Stephan

Stephan is one of Thatcher’s children, and one of the 390,127 people who put “Jedi” on the 2001 census.

He writes for Lay-By Press, an independent publisher of books for anyone who’s pulled into a lay-by to stop and think, because the road isn’t going where they were told it would.

Like his mum and dad, his generation was promised a job for life, a house and a pension at 60. They did everything right. Then someone moved the ladder.

His first book, Gen X: You’ve Been Mugged Off, is for everyone he’s watched wake up in their fifties to find the deal torn up: made redundant, screened out by AI, ghosted by recruiters, a thousand job applications and counting. Like Blackadder explaining how Thatcher’s children got mugged off, it’s funny, furious and fully sourced. It was never their fault. Here’s why, and how we fix it.

He’s probably writing the next book in his van on the Atlantic coast. Van life, he insists, is a lifestyle choice. His dog just wants the rain to stop so they can go for a walk on the beach or something.