My family comes from Dundee in Scotland. I was born just outside of Cambridge in England where I grew up with my brother and sister. Fortunately this is an area in the UK where it is actually possible not to pick up an accent of any kind which turned out to be a big advantage in my career!

Once I finished school I decided to study German and later go to Germany and work as a journalist and photographer.  My love of music led to me joining up with a rock group as a singer (Twilight) and spending all of my spare time writing lyrics and rehearsing. Unfortunately, by the time everything was pretty close to being perfect the band started to “crumble” with members going in different directions. So if you ever saw me live on stage it was 1 of about 20 concerts we gave in the Frankfurt area of Germany!

A well-known German TV Producer, Hans-Jürgen Kliebenstein who I coincidently met in Wiesbaden, liked the sound of my voice and asked me to step in for his regular speaker to do a voice-over on a Lufthansa film production. Shaking like a leaf I somehow managed to get through the 45-minute film introducing me to a new career! As a child I had always wanted to be on Radio or TV and I realized then, this is what I want to do professionally!

I recorded a demo-tape at home and sent it off to what was then Germanys most popular radio station SWF 3 in Baden-Baden ( now SWR 3 ). They liked it and offered me a job to start the very next month and within a year I was presenting 5 different programs and answering fan mails for the first time in my life!

This is also where I got into radio-journalism and interviewing some of the worlds greatest musicians including names like Elton John  and Jon Bon Jovi! My interviews were broadcast by almost all of the ARD Radio stations in the whole of Germany.

At the same time I started doing stage presentations and compèring for companies who liked the way I presented on-air. Being completely bi-lingual by this time I was forever traveling to host big events in Germany, the UK and the USA.