Eight years ago, approaching forty, I started a second career as a writer. Having spent two decades in data management, I already had an eye for analysis, but my love of language – and a fondness for films, fights and fitness – allowed me to add a little flavour to the facts.
I now split my time between writing scripts, magazine columns & mental/physical health reports and I’ve recently launched a new podcast called Films, Fights & Fitness, available on YouTube & Spotify.
Since starting down this road, I have also appeared on BBC radio, ITV television and in national newspapers, talking about the journey.
BACKSTORY
As a kid I had two hobbies – writing and fighting.
In school I used to love to write stories, both fact & fiction, and outside of school I was kickboxing as often as the gym was open.
And so it was, that around twenty years ago, fuelled by these hobbies, I jetted off to Thailand to live and train on a Muay Thai camp.
Though I never made it in the big leagues – the trip, the training and the letters home instilled in me a love of travel, fitness and journalism which have stuck with me until today.
Back in Cardiff, however, my career took a different direction when I found myself working as a business intelligence analyst for the big banks. And I spent the next two decades convinced I’d chosen the wrong path.
But when I left my job in 2015 to write magazine articles on food, fitness and fight-sports, I realised just how valuable that analyst experience would be. The data-diving skills that I’d forged in finance helped me to analyse the scientific studies which formed the basis of my research.
Writing for magazines, however, was not just a mental exercise. Most of the articles that I wrote required me to practice what I was preaching and actually take part in the activities I was writing about. One week I was running up mountains, the next I was training fighters for a charity boxing match.
And so, when ITV’s Lorraine show started a national hunt for a male underwear model in 2016, I decided to get into the best shape of my life (just in time for my 40th birthday) and enter the contest alongside 2,000 lads half my age.
With big thanks due to the patriotism of the Welsh people and the middle-aged demographic of Lorraine’s viewing audience, I was crowned the winner on live TV.
This lead to a lot of press coverage, further appearances on the Lorraine show and a side-line as a commercial model to give myself a second income whilst building the writing career.
(More on this in the modelling section.)
