I am not the type of person to set about writing an autobiography, who were the influences in my life, how I felt about certain events, yadda, yadda, yadda.  That said I’ve led an interesting life I think and certainly done a lot on the interweb and you never know, I might get hit by a bus tomorrow, or last year given that this is already on the net!  So I thought I’d write up a potted history of me.  The highs, the lows and the interesting anecdotes in the hope it stays around much longer than I do.  So why am I writing this?  The simple reason is that I’ve got some interesting stories to tell and I don’t fancy just winking out of existence at the end of days.  Oh! and it’s a great way to share all the music that’s meant so much to me over the years too, if you like what you hear go buy the album, you won’t be disappointed. 

2010 – Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out 

In 2010 the momentum began to build with an interview with the international IEEE organisation for their magazine Spectrum.  The year soon moved on to a formal publishing deal with Microsoft Press to write “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out”.  The book went on sale at the end of October that year.

The year just kept getting better every month as a couple of invited appearances on political programmes for the BBC led to an interview about myself and my books with BBC Radio Sheffield in August which you can listen to here.

The radio appearances kept coming with another appearance on BBC Radio Sheffield, available here and was quickly followed by my first national radio Broadcast across the USA on the Computer America show, available here (and available to download here as a ZIP file).  Computer America had by this time been running for 19 years and was the #1 top rated daily tech podcast according to the New York Times.

The year ended with another commissions from Microsoft Press to produce and narrate a series of Step-by-Step tutorial videos for Windows 7 , Microsoft Office Word 2010 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010.

♫ In 2010 I was really impressed by these two music videos.  Miracles by Norwegian Recycling which is an excellent new track entirely made up from 16 different songs by different artists, and OK Go’s machine video for their track This Too Shall Pass which is simply brilliant.

2009 – the Windows 7 Power Users Guide 

At the height of the credit crunch I moved to a new teaching job and became an author for the first time.  People say that there’s a book is each of us but I never really believed I’d write a complete book.  Nevertheless I launched the Windows 7 Power Users Guide on the August Bank Holiday weekend.

I described the book as “A book for people who use Windows 7 at home or at work and know it can do more for them, but who don’t know how. The Windows 7 Power Users Guide contains helpful how-to’s, full colour pictures and quick tips to guide you through everything from using the Start Menu and Taskbar to backing up your documents and identifying and fixing problems”

It followed on my from my Windows Vista Power Users Guide from three years before and was responsible for getting a full publishing contract with microsoft Press the following year.

2007 to 2008, University – take 2

I moved to a teaching job, teaching English, Maths and I.T. to the long-term unemployed and disengaged teenagers.  This, apart from being the most rewarding job I had since working on Brighton Pier ten years before, led me back to University where I qualified from the University of Huddersfield at their centre in Middle-Earth (sorry, Barnsley) as a maths teacher (so I’ll never be out of work again).  In 2008 I began studying for my CertEd at Sheffield Hallam University, and will graduate from that in 2010.

2007 was the year I wrote the Windows Vista Power Users Guide that Windows Vista: The Official Magazinein the UK descibed as “a really in depth look at Windows Vista that everyone should at least have a loook at”.  The guide hit 50,000 downloads before I really knew what had happened!

In 2007 I also bought myself a ski lodge, at least I think it is.  It’s an eco-home in the south east of the city hiden away in a little oasis of ten houses, all of a similar design but all different from each other.  Finally I had found my haven from the Stepford Wives country I’d grown up in!  The house has big wooden beams and is a complete sun trap.  As I write this I’m celebrating my first anniversary there… in the sunshine and 20°c in the conservatory… in October!

♫ Music that I’ve been listening to a lot includes the tracks Dixie Chicks – Wide Open Spaces and Lacuna Coil – Our Truth.

2005 to 2006

2005 is notable for me for being the first year I managed to have three foreign holidays, one to Paris, one skiing (well sitting) in Alpbach, Austria and another to Dusseldorf in Germermany (as I like to call it).  I also began working for Siemens that year providing second and third-line technical I.T. support for blue chip companies.

