A brief biography
Away from work, I enjoy a range of activities. I try to stay active, and love to compete in multisport events like triathlon and duathlon. I also track racing at the velodrome, climbing, and practicing as many martial arts as I can find. I’m currently half-seriously training for an ironman triathlon and a career as the oldest and least effective MMA fighter on the books.
When recovering, I enjoy cooking, reading and photography. I’ve recently completed a course in photojournalism.
I speak French, try to speak German, and know enough Latin to amuse myself making up lorem ipsum text.
Little known stories
If we’ve ever met, you’ll have been bored to tears by these at least once. If not, well, fore-warned is fore-armed.
- Before I went to Cambridge to study English, I was dead set on becoming a clown and joining the circus.
- In related news, I’ve busked on the streets of Grenoble to pay for food, and firmly believe that I am the inventor of Geronicycle™ – in which grown men drink beer and attempt to crash themselves into garden furniture on a unicycle. The game’s success will be judged by history, you’ll see.
- I have studied and given up karate, tai chi (the proper sort), aikido, bujinkan and krav maga and, if attacked, will require a few minutes’ notice to remember how to fight back.
- My life-long interest in photojournalism led me to stalk a Chaplain. I hid in bushes in the dark, and didn’t get a single photo. But I didn’t get arrested either.
- I spent my 13th birthday with my arm in plaster after putting my foot through the front wheel of my bike. After a good dose of nitrous, I thought it would be hilarious to tell the doctors in A&E that my mum had attacked me. It wasn’t.
