I was born in Camberwell but my parents decided that a metropolitan life was too full of excitement, potential and diversity and elected to move to Didcot (change for Oxford). I was educated at a couple of Jesuit comprehensives where i learned that alliteration is always deliberate and that pretty much everything else is a sin. Eschewing a University place reading English (a decision i cunningly disguised with a massive car crash), i spent a year as a film and video edit-assistant, became an editor and spent several years learning about how and why pictures and sound work. By the early 90’s i was cutting for MTV and many other music-project related clients. In 1992 i took a break and started the indie band FIN. Our Skin EP prompting the NME to christen me ‘the Dennis Potter of Indie Rock’, sadly a reference to my eczema obsession rather than any literary talent. I became very hands-on with our recordings and went from a home 8 track, via 24 to an early ProTools set-up. I still use Pro Tools almost every day and it’s been the most fantastic enabler in every creative project. Around the late 90’s i started writing comedy sketches with my mate Paul Evans and the result of winning the BBC’s Greenlight Award was a half-hour on BBC2 for Hello…I’m Jack Berry. Shortly after this i met the brilliant stand-up Hils Barker and together we created and wrote the cult Radio4 comedy series Radio9 which we self-produced in my home studio. Described by the Financial Times as ‘weird, wicked and wonderful’ the series was re-commissioned and i went on to develop it into the BBC3TV series theMessage, co-written with Hils and David Quantick and described in The Times as ‘a huge step forward for BBC3’ (faint praise at the time). A solo album, Promise, was released in early 2008, garnering records of the week from The Sunday Times and Rough Trade. Around this time i wrote Acts of Godfrey, attracting independent finance and entering pre-production at the start of 2010. Written throughout in rhyming verse (why? God alone knows), the film premiered at London’s Raindance Festival and was released through Guerilla Films. A further solo album A False Parade followed. For the past 15 years i’ve worked consistently as a voice artist for TV and radio which has provided a reasonably steady income which i’ve supplemented by making films such as these for Microsoft. I’ve recently finished a short film called Wonder which has again premiered at Raindance and released an album of the same name. I’m currently writing a film based around a family coming to terms with their Mother’s death. It’s called SEAHORSE (well it is today) and will star Tom Wilkinson and Diana Hardcastle.
