Resume

I left school at 16 thinking I was going to join the RAF, probably just because my Father and Grandfather had served there. Instead, three or four days before I was due to start basic training, I was told my services weren’t required. Which is just as well as it probably meant I missed out on the Falklands War, which started a year or two later.

Instead I got a printing job, one of a series of badly paid, dirty, noisy and uninspiring workplaces that at least enabled me to print fanzines for free, and read as many books as I could get my hands on.

After about eleven years of this – which culminated in headaches, skin rashes and sore throats caused by the heady chemicals used in the industry, I went to Middlesex Polytechnic in London and studied History of Art and Arts Admin, finishing with a double first.

While I was at college I worked as a fishmonger at Sainsburys in Camden Town, then moved to the Design Museum. I stayed there for six years, eventually working as administrator.

In the evenings, I made some extra cash by pretending to work at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley, and the Screen on the Hill. Actually I was watching the movies for free and drinking gallons of free coffee.

Eventually I tired of working twelve hour days, and took another administrative post, at the ICA. This is one of the few jobs I've really loved. The staff were brilliant, the programme was constantly challenging, and there was none of the amateurism and defensive back-biting of other arts organisations. It was my last job in the UK.

When I first came to Australia, I struggled to find any work at all. I ended up working in a rice-cake factory. Slightly depressing. I left that for a more interesting spell at Streetwize Communications, Australia’s foremost providers of health and legal education materials.

As I was only working three days a week there, I also worked for britannica.com, editing their European soccer content, and providing reviews of sports related websites in Australia. When they moved the operation to India in order to take advantage of the reduced labour rates, I got a short contract editing Inside Soccer, at the time only one of two Australian soccer journals.

I worked a short-term contract at Western Sydney Community Forum, before landing a plum role at the Main Press Centre during Sydney 2000. I helped manage the press conference area, and met two of the women I have loved for as long as I have been interested in that sort of thing – Olivia Newton John and Nadia Comaneci. What a great job!

After the Games I worked in the soul destroying finance business. I tried to get by without wearing a suit, and didn't really fit in, but I liked a lot of the people.

In addition, throughout the period from 1978 (when I started work) until 2002 (when I write this) I have freelanced for various newspapers and magazines, including such bizarre bedfellows as the Leyton Orientear, Socialist Youth, The Guardian, Sounds (RIP), Evening Standard, The Face, Vogue Entertaining, Spiral Scratch, and World Soccer.

I have also worked on various books, and am currently writing a contribution to a book on fan culture in Australian Rules football.