Rapping in a skip and silently weeping
Including a joke about pigment for adolescents and one about a thing bakers do
Hello. It is June 2025. This is the thirtieth — thirtieth! — monthly instalment of Interesting Skull, a newsletter that fluctuates wildly between “Look how well I, Mike Rampton, am doing!” and “Please pay heed to how little money I, Mike Rampton, have, and perhaps offer me some work!”, written of course by me, delicate foghorn Mike Rampton. Expect at least ten jokes existing somewhere on the border between “excellent” and “very excellent”, plus some other words.
I AM THE WORLD’S FAVOURITE AUTHOR NEWS
Become A Genius In A Year, written by me, illustrated by Gareth Edwards and edited by Holly Tonks, came out a couple of weeks ago and seems to be doing well. Amazon ran out in a day, because Jeff Bezos has never had any faith in me and didn’t order enough copies in, the dim thicko. It got a five-star review in the Telegraph (although, if I’m totally honest, it reads like a three). I went into a school in South London to do some talks to promote it (which were terrifying and exhausting and involved pratting about in a silly hat) and signed copies for 95 different kids, doing a regrettably lengthy message in each. Possibly the fastest thousand words I’ve ever written, thinking about it.
It’s a really fun book! More fun than it looks based on my facial expression above! Buy it!
Or win it! I went on Tiernan Douieb’s excellent podcast for kids, Radio Nonsense, and talked a lot of toot for ages, and if you listen (I haven’t, I can’t handle listening to myself) there’s a chance to win a copy I believe.
It’s available from Sainsbury’s, my Bookshop.org store, Waterstones, all of them. All of the shops.
1
“I’m going to have a lovely picnic with my favourite member of the Corleone crime family.”
“Sonny?”
“I certainly hope so — nice weather would make my picnic with Michael a lot more pleasant.”
2
“I’ve just unwrapped a bunch of framed pictures of my favourite cast member from the fondly remembered 1980s Children’s BBC programme The Really Wild Show.”
“Chris Packham?”
“I don’t know if it was him, but whoever did it did a great job. They’re protected with bubble wrap but in a way that is also efficient with space.”
3
“I really want to do that thing bakers do! I really really want to do that thing bakers do!”
“Knead?”
“Well, it’s just a want really. There won’t be any negative consequences if I don’t do it. It’s fine. It was just an idea really.”
I have had a month in which I’ve been constantly busy and yet, as far as I can tell, I might not have earned any money at all. I’ve had meetings and chats and danced about in a daft costume for shouting children, but done strikingly little that will lead to money entering my bank account this calendar year. It’s going to be weird when royalty cheques start showing up, because I’ll be living in a skip.
Is there a fortune to be made in making skips inhabitable? Kind of like pod hotels, but living in a skip. You could make one into a kind of bedsit easily enough I reckon. I was recently sent a load of that meal-substitute stuff that tech bros eat because they feel like they’re too important to trouble themselves with thinking about food — nothing would streamline your existence like living in a skip. You could probably get a good internet connection in them because they’re made of metal (I don’t know if that part of the idea stands up to more than a second of thought because I’m not willing to make the effort), and that kind of “nothing but the hustle” type of guy might really go for it.
There’s something to it, stripping away all silly distractions like windows and space, so people can really concentrate on work. If this was America I’d call the concept “Dumpster Thriving”, but this is Britain, so I’m going to call it… “Living In A Skip”.
It might become trendy. Someone might do a rap song about it, a trendy rap song, one of those showy-off trendy rap songs that popular rappers do about their enviable lifestyles and many belongings, like:
You’re doubtful and skeptical / At my refuse receptacle / A drab urban spectacle / That smells like old vegetables / But this streamlined vestibule / Promotes intellectual / Genius conceptual / Brainy and sexual / Success is perpetual / I live in a skip and don’t go anywhere else and there’s a toilet in the corner to go poo in and I need to improve my diet because every bowel movement is completely horrible although I’m getting a lot of work done and that’s the main thing I have or indeed am really.
4
“I’m going to allow, permit, authorise and empower the devil to possess the film director Mr Ferrara.”
“Enable?”
“That’s exactly where the devil will be, yes.”
5
I’ve got a friend who manufactures pigment for adolescents. Makes youth ink.
6
Who hunts a white whale and distrusts law enforcement officers?
Captain ACAB.
