Helen Keen profile picture

Helen Keen

I am here for Friends

About Me

I like to use the word 'rum' in a non-beverage related way.

My Interests

Comedy, books, making things, the 1930s generally (but especially comic novels and science fiction written then), junk shops, running, Topshop, Art Deco, wolves, my collection of small things made out of early plastics, knitting, overusing ampersands (& brackets).

I'd like to meet:

Great aviatrices of the nineteen twenties and 'thirties. Fellow fans of antiquated slang (late 19th Century - 1940s). People who'd let me walk their dogs. Or anyone at all, really.

Music:

Right now anything that's a bit space rocket-y because I'm working on a show for Leicester Comedy Festival/Yuri's Night (and some other stuff) along those lines...

Television:

The Daily Show, Peep Show, The Day Today, Lost, Time Team, Father Ted, any documentary at all, The Adventure Game, The Box of Delights.

Books:

'Great Expectations', 'The Mill on the Floss', 'Middlemarch', 'Notes from the Underground', 'Chrome Yellow', 'Cold Comfort Fam', 'Wuthering Heights','His Monkey Wife (or, Married to a Chimp)', 'Decline & Fall', (these last two novels are hilarious apart from the odd dodgy bit), 'Jane Eyre', Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde, anything by or about the Mitfords (esp. Jessica's 'Hons and Rebels' and Nancy's biogs of Mme de Pompadour, etc.), victorian poety (some), Angela Carter, Dorothy Parker, the Greek myths, all Flaubert (except the Saint Anthony thing - what on earth was that about!?), 'The Waves', 'A room of one's own', 'If the Impressionists had been dentists', Quentin Crisp (should be under Heroes really) W H Auden, 'Treasure Island', 'The girls of slender means', Philip Larkin, Medieval bestiaries and dream vision poetry, Byron, 'Barchester Towers', 'The House of Mirth', anything with nice illustrations by eg Aubrey Beardsley or Jan Pienkowski, Elle magazine (because I like to flirt with pure evil), Shakespeare's sonnets, Grimm's Tales, 1930's craft books, etc.

Heroes:

Elizabeth I, The Pankhursts, Stella Gibbons, Dennis Skinner MP, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Malcolm Gladwell, Thabitha Khumalo