Flyers from the Herbert, people bingo, mug, name badge

I was unemployed when there was an advert for customer service jobs at The Herbert in the Coventry Telegraph. The process had a shaky start. My application email took an eternity to send on my Dad’s fragile computer, finally going half an hour before I needed to leave for a festival. Then I got an interview, but didn’t get the role. About a week later they called and said they’d got more hours so could I do it for three months? That was fifteen years ago.

I don’t need to be doing a job that’s high profile or status driven. If I’m comfortable with something, I stay with it. I like chatting to the customers. There’s no end point and no one is in a hurry to leave, and the staff find ways to make it fun. One Christmas front-of-house staff were playing people bingo. We ticked off members of the public wearing different items of clothing to try to win. If you were wearing a Santa hat, ear-muffs, or a long Dr Who-style-scarf that winter, that's why we were especially pleased to welcome you!

Diaries

I’ve kept a diary of some sort since 1993. There’s a mixture of exercise books, hardback books, and weird themed collections. I just write what’s going on - thoughts, feelings. And I stick bits in, like photos, tickets, receipts and flyers. At the back of every diary, I’ve stuck a calendar so I can stay organised.

It’s all there in my diaries - my first gig, my first festival, when I met my girlfriend, when Zidane got his scuba gear. Every year I take a selfie holding the diary, so you can see my hair get gradually shorter and more grey.

I always plan to write loads when I go away or do something interesting, but it ends up being a big gap. I’m too busy having a good time to write anything.

My favourite things to look back on however are the day to day stuff. That’s what a lot of life is.

Festival cups, wristbands

When I came out of Uni I moved back in with my parents and I felt a bit lost. Volunteering at Oxfam bookshop really expanded my social skills. I made loads of friends and started going down the Colly again. I’ve been volunteering at the bookshop for more than twenty years now.

Then I started doing festival stewarding for Oxfam, too. I like music, I like camping and I like doing stuff for charity. My first one was Glastonbury in 2004. I did two that first year, then I did five the next, then eight the following year. It just kept building up. I think I’ve done about ninety so far.

Loads of my friends are Festival volunteers, and that’s where I met my girlfriend. They’re my Oxfam family. The festivals used to be a high point in the year, but now I’m doing them less and less. Life feels good in general. Maybe I don’t need those peaks or troughs the way that I used to.

Zidane’s scuba-kit, kilt and helicopter

We’ve had Zidane the imaginary dog for a few years now. He’s a lovely, low maintenance, pet. I created him randomly on an old Wii we were given in lockdown. When I went back to the game a few days later, I couldn’t find him and I was devastated. It turns out I’d put the wrong disc in.

After that traumatic scare, I felt quite attached to Zidane. He left the game and became part of our everyday lives. Zidane travels in a helicopter mainly though sometimes an airship or a plane, which he uses to visit me at work. He likes to dress up too, though his costumes aren’t always very politically correct.

Zidane’s a good dog, but he’ll be bored stiff at this Museum all day, so if you’d like to take him for a five minute walk, please let me know. Maybe chase some imaginary animals with him, or imagine a new game to play with him. He’d love that.

Panda costume

I’ve come to realise that I do a lot of dressing up in various uniforms or outfits. Even my dog likes dressing up. But my definitive fancy dress is Rave Panda.

It was really skanky when I picked it up at Glastonbury - covered in glitter and all sorts of stuff. Someone had written ‘Rave Panda’ in lipstick across the front. I washed it and I’ve been wearing it at festivals ever since.

I once officiated a fake wedding as Rave Panda. Two friends in Bristol were getting married the weekend after Shambala festival. They put on Facebook that it was going to be a private event at the registry office and they didn’t want any fuss. So we held a rehearsal wedding for them at the festival. Rave Panda played minister, and the nightshift made a cake out of cardboard which the happy couple cut with a felt-tip pen.

Clingfilm wrap with drawings, book

I have a temp job for Unitemps at Warwick med school, modelling anatomy for the first year medical students.

First, you take your top off and they try to feel where different structures are in the body are - they’ve got a list to tick off. On the second bit, they wrap you in clingfilm and they get a felt tip pen and try to draw where stuff is in your body. These tutors come round and go – ‘No! Your kidneys are too small!’ It’s a really cool job and you get to learn loads of stuff, but of course you’re not meant to help the students or give them clues.

Once someone drew my organs on the wrong way round. I’d definitely rather they worked it out now with a felt tip pen, than later on with a scalpel. You also sometimes get the chance to be hit with small hammers everywhere, to test your reflexes.

Pocket operators, Korg Volcas, Orbital CD

I really love the band Orbital and ‘In Sides’ is my favourite album ever. We went to this event five years ago where the two brothers were supposed to chat about making the album, only one of them couldn’t remember a single thing about it! It was Orbital who inspired me to start doing some music stuff of my own.

I’ve got some synthesisers or pocket operators which I got from E-bay. I started out with one or two, but like everything else in my life, I’ve gone a bit crazy and now I’ve got loads. They look like little calculator things. You press play and they’ll give you a sequence of sounds. You can programme them to read basslines and samples. The bigger ones are Korg Volcas.

Football shirts, football ticket

I support Coventry City FC massively. Me and my Dad used to go to watch games together and had tickets to go to a match when Covid locked down the country. On my birthday, later in lockdown, he gave me the ticket that never got used. You can see his sense of humour. My Dad sadly passed away after that, so I’ve kept it to remember him by.

I’ve gone a little bit mad buying loads of kit over the last year and I know it’s part of the grieving process for my Dad. City’s last game before lock-down was a 1-0 win on the 7th March 2020. My Dad died on the 7th March 2021.

I got a couple of 2 tone football shirts, with the name of the guy that scored that goal on the back. No one knows this, but on the 7th of every month for a whole year I wore that Coventry City shirt for my Dad

Beaver uniform, Cub uniform, Scout uniform

As a kid, I was in the Scouts myself, and now I help out with the 11th - Monday Cubs at The Chesils. They’re a good bunch of people and it’s a good space to have a laugh, spend time with their friends and learn a few skills.

I think Scouts is a genuinely good thing. It connects youngsters and helps them build confidence. It sounds like a cliché, but Scouts does fill up the climbing trees gap that we seem to miss in modern life. I’m proud that other than a few people in Head Office, the whole thing is run by volunteers.

When I was a Scout I didn’t get many badges. I was always a bit rubbish at them really. If there was any badge I could go for, it would be the ‘boyfriend of the day’ badge. Sometimes I’m told I am, but it would be nice to have a badge to prove it!

Mascot feet

It’s official, you heard it here first, I am the man behind Colin the Woodpecker, the mascot for BBC CWR. I also had a few stints as Pudsey the Bear.

People like to tell Colin and Pudsey their stories, and they give you mad eye contact because they can’t see you properly. There are rules though. As Colin you can’t talk and you can’t take off your head. Even when I met (who was at the time) Prince Charles I couldn’t talk to him. All you had the opportunity to do was listen… and gesture.

Colin and Pudsey could get away with murder. My Pudsey the bear accidentally punched Daniel O’Donnell in the face. I sort of went to put my arm around him and tragically missed. Fortunately he was very nice about it.