HENRY vs NICK CLEGG

I think Peter McAdam is one of the funniest people around, and I cannot recommend his book The Nine Henrys highly enough. Check it out at Amazon. This week we shall be running a series of Henrybits that are not found in his book about the nine cloned cartoon characters who inhabit a surreal world nearly as insane as mine...

EXCLUSIVE: Peter McAdam interview

Peter McAdam is - to my mind - one of the funniest people around. His creation The Nine Henrys which is now a book (designed by yours truly) on Gonzo Multimedia is something which really should be on your Christmas present list. A couple of days ago I caught up with him for a chat...

JON: So when is Henrys the movie coming out?  I think there should be a full-length Hollywood feature film about Henrys

PETER: <laugh>  Well I’ve done this job videoing this graffiti and I got £500 for that and I am going to get a Wacom tablet which means I can draw Henrys as though I was drawing on a piece of paper in freestyle. Because my problem was drawing them, and then I had to scan them in, and my scanner’s broke so basically I just had to photograph them and it was just a long process so I think this way I can probably learn myself animation by just doing it cell by cell like straight on to the screen, you know.

JON: I enjoyed Henrys, I think they were very funny indeed.  I like the stuff you were doing last week when they went back in time

PETER: Yeah, well I’ll do more Jon.  I’ll get on that and we’ll just have it as a kind of a little quirky weekly thing as well. Just keeping it going, like you said, you know.

JON: I like the way that you’ve got, on your Facebook group – Henrys have got quite a big following haven’t they? 

PETER: Yeah, and some of them having been photographing the books as well which is good you know

JON: I think it is great fun – I think they are going to take off. They are just not taking off as quickly as I would have liked.

PETER: Yeah, well I tell you what, leading up to Christmas I’ve got things planned and I’m going to get very intense on it – you know like really use some off the wall stuff and have a caption competition as well. Maybe give away a free book or something.

JON: Now, how did Henrys come about in the first place?

PETER: I’ve kept a dream diary since I was about 14, and one day, I think it was around my 20s, there was this name called The Nine Henrys and it just flashed into my head before I woke up, you know like in that hypnogogic area between dreaming and sleep and you have to get up, the alarm has gone and I am thinking … The Nine Henrys, what’s that?  I think the cloned sheep was on the TV I think around about that time and I was thinking wouldn’t it be funny if  there was like a cloned cartoon character, you know all of the same.  And you couldn’t differentiate them.  Because my drawing skills are about as … if I did nine people I couldn’t really handle that, but because they are all the same I guess I thought that was a nice. …..

JON: I like that.  So what happened then, talk me through it.. because they live in such a wonderfully surreal world

PETER: I deliberately kept it sort of limbless, you know just like a line drawing, basically it’s just a big head and legs and that’s it, you know.  And somebody said it looks like a crisp with legs.  I suppose I just kept it simple – big head, thin legs and thin arms and that’s it you know.  It’s easy for me to draw, it’s basic limitations really, you know  artists can work to these limitations and having a kind of line drawn world just makes you think more. You know, if it was a 3D world  then you can add things and if it’s colour you can do, you know, but I thought very minimalist just get back to really kind of basics – almost like doodles.  And some of them are so I’ve kind of like kept the original spurt as it was.  The original drawing that I did probably on the back of a bus ticket and that keeps it a nice….you know rather than be doctoring it on Photoshop or later on re-drawing it, so it keeps its spontaneity, you know.

JON: I agree totally, and it’s very clever as well.  They are not just silly – they live in a cerebral stupid world, if you know what I mean.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, it’s probably me <laughs>  It is me, what am I saying?

JON: What I like about it, is that a lot of it seems to be about as surreal as the world I live in.

PETER: Yes well, we are kindred spirits.  I’ve always seen him as the metaphysical Mr. Bean you know.

