John Fuery

About John Fuery

John followed his fellow Coventrian and then university librarian, Philip Larkin, to Hull Uni in autumn 1975. Armed with an American Studies degree and memories of meeting “Mr. They f*ck you up, your mum and dad” during an anti-apartheid occupation, Fuery began an initially bumpy career as an advertising copywriter in Manchester in early 1979. The intervening 40 years have seen him wield his pen everywhere from post-Death of a Princess Saudi Arabia to pre-1997 handover Hong Kong. Along the way Fuery was also fortunate enough to spend extended periods in Bahrain, Dubai, Kenya and Vietnam, as well as shorter stints in countries such as Australia, Ethiopia, Kuwait and Singapore. In 2000, Fuery established his own freelance creative consultancy in Hong Kong, often working as a “script doctor” for EDKO Picture’s Academy Award-nominated producer, Bill Kong. In autumn 2013, he moved back to Ireland to be close to what was left of his family. He has spent much of his semi-retirement/declining years crafting a lifetime’s worth of sometimes scabrous but never less than entertaining anecdotes into his warts’n’all Amazon Kindle-published autobiog, Good Morning, Mr. Sh*ttybottom.

About the book

About Good Morning, Mr. Sh*ttybottom (197)

Eager to establish just how far you need to turn back your watch before your plane lands in Saudi Arabia? – about 1400 years apparently. Or why you should never, ever eat scrambled eggs you’ve not prepared yourself? – trust us, you really don’t want to know! They’re just two of the many terrific tales Hull Uni alumni, John Fuery, has squeezed into the 489 pages of Good Morning, Mr. Sh*ttybottom following a 40-year globe-trotting advertising career. Those putting in a reluctant cameo include the arrogant Western CEO whose poor treatment of his Chinese staff resulted in their losing face and his receiving the come-uppance that gives Fuery’s book its title. There’s even some semi-naked gyrating from The Spice Girls whose TV commercial the author managed to get pulled off the airwaves in Vietnam. As eye-catching as its contents are audacious, the book’s cover should have had dead-tree and kindle copies of Fuery’s meisterwork flying off both physical store and virtual bookshelves. Frustratingly, while happy to publish and sell the book, Amazon refused to allow the author to run an ad campaign om its behalf. As Fuery says himself, “no one ever said this writing malarkey was going to be easy”.