It depends on which decade you want to reference:

1. Super (1960s Chelsea society girl)
2. Magic (1970s footballer/club comedian)
3. Not-bad-meaning-bad-but-bad-meaning-GOOD (1980s Def Jam b-boy)
4. Choon innit (1990s rave monkey)
5. Supersonic (2000s Concorde nostalgist)

Or you could mix and match according to mood...

Why and when did you set the weblog up?

In Autumn 2001, I accidentally stumbled onto a couple of weblogs via Google - most notably Swish Cottage, which kept popping up with a certain regularity. Previously, I had half-read an article in the Guardian Online supplement about weblogs, and assumed they must be terribly complicated to set up. However, there was a button on Swish Cottage saying "powered by Blogger" which intrigued me. I clicked it, went to www.blogger.com, followed the instructions, and before I knew it - or indeed knew what the hell I was going to do with it - I had my very own blog. This was in the evening of Tuesday October 30, 2001. So my first impulse was "I want to do something a bit like that Swish Cottage thingy." The rest followed on from there.

Any reason behind the name?

I'd been messing about on the Popbitch message board for a few weeks, but was getting a bit fed up with it. So Troubled Diva was originally my Popbitch User ID, thought up at great haste when registering at the site. The name came from various articles I had read about the trials and tribulations of Mariah Carey & Whitney Houston, who had both gone off the rails a bit in 2001. The phrase "troubled diva" kept cropping up in these articles, with monotonous regularity. So it was a cheap little dig at lazy journalism, basically. I kept the handle for the site as I felt that "troubled diva" had become my online identity by then.

In retrospect, I'm not sure how good a choice it was, as people keep assuming that I am the "troubled diva" in question. I'm not - I'm Mike. Also, there's a rather horrible phonetic glottal-stop between the two Ds, which makes it tricky to say out loud. But hey - a brand's a brand, and it is kinda memorable for all that.

What was that "Shirt Off My Back Project" all about?

Most of the stuff I post on the site is the result of acting quickly on random impulses, and this was a case in point. Someone else had blogged about owning a stupid number of T-shirts, and I realised that I owned a similarly stupid number of button-up shirts. Before I knew what I was doing, I had announced my intention to post a picture of one shirt per day, until I ran out of shirts, with a sweepstake amongst my readers as to the day I would finally run out. The closest guess would then win the final shirt - hence the "shirt off my back" title.

I particularly liked the idea of taking what was potentially an incredibly boring and restrictive subject, and trying to find something fresh/interesting/funny to say about it every day. However, I also liked the idea of the project as an exercise in sub-Warhol-esque repetitive tedium, with readers coming back day after day after day to view photos of myself wearing the same deadpan expression in a different shirt. That way, I could then drop occasional little surprises into the photos. Yes, it was weird - but not as weird as the fact that a steadily increasing number of people kept coming back, religiously, day after day, to see the next exciting shirt. What was that all about?

You're quite keen on interacting with your readers, aren't you?

Absolutely. The interactive nature of weblogging is one of its the key appeals of the genre. I enjoy finding out who my readers are - webloggers and non-webloggers alike - and I'm constantly impressed to hell with the quality of the discussions that take place in my comments boxes. Certain pundits have described blogging as an exercise in online community-building. Despite the slight self-important pomposity of the concept, this is something with which I definitely identify.

How many competitions have you run?

Let's see. The Shirt Off My Back Project was the first (unless you count Stylistic Tic Eradication Week, but let's not get into all that). Next was the So You Think You're A Blogaholic? quiz, which was a mix between a blog-based general knowledge contest and a treasure hunt. Next came the Weblog Wordsearch (self-explanatory), and most recently there was the Match The Intro quiz, a fiendishly difficult affair in which you had to match the boring bits at the beginning of extended dance mixes with the corresponding middle sections.

There was also something called the Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? Project, which was a competition between the Top 10 singles charts of the same week in 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993 and 2003. Each day for ten days, I pitted 5 hit singles against each other - one from each decade, starting with the Number 10s and moving through to the Number 1s - and asked my readers to rank them in order of preference, thus building up cumulative scores for each decade. Thus at the end of the project, we could scientifically prove which decade was the greatest ever in pop music history. The result was a dead heat between the 70s and 80s, which necessitated a tie-break (1978 versus 1988 - the 70s won in the end).

You could also arguably include a recent stunt, the Let's Get More Comments Than Wil Wheaton Project, whereby I went underground and hid out in my comments box for a couple of days, without posting anything on the main blog itself. The idea was that if I received more comments (235 in all) than American super-blogger Wil Wheaton by midnight at the end of Red Nose Day, then I would donate £100 to Comic Relief. The restriction was that I couldn't publicise the stunt in the main body of the blog proper - my readers had to spread the word for me. I ended up meeting my target 15 hours early.

