Working as a consultant, I spent 18 months out in Reading building Safedoor.com, a (now-bust) venture spun out of Securicor and designed to be a foray for them into the online secure payments market. Had a fantastic time and part of the fun was getting involved in areas “outside of my expertise” – including helping out with the advertising campaign which was done on the cheap. In this case, a national newspaper (Sunday Times, Observer, Time Out magazine and the Independent on Sunday) full-page spread suggesting that you want to keep your “personal details private”. If only I’d heeded them…

That’s me with the Dyson…

At college, a bunch of us were foolhardy enough to re-enact the Full Monty on stage at the Girton Revue. For the two years previous, recognising that giving any of us a script and asking us to be funny on stage was a non-starter, we’d made instead what best we could out of the comic potential of our bodies; first, the “time-warp” dressed up in drag and secondly, the Spice Girls, dressed as, well girls. Finally, the peak of our careers (and it’s never been this good since), we did the Full Monty…on stage…in front of 200 people…two nights running. And some people thought it was funny.

Advertising the revue, sell out predicted