Nick Toczek (born 20 September 1950; Shipley, England) is a British writer and performer working variously as poet, journalist, magician, vocalist, lyricist and radio broadcaster.

Moving back to Bradford in 1977, he co-founded the seminal music fanzine The Wool City Rocker and formed the band Ulterior Motives, in which he was lyricist and lead vocalist.

Throughout the late '80s and early '90s, he ran weekly alternative cabaret clubs, usually co-organising these with fellow performer Wild Willi Beckett.

He is also a professional close-up magician, a skilled puppeteer, an authority on far-right neo-Nazi and racist groups, a prolific print journalist and an experienced broadcaster.

After a poetry reading in a Birmingham pub, he was invited by J. C. R. Green, director of the Birmingham-based Aquila Publishing Company to submit a short manuscript.

During the last half of 1976 and the first few months of 1977, Toczek was drawn into punk after seeing Birmingham gigs featuring The Clash, Ramones, The Adverts, The Slits, The Vibrators, Blondie, The Prefects, Talking Heads and others.

Under Toczek's editorship, The Wool City Rocker appeared monthly throughout 1980 during which time it changed from being Bradford-focussed to covering the whole of the north of England, later editions each including a free flexi-disc of northern bands.

In September 1986, Toczek formed a business partnership with Willi Beckett (performance poet, frontman of The Psycho Surgeons and leading light of the Monster Raving Loony Party) to run a weekly alternative cabaret club under the name of his long-defunct show, Stereo Graffiti.

It spawned various side projects including Bradford Writers' Group (which the pair founded in 1987) and a Festival of European Community Literature (which they ran in April 1989).

[4] In 2004, Perfect Pitch, another Toczek-Singer cantata, this time based on Toczek's football poems, was performed at The Barbican in London.

[5] The 1997 poetry anthology The Spirit of Bradford, which Toczek co-edited with David Tipton, won a Raymond Williams Community Publishing Award.

His first full-length political book, "Haiters, Baiters and Would-Be Dictators: Anti-Semitism and the UK Far-Right", was published by Routledge at the end of 2015.

He is currently working on the follow-up, "Farage Faces Foreigners", covering the history of British Euro-scepticism, Islamophobia and wider xenophobia.

[6] In 2019, Toczek began collaborating with Matt Webster, former drummer with many bands on the Bradford punk and indie scene of the 80s and 90s, including Western Dance, Primate, Grim and Zed.

Although Webster plays drums, guitar, bass on keyboards on the album, a number of guest musicians augmented the line-up of Signia Alpha.

These included jazz saxophonist Keith Jafrate, flautist Chris Walsh, bassist Mark Cranmer and guitarists Jack Atkinson, Stephen Andrews and Emmanuel Williams.

The album was a mix of indie, jazz and funk grooves with Nick Toczek’s surreal poems and stories over the top.

Walking the Tightrope featured many of the same musicians alongside Webster and Toczek with the addition of guitarists Wulf Ingham and Simon Nolan (formally vocalist with anarcho punks Anti System).

The album again had jazz and funk elements but was rockier in feel and included a guest appearance by The Damned’s Paul Gray, who played bass on the track “Best Wishes”.

Toczek’s own father and uncle were refugees who came to England during World War II, a story told in the short film Tvins.

[9] For more information on Nick Toczek please see his website: www.nick.toczek.com His agent for schools work is Authors Abroad, see his website www.authorsabroad.com/search-authors/nick-toczek During the 1980s, Toczek wrote for the short-lived music weekly, Musicians Only, an offshoot of Melody Maker, for which Nick wrote regular articles and reviews starting in the 28 June 1980 issue,[19] finishing with the final issue,[20] before becoming a features writer on the seminal Edinburgh-based pop culture monthly, Cut.

In the immediate aftermath of the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, he wrote lengthy features for The Guardian, The Independent,[34][35] Pagina (Argentina),[36] The South China News (Hong Kong)[37] and Rheinisher Merkur (Germany).

In September 1986, Toczek began work as a part-time degree course lecturer in the English Department at Bretton Hall College in Wakefield.

In May 1995, he launched the Northern School of Writing at Bretton Hall, offering a range of short-term accredited adult learning courses to the general public.

After he finished working at Bretton Hall in 1997, he continued to run Northern School of Writing courses independently for a couple of years.

As a writer-in-schools overseas he has worked in Germany, Canada, Ireland, The Netherlands, USA, China, France, Indonesia (Borneo, Sumatra and Bali), Egypt, Kuwait, Cyprus, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain, Qatar, Russia, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Jordan, Switzerland, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Brazil, Sarawak, Cambodia, Malawi, Hong Kong, Norway, Java, Brunai, Oman, Sharjah, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Zambia and India.