The clients I was working with included Tesco, Royal Bank or Scotland group and various others including B&Q and the very controversial Huntingdon Life Sciences.  Most people at Siemens were saddled with one or the other but I was part of a small ‘flying-squad’, or floaters as one of the bosses affectionately called us, that got to cover all the clients.  This really helped keep the job interesting and varied.  It was doing this job that I decided it was finally time to go into teaching.  Many of the calls I took care of involved helping people to understand what they’d done wrong and making sure they knew how to avoid the same problem in the future.  With this in mind I studied in evening classes for a teaching qualification which led me on to a proper teaching job.

♫ Music that I was listening to a lot and that meant a lot to me included Dixie Chicks – Easy Silence and Dixie Chicks – Not Ready to Make Nice and Korn – Here to Stay.

2003 to 2004

Leaving Brighton behind in 2003 I upped sticks and moved to Sheffield where I got myself a very nice flat that I only stayed in for a year before getting another very nice flat, that I also only stayed in for a year.  I then finally moved to an even nicer flat I managed to stay in for two years.  All three flats were in the same street!

I did most of my modern architectural photography during this time and in 2004 I was allowed into the empty Millennium Dome shortly before its sale.  My gallery of photos of the empty dome are still one of, if not the only, complete gallery of pictures of the dome available on the internet.

2004 was the year I achieved something I never thought possible, in getting two exhibitions of my photography.  Both in Brighton, one was of portraiture and another was of my modern ahcitectural work.  I even managed to sell a few!  That said it’s so expensive and such hard work putting on an exhibiton that I’m happy to just be happy that it happened. 

♫ In 2003 I was heavily listening to Toploader – Time of my Life, which was my moving to Sheffield anthem and in 2004 I was listening a lot to Runrig – Proterra.

2002

In 2002 I was approached by the chief executive of Brighton, Hove and Lewes Enterprise Agency, who felt that freelancers and micro-businesses working in and around new media in the area were being denied access to funding and training opportunities.  She asked me to set up an umbrella organisation that they could use to access these services.

Out of this was born the Association of New Media Freelancers (ANMF) which, although it was realatively short lived, created such a buzz and was so high profile that its legacy will live on for many years in the various confederations and groups that grew out of it.  I built a team of, well strangers really, who all worked incredibly hard for the benefit of others.  This is something we can all be very proud of.

I also got my first teaching job in 2002, quite by accident as it happens, teaching Web Design and Adobe Photoshop on a degree course at Revensbourne University College in London.

♫ Music that I was listening to a lot included Bloodhound Gang – The Bad Touch, Nelly – Hot in Herre and Eels – Mr E’s Beautiful Blues

Summer 2000 to the end of 2001

This year was defined for me by just one thing.  I was approached by Brighton’s biggest gay and lesbian magazine, G-Scene, who said there was a real need for a gay and lesbian tourist map of Brighton.  They told me about funding that was available from the health authority and so I submitted a bid to produce the map, complete with sexual health information aimed at people who would not pick up sexual health information otherwise.

By early summer, and with the help and support of Brighton City Council tourism department, 25,000 maps had been produced to my own design, and I spent the best part of the following year seeing people in bars referring to it, using it to help them decide how to spend their day.

♫ Music that I was listening to a lot included Savage Garden – Affirmation and Gay Dad – Joy!.

1997 to Spring 2000

In 1997 my job as a club singer led to a move to Brighton where I began working on Brighton Pier, first on Sidestalls running games like the dolphin derby and the high strikerwhich I always enjoyed, and then moving on to decsk-hands.  It was while working here that I met two people who would later go on to be some of my closest friends, Darren Webber and Jake Webster.

Brighton Pier was one of the best jobs I ever had.  The money was rubbish and I worked a minimum of 63 hours over six days every week.  Sure the work was hard but the people I worked with made it all worthwhile as far as I was concerned.  Also working at sea, because we were covered by maritime law at the end of the pier, was great for my asthma.  I always looked forward to January.  It as always lovely and quiet so we could potter around doing what we needed in beautiful sunshine with warm, clear blue skies.

