When I was trying to get my music career off the ground in London, a good friend of mine diagnosed my problem: I had no story. I was your everyday bloke with nothing to really say for myself. No addictions, no convictions, no point of interest.

Well, this is the very brief story of a man without a story.

Born to normal parents with a normal sister, we had a normal house, normal cats, normal cars, and a very normal existence. Like other normal kids, I played the normal sports, watched the same normal television shows, ate normal food, and never, ever stepped out of my comfort zone.

My first step into the unknown came when I left home to attend radio school at Christchurch Polytechnic. Normal was to go to university, normal was to get a job at a bank, normal was not to sit behind a microphone talking to no-one. It was as dj that I had my first taste of failure, and despite its bitter taste, I grew accustomed to it.

As a communicator, much was expected of me, but the young man was far from ready to perform, and I struggled under the weight of expectation. As is the way in radio, I worked the graveyard shift which is the province of the unlucky, unappreciated and unloved, and this social incarceration was not something I endured well. I vividly remember a moment when I was getting ready to go to work just as my parents were going to bed, when it all just seemed so wrong. Armed with the knowledge I have today, I may have done something about it, but governed as I was by “doing what must be done”, I did nothing.

The management of the radio station stood by and watched me fail, worse, they hastened my capitulation. There was no caring, no structure, no guiding hand, no understanding, no second chances. A fellow announcer from the station took me aside and talked me through the things I was getting wrong, and I appreciated that so much. Sadly, last I heard, that particular person was in an institution somewhere having well and truly lost the plot. I remember my father telling me that he didn’t like how the radio industry was treating me, and that I should get a job pumping petrol or something, anything to be away from the pressure. I dismissed this advice, but looking back, he may have been spot on.

It wasn’t all about work pressure, though, much of it was a lack of maturity on my part. Maturity is not something you can learn from a book, though – instead it is something you gain through time and experience. I made poor decisions, I coped badly, and things went from bad to worse. Throw into the mix the intensity of a broken heart from the first love, and it was all in all a very unhappy time indeed. The thing is, if I was raised to not care so much, I would have handled things a whole lot better, but such is the way I’m programmed, it bit deep.

Watching on from afar (Kyoto & Tokyo) as I lurched from one bad decision to another, my sister came to my aid by reccommending a counsellor who could help. I have Janine to thank for arresting what I’m certain was a slide into something quite serious. Fast forward 20 years, and I have used the tools I was given during four hours with that counsellor many times, when loose threads in my life threatened to give way to a grand unraveling.

My family has kept me balanced – the love of a good woman should never be underestimated, and the perspective that came with Lily and Sonny was wonderful, in that I finally stopped focusing on myself. Recently, when I had given up performing music due to the mental toll it was taking, events conspired to make me seek music out as a release. Re-energised, reborn, and Inspired by seaside life, I decided to make the album I’d always dreamed of, free of interference from music-people, and free of obligation and expectation.

That album is called Whirlwind, and it is everything I hoped it would be. It is honest, it is pure, and it is intended to resonate. In making this record, and being part of the Whirlwind project, the man without a story has helped create a platform for ordinary men to tell their own extraordinary stories.