Contact: info@knockback.co.uk

Founders:

Marie Berry
Founding editor, aspiring author, champion slacker

Sarah ; Lewis
Head of aesthetics, part time perfectionist and queen of everything

Hilary Hazard
Contributions editor and popcorn pirate

Writers:

Bisha K. Ali
Newly added to the team Bisha is a classic example of women that KB seek out and abjectly adore, she makes jokes because comedy makes the world go round, she has impeccable manners, a thorough spell check and lots of talented friends. Also she gets shit done.

Chloe McClaren
Marie Berry met Chloe at the Stone Circle in Glastonbury early on a Sunday morning. Chloe was flanked by Valium Jack and some other girl, Berry was with a couple of guys and leaned over to Chloe to borrow a lighter. 2 hours later, when Chloe had to leave, Berry watched her go with tears of laughter in her eyes and a total girl crush in her heart. One of the guys leaned over and said ‘you love her, don’t you.’ And Berry wept, because she really did. Several weeks later a message pinged into Berry’s inbox, it said simply ‘Valium Jack remembered your name! Fucking A!’ Chloe wrote an explanation of the joys and woes of DMT for KB 5, and to this day her ‘posh people’ accent makes Berry fall off benches laughing.

Anna Booty
Anna got in touch with us because she went on one of those things where they paint your face and take soft focus pictures and you have to pretend you look amazing even though you look like a soggy clown. Since then we exchange emails that discuss despair in the abstract and whenever one arrives the whole KB team gets a little heart flutter.

Maude wrote for us in disguise. She kept it a secret right up until we published, then she leapt out at us at a party shouting ‘surprise – it wasn’t a random stranger who had read, digested and fulfilled the guidelines, it was meeeeee.’ To which we said ‘ahh man you already knew the bloody guidelines, but hey, well done, we didn’t know you were funny and could write.’ Maude has now changed her name to Kim Hankinson and she draws lovely pictures you can look at here.

Penny Lane went undercover and worked at a women’s magazine for us, we didn’t realise it at the time but it opened a door to the dark side and she has since taken up working at the Daily Mail. She also got pregnant so she writes a ‘mummy’ column which is fucking horrific. She made up for it by naming her first son Totally Mexico.

Professor Clever graduated top of his class in physics at Imperial in London, he also has degrees in microbiology, social anthropology and history which means he knows what happens, why it happens and who started it. He began writing for us because he thought we could use some brains and was worried that he couldn’t count being funny amongst his many skills. He can though, thankfully for us. He won’t tell us how old he is but he’s got proper grandad hands and Murray mints in his pockets so we figure he’s getting on a bit. He has a really funny Rolf Harris story which was his favourite anecdote up until very recently. Damn it Rolf.

Harry Laconic Junior was born and raised in a playground. He likes meatballs, TV, medical posters, star jumps, jazz flute, popsicals, aeronautics, hand cream, tap water, paperclips, tape measures, wardrobe shopping, photographs of abandoned mattresses, typing, tweed and denim (which he calls twenim), sculpting cheese into piles of cheese, Irish accents, purple, chutney, bangs, Vitamin C, walkie talkies, being an intern, jellyfish, jelly beans, unsalted nuts and sitting on the floor. He’s been a KB writer since issue 1 but really nailed it in issue 3.

Lorem Ipsum decided to write for KB after a kite-boarding accident, she realised there was more to life than producing artsy short stories that won competitions and were hailed as works of great beauty, and that she should try her hand at comedy writing and/or journalism. Unfortunately for all concerned she decided to contact Hilary Hazard who was in the midst of a nasty break up and had a cold. After butting heads for several weeks, Lorem Ipsum resigned herself of KB and never returned. Hilary Hazard apologised but was being insincere and it was really fucking obvious actually.

Sarah Drinkwater was working in a vintage clothes shop back in the days when team KB went clothes shopping. Her commitment to gin was the inspiration for ‘Jenga drinking’ which in turn led to the great jeans sharing episode of 2009, which involved a handsome prince, two serious hangovers and a pair of baggy jeans.
None of these things ever became articles because everyone involved was too totally fuck-faced to write them, but Jenga was never the same, and SDW wrote the Handy Man plan to which some people took exception. A good result all round.

Candy Galore is a pseudonym invented to protect the identity of our esteemed colleague who has gone on to work undercover in one of the nation’s coolest and most worrying companies. Her super powers are ample but include discretion, kung fu and speaking 4 languages.
She is impressive, morally ambidextrous and has a dangerously sharp sense of humour. Unfortunately she hasn’t been seen since 2008 but we assume that’s because she’s out there somewhere being a badass, and not because she was captured and killed.

Carmel Downes is one of those women. You’re never quite sure if she’s joking or not. Every time she walks away you feel like you’ve been had and you can’t tell if you liked it.
Carmel is an artist. Her work revolves around the combined concepts of luck, love, chance and romance (which she insists rhymes, because she has a slight [and possibly affected] French accent). The research for her work has taken her to some dark places including a lemur themed strip club, a secret network of tunnels under the Thames and into a three month relationship with a male escort (that she met while recruiting male escorts).

If Clementine Deliss were a meal she’d be sesame seared tuna. If she were an animal she’d be one that could fly, swim and run. If she were a car… She wouldn’t be a car – she’d be a really sexy boat.
Clementine was one of our most prized possessions writer-wise, but then she hit the big time and now she goes to parties with Simon Cowell and other rich people (she doesn’t go with them but they’re there and so is she).  Her arm has been in Hello twice and she takes the fact that they’ve cropped her face out as a compliment.

Freida Peeps is an environmental scientist with a physics masters and a ferocious sense of indignation about the way the world is run. She blames men, religion and apathy (not necessarily in that order).
Despite her apparent intelligence and hallowed sense of righteousness, she had two kids, lives in Suffolk and breeds rare rabbits for fun.

General Eysing is one of the most astonishing men we have ever had the misfortune to make out with (yes ‘we’ – it was a collective experience). He has fire for hair and shit for brains. He was last spotted at a sweet shop in Ealing pretending he hadn’t seen us.

Jessica Verything wrote the pitch for her article, STRs, on the inside of a Big Mac box, and stood outside the office asking people if they worked at KnockBack until, several weeks later, she found Marie Berry. To this day her piece is a team favourite and was by far the best thing in the issue. Jessica now works for a Pygmy support group in South East Asia and has stopped having unprotected sex and eating Big Macs but she still makes people laugh.

Stacey Bacon is a perma-culture farmer in Cornwall. She dug a massive ditch and then invited us to come and sit in it for a weekend. Stacey once stopped washing her hair for three months. She has had a threesome and she has an IUD which she displays proudly. She has more sexual horror stories than any other KB writer. She is crazy pretty and looks like a cross between Brit Marling and Cameron Diaz so a long list of conquests is to be expected.

Bella Pepper Is a fucking nightmare, she doesn’t pay for drinks, she openly flirts with and occasionally manages to actually steal boyfriends. She’s sanctimonious, obnoxious, overly confident and frankly just a terrible person. Nobody can remember who invited her to join us and even fewer can fathom why. She is a spandex clad, marathon running, fad dieting, rom com watching, Bridget Jones’s diary reading, Cosmopolitan championing cunt.

Artists:

Sam Golin – Illustrator
Stand up comedian, sit down comedian, pen head, prince, pauper.

Daniel Paul Wilton Photographer
Wrestler, cheese head, opportunist and prince of jpegs

Dom Del Torto
Genius, comedian, pencil handler, international man of mishap

Tom Medwell
Champion of second base, photographer of note, all round great gal