I cudda been an Oscar contender

I didn't always want to be a business consultant or have anything to do with the media/information business - I more or less fell into it by accident. After illness and constant departmental restructuring, I decided to take voluntary redundancy. When boredom set in, I started taking temporary jobs and one day ended up being hired to fill envelopes for a day.

Even though the company was a business consultancy, the way the "envelope-stuffing" was being handled was slow, clumsy and inefficient. I made a few suggestions, a new position was created for me and I was hired on a permanent basis. The rest as they say, is history.

It was far cry from my early ambition - I wanted to be an actor!

I have been told I have a nice voice and it's just about the only thing about my body that has stood the test of time and isn't made of plastic. Even teachers told me I had a nice voice - and 1960s British school teachers were more skilled at belittling, assaulting and insulting pupils than complimenting their charges.

My first attempt at acting came about when I was in the Second Llandaff Cub troop, (a junior version of the Boy Scouts). In those days parents encouraged their kids to join such organisations so they could learn vital life skills such as lighting a fire without matches, putting a dust cover on a book and knowing the words to God Save The Queen. Troop members were also supposed to go to church, but I refused - except when Akela invited me to carry the flag down the aisle to the alter. After that, I never set foot in a church again.

The troop leaders decided to put on a play, and in the great British tradition of treating kids as though they were mindless idiots, they chose, "The old woman who lived in a shoe" even though most of us were ten and eleven! A far cry from a school production I went to a few years back, based on the American created hell hole called Iraq.

We were all boys, and although I wouldn't have objected to being picked to play the role of the "old woman" I was pretty pissed to be chosen to play one of the children - Bertha.

Bertha! I ask you - do I look like a Bertha? Not only that, I was expected to dress like a Bertha. In a skirt and blouse. To add further insult to injury, my brother's girlfriend gave me a pair of her old school knickers to wear under the skirt. Angela was 18, and it wasn't until many years later that I understood my brother's comment of "lucky bugger".

Looking back on it, it was a pity my mum knew about Angela's generous knicker donation. I would have loved to have seen the look on her face, when after trying them on to see if they fitted, her sweet, angelic, cherub faced son, proudly came home and announced "Hey mum - I managed to get into Angela's knickers".

I didn't have to worry about learning lines - I didn't have any. All the talking parts went to the usual suspects. The boy whose father was on the school board of governors, the Akelas own son, and one smarmy little goody-two-shoes, who even combed his own hair without his mum telling him.

For those of you who are not familiar with the old nursery rhyme - here is the charming, inspirational rhyme as told to generations of young children whose parents didn't like them reading violent comic books.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread,
She whipped them all soundly, and put them to bed.

At least she didn't leave them alone in an apartment in Portugal.

My next roles were much better. I was selected to play Fagin in a modern version of Oliver Twist, followed by the merchant in the Merchant of Venice. My meatiest role though came aged 14, playing a cynical, exploitive businessman in the Emlyn Williams play, "The Wind of Heaven". A child was born in a Welsh village, and as the play progressed, it became evident he was the new Messiah. The businessman and his assistant arrived in the village in order to promote and exploit the child and his powers. A bit like Bindi Irwin's management team.

Fagin - Merchant of Venice - cynical businessman - now I know how I ended up being a business consultant!