I don’t recall the exact details of my birth but apparently I was there and difficult – which rather neatly sums me up.
I was born in rural Nottingham in late December of 1980 – a few days after the assassination of the much loved John Lennon – thankfully my youth and geographical distance from the crime prevented me from being taken seriously as a suspect, which is just as well as I was ill equipped to face the type of police interrogation that would inevitably follow such a charge.
When I say rural – I don’t mean picturesque – I mean very few buses and even fewer places to go on those limited buses.
Like most people in this country I was forced to spend the early part of my life as a child. As a child I was rather childlike, concerned with childish things such as dinosaurs and Sinbad films rather than the complex political and corporate intrigue that I would later embrace. Although to be honest I do still giggle like a school girl when the right double entendre comes along.
I was also quite the sporty fellow having trials for Nottingham Forest, County Cricket and County Badminton – only failing to reach the highest levels of these disciplines due to a lack of the required talent and skill. I later knocked all of it on the head to pursue the far more exciting sex, drugs and rock n roll – and well two out of three isn’t bad.
As I got taller I was forced to go to school – which to be honest I really didn’t mind because my mates all hung around there too.
I am a huge fan of extreme music such as metal, punk, death metal and black metal – yes I know it’s extremely silly but I like it. I also love hip hop and bands like the Cure, Bjork, Skinny Puppy and The Beach Boys – no really I do.
I play guitar and have played in several punk and metal bands. Some might note that my style of playing – such as it is - focuses more on emotion than technical ability – but that’s just nitpicking isn’t it. A couple of times we got extremely close to being signed – again being hindered only by circumstance and a lack of popularity.
I am also a fan of cinema – although I hate the actual cinema. Some of my faves are Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Hard Boiled, The Godfather, Wicker Man, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and the Devils – and not just because those are the types of films you are supposed to say you like to look brainy or like a film buff
Upon leaving school and going to University I quickly came to realise that my school had been awful and it was a miracle that any of us had passed our A levels. Eager to really find out about the human experience I studied Psychology, media and advertising. I emerged three years later with a degree but none the bloody wiser.
Being a weird guy all round I am also fascinated with serial killers, conspiracies, cryptids, ghosts and anything a bit off kilter really.
Desperate not to enter the adult world of work I continued with academia gaining an MA in film studies which to this day I have never used once.
In my late twenties I attempted to bribe a friend into starting a band with me. In a vain ploy to impress him I sent some music with samples from Aldous Huxley to the TV show Richplanet – of which I was and am a huge fan. I had been interested in the subject of mind control for some years and the time I spent studying related subjects at University made me sure that such techniques were plausible.
Indeed some of the courses that I did on media and advertising were solely based on methods of manipulating the consumer/viewer without their knowledge. This can run the gamut from persuading someone to buy something all the way to convincing a nation to go to war. Richard Hall contacted me and asked me to get a presentation together on the topic of mind control – specifically the USA programme MK Ultra. From there everything sort of snowballed until I compiled all I knew about the subject into the books Your Thought’s Are Not Your Own Vols 1 and 2.