Keanu Reeves running, weeping, through Swindon in the dead of night
Including a joke about a playwright, an idea that could revolutionise action cinema and nearly, but not quite, some news
Hello. It is March 2025. This is the twenty-seventh monthly instalment of Interesting Skull, a newsletter of BRAIN-TEASING CLEVERNESS, RIB-TICKLING FUNNINESS and BOTTOM-EMPTYING PANIC by me, sweaty author Mike Rampton.
WHAT WHOAS ON TOUR, HEYS ON TOUR NEWS
I am doing two live events about my book There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question, in Cardiff on March 29th and Cambridge on March 30th. I went to university in Cardiff, and live in Cambridge, so there’s something quite nice about it being those cities. By nice, of course, I mean ‘petrifying’. There’ll be vaguely familiar faces in the audience in Cambridge that I won’t be able to place — a parent whose kid goes to the same school as mine? one of the scientists who helped out on the book? just a person I’ve walked past a bunch of times? — which, ha ha, I anticipate making me really really stressed out. You know who’s doing a talk in the same room the day before? Michael Rosen! A national treasure, a hero of mine and my daughter’s favourite writer with the initials MR. Here’s a video I made about the talks because I had a lot of work to do:
I’m not sure whether I’m driving or taking the train, but either way, I’ll probably start crying near Swindon!
EXCITING BOOK ALMOST-NEWS
I have been asked to write a really fun book as a direct result of this newsletter, which feels like it both warrants the last 27 months of nonsense and justifies keeping said nonsense going. But I can’t say what the book is yet, as it’s in the back-and-forth, “How about you add another £25 and two hot meals to that offer?” stage of proceedings. Gonna be good though! Two hot meals!
MULTIMEDIA GIANT NEWS
I went on my awesome friend Ruth McPhee’s fantastic folklore/fenland podcast Ruth Is Stranger Than Fiction — literally the best title it could possibly have, I love it — to talk about my village’s larger-than-life character, Moses Carter the Histon Giant (who at one point I got about 20,000 words into trying to write a novel about) and how the time I thought I saw a ghost, the ghost had my face and I’d had ever such a big lunch.
It’s a really good podcast — Ruth Is Stranger Than Fiction, not this episode necessarily, I’ll never know, I won’t listen to this one because it’s got me on it — particularly for fans of history, folklore and drink.
1
“My attitude towards the expo dedicated to red envelopes distributed at Chinese New Year is, whatever happens happens.”
“Lai See fair?”
“That's my attitude, yes.”
2
“My musical composition about someone who works in computing has a final section that is formally distinct from what precedes it.”
“Coda?”
“No, it's about someone who works more on the hardware side.”
3
“I’m a bit like an alleyway in a supermarket,” said Billie, aisleish.
My daughter is seven and is currently really into learning about the human body. She dressed as Adam Kay for World Book Day and is super into Operation Ouch, the excellent CBBC show about medicine. The other day in school she proudly told me that instead of asking her teacher if she could go to the toilet, she said, “Mr Wilkinson, can I go and empty my rectum?”
That’s a funny question coming from anyone, but she is ridiculously beautiful, which adds a whole extra element of hilarity to it for me. ‘Empty’ as a verb is so disgusting. We were talking about impressions recently, and I asked her if she could do an impression of me, and and she put on a deep voice, rolled her eyes and went, “Hey, what's another name for a tissue? An eyebrow HA HA HA HA HA” then glared at me. Absolutely roasted. What a ledge.
4
“I was driving, and one of Britain’s best-loved playwrights stepped out into the road, so I had to come to a screeching halt.”
“Stoppard?”
“I certainly did, or else I’d have hit Harold Pinter.”
5
“I wrote a song about my former bandmate while driving — not on a proper road, mind you — in East Anglia.”
“Diss track?”
“No, the song I wrote on a driveway in Fakenham was a heartfelt paean to the good times we had together.”
6
“I’m eating some fruit grown on an island in the Pitcairns famed for being home to 90% of the world’s Murphy’s petrels.”
“Ducie?”
“No, the fruit of Heliotropium arboreum, one of only two vascular plants that grow on Oeno Island — isn’t particularly tasty, although interestingly its leaves are used in corpse preparation on the nearby Marshall Islands.”
I’ve started running again. It’s rubbish. I get absolutely nothing from it. The one thing I like is doing a nice 10km loop that goes through the village of Rampton, the novelty of which is yet to wear off. But until the weather is consistently nice it’s muddy and horrible, so I’ve been running mostly on the Busway, a completely flat featureless concrete pathway through a completely flat featureless landscape. It’s boring and physically painful at the same time, like eating a whole packet of printer paper.
