About Me

I have been writing since my schooldays at Marlwood Comprehensive School, near Thornbury in Bristol. My dream was to be the next Ziggy Stardust. No-one shared my belief in "Eed Sud and The Luminous Earwigs" as I came to realise no one wanted to hear my songs. I did not give up that easily though and found that if people to wrote plays around my songs, friends were only too keen to perform them! I ran out of friends willing to spend their time writing plays for me so took the plunge myself.

Too Much Punch For Judy has now become one of the most performed plays ever. Currently (August 2009) it has been performed 5428 times since it was written in 1987. It has been performed in 14 different countries, yet started off as a small scale Youth Theatre production performed in a small Drama studio in Epping to a capacity audience of... 35!

Success in festivals has focussed positive attention on my plays. Chunnel of Love was performed at the prestigious National Student Drama Festival in Scarborough (NSDF). Hard To Swallow at the Royal National Theatre in London in 1988 ( Lloyds Bank Young Theatre Challenge). In 2009 Graham – World’s Fastest Blind Runner won the Youth Award at the All England Theatre Festival.

Since 2003 my plays have been in the top 3 most popular texts for the Edexcel GCSE Drama examinations. When I went into my children’s school Drama studio I was amused to see my name on the wall... as a “practitioner”. I have no real background in Theatre. That is an important factor in my work. Together with my students over the last thirty years we have been grappling to find ways of presenting stories to their mums and dads (and various festival adjudicators) that will interest, entertain and inform. Many stories we have told are exceptional and people are at last beginning to see that the way we have told them is exceptional too!

I live in Southampton, have three children (Ollie, Charlie and Daisy) and a black Labrador called Riff. Rachel works as an inclusion support teacher for the Treatment Foster Care Project in Southampton Ollie is currently training to be a plumber, and wants to work for the fire service eventually. Charlie wants to run away to the circus (seriously) and Daisy has just had her first songs released on iTunes. I work part-time as the Executive Director of Arts at the Oasis Academy Lord's Hill in Southampton where I also run the Oasis Youth Theatre (Lord's Hill) OYT.

I am an original Glamrock fan and (I don’t think anyone will know this) had an article published in the Mott The Hoople fanzine 'Two Miles from Heaven' (Issue 2).