I was born in a small town in the northwest of England called Crewe. Soon after, my family relocated to the Midlands and that’s where I spent my formative years, growing up on the outskirts of a working class steel town called Corby. I went to school in a number of places including Sydney, Australia and also made my way across the breadth of the English education system from a prestigious private boarding school, to a state high school until eventually I landed at a community college after being expelled for writing an unauthorized school magazine. Most of my time was spent playing in bands and thinking about music. I started my first band at 14, an industrial-metal outfit called Contempt.

After an uneventful three years of University in Manchester the only highlight of which was seeing Manchester United win the treble, I moved to London where I managed to get myself into a band that had a record contract. The party lasted a short time, notably highs were Motorhead’s 25th birthday party and free music gear, before the band got dropped from the label and I was confronted with having to find a real job.

During this time I starting writing. Mostly because I wanted a creative outlet that didn’t rely on other people. Early efforts were screenplays inspired by gangster films which turned out to be directionless melodramas. Progress was slow but I did manage to get to the Cannes Film Festival although my twenty printed scripts never made it out of my suitcase.