Extraordinary!

With no hint of it in the family genes, I seem to have stumbled from one petrol-fuelled hobby to another over the years. Along the way, it appears I've earned a living driving, riding, photographing or writing about cars and bikes. I collected a couple of pots too! Almost by accident (well, several, actually!) I somehow become one of those fortunates who has earned a crust doing something he enjoys. Well, most of the time anyway.

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These days I attend race meetings as a Technical Commissioner, which is just a fancy name for guy with paperwork. I check all the racing folk have the right kind of clothing and the right kind of engines and equipment and are not trying to cheat.

So basically I just get in everyone's way, but it keeps me off the streets.

It didn't start out like that. I got a proper job, just like my dad told me. Then I went back to college, mixed with "the wrong sorts of people" and it went downhill from there. I never looked back.

In between, of course, were all the other distractions. Working for Camel Motorsport, Kawasaki and a couple of helmet manufacturers. The P.R. business in Fleet Street, working the exhibitions, photography, writing and graphics, I even worked on Karting Magazine for a while.

There was the music, of course, which has been a constant thread through my life. I've fitted in a little flying when I could, and quiet hobbies in the workshop, steam engines and model-making.

Without a doubt though, the most incredible event in my life, and one I never saw coming, was meeting and marrying Jo, and the new life that gave me in the Philippines.

Organising the charity and doing what we do out there has been the most fulfilling and rewarding thing for me, by far.

With a foot in both camps, to see so much money spent in racing so that we can all try to go around in circles faster than the next guy, and then to live in a poor community where even the basics of life are hard to come by, provided such a contrast and has been thought provoking on a very fundamental level. It has provided me with a very interesting perspective on life!