Being facetious, learning Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Korean, dancing like a loon, linguistics, sociolinguistics, evolutionary linguistics, languages, philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of logic, existentialism, political philosophy, literature, second-hand bookshops, history, prehistory, sewing, knitting, making things, anarcho-dandyism, pirates, floofy dresses, nintendo, frosty days, some art, idling, noir everything, paradoxes, thought experiments, comics, irreverence, irrelevance, raconteurs, astronomy, picnics, ducks, ideas, rum, words, vegan cooking, cooking vegans, socialism, tea
Brian Blessed of course.
Noisy noise, spazzrock, antique beat, doom country, sugar-powered space pop, cello concertos and so on, eg The Real Tuesday Weld, Shivaree, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Broadcast, eX-Girl, The Afghan Whigs, Coachwhips, Cibo Matto, Plus-tech Squeeze Box, Le Tigre, Piney Gir, Sundae Club, A Scholar and a Physician, The Twilight Singers, Thomas Truax, Regina Spektor, Boredoms, Polysics, Bis, Mika Bomb, Tom Waits, Luke Smith, Country Teasers, Royal Trux, The Schla La Las, Buck 65, Super Junky Monkey, Electric Eel Shock, Lightning Bolt, Ruins, Meanwhile Back in Communist Russia, Simple Kid, Shostakovich, Joy Division, Half Man Half Biscuit, Immortal Lee County Killers, Buzzcocks, Sebadoh, Bessie Smith, Saint-Saens, Blanche, Luke Haines, The Eighties Matchbox B-line Disaster, The Willard Grant Conspiracy, Khachaturian, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Koko Taylor, Dream City Film Club, La Mômo, Dolium, Tompaulin, Matthew Herbert, Buffalo Daughter, Melt Banana, Rico, Holly Golightly, The Magnetic Fields, The Apples in Stereo, Girls Against Boys, Supersnazz, Mudhoney, Fudge Tunnel, Breeders, The Television Personalities, Wire, Helen Love
Betty Blue, Delicatessen, Mystery Train, Bad Education, The Corpse Bride, Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, Dead Man, Pan's Labyrinth, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry, The Happiness of the Katakuris, X-Men/ X2, Coffee and Cigarettes, Brick, Battle Royale, Wild at Heart, Ghost World, Good Bye Lenin!, Bubba Ho-Tep, The Undead, Hercules in New York, anything by Beat Takeshi
The Avengers (1965-67), House, The Mark Steel Lectures, Twin Peaks, The Fairly Oddparents, Buffy, The Biiiiiiiiiiiig Knights, anything Armando Iannucci turns up on. Can I put radio programmes in here? Good. Blue Jam, Mixing It, The Mark Steel Solution.
BS Johnson, Antal Szerb, Mark Steel, Glen Duncan, Bertrand Russell, Hermann Hesse, Kurt Vonnegut, Daren King, Mikhael Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov, Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, Patrick Hamilton, Saki, Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka, Arthur Schopenhauer, AJ Ayer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mia Couto, Alberto Manguel, Rich Hall, AC Grayling, Albert Camus, Rousseau, Leibniz, Heidegger, Will Self, Lewis Carroll, Reinaldo Arenas, Ralph Ellison, Martin Amis, Steven Pinker
Mark Steel, Brian Blessed, Bertrand Russell