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Stuart was
born in Clydebank, Scotland during the Elizabethan Period of the
Twentieth Century. Raised as an only child in a family of eight he eked
out a lonely, solitary childhood. As a vehemently shy boy he struggled
to make friends and even Basher and Slasher, his imaginary friends,
shunned him. Stuart sought solace in humour and by the age of five was
writing some of the funniest jokes ever written by a manically depressed
five year old from Clydebank. Tragically most of his early work was lost
in a fire that destroyed the small, derelict shed that had become
Stuart’s bedroom. The following Knock-Knock joke is all that remains:
Small
Boy: "Knock, knock."
Silence.
Small
Boy: "Knock, knock."
Silence.
Small
Boy: "Knock, knock."
Silence.
Small
Boy: "Knock, knock."
Silence.
Small
Boy: "Knock, knock."
Man: "Your
parents have moved home – now bugger off and leave me in peace."
Leaving
school at the age of sixteen Stuart plunged into the sordid world of
electronics and computing. Moving from job to job he tried to find
happiness and identity in the underworld of transistors,
integrated-circuits and microprocessors. For a short time he even worked
as an emitter-follower in a handsome cab lamp-fitting factory. He tried
his hand as an inventor, coming up with innovative designs such as the
inflatable dartboard, the solar powered pacemaker and the full scale map
but for various reasons they all flopped - even his brightest idea, the
cardboard tent, slumped miserably.
But his love
of humour never died, and after many boring years as a slave to the
computer industry, he finally returned to his only love – writing
humour. Over the past eight years Stuart has had fifteen books published
– some translated into around twenty languages. Recently he left the
tedium of computing to dedicate his life to writing He has, however,
taken a job as a part-time Baxi-Burner Pilot Light so that he can still
afford the occasional scrap of food. Stuart is about fifty-four, though
his true age will never be known as, bizarrely, his birth-certificate
was used by the arsonist who set fire the small, derelict shed that
was once Stuart’s childhood bedroom.
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