructed Newcastle United wall and into the top right hand corner. Tony Gubba may have slightly sensationalised the strike, claiming ‘If anyone can communicate with free kicks, it’s that man Jay Jay Okocha.’

In week two I set out to challenge Gubba’s bizarre claim, with the story ‘She had that Funny way of Talking.’