About me

When I was a boy I wanted to be a footballer. I was obsessed. If I wasn’t playing football I’d be watching it, drawing players or making myself faint through excessive crowd noises while commentating on my own Subbuteo matches. I should have spent more time reading, I know.

 

When the pro-footballer dream faded (no one saw my amazing potential) I worked in a bank and sold clothes before discovering a new passion in acting.

 

After leaving drama school I did lots of plays and adverts. I found being part of a theatre group very much like being part of a football team. Each player had a certain job within the play. If you were the lead actor, you were the striker. The midfield were the main supporting players, and the manager or head coach was the director. Some plays, however, like watching a nil-nil draw, were boring, and so I started coming up with my own stories.

 

It was while researching an idea for a screenplay that I discovered the remarkable history of the Jules Rimet Trophy. Football, bungled thefts, a priceless cup, I was hooked. But it wasn’t until eight years later, when my son was at primary school, that I discovered a way of bringing the story to life. All the kids in his class spent their lunchtimes playing football, leaving him – not a footballer – to wander the playground alone. To help him feel better, I wrote a bedtime tale about a boy who believed he was allergic to football and needed to hide at lunchtimes.

 

Over the next few years, I spent most of my spare time writing the characters, scenarios and storylines to bring allergy boy and the Jules RImet together. I wrote when I got up, when I got home and on the toilet at work. As most proper writers will tell you, it’s their happiest time. Not necessarily writing on the loo but being alone with their imaginations. And yeah, I agree, that part is pretty amazing, but it’s also taken me six years to publish. Hopefully the next one won’t take that long!