THE BIOGRAPHY BIT

"He is incorrigibly lazy and shows no inclination to work at something that does not interest him. He can write with some facility." - school report circa 1969.

Born 13th April 1958, and so the dreaded big Four-Oh has passed him by. Having been shuttled round a fair few schools, Neil eventually wound up at Ashdown House prep school, in Forest Row, near East Grinstead. There he managed to drift for several years, showing a spectacular lack of prowess in all things except an ability to write decent English and a mania for aeroplanes. For the one, he started a school nespaper which lasted precisely one issue, and for the second he filled every available space with Airfix model aircraft kits.

To the consternation of the headmaster he managed to win a scholarship to Charterhouse School, where great things were expected of him. Once again he managed to come bottom of every class, and showed no interest in anything except, once again, English and the written word, and aeroplanes. This time he started contributing regularly to the official school magazine and the unofficial scurrilous sheet, and filled every available space with balsa wood aircraft, most of which never flew, and if they did, only flew once....

Parents seemed to think that, against all the odds, he might be a lawyer, and so he went to Sussex University in 1976. Once again, he managed to come bottom in every class, but that didn't matter because by then he'd discovered motorcycles, and so the pattern changed slightly to his waking life being filled with a love and enthusiasm for the written word (more contributions to university magazines) and every available space being filled with bits of motorcycle, bike mags, etc.

There's a consistency here, but nobody spotted it.

Having spent a year at Grenoble University, he acquired a love for good food and wine and decent French, none of which would useful to him as a lawyer but which was part of the university course, for some reason.

In due course he went to the College of Law in London to do his solicitors exams, and once again came bottom in every class. However, as a skint student he'd written up his experiences as a despatch rider and sent them in to Bike magazine, which published them. By the time Neil was six months into his solicitor's articles, he'd had half a dozen pieces in print and so he walked out of the job and announced that he was going to be a journalist.

Consternation in the family, parents wringing their hands, what will he do? Total chaos.

Neil meanwhile worked as a despatch rider while freelancing about bikes and in late 1983 some twit gave him the editorship of Motorcycle Trader, the trade monthly. And since then he's been a full-time hack in the business press. After ten years spent editing a couple of food mags, he spent three as editor of a transport magazine, being paid to test trucks, among other things, and then went back to food magazines. Meanwhile he still freelances for the bike press under his own and other names.

In addition, he recently took up Morris dancing with the East Surrey Morris Men. Things went awry in early May 2001 at his first public performance when, on his second dance, he managed to turn his ankle and put himself in a plaster cast, to the huge amusement of all who know him and anyone else too, for that matter.

He probably drinks more claret than is good for him, and his waistline has not been the same since he discovered the delights of good food, he's mercurial, disorganised, scruffy and loud-talking, and that's quite enough of the biographical crap so it's back to the home page.