Mick McCann
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Mick McCann is spanking, top-ranking. Leeds' greatest ever author and godfather of 'Leedsness' is fit as fuck and certainly had NOTHING to do with the writing of this.
Well he hasn't now, now that we've distracted the fat get with cake. Mick has wrtiten three books, that he admits to, and is a blogging/article writing hussy, having written for The City Talking, Culture Vulture, Sabotage Times, The Guardian and many others. Mick is regularly called upon regarding all things Leeds by Made In Leeds TV, BBC Leeds, ITV Yorkshire and Yorkshire Evening Post.
Mick talks too much and has opinions on every-fucking-thing. Worse still, he knows he's right.
Although he insists on dancing at every possible opportunity (don't go shopping with him), and sees it as one of his many gifts, Mick can't dance. Being a deluded twat, he sees the 20 year old clubbers' glances of embarrassment as admiration.
Mick has a number of aliases, 'Mr Leeds', 'The Leeds Man' but is simply known by his very closest friends as 'that ugly, boring, fat, big-headed twat'. Mick is sexist, racist and homophobic and parks bumper to bumper with any vehicle he sees with a disabled sticker and space for a wheel chair.
He lives in Leeds... ooh, and apparently, he's written a couple of books.
How Leeds Changed The World
How Leeds Changed The World is a playful, chatty, funky but factual A-Z encyclopaedia of Leeds. It has sold in its thousands - being Leeds Waterstones top selling Xmas book two years in a row - and was chosen by Leeds City Council to be given as a gift from the city of Leeds to the 800 visiting VIPs for the Tour De France Grand Depart 2014.
Nailed - Digital Stalking
At 7.30am on Wednesday 21st November 2007, six members of Leeds CID arrived at author Mick McCann's house and arrested him and his wife. The house was searched around the children preparing for school, and 14 items were removed. Taken to the Bridewell, the suspects were photographed, fingerprinted and DNA extracted before being released on bail. Neither had a police record, not so much as a parking ticket.
They were arrested under 'suspicion of making malicious phone calls' using a SIM card that Mrs McCann had given away four to five years earlier. This was the third time they'd been questioned by the police regarding this SIM card. In this novel, Mick McCann gives an account of the real events and weaves them through a fiction that is Nailed - Ditial Stalking in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.
'Some of the stuff that went on was quite incredible and I lay out why we were getting bullied by the then Head of Homicide and Serious Crime at West Yorkshire Police. It got lots of local coverage but also had a long feature on daytime Radio 4 and a full page (for over 3 million readers) in Metro yet still didn't sell anywhere near as many as Coming Out or How Leeds.
IDENTITY THEFT - ROAD RAGE - FOUCAULT - EMAILS - SURVEILLANCE - PANOPTICONS - LEEDS - CELEBRITY - DIGITAL ASSAULT - 10111001 - STALKERS - JUSTICE - FORUMS - CONSPIRACY - DATA SNATCH - CHAOS
Coming Out as a Bowie Fan in Leeds, Yorkshire, England
(The Memoirs Of A Punk Romantic)
Coming Out is a gritty, coming of age, sexy street drama based mainly in the late 1970s. A chunk of unexpected working class life, it's stuffed full of real life Leeds stories. Coming Out is edgy not gloomy, life affirming and warm, laced with wit and humour.
Mick tried to capture that cocky, annoying but lovable teenage voice - teenage rebellion, convictions, certainty, confidence, depth of feelings and self expression - without adult justifications or excuses and sees it as also logging the loss of childhood freedom.
The book also chronicles a '70s, working class, northern youth movement completely ignored by the London media that Mick dubs 'The Punk Romantics', a hard not fluffy, street pre-cursor to the New Romantics.
Social Context - 3 day week, The Yorkshire Ripper, winter of discontent, Cold War/nuclear threat, sexual liberation, Punk and the street version of the New Romantics, three to four years earlier.
BOYS IN MAKE-UP - PUNK - FOOTBALL - CHILDHOOD - BOWIE - MAD NUNS - GIRLS - LIFE - HOT WHEELS - LEEDS - CROSS COUNTRY - VIOLENCE - SEX - THE 70S - DISAPPEARING GIRL - ADOLESCENCE - MY DEATH
According to official Nielsen book data, Coming Out outsold five out of six of that years Man Booker Prize shortlist. Months after the competition, with all its attached, blanket publicity, Coming Out has still outsold four of the six books, one of them by over three times.