WELCOME. I’m a UK-based editor, journalist and published author – also a former Editor of Which Computer? magazine who launched and fronted the first business tv service for the Information Technology (IT) industry – The Computer Channel. Currently, I’m Group Editor for the leading industry title for the audio visual industry, the 52-year-old AV Magazine – and Electronics Weekly, which is 63 years old. You can reach me on Linkedin.
AV AWARDS: Traditionally, the evening of AV Magazine’s celebration is one night when the entire professional audio visual industry lets its hair down. I work with the evening’s host, various professional entertainers and awards presenters who have included Alun Cochrane, Russell Kane, David Baddiel, Adam Buxton, the magnificent Colin Murray, Gyles Brandreth, Tom Allen, the late, sadly lamented, Sean Lock, Romesh Ranganathan, and Rob Beckett. In November 2023, the AV Awards celebrated its 25th anniversary.
AV Awards at the Evolution, Battersea
ELEKTRA AWARDS: Another celebration of technical excellence is Electronics Weekly’s annual event which pulls the great and the good of the electronics industry into our regular Park Lane watering hole, the Grosvenor House. Again, the evening’s hosts have included Hal Cruttenden, Ed Gamble, Ben Hanlin, Jon Culshaw, Charlie Stayt, Suzi Ruffell, and Paul Sinha. It celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022.
ROWING: My colleagues at Oxford Brookes University Boat Club are now operating a fabulous set of facilities for elite rowers at their boathouse on the River Thames at Cholsey. OBUBC has produced some of the best rowers in the world. The Club is a direct route to the British team and has the strongest undergraduate rowing squad in the country. Olympic gold medals have been won by Ben Hunt-Davis, Fred Scarlett and Rowley Douglas at Sydney, and Steve Williams at Athens and Beijing.
In 2022 Brookes qualified 66 athletes across 10 crews into the Henley Royal Regatta. This was bolstered by another eight members of the British National team racing in The Grand Challenge Cup, Stewards and Goblets.
The week culminated in a whitewash of the Student Men’s Sweep events. This was a first for the regatta. Brookes claimed its fifth Temple Challenge Cup in eight years and regained the Prince Albert Challenge Cup for the first time since 2009. 
With one of the largest entries ever and challenged by the most competitive rowing teams globally, this was one of the standout achievements in the boat club’s history.
2023 was even better. Oxford Brookes University secured the largest ever trophy haul of any rowing club in the history of the regatta. And at the U23 World Championships in Plovdiv just a few weeks later, Jake Wincomb became the first oarsman from Brookes to become a back to back U23 World Champion after his victory in the Coxless Four. Louis Nares, Toby Lassen, Fergus Woolnough and Tom Bryce became World Champions in the Men’s Eight. The GB Women’s VIII with Arianna Forde, Grace Richards and Rhianna Sumpter were just 0.06 seconds off a Bronze medal finishing in 4th.
FORMULA ONE: The London Design Centre used my business book Formula One: Made in Britain – which details the British influence on Formula One racing and its technology – as the basis for its major exhibition: Formula One, The Great Design Race. The event won Design Week’s award for ‘Best Temporary Exhibition’ and it toured the world visiting the Design Museum, Finland; the Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo; the National Museum of Singapore; and the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington. I also write about F1 in AV Magazine occasionally (see FORMULA ONE line above), and chat on video.
