With social media increasingly filled with hate and misinformation, political agendas and polarisation slicing through communities and anti-queer rhetoric on the rise, you would think that Phil Douglas, founder and director of Curious Arts, would be despondent, but he’s anything but. 

I find Phil sitting in the corner of an independent café, sipping on a latte and reading the news that the UK government has announced an indefinite ban on puberty blockers for under 18s, impacting those with gender dysphoria - a move that various groups that work with trans youth have criticised. 

This is a first. I’ve worked in PR all of my career and never written about myself.

I’m doing it now as my debut novel, ‘The Stand-Up Mam’, is due to be released on 1st July.

My own story’s got all the ingredients of a good novel - a life or death experience, an unlucky for some 13th birthday trip and an unexpected result at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Let’s start with near-death. A few years ago, I took my daughter Freya to York shopping, on her 13th birthday. Just before we left to return home, I had a pain in my eye as if I’d been stabbed with an huge ice pick.

This article was generated by ChatGPT4, from the transcript of an interview with Stephen Waddington on the use of AI in public relations. The transcript was the same one used to write the human version of this article, which had been cleaned and proofed, but contained no additional context, just Stephen’s words. ChatGPT’s limits on character count meant the transcript was split into three, with the same prompt used each time with just the requested style changed in each case.