Frank Key

Paul Byrne (29 January 1959 – 13 September 2019), who used the pseudonym Frank Key, was a British writer, illustrator, blogger and broadcaster best known for his self-published short-story collections and his long-running radio series Hooting Yard on the Air, which was broadcast weekly on Resonance FM from April 2004 until 2019. Key co-founded the Malice Aforethought Press with Max Décharné and published the fiction of Ellis Sharp. According to one critic, "Frank Key can probably lay claim to having written more nonsense than any other man living."

Prior to 2006 Key's published work consisted almost entirely of short-run, self-published pamphlets. All of these original printed releases are out of print. Some of these books have become collector's items which have traded at many times their original value. In 2009 Key began re-publishing stories from his small-press releases. We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, included the short stories The Phlogiston Variations and The Book of Gnats, which were originally published in the Massacre anthology series.

In 1986, inspired by the postpunk DIY ethic, Key founded the Malice Aforethought Press with Max Décharné. Over the next few years they published a large number of short-run pamphlets.

In 2003 Key launched "Hooting Yard", originally intended as an internet archive of his writing. In addition he released six volumes of stories which originally appeared on his web-site. These were published by Hooting Yard and made available as paperbacks and eBooks viaLulu.

In 2014, Key published By Aerostat to Hooting Yard - A Frank Key Reader, a selection of 147 previously published stories, with an introductory essay by Roland Clare.

Resonance FM

Key broadcast weekly on Resonance FM, since 14 April 2004 when his show Hooting Yard on the Air was first commissioned. The programme was broadcast live from Resonance FM's studios and consisted almost entirely of Key narrating his own short stories and observations. Hooting Yard is the longest continuously running series on Resonance FM, with only the ClearSpot Show (which is technically not a series) having existed on the schedules for longer.

Resonance has broadcast a number of Hooting Yard special episodes. In December 2007 Key and the performance artist Germander Speedwell performed the whole of Jubilate Agno, an epic devotional poem by Christopher Smart This was the first and only time that this poem has been performed in its entirety on live radio. The entire performance was in excess of three hours.

Key appeared in Episode 3 of Resonance FM's Tunnel Vision, a series recorded entirely in the sewers under London.

Podcasting

Key narrated for all of the Escape Artists podcasts:Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and PodCastle. In addition his short stories Bubbles Surge from Froth, Boiled Black Broth and Cornets, and Far Far Away were performed by Norm Sherman on the short-fiction series Drabblecast.

The Guardian's literature columnist Sam Jordison described Frank Key as one of the most prolific living writers of literary nonsense. The Guardian's David Stubbs wrote that Frank's prose "reminds of Max Ernst engravings gone Bonzo Doo-Dah". The SF critic David Langford wrote "Frank Key's lumbering machinery is like nothing since Ralph 124C 41+ and other pillars of SF's wooden age, only more decrepit. He may even conceivably be writing steampunk.". In a review of Twitching and Shattered, John Bently concluded, "It isn’t surrealism, it isn’t satire, it’s just not like anything else." Edmund Baxter, the director of programming for Resonance FM wrote "Frank Key is one of the most important writers in English today".

Pamphlets

• Key, Frank; Decharne, Maxim (1986). Stab Your Employer!.
• ——; —— (1987). Smooching With Istvan.
• Key, Frank (1987). A Zest For Crumpled Things.
• —— (1987). "Forty Visits to the Worm Farm".
• —— (1987). Hoots of Destiny.
• —— (1987). Tales of Hoon.
• —— (1990). He Keeps His Gutta-Percha in a Gunny Sack.
• —— (1988). The Churn in the Muck.
• —— (1989). The Brink of Cramp.
• —— (1989). The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet. Malice Aforethought. ISBN 1-871197-26-0.
• —— (1989). Twitching and Shattered. Malice Aforethought. ISBN 1-871197-90-2.
• —— (1989). Volleyball, Tar & Shuddering.
• —— (1989). House of Turps. Malice Aforethought. ISBN 1-871197-40-6.
• —— (1990). Sidney The Bat Is Awarded The Order of Lenin. Malice Aforethought. ISBN 1-871197-70-8.
• —— (1990). Penitence And Farm Implements.
• Natal, Perry; Key, Frank (1990). Bring Me the Head of Derek the Dust-Particle!. Indelible Inc. ISBN 1-871427-13-4.
• Key, Frank (1991). Crop Circles : The Crunlop Experiment. Malice Aforethought. ISBN 1-871197-80-5.
• —— (1991). "Danny Blanchfowler: A Life In Football". Malice Aforethought.
• —— (1993). Testimony of a Tundist.
• —— (1994). Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning. Malice Aforethought. ISBN 1-871197-41-4.

Books

Hooting Yard

• Key, Frank (2006). Befuddled By Cormorants. Hooting Yard.
• —— (2007). Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars. Hooting Yard.
• —— (2008). Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude and Pippy Bags. Hooting Yard.
• —— (2009). We Were Puny, They Were Vapid. Hooting Yard.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• —— (2010). Impugned by a Peasant. Hooting Yard.
• —— (2011). Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke. Hooting Yard Global Domination Enterprises.
• —— (2012). Brute Beauty And Valour And Act, Oh, Air, Pride, Plume, Here Buckle!. Hooting Yard.
• —— (2014). The Funny Mountain. Hooting Yard. ISBN 9781326099442.
• Clare, Roland, ed. (2014). By Aerostat to Hooting Yard - A Frank Key Reader. Dabbler Editions.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Key, Frank (2017). Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning (Reprint ed.). Hooting Yard. ISBN 9780244946227.

Other works

• Beckett, James; Key, Frank; Bradley, Will (2013). Works of James Beckett with constant interjections. New York: Westreich Wagner. ISBN 9780615726281.
• Key, Frank (2015). Mr Key's shorter potted brief, brief lives. London: Constable. ISBN 9781472115232.