JON: Haha I like that

PETER: You know when you have to think of something to get a grip on the concept – it’s quite large and big. Sometimes I like to think of a tag line, you know, that’s what they do with movies don’t they?  They say Sixth Sense meets like erm… I don’t know, like Unforgiven or something so straight away you’ve this like mash up in your head of what to expect sort of thing.  That’s his tag line if it was a movie you know. Maybe you’re right, thanks for pushing that, because maybe I am a person that gets an idea then kind of sways around and another idea comes up and I get seduced by that.  Then I’ve just got this hotel lobby full of ideas and they’re all waiting for me, and that’s like I see the imagination.  And you know the Nine Henrys keep coming to the fore and saying what you going to do with us?  They can argue with me in my head.  And they are saying what you going to do? And Jonathan is on the telephone or email saying you going to animate these or what?  And you’re perfectly right you know.

JON: Well I am going to carry on bullying you until you do

PETER: Yes <laughs>

JON: Because I think The Nine Henrys, the movie has got to be made, even if I am the only person who watches it, I don’t care, I’ve got to see it. Just because I want to see what happens to them

PETER: You know, I’m pretty good  at scriptwriting, and stuff and I’ve never thought of making a movie, but I will put my mind to it, right, definitely

JON: So tell me about the project for the Ipad – what is it?

PETER: It’s just been buzzing around my head for years called The Henry Zone. I can imagine that you download it, and you open it and suddenly you’ve got like four menus, you’ve got the book, in flash form just click and go to next page, you’ve got sketch shop, do some small animations, just some of the static cartoons but animated and live.  And the other one’s called Hole in Nine.  If you imagine like nine golf balls and the Henrys slowly emerging from each ball, and on the Ipad you just the head and they go back down. And you can turn up how fast you want to do this so you’ve just got to keep all Henrys down in the hall, you know.  Just a little game, you know

JON: Sounds fun

THE DAILY HENRY: 1066 and all that

I think Peter McAdam is one of the funniest people around, and I cannot recommend his book The Nine Henrys highly enough. Check it out at Amazon. This week we shall be running a series of Henrybits that are not found in his book about the nine cloned cartoon characters who inhabit a surreal world nearly as insane as mine...

THE DAILY HENRY - The Da Henry Code

I think Peter McAdam is one of the funniest people around, and I cannot recommend his book The Nine Henrys highly enough. Check it out at Amazon. This week we shall be running a series of Henrybits that are not found in his book about the nine cloned cartoon characters who inhabit a surreal world nearly as insane as mine...

PICTURES AND VIDEO FROM THE 9 HENRY'S BOOK LAUNCH

INTERVIEW IN NARC MAGAZINE....See more
INTERVIEW IN THE JOURNAL by DAVID WHETSTONE.... See more

PETER McADAM: Henry @ the movies

PETER McADAM AND THE 9 HENRYS IN THE PRESS

Peter McAdam

HENRY’S quite a character, as are his clones. David Whetstone enters the surreal world of Peter McAdam as his first book is published.

YOU might have seen Henry or even one of his clones. They’re all called Henry, as you might expect. There are nine of them in all.

They have been appearing in magazines around the North East for the past 10 years or so and they are the work of Peter McAdam who describes himself as a serious artist but who revels in the less serious side of life.

Read More http://www.journallive.co.uk/culture-newcastle/2012/08/11/peter-mcadam-book-the-nine-henrys-is-published-61634-31598305/#ixzz23EMqiYDD

PETER McADAM: A stonking review

http://www.thecrackmagazine.com/index.php?section=2&category=17

The Nine Henrys
Peter McAdam,

Gonzo Media Group,
£8.99

If you’re in need of a real leftfield treat (and let’s face it WHO ISN’T?) then grab a hold of Peter McAdam’s collection of cartoons which feature his bunch of cloned cartoon characters, The Nine Henrys. His line drawings are rudimentary at best (he makes David Shrigley’s efforts look like the work of Raphael) but it’s the whirrings of his fevered brain which are really being mapped out here. One Henry (they look like a potato crisp, with mouth and eyes) looses a leg and is captioned “The side effects of Nietzschian philosophy and Post-Hegelian dualism were taking their toll” while another sprouts battlements with the accompanying legend “Beginning with his arms, Henry was turning into a heritage site”.

