Even at the age of thirteen my taste in music was still as eclectic as it is today. My iPod and CD collection consisted of everything from pop and rock, to R&B and dance, to hip-hop and grime, and film and tv show soundtracks. It was through this broad mix that my debut single "Mean Mikey", a marriage of all my favourite music and cartoon shows in one, was born.
Here are some of the many classic tracks that inspired "Mean Mikey"....
The Simpsons - Do The Bartman
If there's one song that influenced "Mean Mikey" the most, it would undoubtably be the Bart Simpson song "Do The Bartman". If you've heard my song about "The Simpsons" (released three years after "Mean Mikey"), you'll know already that it's my favourite tv show of all time. I'd watch it every weekday evening after school on Channel 4 at 6 'o clock with my dad and twin brother Kieran (whose mentioned in the "Mean Mikey" song). It was basically our father-son tradition! I had all the DVD box sets long before the days of Disney +. The "Do The Bartman" music video - along with the music video to another Bart Simpson song, "Deep Deep Trouble" - was featured on the bonus features of the season two box set and I'd sit and watch it endlessly when writing "Mean Mikey". I stole a lot from it! Not just with the song itself, but a lot of the visuals from the "Mean Mikey" music video were taken from the "Do The Bartman" music video - and various episodes of The Simpsons - as well! The way I see it, thievery is a form of flattery! There wouldn't have been Mean Mikey without Bart Simpson, just like there wouldn't have been Bart Simpson without Dennis The Menace. I loved Dennis The Menace and obviously Horrid Henry too, but Bart Simpson was always my favourite growing up. To this day he is still my favourite cartoon character of all time. What I found most fascinating about "Do The Bartman" was how it blended and reflected elements of both adult and child-friendly styles. I was thirteen when I wrote "Mean Mikey", only just a teenager but not quite out of childhood yet, so the song had to be a cross between the fantasy and innocence of youth and childhood and the edgy rebelliousness of adolescence.
Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
My love for The Simpsons and Michael Jackson goes hand in hand, because I actually first discovered him through the season three episode Stark Raving Dad, which he guest starred in. (Conveniently, he also co-wrote the "Do The Bartman" song). I probably heard a few of his songs on the radio beforehand, but he would have just been another singer on the radio to me then. It wasn't until I first watched that episode that I became aware of who he was. It was also through that episode that I first heard "Billie Jean", in a scene where his character Leon Kompowsky performs it to Homer, and shortly after that I heard the real version of the song when I listened to the Number Ones greatest hits album that my parents had on CD. I was instantly hooked by the rhythm, but when his voice came in, I felt like I was in the presence of a god. The "Billie Jean" sequence in "Mean Mikey" (at 2:05-2:17 and 2:34-3:00) was Mr. Croft's idea. But it wasn't "Billie Jean" to start off with, it was the solo from "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough". I remember freaking out at that point, saying: "ARE YOU NUTS?! WE CAN'T PUT THAT IN THE SONG!". I can't remember why he changed it to "Billie Jean" - probably because it's a more distinctive and recognisable MJ song - but it worked so well!
