Welcome to the page of one hundred men. Ordinary guys who are happy to tell a little of their story.
1) Darren is from Grimsby. He loves following his football team and playing poker. He sells ice creams for a living.
2) Daniel was born in Stamford but lives in Leeds. He is an online director and loves being with his family and attending sporting events.
3) Sam lives in Lincoln. He loves football, keeping fit and being with friends.
4) Sam is from Bedford. He is an actor, an all-round 'creative' and a one-man band who does vocals, plays the drums and all the guitars, including bass and ukelele. And he still finds time for tabletop role-playing games.
5) Tim's ambition is to be full-time in voice acting (cartoons, voice-overs...). He is a regular guy who likes football and video games, but how many can identify every national flag in the world, including all the US state flags?
6) Ramón is from Italy, the UK and Spain; he was born in Granada, Andalucía. He has played the guitar since a teenager and his speciality is flamenco and flamenco fusion, though he is happy playing jazz too. He is great at DIY, loves sport and just happens to be a karate black belt.
7) Santiago is from Madrid and has been a dancer since the age of three. His hero is the flamenco dancer Farruquito.
8) Kulvinder was born in Nairobi and came to the UK when two years old. He now lives in Bedford but spent many years in Leeds and then London. Giving good customer service in a local newsagent's is one of his great talents.
9) Trevor is a Bedford man who works for the council. He likes football and has always been a Gooner fan.
10) Arian is from Elbasan, Albania's fourth-largest city. He lives in Birmingham and is an international chef, from Italian to Thai. He drives back to Albania when he can, a journey of 2,200 miles. It's a good job he enjoys driving.
11) Frank was a paratrooper with the Royal Engineers, serving in Jordan, Cyprus and Scotland, and also worked for the Thames Valley Police. He has just received an award for his thirty-eight years of voluntary work for the local hospital.
12) Gurmel comes from the Punjab and lived in the States and Canada before coming to live in the UK. He is a religious leader within the Hindu faith and one of his great joys is taking congregations to the Himalayas on retreat. Rising at 2am is no hardship in those surroundings! In these modern times, he feels it is essential to treat people not as numbers, but as people.
13) Gordon worked all his life in electronics, as an electronics engineer for London Transport and then as a lecturer in Electronics and Computing. He has always been a photographer; however, he has rekindled his interest in the last decade and holds an important role in his camera club. He also leads a Nordic walking group.
14) Noman comes from Sheikhupura in Pakistan, a small city but one full of history. When not working in the shop, he plays badminton and, of course, cricket and is something of an all-rounder, handy with both bat and ball.
15) Graham is from Stopsley, Luton, though his influence extends worldwide as he is a broadcast project manager with Al-Jazeera and many other Middle Eastern broadcasters. His hobbies are photography, yoga and trail running. His commitment to photography is clear: just a few weeks ago he fell forty feet while on a run, broke way too many ribs and yet is back in the artistic saddle. You just can't keep a good man down.
16) Dave is from the island of Montserrat, 'the emerald isle of the Caribbean', though he has spent most of his life surrounded by the greenery of Stoke Newington, London. A member of the Royal Photographic Society, he photographs street scenes and urban architecture.
17) Claudiu comes from the picturesque town of Moinesti in Romania. He has been an SEN schoolteacher for five years and works all the way from five-year-olds to sixteen-year-olds. A confident singer, he believes in the power of music therapy for young people, and he plays classical guitar too.
18) Dersim is from the village of Telsin, Kurdistan, in Iraq. He is over in the UK to learn English (which he already speaks very well) and his ambition is to be a professional footballer. Playing for FC Barcelona would be nice...
19) Nadir is from Darfur in Sudan. He is a refugee and is over in the UK with the help of UNICEF. His brother is over here too; however, they have had to leave the rest of the family back home. He is studying English.
20) Shawn's roots go back to Uganda and Kenya, but he grew up in London and he now lives in Bedford. He works for a company that sells picture frames that get sent as far away as Eastern Europe, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. His ambition is to become a famous rap performer (look out for the name 'O.G' in a year or two's time) and his rap heroes are Juice Wrld, Lunchbox and Yeat.
21) Aaron has just graduated in Psychology and wants to be a doctor. He is a talented rugby player and represented Loughborough University: no mean feat! Having a father who is British and a mother who is Fijian makes for a happy mix. Coincidentally he had me as his housemaster at school and was my last Head of House before I retired.
22) Akin is from Nigeria with parents from the Yoruba and Nupe tribes which is a nicely balanced combination. He has graduated in Law and aspires to be a barrister. Meanwhile he plays drums and guitar in his free time and has a ministry as a youth speaker.
