In 1987 I was climbing in Pembroke with my good mate Tudor Griffiths. We were busy ticking the three-star classics in that old red de Montjoye/Harber guide - oh happy days - and climbing pretty well. Being unemployed I had a bit of time on my hands and I had sewed myself a pair of multi-coloured tights from multi-coloured cotton I had bought from Sheffield market. I was trying to keep up with all the hot-shots of the time who all wore bright lycra, but lycra is difficult to sew, it slips around under the machine foot and cause havoc with thread tension, …. so bright cotton it was.

Anyway, despite the fact that these tights were particularly awful (see photo) I got enough positive comments from them to start making a few pairs for other people. One thing led to another and eventually I realised a man could not live by tights alone, so I made some trousers. This was more like it. Orders started flooding in and before I knew it a little cottage industry had started. Over the next few months I made hundreds of pairs of bright coloured trousers with contrasting pocket colours, all sold for around £20 a pop - still didn’t seem to make much money though which was an early business lesson!

The seed had been sewn for self-employment and, once that is planted, you don’t get rid of it. A company name was needed and for that I have to thanks the afore-mentioned Tudor, who came up with the name Pockets. The spelling was my doing so Pokketz was how it turned out. Later the trousers were dropped (!) and Pokketz became slightly more profitable screen printed T-shirts, concurrent with a series of cartoons published in On The Edge.

So where does Rockfax fit in? Well the cartoons attracted the attention of Mick Ryan; who had started a company called Vertical Brain; and he had published a ‘Rockfax’ guide to Yorkshire Limestone; and he need some cartoons for his next book to North Wales Limestone; so he gave me a call and on our first meeting he also asked if I wanted to write a guide to Peak Limestone; and I said yes and wrote Peak Limestone; and I enjoyed it so I agreed to work with him on the next books to Dorset and the Lakes; then Mick moved to America so I took over Vertical Brain; and I wrote the Pembroke Rockfax and got called a vampire by Ken Wilson; and then wrote the Costa Blanca, Mallorca, El Chorro Rockfax which actually started to sell in some decent numbers; and I realised that this might work in the long run so I re-named the company Rockfax; and I started publishing more books; and then I teamed up with Chris Craggs who had also written lots of guidebooks; and we produced Peak Gritstone East which upset a few people but seemed to please many more people judging by how well it sold; and I also teamed up with Mark Glaister; and the three of us started producing loads more full-colour books to different areas; and then a few more people joined in including Adrian Berry with his performance books like Trad Climbing +; and then Chris and I decided that it might be a good idea if we started producing a series of smaller guidebooks since the other ones had got quite big; so we came up with a design that was so small that it fitted into your Pokketz!

Back to the profile: I am the 40-something year old owner of Rockfax, I am married and have three lovely children, I live in the longest (and best) house in Crookes in Sheffield. I am also part-owner of the UKClimbing.com web site, but that is another story.