Well now.
Fifteen years.
Yep. Fifteen years.
I checked earlier and yes, it’s true – this thing has been running in various forms, on two different blogs for fifteen years.
It only started as a bit of a giggle.
On Livejournal, back in the dim distant days of 2004, someone started a ‘hey, post some photos of you when you were younger!”
I put up a dozen or so, from the single baby photo I had scanned in, and then one from every five years or so up until the most recent pic I had of myself.
At the end of the year, I did it properly, putting loads of photos up, and since then, I’ve continued to update it every year with more recent pics, and have managed to scan in or otherwise digitise other photos I’ve found.
Why do I do it? Oh, why not? And, besides, people who haven’t seen them before get the unfettered joy of joining in the mockery…
So, time once again for the annual mocking and silliness to occur, with the 2019 update to A Life In Pictures.
Now… about the pics you’re going to see below: as you’d expect, I’ve already been about as embarrassed at the shots as I’m ever likely to be, but yes, if you feel the need to go “awwww” at the cute pics of me as a youngster, or mock the pictures of me during the decade(s) that fashion forgot, feel free to do so.
So, here they are, bringing the photos up to date, as of December 2019. As always, I’ve removed a couple of shots from previous years, and added some new ones. For once, I’ve more than a few to pick from this year – a rarity for me – but as with the last couple of years, thanks to some newly discovered photos and some technical wizardry, there are some surprises awaiting you below.
(Oh, since I was asked last year, the wonderful iPhone app I’ve used in recent years to digitise snaps so they’re effectively high resolution scans is a free Google app called Photoscan. I genuinely can’t recommend it highly enough. IOS version; | Google Play version)
OK, without any further ado… in chronological order…
Those are the earliest photos I’ve got of me… looks like they were taken the same day; my older brother is in the background.
3 years old
Three brothers – must be around 1967 or 1968, so I’d be around 3½ years of age?
Aged 4
I’m five, I think, here in this shot and the next one.
It was 1972, ok? And I was at my brother’s bar mitzvah. I was eight.
My son takes great delight in this shot – I think I was 10 at the time.
Me at age 11. I still remember the wallpaper; very, very odd gold pattern to it.
The main ‘man’ – my barmitzvah, August 1977
Three brothers – my barmitzvah, August 1977
Starting the dancing – my barmitzvah, August 1977
Just after my 15th birthday
August 1980, I’m 16 – yes, that is a curly perm. Shut up.
November 1982 – Freshers’ Fair at Manchester Poly
1983 – me at the PULP office, 2nd year at Manchester Poly.
Age 21, at a work leaving do, having left Manchester Poly a month or so earlier.
1985, at my brother’s wedding… at which I was best man. Yeah, 21 again.
At my dad’s 60th birthday in 1989, aged 25. Blimey, was that really almost thirty years ago?
Three brothers – 1991, I believe
1994 – A nice one, from Laura’s and my wedding day – aged 30
A low res shot from the wedding that I discovered in the archives…
I love that I found this next pic. Laura’s still one of my favourite people on the planet. And this is another great pic of us on our wedding day. And yes, ahhh I had dark hair back then…
This next one’s an odd one for lots of reasons; first off, it’s obviously my BBC pass from when I was writing for WeekEnding on Radio 4; secondly, when I visited New York just after 9/11, it was better as ID for getting me into buildings, places, meetings than my actual passport… even though it had expired six years’ earlier…
The earliest pic I have of my lad Phil (excluding ‘scans’). Me, a new dad, aged 31. And so, so tired.
Me holding my son… he’s 18 days’ old here.
Yeah, another ‘Budgie plus baby’ pic, this time he’s three months old…
Me in New York, January 1998, just after we lost Mike
Part of a formal family shot, mid-1999
June 1999 – my spiritual home
August 2000; taken by Phil – he was five years old at the time
October 2001; New York, six weeks after 9/11; visiting Ian
May 2002, Hypotheticals – not a happy Budgie
mid-2002, taken for a WEF World Wide Wednesday
Bristol, 2003. You can see the greying hair now…
July 2004 – working at the office
December 2004 – at my nephew’s bar mitzvah. See? I scrub up nicely occasionally. Three generations of Barnetts.
Not exactly sure when this was taken but would have been around now…
August 2005 – at Brighton. First picture for ages that I’m genuinely happy with.
September 2005, last picture of the Nissan before I crashed it…
October 2005. Again, a photo taken by Phil…
April 2006, at the flat.
Me in mid-2006, looking very serious for one reason or another.
Again, mid-2006.
Me in December 2006… looking slightly more relaxed.
May 2007, Bristol, Saturday night, at around 2 in the morning… very relaxed… aided by what Alistair Cooke used to call ‘The wine of Scotland’.
May 2008 – Phil and me at Comic Expo
May 2008 – Me interviewing Dave Gibbons at Comic Expo
October 2008 – Me and Phil, studio shot for the bar mitzvah
November 2008 – formal pic for Phil’s barmitzvah.
