Born 1975 on a sheepfarm in village called Shatton, Derbyshire, I was interested in far off people and places since visiting older brother running a coconut plantation in Vanuatu in the south Pacific. Then I spent a formative year after school living as an aid volunteer in a small town in Sierra Leone that was so non-descript it was known only as Mile 91. This was a great preparation for what to expect in Masindi. I went on to study Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University and specialised in Social Anthropology.

I became interested in anthropological films, but had all filmmaking pretensions knocked out of me in my first job as a runner on British Sex for Sky One. Since then I have swung between documentaries and factual entertainment. My directing break was on 12 Days of Bethlehem and followed by Passport to the Sun, Going Straight and Rude Brittannia. However I have always hankered after working in Africa and proving that ‘far off’ places can make good television. African School is a great opportunity to prove this and I hope it is good for you, too.