Things you never knew about me

Did I ever tell you about my days as a model?

I was at university and was spotted by an agent in Leeds city centre.

"You've got the right posture, bone structure - everything! Your a natural," she said.

"Really?" I smirked, disbelievingly.

"Seriously. Young men like you can make a lot of money in modelling".

"Yeah, right," I said naively. (Which was why I was at university).

I took some convincing, but eventually I took the woman seriously. Deadly seriously.

For this was no ordinary modelling job. There were no shoes or pouting or edgy hairstyles in this kind of modelling, oh no. For this was a job modelling spiders - wild, rare, exotic, dangerous kinds of spiders. The kind that can kill you with a blink of their 8 poisonous eye-lids, or but a shifty squeeze of their bulbous palpy fang sacs (which they have 2 of).

And so there I was, between the years 1998 and 1999, touring the zoos and veterinary colleges of Russia, standing before delegates and experts with a black widow on my chin, or a brown fiddleback on my hair, whilst they took photographs and pointed and nodded and generally seemed to agree on things.

The motivation for this (since I know you're dying to ask) was a piece of government funded research they were compiling entitled The Encyclopedia of Suffering . It was hoped to be the Russian Kinsey Report, but sadly the money fell through. They wanted to have mobile phones instead and spent it all on satellites and transmitters.

I still reminisce about those days.

Funny isn't it how - even back then- it was obvious to someone that I seemed to know all about suffering.

If only they could see me know, eh.