Er...so the answer is six, then.

How long did that music quiz take to arrange?

About three or four hours, I suppose. Once I have a Big Idea, I get quite obsessive about it. It has to be done to an absolutely spot-on level of detail, or else there's no point. I can't bear the thought of leaving an unfinished, half-cocked idea lying around in a public place. In this respect, blogging has revealed a perfectionist streak in me which I didn't know I had.

You've got merchandise - are you aiming to become a blogging super-brand?

Good God, no! Although admittedly, I have rather been pretending that this is the case; I'm such a tongue-in-cheek little scallywag at times. The merchandise thing is mostly an attempt at lending a hand to a mate of mine who has an online merchandising business. Loads of US bloggers sell stuff online via Cafe Press, so (although I'm by no means the first) I thought I'd try to kick-start the concept over here as well. Because let's face it: just how cool would it be to have a set of coffee mugs, each bearing the logo of one of your favourite weblogs? Or is that just me?

(OK, so maybe it's just me then.)

If so, when's the film out? And who's playing you?

Troubled Diva - The Movie.
One extraordinary man. One unique vision. One private life, on public display.
What drives him? What can stop him?
And who can save him from his deadliest enemy: his broadband connection?

Sorta like The Truman Show, but without the exciting bits. Like dialogue, for instance. Mmm, I like it! And can I have Ralph Fiennes playing me, please?

You turned your blog over to guest posters for a week - where did that idea come from, and how were people invited to post on your blog?

The idea came from knowing that I will possibly be travelling abroad quite a bit this year, with consequently less time available for regular blogging. I'd seen guest blogging on other sites, with greater or lesser degrees of success, and so became consumed with curiosity as to how this might (or might not) work on my own site - which is, after all, firmly pitched towards the individual, "personal" style of blogging. Guest Week was thus a chance to try out the concept, to see how it fitted. I didn't invite anybody behind the scenes - instead, I asked for volunteers on the blog itself. I then picked the five who I thought might provide the most intriguing balance.

Will you be doing that again?

Yes, I think so. Personally, I thought that Guest Week was a raging success. I particularly liked the sensation of checking for updates on my own site. I also liked the way that different guest postings started following on from each others' subject matter, with topics ranging from religious doctrine to self-mutilation, via Belgian chocolate.

What's the "40 In 40 Days Project"?

Another random barmy idea which spun out of control, early on in the life of the blog. I decided that for each of the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday, I would write about a specific incident in my life, selected at random from a master list so that the entries were anything but chronological. This ended up turning into a full-blown autobiographical writing project, which - broadly speaking - started off with jolly little anecdotes to make you laugh, and then slowly went much deeper, much darker, and much more personal. In fact, I surprised myself with just how much detail I was prepared to share publically.

40 in 40 was a good exercise for several reasons. It gave me a chance to work through my own past, to make connections between certain events, and to gain a new sense of perspective on the events which had shaped me. It also helped me to develop my writing style, and to "find my voice" (before Troubled Diva, I hadn't written for pleasure for over 20 years). Now, with links to all 40 entries on their own domain (www.40in40.com) and still individually linked from the front page of the blog, it serves as a "get to know me" introduction for anyone who wishes to do so.

Having now expressed myself in such an intensely personal style, I feel in some ways "purged" by the exercise - I'm happy to let the material stand, but I don't particularly feel much of an urge to continue the blog in such a directly confessional vein. Instead, I can concentrate on prancing about like some sort of demented quiz show host. Now that's what I call Personal Growth and Development...

How much time do you spend posting and working on the blog?

I shudder to think. Over the last year, I've given the blog top priority - it really has been a labour of love, and one of the most fulfilling exercises I have ever undertaken. I'm avoiding the question, aren't I? Hey, maybe I'm getting the hang of this interview lark.

Complete this sentence - "Troubled Diva is..."

...not quite as good this week. It's normally better than this. No, honestly, it is. Why not come back again in a few days' time? Please?

Any other hobbies?

To loosely paraphrase a fellow blogger: I used to be a well-rounded individual, with many active interests and a thriving social life. And then blogging came along, and sucked the life-force out of my very soul. Don't do it, kids!

AUSTRIAN:

Der Unterschied zwischen Tieren zwischen Affen und Primaten
Der is net vü größer wie bei Nudl und Fritatten
Doch wer mehr über Tiere wissen wü muß Biologie studiern
Oder sich im Anschluß auf meiner Homepage informieren



ENGLISH:

The difference between animals such as apes and primates
Is no bigger than between noodles and pasta
But whoever wants to know more about animals should study Biology
Or inform himself on my homepage.