Elsewhere Henry goes to the movies for a wonky take on Blade Runner, Dirty Harry, The Elephant Man and more, but wherever they turn up, they’re underpinned by McAdam’s supremely surrealistic take on life. (Note: The book is having a launch at The Stand Comedy Club on Saturday August 18, 2-6pm, with Martin Stephenson, Gypsy Dave Smith and guests). RM

PETER MCADAM INTERVIEW

NARC INTERVIEW
with Peter McAdam re: THE NINE HENRYS

I suppose the most obvious question would be, what is a Henry?
There are nine Henrys, purported to be the world’s first cloned cartoon character.
They live in a strange lo-fi domestic surrealist world peopled by talking rock buns and elephants on wobbly stilts. They mooch around in their minimalist universe suffering from an existential crisis with some genetically modified humour thrown in .

How does a book like The Nine Henry's start out? Did you have an idea for the character first, or the idea for a book?
In my numerous writings, ie. plans for world domination and draft letters suing God, my pen would wander over to the margin of the page and I would doodle a cartoon character, then in a night vision, (I recommend Pilgrim Premier cheese for lucid dreaming, ASDA mild cheddar for astral projections) a word written down in a dream “The Nine Henry’s” I awoke wrote down the dream in my dream diary and forgot all about it.

After scanning through my ‘genius books’ (notebooks of ideas that never see the light of day), I noticed all these daft cartoons, so I cut them out, placed them alongside each other and the dream word popped into my head… “The Nine Henry’s” The rest is history, with a little bit of eczema attached.

There's quite an extensive “roll of honour” inside, how did these people contribute?
I thought I would get into this crowd sourcing lark so I signed up to a website and with luck
on my side it went bust and it took some of the money I had raised, so I made a decision to do it myself using the Nine Henry Facebook page and I raised about a quarter of what I needed to get the book published.

Those thirteen people are the first contributors, but then signed to Gonzo and kept my promise in mentioning the early funders in the roll of honour in the book.

If possible, can you give some idea of what the process for creating a Henry illustration is like?
Do you tend to plan ideas out or is it nowhere near as complicated as that...
It’s really quite simple to explain but it’ll take me 700 pages, so I’ll summarise: when you hit a brick wall in a project, go off and do something completely different, doodling Henry opens up the stream of consciousness aspect, by playing around with ideas and concepts, I’m just a kid really, playing with mental plastercine. My most subtle work is produced by drawing a Henry in some surreal situation and a few days later when I’m flicking through my book(s), there might be something said on the TV and I’m looking at the drawing and Voila! I call them ‘creative collisions’ whereby you’re thinking of something, then from leftfield another idea collides and this transforms the content.

It’s like the creative process, it’s all about questions and answers, I draw an enigmatic Henry cartoon (question), later I write down a caption or overhear something and it gives it meaning (answer).

On a personal level, what's your artistic background? If any...
I studied Fine Art I have a BA and two MA’a and my mam says all I need now is another MA and an ALA then I’ll have an ALABAMAMAMA… it’s more funnier when you say it.
I’ve been called a dilettante I had to look it up coz I thought it meant ‘someone of French Aristrocacy’. But that’s okay I am a bit of a dilettante and maybe eclectic? I make films, not very good ones, must remember to take the lens cap off, write songs for the air guitar.

I have a film showing at the Star and Shadow weekend of 25th August called Helter Skelter, it’s weird as shit! It’s about a series of dreams I had, I love dreams, dreams are my main source of inspiration like a mixtape of poetry and you can recall them before the ink dries.
And I have an interactive art and sound smartphone app. released this month in collaboration with Foof productions, it’s called i-coda, download it and make me rich so I can record a crap solo album and buy a deckchair in Seaburn.

