Michael Hewitt
I suppose the first thing you want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap. No? I'll tell you anyway.
I was born in St Helens. Then it was in Lancashire. Now, sadly, it's been split between Merseyside and Greater Manchester. Until age 18, I lived in a village called Billinge. Billinge boasted woods full of bluebells, fields of barley, and farms with cows, sheep, and chickens which, even though we weren't aware of the term at the time (and they probably weren't, either), were free-range. Today, all of that has disappeared under concrete and housing estates, and the chickens' eggs have long-since become omelettes.
At age 18, I went to university. First to Manchester, then to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While doing so I picked up degrees in Arabic, Hebrew, Egyptology (ie hieroglyphs, Middle Kingdom), and an M.Phil in the history and development of Modern Hebrew. All those letters after my name look very good on Christmas cards.
While living in Jerusalem, I bumped into a press photographer during some riot or other. To escape the tear gas and the rocks, we retreated to the bar of The American Colony hotel. There, he introduced me to the concept of the bar bill as a tax-deductible business expenditure. Journalism, I decided, in one form or another, was for me. It wasn't to be for a few years, though.
In the meantime, I moved to the South East of England. After acquiring a Diploma in Printing and Publishing Studies (aka DPPS, which further enhances those Christmas cards) from the London College of Printing, I became a typesetter of sorts. Within a year, I'd become computer-literate, too, in charge of my very own data conversion department.
Next, I joined another typesetting company which obligingly went bankrupt on the day I started. So I was unemployed for a few months. But after those few months, I was signed up by a PR company. The idea was that I should set up an IT department for them. I was soon set to work writing press releases, however. From press releases I moved to writing advertorial, then fully-fledged features. Within a couple of years, I'd started writing the occasional freelance piece for tecchie magazines. Then my work started to appear in more mainstream publications.
After four years here I went freelance. I now cover just about every subject under the sun (even on cloudy days, too), from computers to so-called "lifestyle". I write for all of the (what used to be called) broadsheets except The Guardian and The Observer. Nothing personal in that - it's simply that they've never commissioned me. Yet. I also appear in a few foreign publications, numerous tecchie titles that you'll never have heard of, a couple of men's magazines, and, just for balance, a couple of women's magazines, too. And for a glimpse of what I get up to when I'm not working, you might like to check out Joe Slavko's Blog. If you're not easily offended, that is.
As for domestic arrangements, I live in genteel poverty on the Hertfordshire/Essex borders. Don't ask for my address and telephone number - you won't get them. (Unless you want to commission me, of course.)
My preferred e-mail address is hewittmjh@googlemail.com. Failing that, I'm on Twitter.
And finally, the now obligatory guestbook. Should the mood take you, please feel free to sign it and comment.
