Favourite Holiday Place: A few years ago we took the bold move to go to Tromso in northern Norway in November. It was magical. We were able to see the killers whales and humpbacks that visit the fjords at that time of year.
Favourite Film: The Jungle Book (the original) is perfect in every way.
Favourite Book: The Talking Parcel by Gerard Durrell creates a imaginary world within our world.
Favourite Music: Of late I’ve been listening to a lot of Prince and The Fall.
Greatest Influence: The Tobermory friends I grew up.
Worst Influence: The friends I grew up.
Advice to 16 year-old self: If you recognise opportunity, have ambition and determination, with a little added luck you can do anything you put your mind to.
Greatest Regret: I kept diaries for the first three years of my career 17-20. I wish I had kept that up.
Career High: My first filming trip to the Serengeti back in 1999 was incredible, following lions and hyenas and filming pretty much anything that took my fancy.
Career Low: The first couple of years after buying all my film equipment wasn’t great. I wasn’t getting enough work, was utterly skint and was getting further into debt by the month.
I moved to Duns in the Borders, into my mum and stepdad’s basement as I couldn’t afford a room in a flat. Just me, the tumble drier, a chest freezer and a whole load of very expensive film equipment that wasn’t getting used, in a windowless cell that you had to bend over to walk around in.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here