One of the things I keep thinking about when running is how much I’d like to write a really violent action movie where henchmen keep complaining that it’s their birthday as they get killed. I’ve just never seen that before. In the John Wick films Keanu Reeves kills well over 400 people: statistically, it’s at least one of their birthdays.
What I want is for Keanu Reeves to snap someone’s neck, and as they drop to the ground they say something like:
“I certainly didn’t expect this on my birthday!”
“I expected 46 to be rough, but this is ridiculous!”
“Looks like my kids baked me that cake for nothing!”
It would be so upsetting! Same with big battle scenes in things like Game Of Thrones — I think every so often someone who gets stabbed should shout “Today? Of all days? Really? Guess this is what I get for saying I didn’t want a party!”
Statistically, if there are 23 people in a room there is a higher than 50% likelihood that two of them share a birthday. I’ve never seen that addressed in a violent action context. There are about 23 people attacked with hammers in the famous corridor scene in Oldboy — wouldn’t it be fun to have a little sequence afterwards where some of them are bleeding out like, “October? Anyone? I’m the 15th. I know, sword-wielding henchman dying in a hallway after being hit with a hammer — typical Libra, am I right? October 15th? Anyone?”
Possibly, part of why I don’t enjoy running is that my thoughts are quite annoying. There’s simply no need for that henchman to be that irritating! I am doing the Cambridge Half Marathon on March 9th and am not in shape for it, so might soon find myself lying on the ground groaning like a hammer-battered henchman.
Talking of lying down, I tested anti-snoring devices for the i paper, who sensibly opted not to use the more full-on images I provided (above right). And, hey, ace, talking of action movies, I wrote a piece for Esquire about being excited about the new Jurassic Park film looking quite good. Look at how neatly that all linked up. I oughta be in Hollywood!
7
“I’m started a business using laundry detergent to clean the shelves below people’s windows. I’m just not sure how to charge.”
“Persil?”
“Potentially, but they’re not all the same size.”
8
“Mr Holmes, what name would you give to the digestive canal along which food passes, running essentially from mouth to anus?”
“Alimentary, my dear Watson.”
9
“People are treating the new boss in a really obsequious and sycophantic manner, just because he owns an unusual sub-Saharan wild cat.”
“Serval?”
“That’s exactly how they’re behaving, just because he owns a civet.”
THE LAST MONTH IN NUMBERS
Mowed the lawn. Wrote a draft of a picture book about a nice car that probably won’t happen. Worked on three adverts. Went donutting, where you slide down a hill on a rubber ring, which was great and might be my sport. Volunteered at Woodcraft Folk twice, making zines and a weirdly beautiful sandy archipelago. Did three talks to students in Hong Kong, which involved getting up at 5am UK time and having CRAZY MAN EYES. Ran 70ish kilometres but at last once forgot to press start on Strava so might as well not have flipping bothered. Watched a very funny show about farts in the theatre, a rubbish film about lions in the cinema and a million episodes of Gladiators: Epic Pranks and The 1% Club on telly. Got accidentally placed on a list of influencers and sent an enormous box of Bluey merchandise, which was amazing. The only interesting thing about the band Jamiroquai is that in most bands it's the drummer who has the high hat. Rode my bike home from a pub so fast through the wind, rain and night that I fell off it onto a grass verge and got very dirty in the dead of night. Got offered a temp job dealing with half-human, half-Middle-Earth-tree people, but on a collective basis rather than individually, which is a shame as I was hoping for a per man-Ent position.
COOL ACTIONS FOR COOL PEOPLE TO COOLLY TAKE
Buy There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question from Amazon UK, Waterstones or Bookshop.org (the US version, retitled There Are No Silly Questions, will be published on October 14th, btw, and can be pre-ordered from Amazon US, Bookshop.org or Target) (I used to joke that the main aim in my career was getting to a point where I didn’t know how many books I’d written, and might get there sooner than I expected — does a different title make it a different book? Probably not, but maybe? It’s coming out in 21 languages, which is SO MANY)
Pre-order Become A Genius In A Year, out on May 22nd, from Amazon UK, Waterstones or Bookshop.org
Come along to my talks on March 29th in Cardiff or March 30th in Cambridge, or stand by the road in Cambridge on March 9th, look for me among the half-marathon runners and sneak me some jelly babies and/or a yard of Kronenbourg
Next issue: April 4th.
10
CURRENT READING
A Solemn Method Of Sewing Cloth Edges by Ernest Hemingway
You’re Rubbish, Superman by Neil B. Forezod
Hit By A Steamroller While On Fire by Walter Waytogo
Goadingly Persuade A Feline by Derek Att
What To Put On A Cassock by Denise Mainly