I have been a professional writer for almost all my working life, starting as a journalist after a brief period as a messenger boy in Fleet Street, then London's "street of ink". I have also worked as a radio news reporter and presented my own shows on radio and TV. I currently present radio shows on jazz, movies, and classical music, plus a discussion programme on BCB Radio, Bradford. I am best known as a music writer, but I also wrote about men's fashion, IT, politics and religion. I have had four non-fiction books published and was co-author of another. As a songwriter, my greatest success was The Family of Man, recorded by the Liverpool Spinners, but other songs have been recorded by such artists as Ewan MacColl (whose biggest hit was The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face), June Tabor, and the Dransfields. My re-edited version of a song by Willie Nelson was highly praised on the Willie website. In 1999 I gave up full-time freelance journalism to concentrate on creative writing.