In order, I am a family man, a northerner, and a writer. Scarily it is now over forty years since BBC Schools Radio gave me my first commission, and I have been writing as a part-time freelance ever since, mainly plays for the Beeb, and for education publishers. I got involved also with writing questions and formats for various TV and radio quiz shows. In the last few years I settled down to writing longer fiction, and in that time have produced: a collection of short stories 'We Never Had It So Good'; a thriller novel '11:59', which reached the semi-final of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2010 and was subsequently published by Wild Wolf; an historical novel 'Mr Stephenson's Regret', an Amazon semi-finalist in 2011, also published by Wild Wolf; a third Wild Wolf novel, a psychological mystery entitled 'As Close As You Are To Me', and a self-published collection: 'HE & SHE: 1000 stories in 1000 tweets'. I also invent board games, but that's another story.