About me
What I do
I'm a freelance filmmaker and screenwriter. I've had my work broadcast on television, notably the French-German channel ARTE and French public service broadcaster France Télévisions. My most recent film For two centimes more … tells the story of La Coop des Masques, a cooperative factory set up in record time next to the western French city of Guingamp, to combat the deadly shortage of surgical masks at the outset of the 2020 COVID pandemic. Waits&Sea, in Brexit's troubled waters (2019), talks about France, the UK, fishing, Brexit and why I became French. It was broadcast on French TV and was also shown in cinemas and film festivals. As a screenwriter, I'm developing a feature script with Sixteen Films, acclaimed British director Ken Loach's company. I have several other film projects at various stages of gestation. Before moving into film, I worked as a journalist for 25 years. I regularly wrote and made television reports for UK Public service broadcaster the BBC, the international news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) and numerous other clients. For much of that time I specialised in European politics. I was based in Brussels for many years and travelled to all of the European Union's countries on stories. Aside from my native English, I speak fluent French, basic Italian and have an understanding of German.
Why I do it
Other people fascinate me. I've always been driven by a desire to discover new worlds, to go on adventures. I first toured around Europe at 15, sleeping on trains, waking up in a new country every morning to new sounds, new smells, new faces and voices. When I was 18 I toured the world, overland wherever possible. I crossed the USA in buses and beat-up cars, hitch hiked around New Zealand, travelled through China on riverboats and sweltering, mud-spattered charabancs. The journey home was a week long rail odyssey across the Siberian tundra to Soviet Moscow then East Berlin. All the time I met people, All of them different, all of them fascinating, none of them anything like me. It was brilliant. My curiosity naturally led me into journalism. For 25 years I had a job where every day was different. One morning I'd be following a President around, the next speaking with a pig farmer or a druid, or a penniless Romani musician or the Finnish ambassador giving a press conference naked in a sauna. But the best thing that part of my life brought me was my wife and our two kids. She's French, we met while I was working in Brussels and today our home is Brittany. Raising our boys has been the biggest and best adventure of my life. Nothing will ever top that. But I still have the same old burning curiosity. Today, my desire to discover, understand and have adventures drives me as a screenwriter and filmmaker. Other people are brilliant. I've never understood nationalism. Spending your entire life with folks exactly the same as you are. How boring is that?
