John Robb
John Robb is a many-faceted creature.
Not just a well known face from TV but also a best selling author, musician, journalist, Louder Than War music website boss, Louder Than Words and Louder Than War Live festivals boss, Eco champion, vegan behemoth and punk rock warlord as well as TV and radio talking head plus singer from post-punk critically acclaimed mainstays The Membranes.
John Robb is all these things and more and his upcoming 2026 memoirs will cover all of this and his adventures
in punk and post punk and much more in book form and is also getting made into a film.
His recently released books ‘Live Forever - the Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Oasis’ and ‘The Art Of Darkness - the History Of Goth’ are both acclaimed worldwide pop culture best sellers joining his ‘The Stone Roses and the Resurrection of British Pop’ and his 2022 book with the leading maverick green energy boss Dale Vince from Ecotricity called ‘Manifesto’ at the top of the book charts.
.He is currently working on the ground-breaking Green Britain Academy education scheme and a zero carbon clothing line called ‘Dark Forest’ in his downtime between spoken word tours of the UK and Europe.
John Robb grew up in Blackpool (who have now made him an ambassador for the town) before punk rock came along and saved his life. In the post-punk era he formed the Membranes - the highly influential post-punk band whose current critically eulogised albums keep pushing forward with added choirs and textures.
He was one of the leading post-punk fanzine writers in the UK with ‘Rox’ before he went on to write for the rock press with Sounds in the 80s. He was the first person to interview Nirvana and coined the expression Britpop and was instrumental in documenting the Madchester scene with his writing. His website louderthanwar.com is currently one of the top 3 most read music and culture sites in the UK and at the front of diverse modern culture and saw him nearly release the Fontaines DC first single and give Charli XCX her first review amongst other many firsts.
Saturday 9th May 2026
Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh
Friday 15th May 2026
Dorking Halls
Sunday 24th May 2026
Bootleg Social, Blackpool
John Cooper Clarke shot to prominence in the 1970s as the original ‘people’s poet’.
Johnny Vegas stars as Moz, as award-winning BBC TV series comes to the stage for very first time, celebrating 20 years since the show’s first broadcast.
Henry is a writer, poet, TV & Film producer, founder of the Manchester Poetry Festival (now the Literature festival) and co-founder of the Nottingham Poetry Festival.
Brian Bilston has been described as the Banksy of poetry and Twitter’s unofficial Poet Laureate; with over 500,000 followers on social media, Brian has become truly beloved by the online community.
Brian Bilston is one of the UK’s most popular poets. The Catenary Wires comprise:Amelia Fletcher, Rob Pursey and Ian Button. Rob took thirteen of Brian’s poems and created melodies and arrangements, which are then played by a full band.
Nigel Planer was an original member of the comedy groups at the centre of the ‘Alternative Comedy’ movement in the 1980s and starred in the seminal TV series The Young Ones, and The Comic Strip Presents.
Voted Musician of the Year at the Scots Trad Music Awards 2023, and with a career spanning several studio albums and numerous high profile collaborations, her ‘crystalline’ and ‘intoxicating’ vocals have enchanted audiences around the world.