Michael Jackson - Bad
The character Mean Mikey is somewhat similar to Darryl, the protagonist of Michael Jackson's "Bad" song and short film, played by MJ himself - an innocent and harmless young man just trying to fit in with others and prove he's tough, which is essentially what I was back at school. I always struggled with fitting in. I was never the fighting type - as MJ once said, "I'm a lover not a fighter" - mainly because I'd always lose any fight I got into! And whenever anyone started giving me trouble on the playground at school there would be two MJ songs in my head; both telling to do two different things, almost like an angel in one ear and a devil in the other. On one hand there was "Bad" telling me to fight back and stand up for myself, and on the other there was "Beat It" telling me to be a man and walk away. The dilemma being, if I stood up for myself I'd get beaten up because I couldn't hold my own in a fight to save my life, but if I walked away I'd get laughed at and mocked even more, and sometimes people making you feel weak and small can hurt even more than a punch in the face or a kick in the balls. But I learnt from MJ that songwriting is the best way of channeling your emotions and expressing your anger and frustration towards people. In other words, the best way of getting to others and making them feel your pain is by writing a song. That's what MJ did; when the press were giving him trouble he fought back with songs like "Leave Me Alone" and "Scream". I've always had a strong affinity with MJ both musically and personally, he was very misunderstood. He had such a warm and gentle personality, but could be one tough and aggressive motherfucker through song. When I'm saying "I'm Mean Mikey", I'm essentially saying what MJ meant when he said "I'm Bad": "I'm strong, tough and fearless. The cat's pyjamas, the bee's knees, the dog's bollocks. I'm the best". It was my way of showing my teachers and fellow students a more tougher and edgier side to me. I'm sure MJ wrote "Bad" for a similar reason; to show everyone he wasn't as soft, naive and childlike as they thought he was, something I was trying to get across at the time too.
The funny thing is, as well as being the year "Mean Mikey" was released, 2012 was also the 30th year anniversary of the album Thriller (1982) and the 25th anniversary of Bad (1987), and the album Bad was reissued as Bad 25 that year in September, a month prior to the release of "Mean Mikey". To me Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones were, are and always will be the greatest music duo of all time. (I place them just above The Beatles and George Martin). Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad is the ultimate album trilogy; basically to the music industry what the original Star Wars trilogy is to the movie industry. Obviously I love every MJ album, but I always listened to Thriller and Bad the most growing up, and I'd watch Moonwalker - one of my favourite films of all time - and every MJ music video and short film religiously. It seemed only fair for me to pay homage to him in "Mean Mikey", it was my first single, and he's my hero and inspiration. I wouldn't have started singing or writing songs had it not been for him.
Michael Jackson - Black or White
On the album version of "Black Or White" there's a section (from 0:23-0:54) before the song starts - during a guitar instrumental section by Slash - where a dad is yelling at his son to turn off the music. There's a similar skit to that in the music video, starring Home Alone actor Macaulay Culkin as the child and George Wendt as the grouchy father. (A similar parent-child confrontation between a boy and his father to this skit is featured in Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" music video, and Tenacious D's "Kickapoo" from the Pick of Destiny film). It was this that inspired the section in "Mean Mikey" (from 2:34-3:09) with Mean Mikey's dad. Credit to that goes to an old taxi driver of mine, John. I used to go to go to a residential school in London where I'd stay once a month on weekends, and he would drive me there from school on the Fridays and home again on Sundays. Like me, John was a massive Michael Jackson fan (and music fan in general). We would always listen and sing along to MJ's entire catalogue from start to finish - from The Jackson 5 days and onwards - during our journeys. One time when "Black or White" came on while we were driving back to Maidstone on a Sunday, John pretending to be the father, shouted: "Turn it down. Go to bed. Go to school. Get a job. Brush your hair". I laughed so hard. And of course, I ended up adopting those phrase for the song. (I played John the song after it was recorded, he was probably one of the first to hear it before it was released, he loved it). Obviously I couldn't get John to feature on the song, as it was recorded on school grounds, so the next best thing was getting Mr. Croft to provide the voice for Mean Mikey's dad. He did it flawlessly. I doubt my own old man could have done any better himself! Funnily enough, he actually met him shortly after we recorded the song. Definitely an amusing encounter for them both.
