After much pondering, I have decided to drop the cloak of blogging semi-anonymity, step out from behind the curtain and reveal my real name. You won’t have heard of me, don’t worry, and with a little bit of link-following or intelligent Googling it was already possible to find out who I am, so this is hardly that exciting.

But bloggers who use their own names seem to be taken a tad more seriously and – I will admit this is the prime concern now that I’ve got a wife to support and stuff – appear to have more luck blagging paid work off the back of their online gubbins. So I reckon I might as well take the plunge. Even if doing it right after a piss-take post may not be the best time…

I shall most likely be following the Tim Ireland route of keeping the pseudonym at the bottom of posts (to prevent people who’ve got used to “Nosemonkey” being too confused) while revealing my actual name in the title bar. This will, of course, involve template fiddling, and shall be done later today.

In the meantime, in the real world and stuff I am James Clive Matthews, hack writer/editor, and known as Clive to pretty much everyone outside the family. You can buy some of my film criticism stuff here and here, should you be so inclined (or here and here for US readers). I’d prefer it, however, if you refrained from becoming a stalker.

Hopefully dropping the anonymity will not lead to a change in writing style, self-censorship or the like, nor make me feel the need to re-write everything on here to a more professional standard (as 95% of the posts here are first drafts, published as soon as I finish typing and not planned out in advance in any way – largely because I have neither the time nor the inclination to make too much effort for unpaid work). Time will tell if the lack of a mask leads to improvement or decline – fingers crossed that it works out OK, eh?