23) Juan comes from Argentina, La Pampa province, from a village near the city of Santa Rosa. He did his degree in computing and it was while he was working on his doctorate that he was first sent to the UK on a grant, to Exeter and then to Southampton. He settled here and now works in London. He likes paddle boarding, runs with Bedford Harriers - who taught him to run in all weathers, not just when the sun is shining - and is one of a minority of Argentineans who are vegetarian.
24) Luke comes from Ringmer in Sussex and moved to Bedford when he was just one year old. He has travelled widely as an English teacher - to Taiwan, Poland and then Milan in Italy - and he loves singing and music in general. He writes poetry and song lyrics, his favourite being one he called 'Walking in Paris'.
25) Theo is from Jamaica and came over to the UK when he was just two. He studied sports psychology but now works in sports technology in London. He is a basketball coach and aspires to playing as well as Stephan Curry, not to mention being promoted to CEO one day. He likes reading non-fiction, listening to podcasts and R&B music. He goes nowhere without having a Rubik's cube in his bag.
26) Alejandro hails from Mexico City, a surgeon who is currently the director of the largest independent hospital in the capital, Ángeles de las Lomas. Brave man that he is, his preference has always been to work in A&E, dealing with heart attacks, road accidents, bullet wounds and everything in between. Like many, he loves football, but he was actually in the stadium when Maradona's 'Hand of God' goal went in and remembers it vividly.
27) Faisal comes from the city of Haripur in Pakistan, famous for its fruits and flowers. He is a lecturer in Statistics at the University of Haripur, a popular subject for his students. In his free time he likes to go walking and visit famous, historical places.
28) Newton is from Jamaica, came over to the UK and worked for twenty years in London as a fashion photographer - using film, of course! His work also took him to Paris and he is happy that his work helped incorporate black models, hairdressers and make-up artists into the mainstream through magazines such as 'Roots', 'Black Hair and Beauty' and 'Essence'.
29) Columbus is from Bedford. One of his simple aims in life is to have a good time which he does by being with friends, playing guitar and travelling round Europe.
30) Grzegorz is from Warsaw in Poland. He came to the UK about twenty years ago after finishing his military service. In his working life he's been an HGV driver and a high-voltage electrician. In his free time he loves being with his two children.
31) Graham is a window cleaner but can tell you all about being a bailiff too - I think we know who is the more welcome visitor to our homes. He can't swim, though he loves kayaking and spends a lot of time metal detecting and 'magnet fishing'. As this photo was taken, he had a very weedy bicycle and child's scooter at his feet. His word of advice to us: go to bed with a smile on your face and wake up with one on.
32) Einar Sveinbjörnsson comes from the small town of Neskaupstaður in Iceland, where he grew up and stayed till the age of thirty, a place where there is no sunrise for three months and then no night in the summer months. He grew up on a farm and remembers extended Easter holidays for students who were involved in the lambing. There is still ice and snow in Iceland but rather less of it than there used to be. What can be said is that there is much pleasure in listening to Icelandic being spoken; it seemed appropriate to hear it with the weather outside set at 0°!
33) John lives in the heart of the Dorset countryside near Gillingham. He may have worked for much of his life as a welder and maker of bronze sculptures, but now he is a goat farmer. He started with three goats ('does') and now has a family of one hundred and twenty. The thing is, while some do live in normal goat dwellings, many have made their home in John's prized possession, a Victorian railway carriage built in 1860, a regular along the London to Brighton line for several decades. And before you ask, it's a Third Class smoking carriage.
34) Pablo is a drama student in Madrid's prestigious RESAD (like the UK's RADA), currently in his third year. He writes his own plays and particularly favours comedies. Watch out for this new literary talent!
35) Juancho is from Bogatá in Colombia and is a third-year student in the RESAD drama school in Madrid, here photographed in its fascinating costume department: think library but with clothes not books, and a librarian with a tape measure round her neck. Juancho is also a painter and tattoo artist, clearly a man who is going to make his mark in life.
36) Adrian is a company analyist from Muswell Hill in London. Fitting snugly into this WWW internet age, his hobbies are wine, walking and water polo. And cycling!
37) Abdur is born and bred Bedford. He is a computer scientist by trade and his passion is football: not only has he played for Bedford Town but he is now manager of Bedford Riverside FC.
38) John comes from Royston in Cambridgeshire. After university he got a job working part-time in the wine trade and has continued with it for the last twenty-five years; indeed, here we see him in his shop The Flying Cork in Bedford. He was once a keen angler, but then children came along, but he still finds some time for some fishing. His proudest catch? A 14lb pike!
39) Michael's family hails from Jamaica and he himself was brought up in Luton. He works in a furniture warehouse. He used to play a lot of football and is a keen Arsenal fan.
