I have always had a keen interest in sculpture, at primary school I was lucky enough to have a teacher who believed anyone can sculpt, he would often bring out the clay and I would make all sorts of strange creations! When I studied at Rose Bruford College, one of the first productions I worked on was Tis Pity She's A Whore, the designer wanted a life-size replica of the statue of Eros from Piccadilly Circus, I loved working with new materials, welding a steel armature then building it up with chicken wire and plaster, the final thing looked convincingly similar, under the right lighting! Over the years I have made all sorts of weird and wonderful props, including a giant Sunflower, a giant dandelion, and a giant...GIANT, for a production of Jack in the Beanstalk I built a seated Giant that was roughly 5 meters tall, with many moving parts! On a smaller scale I have sculped gravestones and statues,  a Pegasus carnival float, many puppets, birds, monkeys, dogs, a talking wardrobe, and a giant arrangement of flowers made from old bicycles!

I love a prop challenge, when I designed 'The Invisible Man' for Oldham Coliseum we had to create a bicycle that wheeled across the stage with nobody on it, a quill and ink that wrote without being held, and the iconic moment when the invisible man unpeeled the bandages from his head to reveal...no head! I can't tell you how we did it as I'm sworn to secrecy by the Magic Circle! In a production of The 39 Steps we created the Forth Bridge, a train, and a biplane all out of step ladders, and then sent a miniature Flying Scotsman across the bridge on cue. As with many of the prop challenges I take on, I found that throwing money at a problem is not usually the answer, throwing imagination and out-of-the-box thinking at it works every time!