Chik J Duncan

Chik Duncan was born in Bellshill Maternity Hospital, brought up in Rutherglen, on the Southside, and started writing at St. Columbkille's Primary School where teachers often asked if a drunken spider had been crawling all over his jotter. Around the age of nine he began work on his first novel, something about spaceships and planets and stuff. He only ever got as far as Chapter 3 which kind of set the standard for the rest of his life really. He thinks it was also around this time that he first trod the boards, or more accurately the linoleum at the front of the classroom, chosen for the role of Dr. Finlay because he had "a big strong Scottish voice". At nine??? Gaun yirsel', wee man! In his twenties, after many years of trying, he finally managed to get into Glasgow University one night when they accidentally left a window open. Four years later, to everyone's surprise, including his own, a drunken spider got an Honours Degree in Philosophy while Chik was lazing about in the Q.M. coffee bar. Chik's subsequent adventures have included an aggregate of two and a half years in three different psychiatric hospitals, four years living in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Eskdalemuir, two years in a therapeutic community as a volunteer co-worker, two post graduate qualifications, a wee bit of IT tutoring both in Community Education and at the University of Glasgow, and campaigning as a Media Volunteer with See Me Scotland, to end the stigma associated with mental illness. Nowadays, having acquired an inflated opinion of his own talent, Chik sometimes describes himself as a writer, a storyteller and a performer of poyums, but he can probably be summed up in eighteen of his own words thus: "I'm something-something years old, I'm a rebel without a scooby, but your kids and their grannies love me."