Mike Rampton

“Reading Is Fun!”

The great Maurice Sendak’s poster for 1979’s International Year Of The Child.

ChatGPTerminator

Mike Rampton is a good chap. Even when he writes about poo, which is really not the sort of thing I ususally rebleet about.

As a deeply obscure figure I am incredibly grateful to Rich for having me on his podcast. For unrelated reasons I was in a horrible mood so possibly come across as a bit of a miserable, money-obsessed dullard. Which is a shame as I am usually incredible, funny, heroic, good-looking and charming.

I did two World Book Day talks in a lovely school in London today. I have a great gag with a bucket which gets a five-second laugh but involves carrying a bucket around all day. It's the least glamorous thing in the world. Kids were wonderful, what a great job to have, I am so, so tired.

An expat in Dubai has a startling revelation: the Stephen Collins cartoon Reality check …

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Some people just don’t know how to take a condiment.

Battersea Park Comedy Festival advert, for our Sat 6th June show

Battersea Park Comedy Festival advert, with key names from the line-up inc. Joe Lycett, Sara Pascoe and us

Oooh, tickets are onsale for our 11am #BatterseaPark gig on Saturday June 6th. Join ussssssss!

🎟️ batterseaparkcomedyfestival.seetickets.com/event/comedy...

Authors, illustrators and poets who visit schools in the UK & Ireland Discover children’s authors, poets and illustrators who offer school visits across the UK and Ireland, plus useful planning advice.

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The cover of the March 2026 issue of The Week Junior Science+Nature. It's a colourful, beautiful, exciting cover being the main headline "How? What? Why? Discover how science starts with asking questions".

I wrote the cover story for this month's The Week Junior Science+Nature, on shelves now. It's such, such a cool magazine: positive, fun, beautiful and absolutely fascinating. Lovely stuff!

"I recently watched a film made by Aardman Animations and considered how making myself throw up was sometimes a way of easing my grief."
"Solace in vomit?"
"No, it was Chicken Run."

A man walks on the sidewalk with two small dogs in his pockets, while a duck on a leash wears shoes. It is captioned “A man with two dogs in his pockets, walking a duck wearing shoes” on a bar mid-photograph.

You wake up in the morning
With gray clouds overhead
And you struggle for the will
To rise up out of bed
The world outside is frightening
A sad and dismal place
You pray for inspiration
A moment of pure grace
Maybe there’s something out there
To take away these blues
Perhaps

“There’s a word for what beavers do with their teeth. It’s neither bite or chew.”
“Gnaw?”
“Okay, fine. There’s a word for what beavers do with their teeth. It’s neither bite NOR chew. Happy?”

Willie Nelson is one of the most painful wrestling holds.

A picture of a village hall with a sign: Gordon Bennett Memorial Hall

When a British person is surprised to see a memorial hall

Read It Forward with Bookshop.org This February, we invite you to Read It Forward. 10% of all children's book sales through Bookshop.

Last few days! There's still time to READ IT FORWARD! Buy any children's or YA book in February and we'll donate 10% to @booktrust.org.uk and @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social, plus EVERY sale supports indie bookshops 📚

uk.bookshop.org/lists/read-i...

The cover of Adulting Made Easy by Mike Rampton. It has the subtitle "Life skills for the reluctant grown-up" and shows a toothbrush, some fruit and veg, a pair of scissors, a shower, some money, a washing machine, soap and toothpaste.

This very fun new book I wrote comes out on June 4th. It's called Adulting Made Easy and is a warts-and-all guide to cooking, cleaning, health, bills and relationships, written by me — a filthy, broke idiot. It's handy, hilarious and available for preorder: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/adul...

Guy in 30,000 BC, after lengthy tribal gathering: this could have been a carving in a block of stone

A flyer for a book offer: 25% off RRP on books coming soon. Pre-order SOLVE THE WORLD'S GREATEST MYSTERIES, written by Mike Rampton and illustrated by Gareth Conway, with the code FEB26. Offer valid from the 17th to the 20th of February, online only. selected lines only. Ts&Cs available on Waterstones.com. The cover of the book shoes a magnifying glass looking at a collection of mysterious images: a Yeti, an alien, buried treasure and the mask of Tutankhamun.

There is a chunky 25% off my new book SOLVE THE WORLD'S GREATEST MYSTERIES (out on May 7th) if you preorder it from @waterstones.bsky.social (website or app) and use the code FEB26. It's illustrated by my Poo What Where pal Gareth Conway and is loads of fun.

Cartoon. Person says to other person „We invented a robot that answers questions.“, adding, „we just have to feed it 10 baby giraffes a day“. The other person asks „But it answers the questions correctly?“ Person responds „Oh my goodness, no. No no no no no.“ By Aram J. French Appropriated due to missing alt text

A handwritten letter to Sarah McIntyre's MP. It asks him to stand up for the UK's children's book illustrators and their copyright and is illustrated with a picture of a serious-looking mouse holding a large pencil.

An important message beautifully presented by writer/illustrator and SoA Fellow Sarah McIntyre.

Part of the programme for the Cambridge Literary Festival advertising my talk. Saturday 25 April, 4-5pm, Palmerston Room, ages 7-11. Mike Rampton: Become A Genius. Do you want to become the world’s greatest clever-clogs? Then this is the event for you! Writer, journalist, and occasional stand-up comedian Mike Rampton joins the festival to share his most hilarious and interesting facts that you don’t learn in school. From how to milk a cow, to the history of the duckbilled platypus, Mike has all the answers in his new book, Become a Genius in a Year!

Tickets for the Cambridge Literary Festival are available from 10am today. They're free, so if seeing better authors — @athenakugblenu.bsky.social, @louiestowell.bsky.social, Cressida flipping Cowell — you might as well watch me flail for a bit too. www.cambridgeliteraryfestival.com/events/mike-...

Three Olympic fencers went to my school. That’s a lot of Olympic fencers. I presume they did the fencing on their own time. Swordplay of any kind was discouraged in my day.

My new web design business is off to a great start. It's taken me eighteen months but the website for the Kingfisher in Chippenham could be my masterpiece. www.kingfisherchippenham.co.uk/index

So weird that hot dogs come in packages of 10 and my wife left me for a magician

This is out today. Hieperdepiep!

I did the thing! I emailed, cold, the author of a book I liked to tell them it was good, and to say thanks. Know what? That's a good idea. You were all correct. Everyone should do that.

Might be worth asking the people at @whipplemuseum.bsky.social - it sounds like an ice-cream museum but isn't.

I’m lucky enough to be totally unaffected by trends. I was discussing this with my kids Hermione and Cartman and they agreed.

* An easy mnemonic is to note that "TEEN-aged MU-tant NIN-ja TUR-tles" is in trochaic tetrameter, as each word follows the pattern of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (trochee), and there are four words (tetra). Another potentially useful mnemonic (at least for readers of a certain age) is this rhyming couplet consisting of two lines of trochaic tetrameter: "HOLD the / PICK-le / HOLD the / LET-tuce | SPE-cial | OR-ders / DON'T up-/SET us."

I have never read a more useful footnote. (From Michael D.C. Drout’s The Tower and the Ruin.)