How did Gonzo Media get involved? Did you approach them or did they seek you out?
As I was asking for funding requests on the Henry Facebook page to get the ball rolling and my friend Martin Stephenson told me to get in contact with Rob Ayling from Gonzo Multi Media as they were looking for new book projects. I met Rob and he loved them and he passed me on to the editor Jonathan Downes to get Henry into a book.

I signed the book deal at a crossroads in Houghton le Spring? And the weather didn’t half change after that.

Who, or what, is Geordie Nettledyke?
When I was about 6-7 my dad used to come in the from the club half popped, he’d tell me about the exploits of a fellow Miner called Geordie Nettledyke from Nettlesworth, a kind of Mr Bean meets Andy Capp… he had great catchphrases like “half the lies I tell are not true” he would get up to all sorts of mischief.

When I was old enough to go to the club I asked my dad if I could meet him, he agreed to introduce me to this really funny guy. So I waited and waited he never turned up. Then my dad confessed he didn’t exist he created a fictional character as a vehicle for his jokes. I guess that’s what Henry is to me, if I didn’t have these well I would go insane and end up talking to an invisible Mr Nettledyke on a park bench swigging from a bottle of Lightning.

Do you have any plans any future Henry exploits? Henry on his holidays? Henry at the Olympics? Henry solves the banking crisis?
Next for the Henrys is an app. game, a Youtube animation show and…then I will unveil my plans for Total World Domination, the Nine Henrys are the Illuminati, Metaphysical Gangsters, the Nine God’s of Cheesey Bacon Flavoured Crisps, they are the Comte Saint-Germain rolled into one.

They are the future, in three years time there’ll be a Henryocracy… and half the lies I tell are not true.

ANOTHER VISIT TO THE 9 HENRYS

For no other reason than the fact that he makes me laugh, today we are paying another visit to the world of the 9 Henrys and the incomparable Peter McAdam, who I honestly think is one of the funniest people with whom I have ever had dealings.

Check him out on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Nine-Henrys-Peter-McAdam/dp/1908728310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342607794&sr=8-1

THE REAL 9 HENRYS BOOK LAUNCH

I think most people were aware that the Tyne Bridge up in Geordieland was struck by lightning last week, but only Peter McAdam knows what REALLY happened...

The Nine Henry's Book Launch

Featuring Martin Stephenson, Gypsy Dave Smith & Guests
The Nine Henry's By Peter McAdam
Published by Gonzo Multi Media

The Nine Henrys are a quirky bunch of cloned cartoon characters. They live in a strange lo-fi domestic surrealist world peopled by talking rock buns and elephants on wobbly stilts.
Over the years the Henrys have been published in a variety of local NE magazines and now here for the first time thanks to Gonzo Multi-Media the Nine Henrys are brought together in a compendium of line art craziness.

“a five ya aad can draw better than that” Authors brother.

http://www.thestand.co.uk/performance.aspx?id=9716

AN INVITATION TO THE SOCIAL EVENT OF THE SEASON

This man is still ridiculously funny..

MEET THE 9 HENRYS

For the past few months I have been working on this new book for Gonzo. I think that Peter McAdam's creations are hysterically funny. My wife thinks they are stupid.

It is good to have differences of opinion in a relationship. Healthy like.

The book will be available to the world at large in a matter of days so expect a blitz of publicity...

MY POSTBAG TODAY

I feel quite considerably better today; not quite firing on all four cylinders, but certainly - to a greater or lesser degree - functional.

A big `thank you` again to everyone in the Gonzo family who sent kind messages of support, especially Billy Ant-Bee, Michael Des Barres and Peter McAdam.

And talking of Peter McAdam, look what arrived in today's postbag...

The proof copy of his first book, the massively funny and completely peculiar 'The Nine Henrys', and also a DVD of Rick Wakeman, poerforming 'The Classical Wakeman' Live in Lugano, Switzerland.

Wayhay!