Eminem - The Real Slim Shady
Weirdly enough, it was my dad who introduced me to Eminem. Or be it accidentally! I was 11 years old at the time, he had just bought the RECOVƎRY album on CD, and I overheard "Love The Way You Lie" - which ironically is my least favourite Eminem song - playing from his office (which is practically opposite my bedroom), and of course I was instantly intrigued after hearing the word "fuck". It was a word I would hear being used at school by various students, including my own classmates, all the time, but never in a song up until that point. I would go to school the next day and tell everyone. It's always big news for 10 and 11 year old school children when one of their peers hears a song or sees a film or tv show with swearing in it; to them it's like discovering a new star or planet in space or something! I remember watching all the hip-hop countdown shows on 4music back in the day. That's where I'd hear all the great Eminem songs and see all the great music videos; "My Name Is", "Just Lose It", "Lose Yourself", "Without Me", "Stan", "Not Afraid", "Like Toy Soldiers", and a personal favourite of mine at the time, "The Real Slim Shady". You can probably hear some similarities between the character Mean Mikey's persona and Eminem's Slim Shady alter ego. Ed Sheeran once compared Eminem to Bob Dylan and I would definitely say he is up there - alongside Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jerry Leiber, Johnny Cash, Lennon and McCartney and Bernie Taupin - as one of the greatest lyricists of all time. While Dylan is one of my primary songwriting influences, it was Eminem who I was into first. His attitude was always something I resonated with as an angry young man, much like how I resonated with Johnny Rotten when I later got into the Sex Pistols. Eminem is just as comparable to Johnny Rotten as he is to Bob Dylan; he's brutally honest, outspoken, and always writes how he feels and never holds back. Kind of like me! Mind you, because I was recording "Mean Mikey" on school grounds, I had to change a lot of the original lyrics, as a lot of it was me swearing and slagging off a number of teachers, which if kept in would have probably gotten me expelled.
Michael Jackson - They Don't Care About Us
This was another song I resonated with anger wise. I remember the days at school when the teacher would piss me off so much that I'd storm out of class run to the playground, put my headphones on and let all my anger and frustration out to this classic. It's definitely one of MJ's more underrated, but by far, most important songs culturally. Apparently a lot of people overlooked or failed to acknowledge the song's message at the time in 1996, but in recent years, especially after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, it's finally started to get the recognition and understanding it didn't get when MJ was alive. Funny when you're dead how people start listening! For a long time, even I didn't understand the meaning of the song, yet I resonated with it a lot. Obviously I could never relate to this song in terms of racial discrimination, as I'm not a person of colour, but in my own way, as a mentally disabled person who went to a special needs school, I can. One of the most relatable lyrics from "They Don't Care About Us" for me was "You're throwing me in a class with a bad name". I won't lie when saying that I did feel somewhat discriminated at times by a number of teachers at school, though looking back now that I'm older I'm sure it was nothing personal or intentional on their part. I certainly don't have a problem with special needs schools - the one I went to, for all its faults, is a great school - but I do wish those schools would hire more teachers who are diagnosed with disabilities of their own, who can therefore understand and resonate with the struggles that we as disabled students face everyday, and provide their neurotypical colleagues with a better understanding and methods of teaching. I think in some ways "Mean Mikey" was essentially a protest song, it's certainly no "Fight The Power", "Fuck 'Tha Police" or "Killing In The Name", but it was me making a statement of rebellion against what I basically saw as the subjection of children - particularly children with learning difficulties - I was never anti-school or anti-education, all I was saying was that we as children should be free to express ourselves in our own ways rather than the methods we are forced to adapt to by parents and teachers. When you have ADHD like me - or any other learning difficulty - you have a more imaginative and creative mindset, you don't see the world the same way as other kids; they see it as it is, you see it as what it could be. Teachers and parents should be embracing those talents instead of condemning and restricting them.
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
One of my favourite tv channels as a 12-13 year old was VIVA, which was the closet thing to MTV on British television for anyone who didn't have Sky at the time. Almost every weekend, especially the weekends when I was away on residential in London, I'd stay up late watching all the prime time R&B and hip-hop countdown shows, which featured anything from the '90s and early 2000s - Tupac, Biggie, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Kanye, 50 Cent, R. Kelly, Usher, Justin Timberlake, Ludacris, Ne-Yo, Enrique Iglesias, Eminem, Mariah Carey, Destiny's Child, Black Eyed Peas, Beyoncé, J.Lo, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, you name it - which definitely had an impact on my love for urban music, and sitcoms like South Park, Jackass and a personal favourite of mine, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. The type of narrative I was aiming for with "Mean Mikey" was something in the vein of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air theme song, with a similar comedic narrative focus on the character's background.
