The Ultimate Insult Generator: Over 60 Million Hilarious Zingers and Stingers

Mike Barfield is a writer, poet, performer, songwriter, ukulele player and cartoonist. He has written extensively for TV and radio – with credits as diverse as Spitting Image, The Dennis the Menace and Gnasher Show and five years on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. His cartoon feature Apparently has appeared in the pages of Private Eye for over 20 years, and his drawings have been on display in the Cartoon Museum, the V & A, the Museum of London and Nigella Lawson’s downstairs loo.

His Destroy This Book series has been sold around the world, starting with the Destroy This Book In The Name of Science!: Einstein Edition 2017. The Galileo and Brainiac editions were hot on its heels, and Destroy This Book in the Name of Maths and Destroy This Book in the Name of Art are both on the horizon. All of them are unique activity books where the reader doodles on, colours, and cuts up the pages, making over a dozen amazing working models in the process! Every page, including the cover, is an interactive experience – as well as being huge fun!

Mike is also the author of a series of hilarious random insult making books published by Laurence King. ‘The Ultimate Insult Generator’ (aka The Ultimate Wisecrack Generator’ in the USA) was a huge Christmas hit, and will be followed this September by ‘The Ultimate Spell-caster‘ – more fun, but with a Halloweeny-feel.

Mike is also the author of a fact-filled, funny and beautifully illustrated children’s guide to the Periodic Table -‘The Element in the Room’. With drawings by up-and-coming illustrator Lauren Humphrey, the book encourage readers to hunt for the elements hiding in their homes, in the company of scientific detective Sherlock Ohms.

Mike has a first class degree in botany and zoology from King’s College, London, and his ever first book many years ago was also a children’s science title – a tie-in for the ITV kids’ science series Panic Station. His second was the Oldie’s Dictionary for Our Time. He also edited the last great Beachcomber collection: ‘Cram Me With Eels!’. His comic dictionary This Septic Isle was published by Ebury. 

He has five poems in the children’s poetry selection When Granny Won Olympic Gold, edited by Graham Denton. He has only one poem in the poetry collection, Best of Enemies, Best of Friends (compiled by Brian Moses) but they did at least put it on the cover. His most recent published poetry can be found in the collections A First Poetry Book by Pie Corbett and Gaby Morgan, and Is This A Poem, by Roger Stevens. Both highly recommended for use in primary schools. AF Harrold’s ‘Midnight Feasts’ anthology will also have two of Mike’s poems on show.

He still cartoons for Private Eye, writes and performs poetry and comedy, often to the accompaniment of a ukulele. He also invented squirrel fishing.

He can easily be persuaded to give a very entertaining talk about his multifaceted career, and is best approached through his website at www.mikebarfield.co.uk

Oh, and perhaps uniquely, he also presents a clicking, clanking circus of clockwork toys.