John Dowie - The Freewheeling John Dowie

Dear Reader,

The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers edition and distribute a regular edition and ebook wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). Were just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. At the back of this book, youll find the names of all the people who made it happen.

Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.

If youre not yet a subscriber, we hope that youll want to join our publishing revolution and have your name listed in one of our books in the future. To get you started, here is a 5 discount on your first pledge. Just visit unbound.com, make your pledge and type dowie5 in the promo code box when you check out.

Thank you for your support,

Dan, Justin and John

Founders, Unbound

My comedy career began in 1971, which proves I have no comic timing. In 1971 there were no comedy clubs, no comedy agents and not much comedy future. There was, however, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I went there, aged twenty-one, making my professional debut and getting my first review, a bad one (Fatuous Scotsman ) But a bad review was hardly surprising. Comedy requires practice and, with venues being almost non-existent, practice was hard to find. But I persevered, doing gigs where I could, in folk clubs, music venues, fringe theatres, universities and rooms above a pub. Things improved. By the end of the decade, I was working regularly and earning a living. In the 1980s, alternative comedy arrived, and with it more gigs, more money and a lot more comedians. By the 1990s, comedy was big business and about to get even bigger. It was then, with yet more comic timing, that I packed it all in.

It was as though my departure was just the break that comedy was waiting for. No sooner had I stopped than comedians were earning vast amounts of money performing in venues the size of small countries. I, meanwhile, was in a different sort of venue a one-man tent. How did this happen? It happened because I have (Ive been told) an addictive personality. This doesnt mean that once you get to know me youll find me endlessly fascinating. It means that once I get hold of something I like, I do it to death. Which is what happened when I bought a bike.

I thought I could handle it. Ill just have the occasional ride, I told myself. Perhaps at weekends or when I feel stressed. What a joke. Soon I was having bike rides before breakfast. It got worse. The more rides I took, the more rides I wanted. In a very short while I had sold my flat, was living in a tent, and riding my bike all the time.

As former contemporaries dined at the Ivy, I ate beans from a camping stove; as they drank cocktails at the Groucho, I drank wine from a plastic mug; as they snorted heaps of cocaine, I rubbed liniment into my legs. But the question is this: which of us was the happier? And the answer? Them. Obviously.

The bike rides I go on are not the kind enjoyed by the shave-your-legs-and-dress-yourself-in-Lycra sort of cyclist. Ive got nothing against these people, but theyre not my kind of cyclist. My kind of cyclist tends to be either very old or very young, riding rusty boneshakers or bikes with training wheels. The only thing they have in common is overtaking me with monotonous regularity. This is because I cycle less like a man and more like a snail, creaking along, my world on my back (actually, my bicycles back), with no idea of where Im going or how to get there. Which explains the slow pace. If you dont know where youre going, why rush?

Like my bike rides, this book meanders from place to place, sometimes takes a wrong turn and occasionally gets lost. Which might not be a bad thing. If it wasnt for getting lost wed never know where were supposed to be. Or so I like to tell myself. All the bloody time.

Its also a book that has no ending; at least, given that its the story of my life so far, I hope it hasnt. I hope there are still a few more bike rides left: a few more hills to climb, a few more lanes to get lost in. But this is my journey so far. I hope you enjoy the ride. I did.

My first bike was a gift from my grandmother, given to me in 1963, on my thirteenth birthday. At eighteen, I gave it away to a rag-and-bone man, thinking that was the grown-up thing to do. What an idiot. I made an even bigger mistake three years earlier when I gave one of my teachers my teddy bear.

During the 1980s there was a series of TV adverts in which various celebrities nominated a teacher who had influenced them in a positive way. In a perfect world those celebrities, or anyone else for that matter, would have been able to nominate all of their teachers. However, this was the real world, and having only one good teacher put you ahead of the game. Mine was Mr Britton, who tried to teach me French, and succeeded, at least un peu . He succeeded totally, though, in treating me as an adult, treating me with respect.

In those days, the punishments my teachers inflicted on me were usually delivered with either a plimsoll or a cane. Or both. Mr Britton, an intelligent man, considered the beating of small boys to be beneath him. So, when I was shooting my mouth off in his classroom one day, instead of using his age, size, weight and authority against me, he chose to use his brain instead. Unfortunately for me. Come up to the blackboard, he said. And on it write the word extrovert.

I stood, my face burning with embarrassment, a voice inside my head saying, I will never ever open my mouth in Mr Brittons classroom ever again, and then, in front of the entire class, walked up to the blackboard and on it wrote EXTRAVERT.

Some of the more literate children sniggered. Mr Britton could have encouraged them. He could have joined in. But he was better than that. Instead he said, Most people spell extrovert with an O. I see that you have spelt it with an A. That isnt wrong, just unusual. Rather like yourself. Now, would you like to sit down?

Oh yes, I would like to sit down.

Mr Britton and I became friends, as much as a pupil and teacher can become friends. He not only encouraged my interest in writing and performing, he went further. An end-of-term school concert was coming up. You write something funny, he said, and Ill help you perform it.