Born 10th July 1954 in North Shields, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

During 1970 - 1971 Neil played in a group called "Dust"
Their most popular song was written by Neil called "Can you hear the dawn break?"
Neil has said, "We were convinced we would become terribly famous. It was very kind of "stoned seventies"
but we used to think it was absolutely brilliant at the time"

In 1975 after completing a degree in history at the Polytechnic of North London, Neil took a job at
Marvel Comics, Anglicising spellings and indicating where over-risque women needed to be
redrawn with more decency.  While there he interviewed Marc Bolan of T-Rex (a comic fan)
who politely pointed out that his tape recorder wasn't working.

In 1977 Neil worked at Macdonald Educational Publishing and later moved to ITV Books.

In 1982 he joined Smash Hits, a teen pop culture magazine.

On August 19th 1981 Neil met Chris in an electronics shop on the Kings Road, London.

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