David was born in Stockport but his heart has, most of the time, been up the road in Manchester. This was confirmed when, aged 15, he turned up for a day at school wearing a fisherman’s cap and baggy
Stone Roses t-shirt: a young, chubby
Reni. People thought he looked like an idiot; he’d like to think he was ahead of the comeback curve.
Eventually, after exhausting all things Factory, David found
Belle and Sebastian,
The Velvet Underground and
Pavement. He also discovered Manchester’s Star and Garter, home to its famous
Morrissey Smiths Disco and its staple indie night, SMILE. Most of his Friday and Saturday nights were spent there (indeed, this is often still the case), discovering numerous other bands – and much more besides. He also began creating zines with his friends, one of which was defaced by
The Fall’s Mark E Smith. It did feature a picture of him gurning.
After a year in London, he studied Journalism and English Literature at the University of Salford and did bits for This is Fake DIY. After graduating, he wrote about Stockport County and general footballing issues for When Saturday Comes and has been published on the London Review of Books Blog where he lived out a journalistic fantasy by, idiotically, going into the heart of the Manchester riots. He is also relaunching Catch, an independent publication published in the form of a newspaper.
David is currently enjoying the resurgence of
Dexys Midnight Runners and often finds himself listening to them on the way home from his day job as a school data manager - think of an OPTA analyst but for teenagers' school grades. At the moment, it's spreadsheets by day, writing by night. David is on Twitter
@davidpmeller.