♫ Music that I was listening to a lot and that meant a lot to me during these years includes M-People – Search for the Hero, M-People – Just for You, Baz Luhrmann – Everybody’s Free (to wear Sunscreen), Various Artists – Perfect Day and Del Amitri – Be My Downfall, Del Amitri – Always the Last to Know and Texas – Summer Son.

1993 to 1996

After University a relationship took me to Basingstoke.  It wasn’t a good time for me really, my mid-20′s and I have to say that I treated said individual very badly.  That didn’t last for too long, about six months after which I moved to Chichester and was there during the big flood of 1994 when my own street was under-water for two to three months.  We had the Army and fire brigade outside for the time pumping the water away and I remember a whole lot of trips out to them with cups of tea.

It was in Chichester that I had my own flat, a nice little place that I made my own.  The irony is that is was less than half a mile from the home of someone who would later, when I moved to Brighton, become one of my closest friends.

I worked for a while for Blockbuster Video.  This was the second time I had worked for them as I’d worked in, and later managed, a Ritz Video store in 1988.

In 1995 I attended Chichester College of Arts, Science and Technology where I studied Performing Arts (Popular Music).  This came about rather by accident but later led on to my touring the country as a club singer, see the sub-page when I get round to writing it.

♫ Music that meant a lot to me during these years includes REM – Bang and Blame, East 17 – Stay Another Day, Garth Brooks – The Red Strokes, Oasis – Wonderwall and Jamiroquai – When You Gonna Learn (Digeridoo)

1991 to 1992, University – take 1

In 1991, aged 21, I hit the newly-named University of Portsmouth with it’s imaginatively titled Student Union, UPSU (read that out as a word) to study an HND in Computer Studies.  I thoroughly enjoyed the student lifestyle and lived it to the full living on cheap mince, bought in a mass pack once a fortnight and split into daily bags for freezing and getting monumentally pissed.  The bars in Portsmouth weren’t the best places in the world but I always had fun.

Unfortunately I only completed the first year of my two year course.  The course was split into five parts, each making up 20% of the marks.  One part, Cobol programming, I was exempt from because I’d completed a course a couple of years before at Guildford Technical College and got a City & Guilds in it.  Another, ADA, a military programing language, I couldn’t get my head around no matter how hard I tried.  A third, Motorolla 68000 processor assembly language, the lecturer told us half-way through the first year that we’d never need it.  There didn’t seem a lot of point after that!

I owned my first PC at university, an Olivetti Intel 8086-based machine with a green screen that I absolutely adored.  My Dad had bought it from his work when they upgraded their computers.  I used it until finally retiring it in 1996 and replacing it with a palmtop.

♫ Music that meant a lot to me at the time include the tracks George Michael – Something to Save, Michael Bolton – Steel Bars, the insufferable Bryan Adams – Every bit of poo, I do it for you that was the never-ending soundtrack to the blistering summer of 1991, The KLF – Justified and Ancient, Shanice – I Love Your Smile and Michael Jackson – Give in to Me.

1989 to 1990

I had a couple of dead years after school.  I worked for a few months in Fads the decorators, later swallowed up by Focus Do It All or some other big chain.  It was there that I worked with Shakin’ Stevens’ son, a very nice young man he was too.  There was one day when a guy I worked with spilt white-spirit on his work trousers.  The only replacement was a skirt and the manageress said he could stay behind the till where nobody would see him.  However this was the day that the assistant manageress had pencilled in to strip out the window display and replace it and the till point was just inside the window.  Sales absolutely shot up that day but, despite being asked, he never wore the skirt again.

Other jobs I did during this time included bar work.  I worked in several pubs including a biker’s bar where the locals were the nicest possible people I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet.  I also worked as a warehouseman but wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do.  At school I’d told the careers advisor I wanted to be Spider-man, but she just laughed and told me some other guy already had the job and I wasn’t qualified for it anyway.  How was I to know at the time time that I’d later go on to become both a photographer and a web designer. 

