Author

I was born in the New Forest at a cottage hospital near Fordingbridge in Hampshire, England. 

Childhood was spent in Salisbury, a city with a strange mix of the ecclesiastical and the military. Beyond the garden wall lay a theological college, a cathedral, and friendships with the sons of bishops. At the end of the street stood a NAAFI where members of the armed forces caroused. Our milk bottles were used for hand grenade practice, being tossed through the windows of a car showroom opposite.

At the age of seven, there was a near miss from a Canberra bomber whilst playing in the garden. The jet swerved low overhead, stalled, and spun into the ground, exploding by the nearby River Avon.

I attended Chafyn Grove, a private preparatory school, where I longed to be cast in the school plays but was not considered pretty enough. 

In Salisbury, there were also frequent visits to the local Infirmary. The result was a total loss of hearing in my left ear, and from then on, communication became a whimsical affair as I second-guessed my way through life.

At thirteen, I boarded at a school in Dorset. There, I thrived on a regimen of morning runs and cold showers. I was also allowed to perform in the school plays, and I caught the acting bug. 

At fifteen, I wrote my first script for BBC Bristol and made my first TV appearance in a fundraising appeal to restore the School’s Abbey church. My co-presenter was the Dorset celebrity Ralph Whiteman.

Life in the professional theatre began at the New Theatre Bromley. Here, as a student ASM, I assisted Goon Michael Bentine in building a gorilla suit and pitched the theatre into black when I forgot to switch on the mains during a crossfade.

At RADA, I trained to become an actor and discovered stage fright. 

Armed with an acting diploma and several ferocious Alsatian dogs, I immediately went on to guard premises near Heathrow, at Tower Bridge, and at Consolidated Gold. 

Joining Olivier’s National Theatre at the Old Vic, I ‘Jumped’ for Tom Stoppard, kissed Maureen Lipman as an 18th-century Juvenile, and passed the sugar to Anthony Hopkins’ Coriolanus in the canteen. 

For twenty years, I trod the boards. As a jobbing actor, I toured the country, did TV stints on Z Cars, soaps, and dramas, and appeared in comedy shows from ‘Les Dawson’ to ‘Only Fools and Horses’. In the film ‘Birth of the Beatles’, I played Brian Epstein.