May 2009 – Me and Matt Jones, (pic by Jamais Cascio)
July 2009 – At the BERG 40th Anniversary Apollo 11 drinkup (pic by Matt Jones)
November 2009 – Me and Phil at a friend’s son’s barmitzvah.
April 2010, in Luton
July 2010, on Mastermind. No, not an illusion; you’re not allowed to wear black for the show…
August 2010, at Laura’s
October 2010, from Phil Tanner’s Photos – Mitch Benn ‘Proud of the BBC’ video shoot) The actual video’s here.
October 2010, again: at MCM
December 2010, after the office party
October 2011, trying out a beard… not quite yet… but give it a year…
Laura took this one in April 2012 – not a bad shot of me, all things considered.
And then I had my hair cut…
No idea why I took this one, but it has me without a beard, anyway… August 2012
Lost my father in October 2012 – here’s the progress of the shiva beard before trimming it down
Sequence of shots, demonstrating Lesson 1 about falling asleep in a friend’s house where children live. Don’t
(November 2012)
This final one attracted the title “… and all the woodland creatures gathered around, for they had never seen a creature such as this in the forest.”
Me, at The Leveson Inquiry. The reading of the summary, not giving evidence…
The delightful Clara Benn proved that I’m tiny when sitting next to Mitch Benn…
Isn’t perspective fun?
Met up with an old friend, and wandered around Camden with him. A nice afternoon…
Yeah, I broke my foot…
And so to 2013…
Well, in March, I did a charity event where I wrote twenty-four stories in twenty-four hours for Comic Relief.
That’s Mitch Benn in the background, writing his comedy album, which he did also within twenty-four hours.
Phil turned up to support us…
And I got progressively more tired, and more silly, as the hours passed…
A small accident with the beard trimmer led me to shave off the beard I’d had for roughly a year…
Most people were glad I grew it back almost immediately
Later in the year, finally managed to get a photo with two of my closest friends. There’s been any number of pictures of two of the three of us, but rarely any shots of all three… until now.
Not the best pic, I have to admit, but rather pleased we managed it at all!
However, another photo was taken that night which continues to amuse me no end.
You don’t think I’m in it? Really? Look to the right. Yes, just there… that blurred shock of grey/white hair? Yeah, afraid so…
Towards the end of the year, there was something new… a mini-me. Or to be precise, I was scanned for a 3D printing of myself. Very strange to see myself post-scanning on a screen…
But that was nothing to seeing the actual result…
In July, managed to catch up with an old friend, at his reading of The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains at the Barbican. I like this photo, entitled Two beards (old friends attached), a lot.
Around the same time, I wrote a post on the rising tide of overt anti-semitism in the UK, and that I’d personally faced. I used the following shot to illustrate it. I was and still am very happy with how it turned out.
Some time ago, remember, the delightful Clara Benn had taken a shot which proved I was substantially smaller than Mitch, tiny in comparison, in fact. November 2015, she proved it again…
Isn’t perspective wonderful?
And so to 2016, and I’m not sure what this pic was for, in July, but it’s an odd one…
Never liked the next shot in colour, I do, however, really like it in black and white.
Anyway… Moving on…
Towards the end of the 2016, close friends had a baby, and I got to say hello both in October and November. I’ve never hidden how soppy I am about babies. I suspect these photos prove it.
And this is the shot, at the end of 2016, that convinced me that if I ever do get a hat, it’ll be a Homburg, not a Fedora…
Me and my lad, outside Distraction Club, December 2016
And in December 2017, this one of the new[er], short[er] haircut.
In June 2018, I got to see Pippa Evans; this is me waiting to go in…
In August 2018, my lad Phil was in town for a few days. We realised it had been a while since we’d had pics taken of the pair of us. So here are two.
And, of course since we had that pic, and I had a similar one from almost exactly ten years’ earlier, I was kind of obliged to put the two together. I really like this image.
In October, I attended the Brexit march for a People’s Vote. It ended up with 700,000 people… plus me.
Same march, with Mitch… No idea why, but I really like how my hair looks in this shot.
And the final shot from 2018 answered the question “so, what did you do immediately after Christmas 2018, budgie?”
And so to 2019…
It’s rare there’s a pic of me that even I will reluctantly admit is a good shot, especially if it’s a selfie, but you know what? I really like this one… 
Of course, that was after a haircut.
I look decidedly less good immediately before a haircut…
I just wish any pics from Edinburgh didn’t look like I’d photoshopped me into previously taken shots…
Oh yeah, I was in hospital in Edinburgh. I wasn’t impressed…
Here’s another post haircut pic…
I think that should do you. And, as I wish everyone a happy new year, one full of love, joy, and silliness, the traditional benediction:
Mocking may now commence.
budgie's perch 