On the advent of Barley’s arrival on UK TV (rendered by the dream-team of surreal bile lovers everywhere Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris), Momus asks himself the question that all in the late-90s who  stared into Brooker’s dark twisted mirror have surely asked –  whether he is Nathan Barley:

"Nathan was listening to drum’n’bass, looking at websites on his Nokia
Communicator, or reading an issue of Sleazenation magazine in a Tokyo
hotel room. So was I. Brooker observed these foibles with black Nazi
bile, though, and condemned Barley to die a thousand ignominious
fantasy deaths for them. On the strength of the trailers,
the actual TV show looks a lot milder, though funny and promising.
Perhaps the sins of the 90s have been exculpated by the much worse
excesses of the Naughties."

And, speaking of "excesses of the Naughties" it seems that Nathan lives on, and if anything has moved further to the dark-side. This from Monday’s MediaGuardian "How to be a creative director" article:

"Half my day is a managerial role and the other half
is helping the creative team with ideas. My
computer skills are still fairly rudimentary, but my colleagues are on
hand for the technical elements while I create the concepts. Glue started off doing simple
web banners, but now we’re making games, consumer-facing websites,
campaign-led microsites and on line interactive video content. All this
is helped by the spread of broadband. We’re always looking for new
things to do and we don’t just put offline ideas online. One of our
biggest projects recently was producing the online rebuttal to Super
Size Me for McDonald’s."

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