Usher - Yeah! (ft. Lil Jon and Ludacris)
To me Usher was and is the King of R&B, and I'm not saying that to purposely disparage R. Kelly, I'd still be saying that even if he wasn't locked behind bars right now and was still in the studio making hits and on stage performing. I'm not saying I didn't like R. Kelly's music, I wasn't a full blown fan and I never had any of his albums, but I obviously knew some of the hits - I loved "I Believe I Can Fly", "The World's Greatest" and "Ignition (Remix)" - and the songs he wrote for other artists like MJ ("You Are Not Alone", "One More Chance" and "Cry") and Whitney ("I Look To You"). But R. Kelly was a bit too early for me, Usher was more my generation. To me he was the coolest and most charismatic of all his peers. God, imagine how embarrassing and humiliating it must have been for Usher when R. Kelly got convicted, having sang with him on a song that goes "We be messing round with the same girl"....
Justin Timberlake - Cry Me A River
I love the irony of how I reference Justin Bieber in the lyric "Listening to Michael Jackson and Justin Bieber all night long", because it was originally going to be "Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake", because they were my two favourite artists at the time, but "Michael Jackson and Justin Bieber" sounded funnier; putting an iconic artist (Michael Jackson) in the same sentence as an artist of acquired taste (Justin Bieber), was like saying "Eating cheese and marmite sandwiches"; almost everyone loves cheese sandwiches, just like almost everyone loves Michael Jackson, but very few people like marmite, just like very few people liked Bieber at the time... At least at my school! It's not that I didn't have respect for Bieber, but I was definitely more enamoured of Timberlake. Justified and FutureLove/SexSounds were definitely an influence on the R&B-like swaggering sound of "Mean Mikey". Funny to think that while Mr. Croft and I were recording "Mean Mikey", Timberlake was in the studio around the same recording his comeback album The 20/20 Experience. How convenient!
Tinie Tempah - Pass Out
"Mean Mikey" wasn't just a reflection of my thirteen year old self, it was a reflection of its time. It was written around the time of the British hip-hop and grime mainstream breakthrough, one of the key eras of music for my generation, as significant to the 2000s and early 2010s generation as Britpop was to the '90s generation. It was my brother Kieran who introduced me to the likes of Tinie Tempah, Labrinth, Dizzee Rascal, Tinchy Stryder, Chip (then known as Chipmunk), Plan B, Professor Green and others, he was a bit more earlier to the party than me with UK rap. Tinie Tempah was the first British rapper to have a platinum song in America with "Written In The Stars". He was also the first of the UK rap bunch Kieran introduced me to. "Pass Out" was the first song we owned with swearing it it. Kieran and I would have been eleven or twelve at the time - before the days of Apple Music - and our dad had an iTunes account, we were considered "to young" to have iTunes accounts of our own at the time, so if there was ever a song we liked we would have to ask our parents' permission for Dad to download it for us, and of course they would always check the 30 second preview, so we could never get away with having any songs with swearing in them. So obviously I was surprised when Kieran played me "Pass Out" for the first time and I heard the phrase "I'm a star and I bought my fuckin' cast out", it amazed me that he had somehow managed to convince Dad to buy it for him. Not only that, but the entire Disc-Overy album too! Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if Kieran had somehow managed to get hold of Dad's iTunes password and had downloaded the songs himself, he was always quite sneaky when we were growing up! Mind you, I don't think Dad was that bothered about us having songs with swearing in them anyway, I'm sure he would have willingly downloaded them for us, if Mum wasn't there to put the kibosh on it! You know what they say, "If your mum says no, ask your dad!". One time I was playing the Disc-Overy album out loud in my bedroom and Kieran rushed in urgently: "Put your headphones on. You don't want mum finding out!".
