In the autumn, I popped up in in cinemas in The Three Musketeers 3D, playing an extravagant Tailor in a couple of scenes near the start of the movie. Here's me looking rather dashing in my costume: (Click on the photo to open it full sized)

I wrote a short story for a project called (Now That Would Be) Telling, where a group of writers collaborated with artist Hayley Lock and curator Catherine Hemelryk on a series of installations in various historic houses around the country. My story was a response to Ickworth House in Suffolk and you can read it on the website. There are images there too.

My second art-collaboration was with Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard (for whom I played a Martian in their BFI piece, Radiomania, in 2009) for the AND Festival. Romeo Echo Delta is a hoax broadcast that went out on BBC Radio Merseyside, regarding the strange appearance of a beam of red light over Birkenhead one evening. It remains installed at Kate MacGarry until 17th December should you wish to have a listen.

In the Spring I was a Visiting Artist at the National Student Drama Festival and gave a series of workshops about solo shows - writing, performing and producing.

In June I gave a talk at Transform at the West Yorkshire Playhouse regarding science and comedy.

I have been involved (with two other playwrights at the NT Studio) with a piece about a chaotic evening at a London embassy. It's been a lot of fun to work on and there should be developments next year.

I performed 'Coelacanth' all over the place this year. At The Carriageworks in Leeds; at London's pop-up Urban Physic Garden; at the Green Man and Greenbelt Festivals; and at Port Eliot and the inaugural Wilderness Festival where I also took the role of the Idler Academy's Sports Master, leading classes in Frisbee Tree Golf. There are photos of the matches on the CLFTGC Facebook page.

I spoke of my love for FTG at the London Word Festival too. To the left there's a photo of me in full lecture mode. Note the concentration on my face as I hold the disc. . .

I turned up a couple of times at Out of This World, the British Library's Science Fiction exhibition. I was a doomed accountant in a staged reading of an updated version of Karel Capek's R.U.R. and, in the final evening of talks, I performed readings from some of JG Ballard's works as part of an event marking the cataloguing of his papers by the Library.

Some of my writing was featured on Folio First.

With all that going on this year, I just didn't find a long enough period of writing time to finish This Is My Treasure. It's more finished than it was this time last year, and the reading of segments I did at the Interrobang?! club night in September went really well.

Here's a new bit (different from last year's):

It’s winter, a Sunday after a snow Friday. After Jack Frost comes John Thaw. The streets are slush gullies, the trees are rocking back and forth to keep warm in the gusts. I pass a row of bikes pushed into an orgy, wheels intimate with the next frame, outside a college, then down a road where the paving slabs jag at critical angles and barely touch – a street of cold marriages.

Arrival at a party. The hosts are a couple of writers – he has a Saturday supplement column with a photo byline of arrogance and threat – you won’t like what he has to say, and if you do, well then, he has no respect for you. She recently got back from the Caucasus and filed a story exposing Georgia’s precarious orphanages, often placed in areas notable for landslides, floods and ravenous wolves. The point being that the land is cheaper there, and, well, orphans.

There's more in that scene, but I wanted to give you a taster.

You may have heard me say this before, but I really really will do this live next year. I'm booking venues for workshop performances and more staged ones as the year progresses. Watch this space.

But please accept my (early) compliments for the season and wish you a wonderful 2012.
And I'll be in touch when I have more news - dates for the show and news on further work.

I'm planning to perform in Bristol in the Summer and a few of the usual festivals again.

PS - A couple of other things. I recorded a commentary track for an episode which featured me in my underpants for the DVD release of Fist of Fun, the brilliant early 90s comedy series by Lee (Stewart Lee) and Herring (Richard Herring).
It's available exclusively at Go Faster Stripe, there are TONS of extras on the discs, and I think you'd love it. Also, my flatmate Helen Arney is selling her delightful seasonal CD, It's Going to be an Awkward Christmas, Darling either as a digital download or a real proper compact disc. Your Christmas won't be awkward enough without it.