40) Nayeem was born in Bangla Desh and grew up in a town near Dhaka. He has lived in Bedford for a couple of years and works as a train manager for EMR. His passion is travelling! Just in recent times he has been backpacking in Morocco, Tunisia, Spain, Poland, Turkey... High time the United Nations poached him from the train company, say I.
41) Paul comes from Bedford and is the director of a storage and property company. He enjoys relaxing in coffee shops and has just begun a new venture: learning to act. He's not getting ahead of himself with dreams of appearing at the Donbar or at the Old Vic, but he fancies some comic parts as he progresses. Good luck to him for having the courage to go for it.
42) Matteo is half from the Campobasso region of Italy and half from Thessalonika in Greece. Currently a trainee chef in Bedford, he fancies the idea of working in London when he qualifies. He likes Italian motor cars and the music of Gigi d'Alessio. As one of Gigi's album titles has it, 'Passo Dopo Passo' (step by step), it will be interesting to see where life takes Matteo next.
43) Cameron is from Bedford and works in the town's best bookshop, Eagle Books. He spent four years in California honing his skills as a poet and gives some of his week to helping students at the local college with their English literature exams. His own poems 'aim to ask and not tell' and he assures me that there is nothing wrong with 'not getting' a poet: an intimate encounter with the poet can still take place. And his favourite poet? The American, John Ashbery.
44) Mark is appropriately photographed in Bedford's Eagle Bookshop since he is enamoured of all types of literature, looking longingly at the Folio Golden Treasury, the Everyman series and Penguin short stories. And he himself loves to write poetry.
45) Davis is from Latvia and for the last eleven years has lived in Clapham near Bedford. He works as a factory engineer, covering the UPS side of computer back-up systems, that is to say 'uninterruptible power supply'. He is a keen fan of heavy metal music, so we had much to talk about.
46) Altaf is from Lahore in Pakistan. He has lived in Luton for the last twenty years or so and is now retired. I found him with camera in hand and he loves all sorts of photography: landscape, architecture, people, drone work and videography.
47) Dennis is from Kumasi in Ghana and for the last few months has been a student of Management at the University of Bedfordshire, a two-year course. He encouraged me to listen to Kofi Kinaata's song 'Thy Grace': a fine song which took me back to my years in the Congo (Zaïre).
48) Zsolt is from the town of Paks (pronounced 'Poksh') in Hungary and works as a project manager in Bedford, having previously worked in London, Luton and Milton Keynes. A top sportsman, he used to play handball at international level, and he is also a practicioner of judo, balancing the sport with a love of psychology and philosophy.
49) Tamas is from Pecs (previously called Sophiana) in Hungary. He is a warehouse supervisor whose main love is heavy metal music, a favourite being Judas Priest (see t-shirt...). Before going to university, he used to play lead guitar for a band called Felicium.
50) Alex is from the south of Poland, from a town called Tarlowskie Gory near Katowice. He has worked in Bedford for the last five years as a warehouse operative. He likes spending time with friends and playing football.
Nella (aged 4), Josephine (aged 1 ) and Elwood (aged 6), all winners of multiple rosettes, including Cruft's of course. Now read on to learn about their master...
51) Parvaz is an infrastructure engineer who works for the RSPB, fixing any and all of their IT problems. As can be seen from his shirt, he plays rugby for Bedford Swifts RFC. His attachment to Old English Sheepdogs dates back twenty years and he has owned ten so far (they can live for up to fourteen years). He does have one more at home, the mother, but she was having an afternoon's rest from 'baby' Josephine.
52) This is Cujo the St Bernard and Michael, who comes from Salisbury. For ten years he lived near Chicago in a small town called Big Rock (Illinois) where he ran an animal rescue sanctuary on a ten-acre farm. The 180 animals took up all the space, both inside and outside the house and included chickens, goats, pigs and even alligator snapping turtles (not to be got on the wrong side of). And, no surprise here, a feral St Bernard with whom he fell in love.
53) Giulio is from Calabria in the south of Italy, from Amaroni, the Città del Mele (Honey Town). He has lived in Bedford for the last eight years and is an insurance broker. He likes playing football and listening to Italian rap (like Sfera Ebbasta).
54) Kamalpreet is from Jalandhar in the Punjab, but he lives in Southall London where he is a car mechanic. He loves listening to music and videography.
55) Doug was born in Broxbourn and was brought up in Irchester near Wellingborough. He began life as a mechanical engineer and went on to make bottle-washing machines and then machines for the shoe trade. Since retiring, he has been a volunteer at Harrold Country Park. Out went bottles and shoes; in came tractor-driving, chain saws, brush-cutting and bridge-building. A retirement well spent!
56) Emmanuel is from Freetown in Sierra Leone, a speaker of both Krio and English. He works as a revenue officer for National Railways, and in his free time loves watching Spurs, attending Masonic meetings and singing in the church choir.
