Growing up on a working-class council estate in Yorkshire, my life prospects involved either working at the local coal mine or working for the gas board.

It therefore surprised my parents when I mooted the idea of going to art school.

I learned many things there: how to think like an artist. How to be uncompromising. How to express myself. I found the like-minded. But my roots always grounded me.

This was a valuable commodity in advertising (my next port of call after college) which prized people with ‘the common touch’. In advertising, I learnt pragmatism and how to meet the needs of a client. I also learned how to work in a team, brainstorm and share my ideas.

After a roller-coaster ride through high-profile ad agencies, fallow periods that coincided with the GFC, and a transition into a broader range of written work, I fell in love with a Canadian girl and set off for the beautiful shores of Vancouver Island.

Here I continue to function as a kind of creative ‘Swiss Army Knife’—writing and creating in many styles, genres and fields.

Latterly this has focused on marketing B2B but I always have various irons in the fire at any one time, all of which I try to bring a spark of creativity to.