Very Old News
For several years we have been tracking Rhodes’ movements in order to bring you all the very latest news – hacking into his email account, bugging his telephone conversations and, only when truly necessary, breaking into his home. Rather than archive all our findings in full – that would be insane – we shall leave here a summary of what our dedicated team of researchers way down on the 11th-28th floors have discovered about him over the last few years. Good work, girls.
• Rhodes spends a lot of time looking at herons. Sometimes he will see one eat a frog or a fish (usually an eel).
• Two of Rhodes’ favourite things are Jonny Woo’s A Night of 1000 Jay Astons and Stark Dallas Naked. He firmly believes that Woo’s face ought to be on stamps, and spends most of his waking hours campaigning for this.
•Pop star Cate Le Bon has written a song based on Timoleon Vieta Come Home. It has been released on stylish white vinyl.
• He once painted his hall the exact same colour as the back cover of the current paperback edition of Wearing Dad’s Head by Barry Yourgrau. This is believed to be the world’s first ever Barry Yourgrau Appreciation Hallway.
• He frequently listens to Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. You can find some of their songs free and legally here. And there’s more on their own website.
• Rhodes has an inconsistent approach to the maintenance of exterior woodwork. (***UPDATE*** This continues. He really needs to put some teak oil on him bench).
• This clip sums up what Rhodes thinks of online social networking. Rhodes has nothing to do with the Facebook page set up in his name, and the person posting as him is not him. Having hacked into his bank account we can confirm that he does not earn nearly enough to have to put up with Internet imposters, but there you are.
• He declared Dial M For Merthyr by Rachel Trezise to be his favourite book of 2008. We agree. You should totally read it. Here she is watching Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci in Porth in 1997. Rhodes wasn’t there, but he did see the Mynci an estimated ten times in as many years.
• He once saw a flock of waxwings outside his flat in Edinburgh.
• Rhodes makes surprisingly regular appearances in the Russian edition of Men’s Health magazine. Anyone who has seen his rippling physique will be unsurprised by this.
• Rhodes’ bad boy reputation is not without foundation – he quite often has to pay library fines, and is sometimes even given tickets for minor parking violations.
• Although dismissive of all other flatulence-based humour, he is a fan of Mr Methane.
• His four favourite ever films are This Is Spinal Tap, Billy Liar, Sex Lives of the Potato Men and Why Does Herr R Run Amok?.
• Every gym he ever joins closes down.
• He loves VIz.
• He often dreams about Ken Dodd.
• He has been stang off a wasp twice – both times in glamorous locations: Edinburgh and Poland.
• Rhodes owns at least four spirit levels.
• There is a chunk of Gold that is only in the Finnish edition.
• As you can see, he does very little worth reporting. However, we won’t let this stop us from gathering all the information we can about him.
As you know, Rhodes is tabloid fodder. We are always first to leap to his defence in any scandal cooked up by gossip columnists, even when the evidence seems to be stacked against him.
Rhodes was once obliged to issue a denial that he had started selling carpets in Peebles. We trust him implicitly, and can only assume that this photograph has been tampered with:
Rhodes still refuses to comment on rumours that he sub-contracted the writing of Little Hands Clapping to underpaid child workers. As his biggest fans we would like to give him the benefit of the doubt in this matter, but even we have to concede that this picture leaves him with some explaining to do:
