News from the Squares

I've always been torn about my true role in life.

I always wanted to be a writer, and have written from a very young age. The first puppet show for which I wrote the script was presented when I was 9 years old. It even had some jokes in it. The kind children watching the show laughed, a bit.

Since then I've written stories, books, plays, sketches, and stand up comedy routines. I started writing for other performers in the late 1970’s and eventually ended up on stage in one of my own sketches in 1981. My life was transformed at that moment.

If the audience hadn’t laughed that night, I would never have ventured on a stage again.

I then helped create 'The Joeys', a four man musical comedy act who toured from 1981 to 1985. After dabbling in stand up comedy and writing for TV, I wrote a stage play premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1988. I really wanted to write a play and watch from the back of the theatre taking notes on the actors performance, but somehow I always ended up on stage.

My performance in this Perrier nominated two hander comedy romp lead to a role in

Red Dwarf

playing the much put upon mechanoid Kryten. I've been intermittently covered in rubber since 1989.

In 1994 I published my first novel,

The Man on Platform 5

.

Since then I've published 12 books, the most recent being

News from Gardenia

which was launched on Unbound.

I still occasionally appear on TV presenting such shows as

Scrapheap Challenge

,

How Do They Do It

and the recently re-launched

Red Dwarf

. I also produce two rather popular video podcasts,

Carpool

and

Fully Charged

.

I'm married to another writer, Judy Pascoe, and we have two teenage children, two dogs and a gaggle of chickens.