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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. Over
the past eight years Stuart has had twenty-two books published – some
translated into over 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-five, 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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