Previous Published Work

Hi there, this attempt to redo my ol’ website is currently work in progress. Sorry to redirect you but all my published written work is collected here on Scribd.

A quick guide to my previous work

In 1986, after my O’level exams, I went to work for the West Sussex County Times and was tasked with writing up all the marriage announcements. These were published across a broadsheet centre spread and I typed up a few other stories. At both my secondary schools, I wrote for the school magazine.

My mum took me to London to Conde Nast to apply for a job and I was offered paid work on GQ in 1989. Unfortunately it coincided with a cookery course I’d been booked onto. I then did a secretarial course, which meant I learned to type and even spent a week back at Conde Nast in the HR department, mishearing instructions and giving the entire office block too many days off and got fired.

During my art degree, a group of us got together to produce a magazine called Artholes. I wrote the text, which ran alongside cartoons, graphics, calligraphy, paintings and photography. We produced two issues.

After that, out in the jungle of work, living in south west London, I started child minding and had about 3 regular clients to take children on trips, do portraits of their pets, puppet shows on the side of the bath, going ice skating and even Qasar when it was popular in the early 90s.

My first job was, ironically, selling subscriptions for Conde Nast magazines. I then moved to an office in Soho (apparently the previous offices of Smash Hits) in 1994 and met a guy called Spud who got me into live music promotion.

I had an art exhibition in 1994 and set about sending information to the press. Then I wandered up Highgate Hill to find lunch and saw the word FOOD on the end of a terrace of old brick buildings. This led me to the Raj Tearooms and the start of my writing career. Firstly I was introduced to a guy called Malcolm who ran a local newspaper The Muswell Record.

Together with Darcy, the chef who ran the tearooms, we devised the Pond Square Recreation Society and did a regular jokey column in the Muswell Record called Dig and Delve. I’d write some archeology stories too and got one into the Ham and High. I found out how villages were formed around a natural spring and Victorian civil engineers turned them into public toilets. We also wrote a soap opera Highgate Peeks.

How pastoral people would gather and their paths were beaten over underground streams, which animals followed and slept over at night. It is said the minerals from these streams prevented cattle and sheep from getting arthritis. (Needs more investigation). Copper deficiency? Highgate is a traditional village created much like the old village of Dunsfold, where I grew up. The old village consisted of a church well, a church, farm, houses including the vicarage and a green in the middle surrounded by fields of crops and grazing herds of cattle and sheep. I wrote a story about Highgate for the Muswell Record and similar conjecture about the origins of Dunsfold for the parish magazine.

As a result of working for the Raj Tearooms, I started getting publicity for events, venues and musical artists in 1995. I booked bands to play at various venues around London, including the Mean Fiddler in 1996, which featured a band called Santa’s Boyfriend comprising Joe Sumner.

In 1997 I got accepted onto a postgraduate certificate in periodical journalism at the London College of Printing (now Communication), which I started in September 1997 after 6 months booking bands at the Laurel Tree in Camden, which is where and when Coldplay started as Starfish. Apparently they got their name from Coldplay Presents, which ran a weekly live music night at the Laurel Tree on Bayham Street.

After my course, I did “industrial placement” and got an offer on Marie Claire magazine, which would have been mostly office work and another magazine offered me a job during my exams so I had to decline it. Bummer, yes. Then I got an internship at the Camden New Journal. This was quite an experience and I stayed there until a pharmaceutical incident ended my tenure abruptly.

As I read the regular leaflet called What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You, I’d been allowed to write a health column, which turned out to be ahead of its time. I wrote on couch potatos, vitamin deficies, food intolerance, clamp downs on dietary supplements, specifically B6, eating disorders and other stories sourced from the magazine and other news, which came into the newspaper. I also interviewed businesses for street features and advertising was bought to go alongside these. I also started writing theatre reviews on the vibrant London fringe in a range of pubs with theatres.

Then I was sent to interview a homeopathic doctor. I won’t forget this. The homeopath explained how this treatment worked. My mother had been a fan and took me to a homeopathic doctor in Guildford. Here let me note that the NHS has distanced itself from homeopathic medicine although it is older than modern western medicine. Conversations about why complementary and conventional medicines cannot work together have been silenced.

Therefore, in 1998, I interviewed this homeopathic doctor, who told me how she treated patients with cancers. When the interview was published, Cancer Research called the homeopath to shut her down and she called the newspaper to complain. This was a wake up call about so called cancer research. I ask, if homeopathy was so ineffective, why is the discussion about it so heated? Anyone paying for treatment, which doesn’t work would surely question it.

In March 1998, after working at the Camden New Journal, I then went to work for Mitre House Publishing in Old Street, where I went from proof reading articles and laying out magazine pages for publishing, which I had learned on my journalist course, to editing, writing and helping with selecting content for magazines covering insurance, charity business, healthcare, technology, finance and the new world of emerging Internet technology. In 2001 I did a short html and photoshop course and designed the company’s first website, using my idea for easy navigation with keyword search, menus and back and forth arrows.

I wrote a play set in 1999 amongst the emerging new media, PR gimmicks, corporate hospitality and business competition. I’m also typing up my diary from that year, when I was 28 years old (blog with this coming soon).

I went back to writing regular theatre reviews from 1998 to 2000, visiting at least one fringe theatre a week for a new original play.

Publications I have written for

Please see my Pinterest or Scribd for a wide ranged of my published work, either bylined or ghost written. Here are some I have written for regularly such as Marylebone Journal, The Hearing Times and High Net Worth on a wide range of topics