User Profile

I grew up in Blidworth a mining village in North Nottinghamshire, the eldest of four boys. My upbringing was typical of working class boys born in the 1960s; a world defined by TV adventure, comic books, glam-rock, family holidays and adolescent pranks. In 1977 Ignoring the tyrannical advice of Schools Careers Officer I embarked upon a career in Art and Design.

I attended Mansfield College of Art, then Clarendon College, Nottingham (an establishment once described as 'a middle class girls finishing school'). It was at Clarendon that I met my lifelong friend Chris (Riff) Richards. After Clarendon I did a fine art degree at Leeds Polytechnic, returning to Nottingham in 1984.

Throughout the 80s I performed in various art school bands including The Smart Cookies and Ramba Zamba. I still write music with Riff and to our eternal shame we still enjoy making fools of ourselves in club venues where 70s disco and 80s electro-pop is played.

Over the years I've exhibited creative work, published articles in newspapers and magazines, appeared on local and national TV and radio. These activites range from very serious to downright insane, usually when collaborating with Riff. In 2002 we co-authored 'Nottingham in the 1980s' a book of black and white photographs and memorabilia documenting the period.

I live in Papplewick with my wife Clare and three children, Hannah, Daisy and Gilbert. Papplewick lies just a short distance from Lord Byron's ancestral home Newstead Abbey and is half way between Nottingham and Mansfield. This provides an ideal base for my web work with Headland Multimedia in Nottingham and Leeds.

Recently Riff and I reformed our art school band the Smart Cookies, so we are having fun writing songs again. We are also working on our first novel 'A Dancing Life' a comic thriller set in 1983 which promises a heady mix of teenage angst, 80s culture, sex, violence and black humour.

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