I was part of a gang-of-four during this time.  My friends, Peter Adams, Brian Treanor, David James and I were pretty inseparable and had masses of fun together.  All of them were fantastic people and I’ll always remember those friendships fondly as, first, they taught me a lot about myself and about life and also that they made me respect the value of a proper friendship.  So thank to all you guys if you ever read this.    There was one particularly funny night out when we’d all gone ice skating in Bracknell.  I’d bought a Yamaha keyboard (a musical one) some months before and Peter had borrowed it for a few weeks.  He spotted a friend of his across the bar at the ice rink and shouted to him, while poitning at me “Have you seen this guy’s organ?  It’s huge and it does everything!”

Peter had been a friend for years already and was a couple of years older than me.  The other guys who were the same age as him I met later.  I remember my first trip to Alton Towers with them and our first ride, on the M1 when we passed between two lorries and David had to do an emergency stop when he felt the car lifting off the tarmac.  Peter was very into new-age things and we went to Avebury in Wiltshire a good few times which was cool.  There was one time we were following a guide book he’d bought about lay-line routes and we came to a field with a nasty looking bull in it.  We couldn’t go round so spent a while debating whether or not to go through.  Eventually we did without incident only to read in the book afterwards “at this point you will probably come across a field with a nasty looking bull in it.  Don’t worry because the bull is perfectly tame.”  Brian was especially supportive during my ‘coming out’ period in 1989 to 1990 and I owe him a big debt of gratitude for many hours of long talks, sat in his red Escort van.

♫ Music that meant a lot to me at this time included Gene Pitney – Something’s Gotten Hold of my Heart, Gloria Estefan – Rhythm is Gonna Get You, T’Pau – Bridge of Spies, Pet Shop Boys – Domino Dancing, Giorgio Moroder – The Duel, Madonna – Cherish, Tony Stone – This is Serious and Prince and Sheena Easton – The Arms of Orion

Autumn 1981 to 1988

Secondary School, Frogmore Comprehensive School, I didn’t enjoy at all!  It was a lovely school, all stylish with round windows everywhere and with loads and loads of land.  I just wasn’t, and still aren’t, an academic student.  My best subjects were Technical Drawing and Drama.  I enjoyed Physics when we got to play with stuff though.  I hated chemistry because I was rubbish at it and P.E. was my worst subject because of my asthma.  I’d find any old excuse to get out of the class and it usually worked.  The problem looking back though was that my P.E. teachers just didn’t understand asthma.  Everybody had to wear shorts and a thin rugby top out in the freezing cold to play rugby.  If they’d let me wear something warmer so my asthma wasn’t set off all the time things might have been very different.  I really resent the fact that I had generally rubbish teachers.  My best teacher taught English, can’t remember her name now.  I remember a poetry assignment in fifth form when everybody was rewriting “I wandered lonely as a cloud” and I came top of the class for the rather different “Two little fishes, swimming in a tank.  One got a shock when the other one sank.”

My teachers included a male ballet dancer that everyone took the mickey out of until they realised just how fit it made him and a needlework teacher called Annette Curtain.  I didn’t do that well academically despite being pushed and pushed by my Dad who thought, incorrectly as my teacher training has proven to me, that I could do well because he had.  There was also a disaster when my final CSE history exam turned out to be all about Vietnam when we’d been taught the tudors.  We got no recourse with that and all failed it because my teacher was rubbish and had cocked it up.  The worst part was that Vietnam would have been much more interesting to learn about!  I ended up taking the first year in sixth form twice to get my O’Levels.  For the last two years of junior school and first five years of Comprehensive school I got picked on, badly.  I was the second fastest runner in my year and it was no coincidence, I needed it!  My next door neighbour was the only runner faster than me and, yes, you guessed it, a bully.  In that first year of it I broke a mirror.  I’ve never been superstitious, it’s bad luck but you do the maths on that one.

