Mike Gayle (born October 1970) is an English journalist and novelist.

Biography

Gayle was born in

Quinton, Birmingham Quinton, is a residential area and ward of Birmingham, England just under west of the city centre. Formerly part of Halesowen parish, Quinton became part of Birmingham in 1909. Quinton was a village and the surrounding area was farmland until ...

, to parents from

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

, and is the younger brother of broadcaster

Phil Gayle Phil Gayle (born 6 April 1964) is an English newsreader, broadcaster and journalist who has worked for networks including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, broadcasting the news on both television and radio. As well as presenting on programmes incl ...

. He attended Lordswood Boys' School where he was Head Boy. He studied Sociology and Journalism at university. Gayle edited a music fanzine and joined a Birmingham listings magazine before moving to London and beginning a postgraduate diploma in journalism. Before having his first novel published, he was a features editor and later an agony aunt for '' Just Seventeen'' and ''

Bliss BLISS is a system programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by W. A. Wulf, D. B. Russell, and A. N. Habermann around 1970. It was perhaps the best known system language until C debuted a few years later. Since then, C b ...

''. As a freelance journalist he has written for the '' Sunday Times'', ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'', the '' Daily Express'', ''

FHM ''FHM'' (For Him Magazine) is a British multinational men's lifestyle magazine that was published in several countries. Its master edition contained features such as the ''FHM'' 100 Sexiest Women in the World, which has featured models, actres ...

'', ''

More! ''More!'' was a fortnightly, later weekly, women's fashion magazine and associated website published on Tuesdays in the United Kingdom by Bauer London Lifestyle. It included celebrity news, high street fashion, and sex tips. The magazine was pu ...

'', ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its pare ...

'' and ''

Top of the Pops ''Top of the Pops'' (''TOTP'') is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. The programme was the world's longest-running weekly music show. For most o ...

''. Gayle is a

chick-lit Chick lit is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at younger women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s, the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism. Novels id ...

author, although he has expressed a dislike for the term.Gayle, Mike
I'm a chicky chappy
''

'', 20 June 2008. Accessed 11 July 2020. Alongside Tony Parsons and

Tim Lott Tim Lott (born 23 January 1956) is a British author. He worked as a music journalist and ran a magazine publishing business, launching '' Flexipop'' magazine in 1980 with ex-''Record Mirror'' journalist Barry Cain. Early life and education In ...

, he has also been associated with a "new wave of fictions about inadequate young British masculinities". Gayle is friends with Danny Wallace, who has dubbed Mike his Minister of Home Affairs in the Kingdom of Lovely. He lives in

Harborne Harborne is an area of south-west Birmingham, England. It is one of the most affluent areas of the Midlands, southwest from Birmingham city centre. It is a Birmingham City Council ward in the formal district and in the parliamentary constitu ...

with his daughters and his wife Claire.

Novels

*''

My Legendary Girlfriend "My Legendary Girlfriend" is the first single from the album '' Separations'' by British band Pulp. The single was first released in 1991 on 12" vinyl and then in 1996 on CD featuring the original track-listing. "Is This House?" and "This Hous ...

''. London: Flame, 1998. *''Mr. Commitment''. London: Flame, 1999. *'' Turning Thirty''. London: Flame, 2000. *''Dinner for Two''. London: Flame, 2002. *''His 'n' Hers'', 2004. *''Brand New Friend'', 2005. *''Wish You Were Here'', 2007. *''The Life & Soul of the Party'', 2008. *''The To Do List'', 2009. *''The Importance of Being a Bachelor'', 2010. *''The Stag and Hen Weekend'', 2012. *''Turning Forty'', 2013. *''Seeing Other People'', 2014. *''The Hope Family Calendar'', 2016. *''The Man I Think I Know'', 2018. *''Half a world away'', 2019. *''All The Lonely People'', 2020.

References

External links

Official websiteMySpace page
1970 births Living people Writers from Birmingham, West Midlands Black British writers British advice columnists British male journalists 21st-century British novelists English people of Jamaican descent British male novelists 21st-century English male writers People educated at Lordswood Boys' School {{UK-novelist-stub