I am a husband, comedian, web consultant, closet geek, record label boss and gig promoter. Several of those things I do at Josaka (www.josaka.com) a website and label which I run and own with Kevin Harrington. My day job is as a web consultant and I’ve done that sort of work for lots of people including the Greater London Authority under both Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson. I now do the same sort of stuff for a bank. I’ve previously owned a tea room and a clothes shop. I live in central London with my wife Ruth and our toy cat Bernard.
In 2007 I took my second one-man comedy show ‘Complaining’ to the Edinburgh Fringe for a 27 consecutive night run. At the moment I’m working on my first book ‘Quiz Shows, Rap Offs and Blind Confidence’ and writing my next hour-long comedy show.
That’s now – but here’s some history…
I was brought up in Cheshire where, just prior to starting secondary school, my biggest worry was the shocking green blazer I would be donning in the not to distant future. We moved south when I was 11 and all that changed: the bright lights of Farnborough (or was it the aircraft fumes?) had an unexpected result…
Fast-forward 5 years and by the age of 15 I was DJ’ing locally at under 18 parties and within a year organising parties with my own promotions company and presenting hospital radio.
When I was 16 I first presented on television on the Channel 4 sports programme ‘Rookies’. Later that year I changed direction following a chance meeting in a pub. This led to spending 5 years lost in music – managing bands (Sodacurve, Reuben, Mainstate & Spotless) promoting events (under the name GIGMANIA), working for a record label, sound engineering, DJ’ing for a summer season in Ibiza and eventually as a web music journalist for BMG funded music portal ‘fanglobe.com’
In June 2001 fanglobe.com went in to liquidation one week before my 21st birthday. This meant I could pursue being a presenter, although I didn’t really know it yet. Instead I bought a tea room and worked there…fortunately I tired of serving tea and was soon compere for gigs in and around Reading.
Since then, I have established myself as a live compere as well as finding time to write for a variety of publications including web music bible www.drownedinsound.com and music magazine Unsigned Showcase.
In 2002 I wrote and presented a pilot music TV show, worked on several other pilots and presented shows on ‘Delta FM’. In 2003 I spent a month freelance with BBC Berkshire writing for their website and covering some issues on BBC Radio Berkshire.
I went on to present a weekly radio show on Blast 1386 (www.blast1386.com and Sky Digital 913) and a streaming show for Arkade.com as well as presenting live gigs/events to over 20000 people in 2005.
Commercially I have appeared in adverts for Walkers crisps, NTL and in the background for BBC 2 and a movie called ‘Derailed’ (2005). I’ve kept a roof over my head by working in marketing, on websites and appearing on TV shows including Beg Borrow Steal, In It to Win It and The Carrot or the Stick…they are normally kind enough to give me money in return for a fairly small amount of shame.
After that, following a chance heckle at an acoustic night in Farnham, I began working on my first comedy show. I took ‘Quiz shows, Rap Offs and Blind Confidence’ to the Holyrood Tavern in Edinburgh for a 9-night run at the 2006 Fringe.
It went well and I returned the following year for a month-long run of ‘Jim Bowes: Complaining’ this was followed by a short run in London. Directly after this I moved to London and decided to put comedy on a backburner to have some fun and make sure I had a career.
In 2008 I performed and curated at Reading Comedy Festival including an appearance with 2008 if.comedy winner David O’Doherty. In 2009 I didn’t play any comedy gigs at all. However I started work on my third Edinburgh show and first book and also made sure the Josaka 10th birthday celebrations went off in style.
My third one-man comedy show will debut at Brighton Fringe Festival at the end of May 2010.
