This is an archive of my recent writing, though I assume I will have missed some of it or a lot of it. I have been writing on the internet since I was about 15 – I was not a very cool teenager – and as a result a lot of that has been lost to the sands of time, mainly because I coded it all on a website myself (see previous statement regarding not being a very cool teenager) and didn't back it up. Similarly, I have written for a number of magazines that have since exploded and gone defunct, or their websites have been bought and re-uploaded, or blah blah blah blah bloo. I still have every laptop I've ever owned, so the words all exist somewhere, at least (current location of every word I have ever written: Big Yellow Storage, Bow), but since Twitter went like that it's hard to keep track of everything I do or write online. This therefore is an honest attempt to keep track of my work, manually updated as and when I remember to do it. Enjoy.

 

(As ever, the best example of my work to date is my book, Four Stars; I have just started the early stages of setting up a Substack, and you can follow along there. We'll have some fun.)

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Last updated: January 2026

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​A googly-eyes trend for a frowny-faced world, Jan '26, The Observer — A really satisfying one to pull together, actually – noticing all the googly eyes on things felt a bit like a half-idea until I started to pull at the thread and things unravelled, and, (though it took a day longer to write than I expected, including one afternoon of absolute stare-at-the-blank-page agony), I think it just came out really well (and it's always cool to end up on the print cover). Made me really up for, 'Do you think this would be a thing?' commissions going forward.

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Barang, London: ‘I now trust this restaurant with my life’, Jan '26, The Observer — I went to the excellent Barang residency above The Globe Tavern in Borough Market and just had a completely perfect December lunch and gave it the glowing review it deserved. A Peek Behind The Curtain: the guest I took and who I described as "boring" in the piece in Michael Segalov, my friend and editor. He was meant to take that line out but it's actually a lot, lot funnier that he didn't. 

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The Joel Golby Gift Guide 2025, Dec '25, self-published — every year on Instagram people ask me for help buying their boyfriends gifts and every year I promise to do a gift guide and then never do. Apart from in 2025, when I actually sat down at did something, and shared it in the most insane way via a Google Doc. 6.5k words and it went, for some reason, absolutely tonto (4.3m views!) on Twitter, so suddenly Americans were looking at it and complaining they couldn't make it to De Beauvoir Deli because it's in De Beauvoir. Yeah, man. I know. It is unbearable for me to think about how much money I lost out on by not putting affiliate links in this but that's just who I am as a person, I suppose. Morally pure and an idiot at the same time. 

 

Diary of an undercover watch geek, Dec '25, GQ — I went to a watch party held by Subdial and it was really very class although I felt like a complete and actual fake being there in a room full of actual successful people with actual successful people watches on and I was wearing a borrowed Patek as a joke. Really loved the light touch edit on this one, and great photos by Freddie Payne. Annoyingly I have got way more 'into watches' as a direct result of the piece and basically spent the entire commission and then some on eBay getting more of them. So functionally writing this article has actually cost me money. 

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What do we actually want from our football pundits?, Dec '25, The Observer — a quick fun one for the Sports pages: a real blast to write, and a piece I was already mulling when Jamie Carragher gave me the gift of being quite weird on Sky Sports for ten minutes about Mo Salah. Really love when a piece taps into what it felt like to write for old VICE: A Thing Is Happening, Notice The Thing, Write About The Thing, Joke About The Thing. Would like to do more of that in 2026.

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Norbert’s, south London: ‘I feel like a competition winner’, Dec '25, The Observer — my friend Joel and I went to Norbert's one Saturday and his quote got used as the headline on my review. He was buzzing about it but I was quite fuming. Anyway: Norbert's is fantastic and if you ever want to go to Norbert's, just hit me up and ask me. I am literally always down to go to Norbert's. 

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Zlatan Ibrahimovic: get the milk, asshole (with Joel Golby), Dec '25, The Upshot — turned up 40 minutes late and phenomenally hungover for this record and I think it does visibly show, but had a great time doing it anyway. I would say 30% of the comments on this particular video are personally calling me some derivation of "weird", by the way. Not ideal for the ego. Not! I! Deal! 

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Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room, Nov '25, Joel Golby's Book Club – a post-holiday episode of Britain's most beloved book podcast [citation enormously needed], featuring the return of Geordie Joel. Read this book very quickly but in a way that I didn't quite like. Or at least I thought so before I somehow talked about it for 30 minutes. 

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Singburi, London: ‘A suburban institution is reborn in Shoreditch’, Oct '25, The Observer — the ultimate Singburi piece is always going to be Jonathan Nunn's, but I also went – twice, actually! If you care! – and enjoyed the food there, too. Quite desperate to go one time when it's dinner. I always go at lunch and it's good but... just imagine how good it would be with one-and-a-half bottles of wine. But then isn't that true of everything

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Beware: Cantaloupe in Stockport is so good it will reduce you to clichés, Oct '25, The Observer — quite a frantic experience writing this – I had exactly one night free where I could go to Cantaloupe before going on holiday to Greece for a week, so on a completely random Wednesday I ran up there and back in one evening, and when I did get home I fell asleep face-first and didn't get up until quite late the next morning – but damn, worth it. Me and my mate Jake did some perfect ordering of both the food and the wine then one gorgeous pint of Guinness at a pub by the station for after. Didn't get a mention in the review for reasons of word count, so I can just say it here: the panelle was absolutely outstanding. 

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Joel Golby’s long and vibey search for the perfect pub, Sept '25, GQ — they did a British issue and let me write about pubs, so it was basically my perfect commission. Thank you Oli Franklin-Wallis. 

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Benedict Townsend's Book Club?, Sept '25, Joel Golby's Book Club — a really fun and interesting episode of the podcast with my friend Benedict, who asked me some really fascinating questions about the writing process on Instagram and I was like, 'Why don't we actually do this with our mouths? On a Riverside link?'. I think he just asked a lot of great Qs, in a way that I hope can be a really useful resource for other writers. He will be asked back.

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'I'M GOING WITH RAY PARLOUR' | JOEL GOLBY'S PERFECT FOOTBALL MATCH, Sept '25, Mundial — I had a wonderful time making up my ideal football match with the sweet Mundial boys. This takes the form of a 'video podcast', my first, and I learned a lot of lessons about the form i.e. if you think you need a haircut before someone points five different 4K cameras at you, yes you definitely do need a haircut, and therefore you should go for a haircut. Don't just assume you can get away with not having a haircut. 

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Rhys James' You'll Like It When You Get There, Aug '25, Joel Golby's Book Club — Rhys came on the podcast to absolutely slice me about how often I upload a new episode and then we had a really good 'writing process' talk about his new book: he's annoyingly smart and thinks in the way I really like, so it was a great chat. 'Listen now'. 

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N.B.: There were other articles between May and August '25 – there had to be? Surely? – but I haven't delved in and found them all yet.

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Joel and Lucas Oakeley Create A Character, May '25, Joel Golby's Book Club — my boy Lucas 'stop masturbating you freak and read a fucking book' Oakeley used my patented 'invent a character' method, which I thought I had come up with independently but it turns out D&D Dungeonmasters have been using for decades. Anyway: I still think it's a useful process for character creation and is a fun listen. Shoot me! Shoot me with a gun!