In 1981 my Dad bought me my first computer, a Sinclair ZX81, which was annoying because I wanted a colouring book!  It didn’t take more than a couple of weeks though before I was completely hooked.  The next year I got a ZX Spectrum for Christmas for it’s (cough!) educational value.  I absolutely adored the Speccy with its squishy rubber keys and colour-clash.  Shortly after Sinclair released the QL, which was years ahead of it’s time and only flopped because Apple announced the Mac the following day, I got a part time job in a newsagents to save up for one.  I put in half and my Dad put in the other half.  It was a stunning piece of design and engineering and I bought another on eBay in 2004.  This was when I truly got hooked on computers.  My favourite games were 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81 and 3D Deathchase, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Elite and Horace Goes Skiingon the Speccy.  I had friends with Commodore Vic 20′s (pah! pocket calculators) and Commodore 64s and a friend with a BBC Micro and you can happily believe everything you read about the snobbery of different owners in how fiercely loyal they were to theirmachine.  Nothing else could compare, no matter what you owned back then.  I can remember going to Dixons and Allders and seeing banks of completely different computers all next to each other with different chipsets and all running bespoke operating systems… truly the golden age of computing!

♫ This was when music really started to come into my life.  Mostly I listened to TV and movie tracks and classical but there are a few tracks the define that period for me and that I listened to a lot, a few of which, as this was when I really began to discover music, were Iron Maiden – Run to the Hills, Ghostbusters OST – I Can Wait Forever (Air Supply), Saxon – Crusader, Tangerine Dream – Le Parc and a 12″ remix of Alison Moyet – Love Resurrection that I now can’t find for love nor money.  The albums the Saxon and Tangerine Dream tracks were on would take me seven years to find!  Oh, how we take the internet for granted today.  I’d listen to these, and a lot more Iron Maiden when taking my dog, Tam, for some verylong walks on Minley common, just next to a Royal Engineers base.  There was funny time I was there with my friend Gavin Ayton and we were discussing some VERY personal, teenage matters when all of a sudden (ie. quite deliberately) loads of soldiers popped up right next to us, just to let us know a) that they were on a camouflage operation and that b) they’d heard every word we’d said.

1985 was also the year I discovered Role Playing Games, beginning with Dungeons and Dragons.  See the sub page (when I write it) for details on this.

1978 to Summer 1981

School…!  No!!  I’d moved from my primary school in London to Frogmore Primary in 1975 but in 1977 came the move to junior school.  Primary school had been great because I’d been regularly tasked with telling stories, well making them up on the spot, because I was good at it.  If you ever wanted to hear a story about Mickey mouse and Superman I knew it.  I would later go on to tell lots more Mickey Mouse stories!  I have to say I never enjoyed school very much but there were some moments at Frogmore Juniors.  I remember having to sing Super Trouper by ABBA acapella in assembly once because they discovered I could sing, I hated it but got a lot of kudos for it and it was something nobody forgot for years.  I also took my cycling proficiency test here which I passed “by the skin of my teeth” according to the instructor because I forgot to signal twice from pulling out and then turning.

My toys of choice in my youth were Lego, Matchbox cars and Action Man.  My friends, Peter Adams, Scott Pibworth and I seemed to have, what we agreed were ‘seasons’ when we were then weren’t interested in a particular toy, until next year’s seaon came back round.  We especially loved the fact that Action Man’s parachute would never open until he was three inches from the ground.  Peter had a broken one and when his dad complained to Palitoy, he received a whole box of spare limbs.  It was like the Somme come play time.  I’ll never forget the year my dad built me a really big, multi-level garage for my matchbox cars, painted green and red, with slats I could remove to get into the rooms from the roof.  In addition to these toys I loved Hornby and Meccano.  I wasn’t really interested in music back then but really loved the musical version of War of the Worlds as it really scared me.

♫ I wasn’t really into music very much at this point but Madness – Baggy Trousers and Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights and ABBA – Our Last Summer were what I was listening to at the time.

