So, here's what makes UP Front tick...

The UP Front team is mostly made up of experienced Brussels-based journalists - most of whom have been here for a number of years.

This hand-picked (ish) bunch of gobby hacks are on intimate terms with the city and, in some cases, on similar terms with certain of its residents. A few UP Front-ers have even confessed, albeit under duress, to actually liking the place. Truly, we live in interesting times...

And, aside from the writers, the UP Front crew also includes web experts, photographers and a professional advertising team. So show us the money, big business, whenever you're ready...

Meet the team

Editor Tony Mallett is a journalist of more than 20 years standing (plus sitting down, propping up bars, falling over etc) and arrived in Brussels, somewhat dazed, in 2000.

A Scottish/Lancastrian/Yorkshireman, Mallett describes himself as 'being from the North' and, for this reason, almost gets away with justifying his lifetime love affair with Manchester United. It has certainly significantly outlasted all his other ones...

A former Lancashire schoolboy footballer, his potential soccer career was ruined by "cigarettes, women and wine - or maybe I was just crap..."

He describes his perfect evening as "down the pub with a crossword and some mates, followed by a lovely meal at home cooked by a beautiful and preferably naked young lady, ending with some energetic rumpy-pumpy". The reality is all too often "shed-loads of beer, an Indian takeaway and a malodorous night spent snoring and farting on the sofa..."

His major ambition is to finish the novel he 'started' a decade ago and to perhaps pen a "sort-of autobiography". "So, if anyone can tell me what the hell I was doing for most of the 1980s, it would really help. Thanks."

We discovered Nebraska-born, assistant editor Lee Ober quite by chance one night, in a highly agitated state while (mostly) sitting on a Brussels barstool.

Drinking heavily and babbling about modern art being a conspiracy between craftsman and millionaires to make poor people feel stupid and inferior, Lee then launched into another tirade about the appalling state of politics in some place he had never been - Farawayistan, possibly.

All attempts to calm him down were met with "Oh shut up!" followed by "I am always right, and I never lie!"

Now, the UP Front crew knows 'talent' when we're forced to listen to it, so we cunningly fed him more booze and took him to our HQ, where he was promptly locked up for the good of society.

Lee is now allowed out for a few days each week to stand behind the bar at Fat Boy's were he has been conditioned to pour a tray of pints on hearing cries of: "YES! GO ON LADS!" or: "GET IN!" during 'soccer' matches. For an American, his progress is really quite encouraging and we hope to have him ready for full social interaction in the coming months.

When the UP Front editor met Suki Jenkins - Seattle, alty rock chick - she was barstool diving for sport. He took a liking to her gags - and her legs - then invited her, over several drinks, to join the team.

Drunk, she agreed.
Bless.

With her headset never too far from her ears, Suki regularly braves the local cobbles in high heels to the beat of Studio Brussel.
After a blurred stint in her 20s working for various music companies, she trained as an architect in Rotterdam - by profession - and as a conceptual artist - by reasons of insanity. Hobbies include hugging trees, eating for free, gigging and wangling CDs from unsuspecting Belgian bands.

Likes: Brussels, Power tools, Flemish bars, shoes, her strange little dog and irritating Belgian politicians.
Dislikes: Mess, expat bars, grumpy editors and people who say "like, ya know".
Catch phrase: "Mallett, I know you said 200 words, not 2,000, but please don't change the tone..."

Jessie Persoons was born in 1973 in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Belgium, called Tienen, but we won't hold that against her.

Jessie has had a passion for films and music ever since she was a young child. Unfortunately, her accent sounds worse than Johnny Logan with a bad hangover and being Belgian doesn't help when it comes to being taken seriously as an actor or actress (we all know what happened to Jean-Claude Van Damme). So she became the next best thing: a teacher. Teenagers are by far the best actors in the world, she says, and as a teacher she directed a few plays with her students over the year.

In 1995 she got into taekwondo, which eventually earned her seven Belgian championship titles and a red belt - so don't mess!

Jessie's favourite quotes are: 'tomorrow I'll give up the fags' and 'I start my diet on Monday'. She has latterly decided to go back to school to do a university degree in political sciences, which will get her closer to the best actors of all: politicians.

Jon Eldridge arrived in Belgium six years ago on the wrong boat. He wasn't supposed to be on a ferry to somewhere exotic...he'd just missed the boat, again.

Catching the next one to Ostend, and resolving to look into Eurostar, he was eager to make up for lost time. On arriving in Brussels, he plunged headlong into the expat routine of Belgium bitching, French-language butchering and the occasional day's work.

After a teen-romance ended in bitter recrimination two decades ago, he gave up looking for the love of his life at home or abroad. He has settled down instead to a life of sordid, meaningless and increasingly imaginary encounters with the fairer sex.

Growing up in a train stop on the London-to-Brighton line, he claims sufficient license to be a Chelsea fan - old enough to recall Nevin and Dixon, but not too old to remember Osgood and "the Cat" Bonetti, though he went to school with the latter's daughter.

Nowadays his football allegiances include Belgian league sides, Union Saint Gilloise and British United. One is a team of "nearly-men" on the verge of something big, and the other he plays for.

UP Front's co-photographer Andy Carling has spent many years travelling and climbing mountains throughout Africa and the Middle East, and spent 15 years standing on top of Cumbrian fells in the rain for the National Trust. This is believed to have affected his psychology in unusual ways.

He claims to have climbed Mount Gordon Bennet, met the Guardian of the Ark of the Covenant and eaten more meat than a Maasai. All of this has prepared him well for his greatest challenge; living in Belgium.

On dark nights he apparently dreams of sheds and trebuchets.