I grew up in Barnet, North London and on the Isle of Man. I did a BA in Fine Art at Brighton including a second year at Kansas City Art Institute. My interest in documentary films grew when BBC2 began showing retrospectives of film-makers such as Fred Wiseman and Denis Mitchell.

My route into factual and documentary TV in the 1990s was through learning to use the new lightweight video cameras that were coming in. I still enjoy using the modern equivalents for making TV and for my own films.

Television subjects have ranged from life in schools and hospitals, to trawlers as well as films about immigration, leaving legacies, owning animals and the art world.

Mindful of my roots in art, the indie documentaries I've made usually concern people making strange and often extraordinary artworks on the fringes of society such as internet preachers in Fargo, North Dakota to an artist-plumber living in his own creation in rural Herefordshire.

I live in London with my partner, the artist Bridget Smith and our daughter.