If Les Dawson's mum had gone to Prague for a weekend and got hooked up with local scribe Franz Kafka then David Birtwistle could well have been the result. He's got Les's comic talent, perfect command of the Lancs demotic and his tendency to elaborate wordplay. Kafka's genetic contribution is a surreal take on the foreboding aspects of the modern world. Dave's Inland Beach Hut seems to yearn for a Waldenesque paradise while his A Certain Feel for Words is pure Les as he might recite before settling down at the piano for a rendering of the Moonlight Sonata. The Beeches leaves the primitive nirvana of what might be some Pennine retreat and plonks us down in a mad old peoples' home full of escapees from a lunatic asylum. Most of these stories appeared in the Crazy Oik between 2009 and today (2018)