Dappy - No Regrets
One British rapper I was particularly enamoured of at the time was Dappy from N-Dubz. He was such a unique and rebellious and reckless character. I loved his energy and charisma and really resonated with his attitude and hyperactivity. His debut single "No Regrets" was definitely a key influence lyrically on my writing for "Mean Mikey". (As well as his follow-up single "Rockstar", although that song came out in January 2012, by which point I had already began writing the song so it would have been a last minute entry to the inspiration playlist). This may not come as a surprise as both songs focus on the narrative of self-development and overcoming past traumas and learning from mistakes. And the lyric "I'm a changed man now, Chris Brown". I'd love to say I came up with that myself, but obviously I took it from this song. I still love N-Dubz and Dappy's solo stuff today. Tulisa and Fazer's solo stuff, less so.
Chris Brown - She Ain't You
Each lyric in "Mean Mikey", including those I borrowed - or stole, depending on your point of view - from other songs were chosen for a reason. I didn't sit there and listen to "No Regrets" and say "Oh that's a great lyric. I'm going to take it!" and put it in the song for the sake of it. I remember reading an interview where Dappy was asked why he referenced Chris Brown, and he said: "It just went with the rhyme". But it could be implied, based on the narrative of this music video, that he had a father or stepfather who was physically abusive towards his mother, like Chris Brown had as a child with his mum's boyfriend. The reason I used it was because I was quite a violent child towards teachers at school, especially in situations when they would try to restrain me, which obviously didn't reflect well on me at the time, and the fact that I was also a big Chris Brown fan (of his music and him as a performer, not as person, just to be clear) didn't help matters either. By the time "Mean Mikey" was written I began to gain more self-control over my anger. So to me, saying "I'm a changed man now, Chris Brown" was essentially me saying: "Fuck you. Just because I love Chris Brown's music doesn't mean I condone the things he's done or aspire to go down that route myself". I should clarify on this note, that I was a big Rihanna fan at the time as well; I loved her music just as much and was a fan of both her and Chris Brown before and after finding out about their controversial relationship. Ironically 2012 was when they got back together!
Ed Sheeran - You Need Me, I Don't Need You
I discovered Ed Sheeran through "The A Team", which is still one of my favourite songs of all time today, but as beautiful as it was, it's not like it was anything new to me at the time. I had heard plenty of other acoustic ballads before. It was the follow up single "You Need Me, I Don't Need You" and the whole folk and hip-hop crossover thing that really took me by surprise. Of course, looking back now, it's not like that hadn't been done before either; Nizlopi had done it before Ed Sheeran and Bob Dylan did it long before any of them with "Subterranean Homesick Blues" before hip-hop was even a thing, but for me at the time as a twelve year old it was something new entirely as I had not yet heard Nizlopi or Dylan. All I did in my spare time as a twelve and thirteen year old was sit in my bedroom and play guitar - or at least attempt to play - along to the + album, during the times when I wasn't dancing around to and imitating Michael Jackson of course! "You Need Me, I Don't Need You" was another song I'd listen to religiously when writing "Mean Mikey". I was so obsessed with it I just couldn't help but nick the phrase "Never be anything but a singer-songwriter". Hope you don't mind Ed! There were two remixes of this song that I loved too, one that featured Devlin and Wretch 32, both of whom I discovered through Ed Sheeran, and the other featuring Rizzle Kicks, whose album Stereo Typical was another favourite of mine at the time. Ed was, and in some ways still is, a massive inspiration to me, his genre-blending and ability to crossover different styles is definitely something that influenced me. I love the content behind "You Need Me, I Don't Need You"; the industry trying to make him something he didn't want to be, telling him to dye his hair because ginger hair "wasn't a good selling point", trying to categorise him within a certain trend or genre to fit in with what was relevant at the time, and he was basically like "Fuck that" and wrote this song. Had "Mean Mikey" been distributed to a mainstream record label it certainly wouldn't have been considered marketable or industry standard, it wouldn't have fit the "teen pop" category