My name is Robert Wringham, writer-comedian. I lend my celebrated WISDOM and WIT to many, many things.
I write short- and long-form humour, fiction, creative nonfiction, critical essays, and the odd polemical rampage. As a performer, I do comedy, readings, interviews with other comedy people, and talks.
My first book, You Are Nothing, tells the story of Cluub Zarathustra — the early work of comedians Stewart Lee, Roger Mann and Simon Munnery.
A Loose Egg is a collection of short pieces and was shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour.
For well over a decade, I’ve been editor and publisher of the biannual New Escapologist magazine, which was an easy gig to get since I made the whole thing up myself. The magazine is a niche one, but it’s available in loads of trendy bookshops.
My New Escapologist spin-off book Escape Everything! became a bestseller in translation when published by Heyne in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as Ich Bin Raus and then by Cassiopeia in Korea (2018). It was refreshed and republished by Unbound in paperback in 2021 as I’m Out and then finally as a tenth-anniversary paperback under the original title. Phew.
The sequel to Escape Everything! is called The Good Life for Wage Slaves in English and Das Good Leben in German. It’s one part misery memoir and one part useful survival guide.
Stern Plastic Owl is my second collection of short humour pieces, including the famous “Sex Life of H.G. Wells” and selected installments of my Idler column (2016-2020)
Circa 2022, I located and defrosted a 1980s folk hero called The Iceman. Together we created Melt It! The Book of the Iceman, which has now been adapted very nicely for film.
My first novel is called Rub-A-Dub-Dub and it won a Saltire Prize for book design. My second novel is called Tether.
For many years, I’ve written print and digital journalism like The Modernist, The Skinny, Verbicide, CACTUS, Side Street Review, Splitsider, Meat, tMCQ, From the Sublime, the British Comedy Guide, Canadian Notes and Queries, Playboy, and regularly for the Idler.
I perform at great fringe venues like Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, the Glasgow CCA, Mainline Theatre in Montréal, PEN Theatre in South London, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Melt It! film with our live Q&A component also took me to some legendary and beautiful venues like Chapter Arts, the GFT, DCA, Cameo Picturehouse, Midlands Art Centre, the Bill Murray, and the list goes on. My current show is called The Annotated Audiobook.
Online, I obsessively and joyfully keep blogs here and here, and I contribute to HiLobrow. If you prefer to use ears over eyes, there’s the disgraceful Punch and Judy Show I recorded between 2009 and 2012 with my friend Daniel Godsil: it’s old now but we still have fans out there.
Immune to popular wisdom, I love meeting my heroes. I’ve interviewed or otherwise worked with Luke Rhinehart, Will Self, Tom Hodgkinson Alain de Botton, Momus, Poly Styrene, John Dowie, Simon Munnery, Jo Brand, Neil Mullarkey, Stewart Lee, and Ian Macpherson among others.
Some favourite miscelanious projects include editing Richard Herring’s The Box Lady (Go Faster Stripe, 2013); Luke Rhinehart’s final novel, Invasion (Titan, 2016), and Tim Blanchard’s nonfiction Powysland (Sundial, 2018); directing a one-person show for Gabriel Featherstone (2019/20); and transcribing and panache-enhancing my friend Wentworth’s epic twenty-year travel journal (ongoing).
I grew up in Dudley before escaping in 2004. I try not to look back. I now live mainly in Glasgow and sometimes in Montreal. I read a lot of library books, walk stupidly-long distances for fun, and listen to great music. I get my unstoppable energy from peaches. My name comes from James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
Today, I’m doing this.
Email: r [dot] wringham [at] gmail [dot] com or info [at] newescapologist [dot] co.uk
Photos: Max Crawford