How long have you worked at the Uni? What does your role involve?
It will be getting on for 17 years. I'm a teaching fellow, so obviously I do a lot of teaching for the undergraduate courses. But I'm also involved in coordinating the dissertations and the personal tutoring system that we have in the department. I do look after some of the postgraduates as well, so quite a lot of things.
What would you most like to achieve while at the University?
I'd like to become promoted to senior fellow as my first priority, but longer term, I think as part of an increasing move to try and improve the student experience in the department, I’d like to try and improve our personal tutoring system, and make sure that our students are happy, because we have a very potentially anxious cohort. I think there's definitely an issue with student mental health these days. They come in with such high expectations and such high pressure on themselves. They're very bright and accomplished, but sometimes I think they worry too much.
One of the things I think we want to try and work on is trying to find ways to improve the student experience from the beginning. We have very good retention rates, but I think that they have quite a roller coaster ride. The key thing is to try and improve that experience even more, which means that the students don't feel too pressured. To try to increase their resilience, and try and make them feel better about themselves. They're an amazing bunch of students, but they do have a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress and a lot of fear for the future.
Name one thing that makes you feel proud to work at the University of Bath?
One thing we have which I'm very proud of is our department’s peer support mechanisms. So we have peer assisted learning and peer mentoring. Our peer assisted learning scheme in particular wins a lot of prizes. Our mentors do an amazing job. We've been doing it for a few years now, and it's really built up and developed. We've got some really keen students who are our peer assisted learning leaders, they're fantastic. They're really enthusiastic and hardworking and they're lovely to work with. And then they inspire the next generation of students who then come on and take over. So I'm very proud of the way that our peer support has really developed and blossomed at the University.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I was going to have two jobs, because I didn't quite understand how jobs worked! And also didn't quite understand how difficult they would both be.
I wanted to be a footballer during the day, and a stand-up comedian at night. So I thought I could do both those jobs easily, because football obviously only takes 90 minutes then there's nothing else to do, and I would have the evenings free for stand-up!
What’s the one thing you know now that you wish you’d known when you were younger?
It would have been nice to know earlier that happiness is something that you get from giving things to other people, rather than that you just do fun things to be happy. I think that there's much more happiness that comes from giving other people happiness. I think that's something that we don't teach people early enough.
What was your first job?
Babysitting was probably my first job. Then when I went to university I worked at the cinema for a while, but I was terrible at it because it was handling money and things like that. I'd never done that before. I worked in the bar in the cinema for a while as well. That was catastrophic, because nobody ever taught me how to do shots and measures and all that kind of stuff, so I didn't last very long doing that. I was only there for about a month, and I think by mutual agreement we went our separate ways.
If you could start your own dream business, what would it be?
I do a radio show as a hobby, but I would really love to run a radio station, to actually have a whole station where I could organize the whole schedule and all the presenters and everything else. Running a big proper, national radio station. That would be amazing.
My current radio show is a music show. It covers lots of genres, there’s electronic music, art rock, jazz, folk, modern classical music, soundtracks and all kinds of stuff. I'm particularly keen to promote new bands and artists that people don't necessarily know. So often quite eccentric music or not necessarily mainstream music.
Where is your favourite holiday destination and why?
I'm going to have to choose three. So I love Venice, but I haven't been for a long time. Venice is gorgeous, I love it, it's great place to go. I'm always worried about the effects of tourism on Venice. It's sinking, but it's a beautiful place. I really love America (I don’t always like the politics) but I would love to get back. I really love New York, particularly, but I’d like to go to other places too. And another place that I really like is Portmeirion in Wales. It’s a village with beautiful Italian architecture. I love the TV program The Prisoner that was filmed there as well, so I developed a sort of lifelong love of the place.
What’s your favourite book or album and why?
That's very difficult, particularly for albums. It would be very hard to pin it down to one album, so I'll go with a book which I've loved my whole life, which is the Wind in the Willows.
I first became aware of it because it was an audio book, read by Kenneth Williams. I used to listen to it a lot, particularly if I was off school ill when I was a child, as it was made me feel better. And so for years, I only knew it as an audio book, and then I actually read the original book, which is lovely, but there are things in it that actually don't really fit in with a kids book very well. In the audiobook it is missing some quite psychedelic, weird chapters. It was really strange for me discovering it as an adult. It feels like a kid’s book when you're a kid, and then when you grow up, you realize that actually, it's an adult reflecting on life. So it's an interesting book on two different levels. It’s lovely and enchanting. I wish more kids would read it now.
When are you happiest?
I'm very happy spending time with my wife and my cats. But another thing that my wife and I do is we go geocaching. It's a hobby where you kind of go out and find, predominantly, little bits of Tupperware in hedges, but it's a bit more complicated than that!
There's millions of these geocaches scattered all around the world. There's even some on the University campus. My wife and I love going out in the countryside, and we both like walking, and it's great to get some exercise, but you go out and find these little hidden things. You go to amazing places you're not aware of, and you have to search for them using satellites and GPS devices. We've met new people and you go to new places, and you find these really amazing things, sometimes Tupperware boxes in hedges, but sometimes they're quite complicated puzzles.
If you could meet anyone in the world dead or alive who would it be and why?
This one's a bit emotional because my dad died quite recently, and I would love to see him again. I would love to talk to him, because he was quite ill for quite a while. You never get a chance to talk to people in the way you want to, because you always think there'll be some extra time. So I think I would now like to talk to him in hindsight, knowing all the things that I know now, and just talk to him properly.
Which one superpower would you like to possess?
I'm a bit of a geek, I love superheroes and comics and all that kind of stuff. I've got an encyclopaedic knowledge of superpowers and just picking one will be really difficult. I was actually thinking of regeneration, because whenever I hurt my back or scrape my knees, I just wish it would heal up straight away. So that'll be great. But then in the comics and the films the characters with regeneration live forever and I'm not sure I want to live forever. So maybe not that one actually, I'm going to changeI think it would be great to have something like super speed, because there don't seem to be enough hours in the day to do stuff. You wouldn’t worry about missing the bus or if you missed the train you could just catch it up, or be able to do half a dozen extra things in an hour would be great.
Tell us your favourite joke
There's two people one says to the other: “Can you tell me what someone from Corsica is called?”
And the other person says: “Corsican!”