I would have been placed within at the time. For starters, the song was written entirely by me, and teen acts traditionally have their songs written for them. It doesn't use autotune which is pretty much the selling point of that genre. And they would have likely wanted the lyrics changed to a positive narrative and therefore to express the opposite of how I felt about my life at the time. Fuck that "Mean Mikey" is no "Friday" and I'm no male Rebecca Black (funnily enough, she's a year older than me!). I've never been one to pretend to be someone or something I'm not - as Kurt Cobain once said, "I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not" - "Mean Mikey" was a truthful and honest perception of me and my life, and reflected my own personal tastes, I wasn't trying to piggyback on any current style or trend at the time or follow others like a sheep. I don't have a monkey see monkey do mindset. I'm not phased by genres or categories, that's why I chose to use the lyric "Never be anything but a singer-songwriter", because I don't consider myself to be any particular type of artist within any particular genre or style, I'm just a singer-songwriter, and that's all I'll ever be and I'm happy with that. I love all genres and styles of music so why would I want to be limited to just one?
Iyaz - Replay
The first song Mr. Croft and I played together, around the time we first met and started working together at school in late 2011, was "Grenade" by Bruno Mars; that attempt was a complete trainwreck, eventually we gave up and I suggested "Replay" by Iyaz, one of my favourite songs at the time, instead. We converted it to this upbeat funky stripped back old school R&B piano rendition (which was essentially the foundation of what became "Mean Mikey"), I wish we recorded it at the time, it was sick! When I first showed Mr. Croft the lyrics to "Mean Mikey" he certainly wasn't surprised that one of the phrases in the final chorus just so happened to be "Hey, turn up the music! My iPods stuck on replay, hey!". iPods were still very popular at the time. I didn't get an iPhone till I was 15, they were too expensive, and personally I never saw the point in iPads, I had a laptop so they weren't very inclusive, but Mr. Croft had one, which funnily enough we used to record all the vocal stems to "Mean Mikey" with. No computer, no headphones, no mic, no pop shield or anything, just an iPad, which is bizarre. Yet Mr. Croft still managed to make them sound professionally recorded. I still don't know how he did it. A good magician - or in this case producer - never reveals his secrets.
The Jackson 5 - ABC
Most aspiring songwriters start with a Beatles songbook, but for it was The Jackson 5, and the "ABC, 123" route and the Do-re-mis that I began with when I first started writing, instead of Ob-la-di-Ob-la-das and Yellow Submarines. Obviously I love The Beatles too, but I was into The Jackson 5 first. Prior to the days when I had an iPod I had a portable MP3 player, where I had The Ultimate Collection featuring all the greatest hits of The Jackson 5 and young Michael Jackson - "I Want You Back", "ABC", "The Love You Save", "Who's Lovin' You", "I Wanna Be Where You Are", "Never Can Say Goodbye", "Got To Be There", "Mama's Pearl", "Rockin' Robin", "Ben" - which I'd listen to - in addition to all the later MJ of course - on the way to school most days. I'll never say anything bad about The Jackson 5, they're one of my biggest influences, I still find myself revising them and MJ regularly today when songwriting. But as much as I love the The Corporation's genius songwriting, I do find it quite upsetting how MJ was singing all those joyful songs about youth, when we all know it wasn't at all as glamorous as that for him, nor other child stars in music and otherwise who came before and after him, who sacrificed their own childhoods to bring joy to those of others. "Mean Mikey" was my debut single, but two years prior, I featured, alongside my teachers and fellow students, on my school's Christmas charity single "Another Bower Grove Christmas", which was written by the school music technician and my singing teacher, Toby Starks (founding member and primary songwriter of Wheeler Street and The Lowly Strung). I really idolised Mr. Starks. I could have easily asked him to write a debut single for me, which I was actually thinking about doing at the time initially. After all, he's a much better songwriter than me by miles! But if I did, you just know it would have been something with similar lyrics to "Another Bower Grove Christmas", about how great school is, and I obviously didn't feel that way at the time at all, so I could only express how I truly felt by writing a song myself.