1977

I always remember 1977 as the best year of my childhood for no other reason than IPC magazines released the comic 2000AD, the home of Judge Dredd, the Harlem Heroes and my personal favourite, super spy M.A.C.H. 1 who I would try and imitate with electronics stickers they gave away that I’d put on my arms.  I was to have the first, well lots, of issues at one point only to throw them away, unaware how valuable they would later become.  My Dad stopped me reading it for a few weeks because he saw how violent it was, but he reneged after he realised how much I loved it.  My favourite cover was an early issue featuring a giant gorilla.  I also read the comic Whizzer and Chips which was brilliant.  I was a loyal chip-ite for years.  It’s funny when the centre pull-out of a comic can create brand loyalty against the main section.  There was one character who worked in a shop called Willoughby who’s name I, for years, thought was pronounced Will-ought-to-be.  I was so gutted when I found out the truth that I carried on calling him that anyway, but somehow it just wasn’t the same.

1976

I made my first true friend in 1976, Rennie Davies (at least I’m assuming that’s how it’s spelt), he was a year or two younger than me.  When Star Wars came out in ’77 he went potty about it.  I vividly remember a birthday party he had with Star Wars everything!  Place mats, table cloths, cups, plates, you name it he had it.  There was a movie theme tune record out at the time, a disco version, and there was one funny bit with an alien saying what Rennie always maintained was “it’s piddle time!”, something he’d shout with glee whenever he needed a pee.  His family moved to Wales in about ’78 and I’ve been trying to track him down ever since.  If you know him or even are him, please get in touch.

1976 was a landmark year really!  I had my first birthday party where my Dad organised an Easter egg hunt and I’m the only person who couldn’t find any, which I had some trouble with.  I ended up in my wardrobe, unwilling to face the world.  I also got my first girlfriend, wossername, who later dumped me when her parents bought her a pony.  I think I speak for guys everywhere when I say there’s just no way you can complete with that!!

1975

The family moves back to Blackwater and Park Hill Road, or Parkhill road depending on what end of the road you were at and what road sign you read.  This is the place I describe now as Stepford Wives country… everybody was the same and all the houses were the same.  They all had a Ford car and were out washing it with two kids and a dog on a Sunday morning.  I really rebelled against this place and it was one of the reasons that I spend my thirties trying to find, and ultimately finding, a home with unique character.  I’d spend much of the next few years playing in the Monkey Woods though I was never to find out why they were called that.  They’re the woods in the picture sandwiched between Park Hill Road and Frogmore Park Drive.  I also narrowly avoided falling in the lake at Lake Side a good few times, especially when skating on ice there.  I remember moving into Park Hill Road because my dad was angry that the previous owners had taken all the plants from the gardens when they left, leaving him to have to start from scratch.

the rest of 1974

My Dad gets a new job with John Mowlem in London as group deputy treasurer, he can’t be the treasurer for some bizarre reason because he’s not an accountant and we move to Brentford for a year and a half.  We’ve got a flyover leading to the M4 close to the house and it’s here that I first develop asthma.  I can’t help but wonder what life would have been like for me if we hadn’t lived there?  That said my Dad was asthmatic so it was fairly likely I would be too.  It’s here I go to my very first school.  They don’t have enough of a reading resource for all the class, a book with movable letters and stuff in it so I’m the only child who doesn’t get one.  It doesn’t seem to do me any harm though.  I wonder how many other kids in my class ended up teaching English?  I have vague memories here of playing with go-karts with my friends at some garages behind the house.

It’s here I start to become aware of my sister, Karen, who I’ve never got along with.  Maybe she resented the fact this photograph proves, that I was much prettier than she was!  I don’t know.  Anyway one of my earliest memories is her bashing my head against the corner of our piano, cracking it open, and my having to have it stitched up in hospital.  It hurt and there was a considerable amount of blood.  About seven towels of it according to my mum.

the rest of 1970 to early 1974

I grew up in Hartley Close, Blackwater, Hampshire.  The place is right on the borders of Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire but I don’t really have any memories of these years for fairly obviously reasons.  My mother is a former model from Renfrew, Glasgow and my father an economist who won a scholarship to the London School of Economics who was from Exeter or some other unexciting place down in the south west, and later Dover where his father was a band leader in the Army.  This is one of the few men responsible for a strike within the British Army!  He and his men downed tools when the MOD started buying some cheap rubbish instead of Birds custard.  They won the fight and normal custard service was soon resumed.  My Dad was at the time working for British Leyland in London.  Elsewhere in the family my other grandad was a shipbuilder in Glasgow who unfortunately battled drink, he died on a park bench and was unceremoniously robbed by the friend he was sitting with at the time.