One of the odd things about being a journeyman author is that I’m asked to do a lot more quote-unquote “performing” than I’m good at or comfortable with. If I was good at addressing large rooms of people I wouldn’t have chosen a career spent largely alone with a bunch of pens. There’s a lot of “Mike, can you make a quick video?”, and then filming stuff and sending it off with no idea where it’s going or what it’s really for — the other day I learned some phrases in Slovak for one, and can’t remember why. But I was pleased with the seamless magic trick in the one above. If only it wasn’t paired with the clear sense that I didn’t know where my sentence was going. I’ve left the full joyless will-this-do?-ness of the whole thing in there, partly to get across the weirdness of the job and partly because I simply don’t have the energy to edit it.
I think most people have a love/hate relationship with attention and performing, but the extremes of my working life make it all particularly silly. I have about five in-person meetings a year, and otherwise work totally on my own, apart from when I’m told to go somewhere and lark about in front of a bunch of strangers then go home again. It’s really tiring and I’m not good at it and there always seems to be some extra element that makes it all more complicated, like there’s a dinner table in my car or I’ve got a weeping sore on my head or something.
I’ve spent chunks of my life being very loud and chunks being almost silent, and only occasionally seem to have had the balance right. I didn’t talk to a lot of people on my course at university, for instance. Once, I made a conscious effort to be more engaged. The lecturer asked if someone could help with a projector. “I’ll do it!” I said. However, I hadn’t spoken out loud for several days, and something odd happened with the saliva in my throat, and the voice that came out sounded nothing at all like my voice. It still sounded like a human voice, but a lot more big and confident and booming, more kind of Matt Berry-esque, than my usual one. It really caught me by surprise, and I started laughing uncontrollably, but nobody else in the lecture theatre had ever heard my voice so didn’t know what was unusual, which also made me laugh, so I was rendered completely insensible, shaking, laughing so much I was silent, tears streaming down my cheeks. I looked like something about me was entirely broken. Like, I volunteered to help with an extremely pedestrian task then gave a huge smile and started crying and couldn’t stop. Someone else helped with the projector, I was in no state to.
So, yeah, an inconsistent public speaker.
7
“I just met a scantily-clad woman in the circus and am all aquiver.”
“Big top?”
“No, an extremely small one which left nothing to the imagination, that's why I've gone a bit peculiar.”
8
“I know a man who produced a Hollywood film about a talking pig.”
“Babe magnate?”
“I only know him on a professional basis, I've no idea what his personal life's like.”
9
“I met a woman on a dating app who makes canned food even more canned.”
“Tinder?”
“Yeah, even more canned.”
MAY IN NUMBERS
Took three scooters apart. Drove about eighty metres the wrong way down a one-way street in a state of blind, abject panic. Spent twenty minutes trapped at the top of a travelator in a big Tesco when a stricken man who I was trying to help refused to let go of me. Scratched my car in the carpark of the same Tesco when I was extremely stressed — on a different occasion — and forgot how directions worked. Begged for work from more people than opted to give me any. Bought a bunch of functionless antiques for no good reason. Spent a while working on a joke that didn’t work because I’d misremembered Ronnie Barker’s character from Open All Hours as being called “Gravel”. Also spent a while on one about Estelle Getty and a gestalt entity both having many parts, and that didn’t get anywhere. Penn & Teller are both named after things you find in banks, while Sonny & Cher are both named after words associated with picnics. Makes you think.
COOL ACTIONS COOL PEOPLE MIGHT TAKE COOLLY
Buy my books, you scurvy curs! They’re all on my exciting store on Bookshop.org that in theory I get a few pence from.
Or, There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question is on Amazon UK, Waterstones and Nosy Crow.
The US version, retitled There Are No Silly Questions, is out in October and available from Amazon US, Bookshop.org or Target.
Become A Genius In A Year can be bought from Amazon UK (if you like waiting — again, Jeff Bezos really did me on this one), Waterstones or HarperCollins.
Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Strava or BlueSky. And please tell people about this newsletter, I put a lot of work into it to quite sad results numberswise.
If you work at a media outlet and would like me to write for you, or have a platform I can promote my nonsense on, please get in touch. I don’t really say no to anything. Someone asked me about it recently, and said, “Mike, do you ever say no to anything?” “Yes,” I said.
Next issue: July 4th.
10
CURRENT READING
Who Is Princess Beatrice? by Denise Auf Der King
Now That’s A Refreshing Fruit by Chris Papple
Bringing An Acoustic Guitar To A Party And Insisting On Playing It For Absolutely Ages by Major Dick Behaviour
Salad Chef by Leif Cook
Straight Into My Veins by Ivy Drip