Born to soiled genes and a small northern town playing second fiddle to the despair-Mecca of Blackpool, life was never going to be all beer and skittles for Benjamin Shaw. 

After a period of particular awfulness and a short descent into madness, he awoke sober one lunchtime to find himself happily married and living in Melbourne, Australia. So with steps full of spring and a newly gained ‘can-do' spirit, the happy couple seized the day and followed their hearts up the river of golden dreams, all the way to a tiny, grey, one-bedroom flat in North London. 

Lurching from one disastrous Customer Service job to the next, and each day turning to nought but filth, there was one of two paths Shaw could take to escape - either write the next great British novel, boldly staking claim to all that is good and pure in the land; or buy a pushbike and pedal himself into oncoming traffic. Luckily, Shaw had neither authoring talent nor bicycle clips, and instead sat in bars and wrote songs.