I spent much of my youth, every other weekend really in Lydden, just outside Dover at my grandparents house.  I really loved them, even though my Grandma spent year upon year pointing sheep out to me.  My Grandad was the man I always wanted to model myself on but never truly succeeded, at least not yet.  A former military man, he never had a bad word to say about anyone and was kind and gentle beyond belief.  After the death of his wife he was accepted as a Chelsea Pensioner and the whole family was incredibly proud of him until his death in the early 90′s.  My grandad used to read me bedtime stories from an old book he had.  It was full of fantastic and wonderful tales about bears and soldiers.  I still have the book, all tattered and weathered, and I treasure it greatly.

March 1970

Dragged kicking and screaming into the world there I am on March 27th 1970, two weeks late and with my mother having to be carried from the house by the ambulance men, due to the fact that there’s a Henry Cooper fight on the telly that she’d far rather be watching than giving birth.  It’s Good Friday and snowing heavily outside but that won’t stop me, I’ve had over nine months cooped up without any windows and being born on a bank holiday..?  Start as you mean to continue I say!  The stories of me being dropped on my head later turned out to be a wind up, but my GP, who arrives a bit late, describes me on arrival as perfect.

Minutiae

Favourite Films

• The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
• Some Like it Hot (1959) with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marylin Monroe
• Airplane (1980)
• Poltergeist (1982)
• Electric Dreams (1984)
• Stand By Me (1986)
• Predator (1987)
• Full Metal Jacket (1987)
• The Big Blue (1988)
• Frantic (1988)
• The Abyss (1989)
• Bad Boys (1995)
• The American President (1995)
• The One That Got Away (1996) TV Movie
• Taxi (1998)
• The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
• Live from Baghdad (2002) TV Movie
• Road Trip (2000)
• Club Dread (2004)
• Casino Royale (2006)
• Hot Fuzz (2007)

Favourite TV Shows

•   1970s
  • The Six Million Dollar Man (action)
  • The Time Tunnel (action)
  • Doctor Who (sci-fi)
  • The Liver Birds (sitcom)
  • Dave Allen at Large (comedy)
•   1980s
  • Knight Rider (action)
  • Doctor Who (sci-fi)
  • Neighbours (soap)
  • Yes Minister (sitcom)
  • Yes Prime Minister (sitcom)
  • Black Adder (sitcom)
  • Allo’ Allo’ (sitcom)
  • Cagney & Lacey (drama)
  • Soldier, Soldier (drama)
  • Star Trek : The Next Generation (sci-fi)
  • Terry and June (sitcom)
  • Ever Decreasing Circles (sitcom)
•   1990s
  • Friends (sitcom)
  • Absolutely Fabulous (sitcom)
  • Frasier (sitcom)
  • This Life (drama)
  • Star Trek : Deep Space Nine (sci-fi)
  • Star Trek : Voyager (sci-fi)
  • Space, Above and Beyond (sci-fi)
  • SeaQuest DSV (sci-fi)
  • The X-Files (sci-fi)
  • Lois and Clark : The New Adventures of Superman (sci-fi)
  • Pride and Prejudice [BBC] (drama)
  • Have I Got News For You (panel show)
  • Father Ted (sitcom)
  • The Fast Show (sketch show)
•   2000s
  • The IT Crowd (sitcom)
  • Stargate SG-1 (sci-fi)
  • Stargate Atlantis (sci-fi)
  • Stargate Universe (sci-fi)
  • Doctor Who (sci-fi)
  • Torchwood (sci-fi)
  • Bionic Woman [remake] (action)
  • Family Guy (cartoon)
  • Spongebob Squarepants (cartoon)
  • Have I Got News For You (panel show)
  • Mock the Week (panel show)
  • American Dad (cartoon)
  • Futurama (cartoon)