richardfrosty – Richard Frost – Manchester

© Tango

Now I appreciate I’m not the only one in this position – it feels like every company in the country is furloughing staff (aka giving them a temporary leave of absence) as the realities of fighting coronavirus hit home – and plenty of people are having to deal with far more challenging circumstances than me at the moment. Still, I enjoy what I do for a living, whether that’s improving Sleeper Media’s online offering or interviewing leading lights in the hospitality world, and I’ll miss wandering round Strawberry Studios on my lunchbreak.

Nevertheless, every cloud has a silver lining and all that, and in this case the silver lining is that I suddenly find myself with *a lot* of free time to finally do all those things I’d never quite managed to get round to before. What sort of things?

Well for starters, I’ve written tens of thousands of articles down the years covering everything from Heinz Beck’s take on Italian cuisine and Gary Neville’s plans to launch a university to a bunch of volunteers dressing in pink and dancing the conga. You can still read most of them by visiting the websites of Supper, North West Business Insider, Time Out, the Liverpool Echo, the Southport Visiter, the Watford Observer and so on.

But many of my pieces have long since disappeared into the ether – either the websites I created them for have been taken down, or they were never online in the first place. Currently, the only place you’ll find these articles is languishing on my hard drive.

So starting tomorrow, and continuing throughout April, I’ll be posting a selection of articles on here spanning the arts, sport, travel, history and politics that haven’t seen the light of day for quite some time – over 15 years in some cases! My plan is to work through them chronologically, beginning with an exclusive interview with Super Furry Animals in Newcastle.

Hope you enjoy reading them and I’d love to hear from you if you like what you see, or just want to know what Gruff Rhys is like in person.

Stay safe everyone…