Playing guitar all the time now. I formed a band at school with David White and Alex Wells called ElAlDave. It was terrible but I’ve never laughed so much in my life. Our greatest achievement was our reworking of the Coco Pops advert song which was basically us laughing for 3 minutes while a single-finger chord pattern playing on the keyboard. 

I got heavily into home recording, using two tape recorders to bounce back and forth adding tracks and tape hiss as I went. Then later moving on to Cubase (music production software), which I still use today. 

I left school without finishing a single piece of homework.

I started playing guitar in function bands at 16.

Went to college to do a music technology course, I hated it and left halfway through after not finishing a single piece of homework. 

I became a full time musician at 18, first working at Thorness Bay holiday camp for two years, then on to Shanklin and Sandown Theatres as a sort of resident musician for 10 years. 

I went to Newcastle Music College in 1995, hated the course, didn’t finish a single piece of homework, but bought loads of cds and listened to a ridiculous amount of music.

In 1998 me and my brother wrote and made a mockumentary about the history of pencils. It took a year to make. We sent it to loads of productions companies and heard nothing back, then we sent it straight to Channel 4 and got a phone call the next day asking if we’d like to come up to London for a meeting. We said, “Oh go on then”.