Speaking of lobsters. Back in 1994 I spent the summer getting intimately acquainted with all things fishy working in the kitchen of The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow; meanwhile getting reports from friends back in London of wild art parties and riots on the streets. I couldn't take the small town life any longer and hotfooted it back to the big city where I teamed up with some like-minded artists to make half-baked magazine, a photocopied A3 magazine-in-a-bag. To coincide with each issue we had a launch party called... the Lobster Club. These legendary (?) booze-and-ska-fuelled parties were usually held in pub function rooms around the Brixton and Camberwell area including a lovely Jamaican pub The Denmark (now sadly converted into flats). Jerry Dammers was a regular face, Peter Davison (yes - Dr Who!) came along to one and, at the last ever Lobster Club, rocksteady legend Alton Ellis performed - the crappy PA cutting out every time he hit the high note in Sitting In The Park.

Scrape the Trouble Off Your Boots is a comic strip I drew while I was working down in Cornwall, shortly before moving back to London. I have scanned it in from the photocopy that appeared in Issue #1 of half-baked, so it is pleasantly wonky and faded. Looking back at it today I realised how important it has been for my work: the name Lobster Club makes its first appearance here, as do the ubiquitous moths (see Moron), I adapted or 'reimagined' the strip ten years on in 2004 as Payé, Balayé, Oublié for Mococo magazine and the main character crops up again in Second Class Smoker. Basically, I have been remaking it over and over again in one form or another for the last 15 years. Maybe I'll have a new idea one of these days...