Mike Gayle is best known for his writing and a bit part in the early days of the Join me Collective, in which he gets into a turquoise Mercedes, leaving Danny Wallace alone in the rain (although Danny was shortly joined by Joinee Whitby).
Gayle freelanced for a handful of well-known magazines, including the now passé FHM and Cosmopolitan. Either a brilliant empathist or simply brilliant at dumping his own personal angst into print, Gayle wrote "My Legendary Girlfriend", "Mr. Commitment", "Turning Thirty", "Dinner for Two", "His 'n' Hers" and the soon-to-be-published "Brand New Friend".
Much like John Hughes ("The Breakfast Club" et al.), Gayle said everything he needed to say in his early works and his later works gradually become more formulaic and stale. He follows the maxim "write what you know" to the limit, both with the issues involved (unless Gayle really is a fantastic empathist) and also in terms of plot devices, giving the protagonist in "Dinner for Two" the job of Agony Uncle, a post Gayle once held, providing an insight into the teenage girl's mind you won't have had since you last nicked your sister's copy of "Cosmo for the Underaged".
This progressive failing should not, however, detract from Gayle's early brilliance and his observations of being a twenty-something man with the big issues that confront the current crop of twenty-somethings; namely, girlfriends and that hard to define general angsty "what should I be doing with myself" feeling that all of us living in a society previous generations bequeathed to us with their blood, sweat, tears and toil find ourselves having to deal with. It would be nice to see Gayle metaphorically give his characters a bit more of a slap for getting so worked up about their petty issues (which, to be fair, he has done on occasion, dropping a serious issue into his characters' otherwise pretty inane problems). In subject matter and style Gayle is reminiscent of Hornby's "High Fidelity".
In conclusion, there is no evidence to suggest that Gayle is a Joinee.
For further details[]
Click here.