Salutations cyber-warrior/warrioress,

I’m firing off this missive to calm my flock o’chill-dren. First off the bat, thanks are due to those of you who continue to blow the torch of Darkplace, notably all at the ‘Save Darkplace’ website. Cheers fellas, keep up the bad work (by which I mean good work). I owe you a figurative beer. (You won’t actually get a beer from me).

The news on a second season of Darkplace is thus. There is no news. Sadly the rest of the tapes of mein meisterwerk are likely to remain chez Marenghi unless the world makes some kind of evolutionary leap and catches up with my vision. And, between you, me and the proverbial, I think I might have taped over one of them with an episode of The Thornbirds. Tant pis, the digital versatile disc is nearing completion and will feature the following terrifying treatlets:

Commentaries to all episodes
Deleted scenes
Test footage
Original ‘One Track Lover’ Single (Extended Version)
Over an hour of extra talking heads
Photo galleries
Original radio ads
Original storyboards and storyboard to scene comparisons
Plus more

In short, it will render all previous DVDs redundant. (And shut down those shameless profiteering sons of bitches on E-bay.) I will let you know the release date as soon as I have it or pretty soon after I have it.

Till then, I remain your obedient shaman, Garth Marenghi

PS. If you were wondering what happened to the mooted repeats of Darkplace, I suggest you write to the Home Secretary.

PPS. If you happen to be in Croatia, Todd’s got a new Taco commercial out there this week only.

PPPS. Do check out my website garthmarenghi.com for new content this week. Spread The Word, pilgrims.

In My Own Fright

Perhaps it's the lapsed catholic in me, but my books have a habit of getting banned, especially in secondary schools. Maybe it's because I will never shirk from provoking. Oscar Wilde once said a very cutting thing about censorship, basically along the lines of it being pretty bad. This week his clever Oscarism rung true. And right in my face, to boot.

Yours truly was slated to do a book reading-come-press launch at the Ipswich Waterstone's, where my new collection of short stories A Little Bite of What You Fancy had been their best selling horror hardback for two weeks earlier that spring. I didn't want to go because I'd had a bit of trouble with some goths last time I rode in, but my publicity manager, Dean Learner, said it would be 'ungracious' to just not turn up as it had 'been in my diary for ages'. Additionally, he reminded me that if I wanted to continue to get good reviews (e.g. 'This is one of the best books about crabs I've read'- Hard Gore Magazine) I had to 'play the game'.

However, when I arrived, the assistant-manager of Waterstone's (who, by his complexion, I judged to be in his late teens) said that the story I'd chosen to read, 'Gobble Gobble', was unsuitable for a 7pm audience, which would 'inevitably include kids'.

This pin head, calm as you like, proceeded to open the book and point to a scene where the lead character, Bogpo, sucks on his fellow mutant's penis, and declared it 'obscene' and 'distasteful'. I was livid. He'd totally missed the point. In the fictional culture I was describing, such a gesture was a sign of respect. I was highlighting the arbitrariness of any social behaviour. For a start they totally overlooked the fact that Bogpo himself had no fewer than four penises. Their attitudes to the penis, from this fact alone, was bound to be different. Explaining that I had no intention of 'calming myself', I did a swift 180 and left him to deal with the fifteen-plus people already queuing outside.

That evening I was looking forward to the opportunity to sound off about all this on Radio Suffolk (one of the few stations still prepared to give Jethro Tull the time of day. And good on 'em). But just as I was hitting my stride in their popular drive-time slot, the sound guy cut me off because I apparently said 'piss'.