Biography 

It all started to go wrong when I went to a Quaker school. The teachers’ approach was, “We think you’re shit – prove us wrong,” which didn’t seem very Quakerly. I believed them, didn’t prove them wrong, and left the school convinced I couldn’t do anything.

I spent the next seven years trying to piece myself back together, working as a barman and short-order chef, teaching English, French, and guitar. I also took college courses and finally got into the University of Cambridge. I spent three happy years there, writing comedy sketches and articles for the university paper. I emerged with a fairly respectable degree in philosophy, a long-term girlfriend, and a contract to write a book about Joe Orton.

The book deal was great, but wasn’t going to make a huge amount of money, so I spent a few years training and managing people at Yellow Pages. As Google took over from Yellow Pages as the source of all knowledge, I saw my job wasn’t going to last. After a year teaching English in Paris, I moved back to Reading, where I live with my wife. I divide my time between teaching French people over the phone and writing books.

A lifelong Beatles obsessive, I’ve always been fascinated by the Paul is dead rumour. Would it be possible to replace a famous person with a lookalike? What would it do to a person’s mind if he became someone else permanently and had to sever all ties with his old life? These are the questions faced by the characters in my novel, Sing The Dead Man’s Songs.