I was born in Newcastle but spent my childhood in Croydon and West Sussex. I got my first taste of London at 17 at a Love Music Hate Racism gig. A girl I met there introduced me to the indie scene of the noughties, and I joined a band called Littl’ans. The French designer-photographer Hedi Slimane came to one of our shows and the fashion world adopted us for a little bit – and I went to live with the Misshapes in New York. Somewhere along the line I caught meningitis and ended up in a coma. It was an utterly life-changing event and, perhaps strangely, I still see my life in terms of before and after that illness.
Now I am head of PR and marketing for a bar group which own three high-energy live music bars – Old St Records, Venn St Records and Northcote Records – all based around New York record stores. I never wanted to work in hospitality, but I love music and people, as well as food, so it just clicked.
I first started reading the Guardian when I moved to London. I like that there’s an integrity to the paper and the way it reports news. It adapted to the digital age before anyone else, and it really shows – it’s such a diverse website. The long reads are brilliant. I’m not one to comment on the website, but I once wrote an article for its comment section about my father’s alcoholism and the comments brought me to tears.
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