Born and brought up in Lincolnshire, I operated in a rural dreamworld until one afternoon in 1975 when my school team's creaking 2-3-5 formation was cruelly exposed by the ball-playing strikers of Faldingworth Juniors (think England v Hungary in 1953 except with tiny people and East Midlands accents). At the age of 10 I already knew I would never play any kind of sport at professional level. I couldn't even run properly.

After that humiliating right of passage came guitars, mild obsessions with various country girls, and trying to avoid fights. I read English and Film Studies at UEA, before a spell at a small Norfolk agency writing recruitment brochures for a top midlands pie manufacturer. After moving to London in 1988 I experimented with various non-linear career trajectories - art packer, market superintendent, surveyor, stall holder, picture librarian, camera tester and film reviewer. I began writing, illustrating and cartooning for When Saturday Comes in 1990.

I became a founder member of the school of East Midlands magical realist bollocks and his first travel book Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive, was published by Flamingo in March 2000. The follow up, The Groundwater Diaries, is due out in June 2003. I am also involved in various web projects, including One Touch Football and Dot Two and I draw a regular cartoon strip for The Guardian.

I'm married, have a young daughter and son, and live in North London.