Pip Fallow grew up on a council estate deep in the coal fields of County Durham. Spewed out of the newly implemented comprehensive education system and destined for a life of cutting coal he found no coal to cut. Thatcher’s mass pit closer had taken hold. Illiterate and armed with little more than a CSE pass in metalwork he joined the back of a dole queue three and a half million souls long. He served an apprenticeship as a bricklayer as all around went on strike and fought bitterly with their own government. His apprenticeship complete, it became apparent that due to the recession there were no bricks to lay. He was told by Thatcher he was a ‘moaning Minnie’ and by Lord Tebbit to get on his bike and go find work. He did, living on his wits for a decade before landing back in a broken North East, now literate and ready to write. He is a bricklayer, published author and calls himself ‘a former young socialist’. He was shortlisted for the Sid Chaplin Award for working class writing and has dabbled in acting, with a brief role in a Ken Loach film.