Glee Cast - Loser Like Me
Glee was one of my favourite tv shows at the time. I loved how it wasn't genre specific and had it bit of everything - a mixture of classic and modern pop, musical theatre, R&B, hip-hop, dance, soul, jazz, country and classic rock - and something for everyone. Guilty pleasures don't exist for me, I love pretty much every and any genre of music, so I don't feel ashamed, let alone guilty, about anything I listen to. I listened to a lot of cheesy pop music around the time when I wrote "Mean Mikey". I loved Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, Rihanna and P!nk, Avril Lavigne and Jessie J, Taylor Swift, and even some One Direction songs. In fact, I still occasionally listen to some of those artists now and then today. Mind you, I would have probably got a few wedgies, or even worse, a slushy or two in my face (if my school had a slushy machine like William McKinley High School) had I admitted to liking Glee, Lady Gaga or One Direction at school. Back then it seemed strange to most people for a heterosexual teenage boy like myself to be into music that was widely and stereotypically considered to be only for girls and homosexuals (even though I liked all the music considered to be for heterosexual boys too; like rock and hip-hop). Nowadays, thanks to the LGBTQ community, children are probably able to be a lot more open about the things they love without being judged or bullied for them. If you were to ask me if I was popular at school the answer wouldn't be yes, but it wouldn't be no either. I was well know, but for infamous reasons, and was hated more than loved. Glee was the perfect show for high school outcasts like myself, and anyone who lived outside of society and struggled with social and self-acceptance, due to their gender, sexuality, appearance, race, and physical and, in my case, mental disabilities.
Horrid Henry and the Killer Boy Rats - I'm Horrid Henry
I obviously can't leave Horrid Henry off this list. Him and Mean Mikey are like peas in a pod. To call Mean Mikey a Horrid Henry parody would be an accurate description but also reductive. Contrary to what a lot of people may think, I didn't purposely "copy" Horrid Henry. Bart Simpson and Dennis The Menace were just as much of a direct and important influence on Mean Mikey; in fact, I was originally going to call the character "Mikey The Meanest", in homage to Dennis The Menace - who of course Horrid Henry is based on, like Bart Simpson - but Mean Mikey was shorter and punchier so I used that. But as cringey as it may be in retrospect, I definitely can't deny the impact Horrid Henry had on me growing up. The earliest memory I have dates back to my second year of primary school when I was five - going on six - years old; the picture book Don't Be Horrid Henry was one of my favourite books at the time, and as my reading abilities gradually developed I started to read all the classics; Horrid Henry and the Secret Club, Horrid Henry Tricks The Tooth Fairy, Horrid Henry Gets Rich Quick, Horrid Henry's Revenge, Horrid Henry and the Bogey Babysitter, Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine and Horrid Henry and the Christmas Cracker, to name a few of my favourites. The TV series came around two years later when I was seven. If you grew up in Britain in the early 2000s like I did, you wouldn't have been able to go through primary school without liking Horrid Henry. You couldn't read any of the books or watch any of the episodes without relating to them, they reflected our way of life as British kids to a tee, and it would be an understatement to say I related an awful lot to Horrid Henry. Although I was more enamoured of Bart Simpson than Horrid Henry, at the same time, Bart was American, lived in America and had two sisters, whereas I was British, lived in England and had a younger brother (or be it, one minute younger) so I naturally related more to Henry. I remember feeling quite upset after watching the trailer for the film in 2011, because the kid playing Henry was the same age as me at the time. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME!!!
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