Peter Guttridge

Peter Guttridge was born in Burnley, a cotton-weaving town in Northern England. He was brought up in the shadow of Pendle Hill where four hundred years ago the Lancashire Witches lived, turned their neighbours into toads, and died. He spent a year studying history at Oxford University before the authorities sussed him and threw him out. He finished his degree at Nottingham University and, ten years later, a second degree in film studies at London University.

Guttridge spent much of his twenties traveling and doing a range of jobsfrom kitchen porter to barman, shop assistant to sewerage workerwhile trying to write fiction. He traveled in America for six months and ended up in Santa Cruz, California, where for a year he tried to write ?The Great Novel.? He failed. On his return to London, England, he wrote a comic piece about his woeful experiences attempting to busk in New Orleans when he could neither sing nor play guitar. A British magazine accepted it and his career as a journalist began.

For the next three years this same magazine sent him each month to experience a dizzying range of activities: from going on a tour of Scandinavia with a rock band to performing as a male stripper in London?s Soho. While he still had some shred of dignity left he moved across to the quality British newspapersThe Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Observer, and The Sunday Timeswhere for the next ten years he wrote about music, film, literature, and the comedy industry.