John Martin is an Australian.
Or he says he is. His father was one of Australia's first boat people, an illegal immigrant Pom who jumped ship after World War 2 and hid in Australia from the authorities and later married a Tasmanian woman.
John Martin junior lives in Canberra, the capital of Australia. "Some overseas people and Sydney people don't actually believe it's the capital but it is, so there."
John Martin does have a serious side. He works as a journalist and since 1976 has served in various capacities on newspapers up and down the Australian eastern seaboard and Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia.
For 15 months, he compiled a five-day-a-week column in The Canberra Times called CC - which contained short offbeat items, curiosities and snippets of news with an emphasis on community and local history.
Before that, he was editor of the University of Canberra's newspaper Monitor, taking it online.
But writing lighter stuff is his deepest passion.
John Martin has written three books and contributed to a recent anthology of parenting humour in the United States. Check them all out here.
For what it's worth, John Martin is a member of an international Internet humour writers group called The Netwits, which comprises more than 170 of the funniest people on - and off - the planet, though mostly from North America.
"(This is why I sometimes drop the 'u' from humour, which is the Australian way - I bow to pressure from force of numbers. The Netwits' motto is: "Because together we'll accomplish even less". As it turns out, I get to cut down on my keystrokes too.)
Martin's humour/humor writing has appeared on numerous web sites in the US, the UK and India. Canadians have also been able to read some of his shorter humorous fiction on many WAP-enabled mobile (cell) phones there.
He also wrote a called Funny Business in the Canberra Times for part of 2002 but they stopped running that, possibly because it was not funny at all.
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NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it
So, who is Australian humor writer John Martin anyway?
