A Damn Fine Cup of Culture brings you freshly brewed discussions about films, TV shows, books, comics, games, theatre and anything vaguely or specifically (pop-)cultural that catches our fancy.

The blog was originally started in 2007 under the name Eagles on Pogo Sticks (which made sense at the time) and doubled its writers’ team in spring 2014. Who are we, though, and why do we spend so much time on culture (and coffee)? Here are the writers to tell you, in their own words:

Mege has a proper day job, but likes to type away like so many monkeys until there are short stories, novels, plays and screenplays. He also has opinions about movies, books, plays and suchlike and is not afraid to share them. He hails from near Bern, Switzerland.

Matt loves – sometimes quite indecently so – to have and share opinions about all forms of storytelling, whether it comes in the shape of a book, film, TV series, computer game, stage production or anything else. He even did so for a living until the state of Switzerland decided that there’s something iffy about handing taxpayers’ money to an individual for what he loves doing. He started the site’s original incarnation, Eagles on Pogo Sticks, as a way to force himself to write more, and so far it seems to be working – but he’s expanded to using the blog to blackmail friends with interesting opinions to contribute their thoughts on a regular basis. Whatever will he think of next?

Julie joined A Damn Fine Cup of Culture in late 2018 with a head full of movie-trivia and a tendency to geek out about film. A cinematic omnivore from the rainy Netherlands she ventures opinions on everything from pre-1950s hollywood to the latest and anything in between. She also reads. She has blogged about film and food and now film again by joining Mege and Matt for coffee.

Eric is someone who fell in love with the effortless ability of media – from books to films to video games – to whisk him away into different realities ever since he was a kid, and you could say he’s never quite come back. His adult form has been known to yammer on at length about such things in an effort to understand it, but the kid in him knows that the most important part of magic lies in the experiencing of it.

Alan lives in London, very close to the birthplace of Charlie Chaplin. This is a pure coincidence but he does enjoy this fact. As a film enthusiast he started with a large VHS collection, before graduating to a large DVD collection and is now building an impressive Blu-ray collection. The end of physical media is going to leave him with an awful lot of shelf space. When not watching films, he writes short stories, and these can be found here: http://www.alangrahamwords.com/stories.html.

(Also, many thanks to our friend Tobias for the fantastic header and logo work. We owe you many, many damn fine cups of coffee!)