57) David, the son of Emmanuel, grew up in Tottenham and somehow manages to be a Man Utd supporter. He works as a security officer for Sainsbury's and would like to run his own security firm one day. He plays Sunday league football for Luton Hoo FC.
58) Tim comes from Ampthill and has worked as a town planner for the last twenty or so years, working on planning applications and crossing swords with local councils. He rowed at university and this photograph was taken at the annual Bedford Regatta. He likes keeping fit and being a 'family guy'.
59) Franz Ulrich Heinrich Maria is from Münster in Westphalia, Germany. He used to be involved in the administration of agricultural engineering and in retirement he loves sailing, specifically a 50-year-old boat, six metres long and made of mahogany. He goes as far afield as North Germany, Holland and Poland. A man with a farming background who now enjoys ploughing the waves.
60) Tim comes from Folkestone and now lives in Copmanthorpe near York. After studying science and philosophy at university, he moved in a different direction and took his PhD in music technology. Spending much of his time with his team in Norway, he works for a musical charity which helps disabled people to play and compose music, sometimes performing simply using eye movements.
61) Eric is 91 years old and is from Halifax in Yorkshire. He worked for many years as an electrical engineer, often making control panels for ships. He likes going off on family breaks, particularly to the Solway Firth in Scotland. He enjoys Sudoku puzzles, gardening and being a handiman.
62) Paul is born and bred in Lincoln. He has been riding scooters for almost twenty years, and likes going to Mod reunions in Brighton, Great Yarmouth, Nottingham and Sheffield. He has had this particular bike since 2020, and he buys many of his clothes in vintage shops in Brighton.
63) Stuart is from Lincoln. He used to work as a manufacturer of windows, but retired early when he damaged the nerves in his spine. He listened to The Who's album 'Quadrophenia' forty years ago and has been a Mod ever since. He has owned more than twenty scooters: some have been stolen and others wrecked; he has had this one for three years. He is also a photographer and likes photographing anything and everything.
64) Chris comes from Newmarket. While he is understandably a big fan of horse racing and horse breeding, his great passion is football. No armchair football aficionado he, for he has managed Biggleswade Town, Newmarket Town and Kempston Rovers, and is now in charge of Rushden and Diamonds, most famous for its years in the Football League at the turn of the century. When his club's commitments allow, he enjoys going to the theatre, and 'Les Misérables' is his all-time favourite.
65) Lewis is born and bred Luton, a student of Sport and PE at the University of Bedfordshire. He is hoping to become a teacher when he qualifies. He has played football for several Luton teams and in his free time he enjoys going to the gym, walking football and playing basketball.
66) Simon is from Derby and lives in Portsmouth; I caught up with him working on a job in London. He describes himself as an eclectic handyman who can fix anything. He likes to ride motorcycles, and is looking forward to upgrading his Honda to a Harley - the bigger the better!
67) Gordon comes from Belfast and the great love of his life is downhill mountain biking, an activity he has pursued all over the UK, but not without significant injuries. He's a huge fan of Star Wars and collecting die-cast toys.
68) Cristiano is from the Canary Islands and has been living in Brighton for the last eight years. He speaks excellent English and works as a commissionaire at the Grand Hotel. In his free time he reads horror stories.
69) Keith has always lived on the south coast, currently resident down an extremely narrow lane in Brighton called a twitten. For 30 years he commuted to London to work as a hairdresser near St Paul's Cathedral - his boss was Vidal Sassoon. He's a Chelsea fan and loves listening to reggae, a throwback to his skinhead days in the 1960's.
70) Jaime is from the Lavapiés area of Madrid. He owns the Bar Calandria, and previously made audio-visual productions, films and commercials which were made for small businesses and shown in local cinemas. In his limited free time he reads novels, history essays and comics from the 1980's.
71) Westley (with a 't') is from Rushden, but once able to travel he established himself as a citizen of the world, spending months at a time in India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Australia. Gazing at the Himalayas was one of the high points of his life. He has taught English as a foreign language, and in his free time he enjoys meeting people. We see him writing a poem for me based around the word 'photograph'.
72) Paul is seen here at the Remembrance parade in Bedford, representing the 2nd Battalion of the Coldstream Guards, a regiment in which he served for ten years. He spent time in Germany, N. Ireland, Canada and Cyprus. He has done a variety of jobs since, including making blinds and security work. He enjoys playing golf, but modestly makes no mention of a handicap.
73) Ugochukwu is a great Nigerian (Igbo) name which means 'God's eagle'. He comes from Imo State in the east of the country, but is now a long way from home, living in sunny Essex. He works in project management in the local authority, is a choir master and football referee. I talked to him as he was watching his son play his first game for Northwood FC (near Watford), a match they went on to win.