I was born…
… and dragged up as one of four only-children atop the magical and mystical South Downs. I began my writing and directing career with a stage adaptation of A.C. Clark/S. Kubrick’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey, when I was a pupil at Slindon Primary School. Here I was regarded by my kaftan-wearing and chain-smoking deputy head as a possible reincarnation of Chaucer, when in reality I just couldn’t spell.
Feeling the need to understand the writer’s craft, I embarked on a spandex-leotard-clad adventure that began at The Arts Educational School in London – where I received a BA in transforming into various animals.
After a successful career in community theatre, having written and staged four comedy musicals off Broadway (Hammersmith), I directed a short film, Coping Strategies, about four flatmates with learning disabilities trying to make sense of the strange world around their new flatshare. As well as the film being invited to numerous festivals around the world (including Karlovy Vary), I like to fantasise that it launched the career of Bill Nighy. I also directed for Gamelab/BBC/Mencap, for their BIMA nominated production of Us 5.
Wishing to return to my first love of scriptwriting, I discovered that I had accidentally applied and been accepted on Bath Spa University’s scriptwriting course. This accident was a happy one, as I am now in the process of launching the short radio comedy Super-moon, about a mid-thirties dreamer whose soul-searching pilgrimage to a haunted hilltop is ruined by the appearance of The King of the Un-woke – his boss. Watch this space!
After graduating, I will also begin the promotion of my latest feature-length screenplays: The Last Flight of Willi Schludecker – the tragic/comic true story of the Luftwaffe bomber pilot who returned to Bath to say sorry – and The Flap , a rural comedy about an actual UFO scare that made a small British country town world famous in the Cold-War paranoid era of the 1960s. Think Close Encounters meets The Worzels!