At the age of 15 in 1955 I went to sea as a midshipman, and travelled the world including some remote islands such as the Galapagos and Pitcairns. When I came ashore London was in the grip of the swinging 60's and I made my living as a singer guitarist and met many of the people who went on to become household names such as Diz Disley, Billy Conelly and Gerry Rafferty, Paul Simon,Elton John and many others.  My music agent got me an equity card and I did a lot of film and TV extra work. One day while working as an extra, the main actor was supposed to grab me by the throat and throw me to the ground. Instead he but a choker hold on me, unfortunately for him I was fully trained in unarmed combat and threw him over my shoulder. The Director was not best pleased, but the Stunt Co-ordinator drew me to one side and asked me where I had learnt the move. When I told him, I joined his stunt team an worked on many shows like Moonstrike and Z cars, plus several films including 'The thin red line', with Kerin Moore in Spain.  Most summers I headed for the coast and worked as a Life Guard on a beach or racing some rich mans yacht for about £7.50 a week.  One day I salvaged an anchor and was asked to lay some mooring for the local boatyard. He paid me £400 and I realised that diving paid better than singing so I became one of only 200 registered commercial divers working in the UK. In 1966 the Offshore Oil Industry required divers and for the next 40 years I travelled the world, and dived up to 750feet and did saturation dives that lasted over 43 days. During that time I worked and lived in 38 different countries as far apart as Borneo and Brazil, Norway and South Africa, most of the Middle East and the Carribean. I started writing in 1974 during an exceptionally long 43 day saturation dive. Having read every book on the rig, I decided to write my own. It was in long hand, ran to 100,000 words and was a load of rubbish. When came a shore, a close friend Benita Brown suggested we both join the Kartherine Cookson northern writers.  I had some early success selling 3 plays for TV and writing articles for local papers. However, divorce, the pressure of work and the amount of travelling I was doing did not give me a lot of chance to seek publication though I continued to write for my own pleasure. I retired to Majorca in 2010 and was asked to start a creative writers circle; the sheer enthusiam of my members gave me the urge to look at some of my old work again. Since then I have published 8 books.

Master diver.
Private pilot license.
Yacht Master.
City and Guilds Technical Author.
Civil engineering Degree.