STAT18
Design & editorial work. Book-binding. For STAT - ISSUE 18. June 2026.
Contents include: An Alternative Guide to Blackpool; The Ones of Us Who Are Still Here; Postcards of Loneliness; Like Pulling Teeth!; Rock Stars / No Vacancies; Unconventional Wisdom; PLUS reviews of Blackpool-adjacent music, film and television.Featuring work by: Austin Collings, Timon Benson, Matthew James Fleming, Ellie Foster, Kyle MacNeill, Alex McCann, Rowan Pacey, Hannah Ralph, Yushra Rashid, Kamila Rymajdo and Johnny Vegas (yes, that one).
80 pages, 100gsm eco-grey innards, 170gsm manilla cover with elastic binding.
BLACKPOOL TOWER IS A GUN
It’s the sort of phrase beamed into your brain just before you enter the slumberzone. You write it down, come back to it later with fresh morning eyes, and haven’t the foggiest what it means. Something about it rings true, but you can’t quite place why.
It was the tallest structure in Empire, Blackpool Tower. A giant mechanical flex of our imperial power. A weapon of plunder, taunting the sky itself. Now, without an empire, it's pointed at Blackpool's head.
Rotting, blood-red into the skyline, high above the pleasure beach of diminishing returns, Blackpool remains a site of pilgrimage. Blaring lights, thumping karaoke machines, and a cheeky key in the Pirate Bar shitters. There are a million messages to be found in Blackpool Illuminations.
Blackpool, one of the poorest and most perilous towns in England. We love it like a dog does a piss-soaked lamppost, it’s ours. As waves crash and sand blasts your eyes, we don’t mind a gun pointed at our head, as long as there’s one more song
Pete Mercer + George Francis Lee
