Brian Thomas

Cornish-born, Brian Thomas began his working career as a library assistant in his home town and ended his formal career some years later as chief reporter of his local newspaper in Devon. In between he wrote extensively for both evening and weekly newspapers in Devon and Cornwall, specialising in local government and music. He also served for a short while as a local officer for the National Union of Journalists in Devon.

Brian provided cartoons for several publications, including some advertising work and a regular Page One Laugh in the mid-seventies for his weekly newspaper. He wrote Newton Abbot in the News (now sadly out of print) for local publisher Obelisk in 1996 with the kind co-operation of his local paper and has written the editorial for the Newton Abbot and Kingsteignton District Guide since 2004.

Over the years he has also written scripts, poems, novels, short stories and songs. These include the recently-published Kindle ebook Guts, a comic novel highlighting the potential results of office stress, and the mini-books The UFO Armageddon and The Testing of Dottie Oxbridge and Other Grand Adventures, both knockabout comedy parodies, some of which are based on pieces written for a number of comedy groups of friends, including The Onesheep Five. He has also been involved in an extensive tape archive of improvised music and comedy with a long-time friend for several decades which led to three CDs and one cassette of delightfully eccentric (unreleased) material under the name The Bivalve Quickstep.

Brian’s favourite creative souls are too numerous to mention in detail, but they include authors Paul Auster and Stephen King, illustrators Georges Remi (Herge, Tintin), Albert Uderzo (Asterix) and Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts), composers Johannes Brahms, Bela Bartok and George Gershwin, the unsurpassed jazz giant John Coltrane, rock masters Dream Theater, Gentle Giant, Magma, Stackridge and Frank Zappa, pop icons Kate Bush and the incomparable Abba, the Liverpool poets (Henri, McGough and Patten) and comic geniuses from Spike Jones, Woody Allen and The Firesign Theatre to The Goons, Monty Python and Billy Connolly. His favourite fish is Pollock - perfect for his signature dish, fish pie.