WHAT I’M CALLED: Stuart Fowkes.

MY AGE: A nice symmetrical 33.

WHAT I DO: I work for anti-poverty charity ActionAid by day, by night I play in the Oxford band Listing Ships, and help organise the Audioscope festival.

WHERE I LIVE: In a little house down by the river in Oxford.

HAPPIEST YEAR: Still to come, I hope.

WHO I LOVE: My girlfriend, who believes in me far more than I do.

DARKEST MOMENT: Either: 1. Second year at university, studying Sylvia Plath on my own for two months in a basement flat in a cold winter; 2. A more mundane career crisis around 2004 when I was sick of making money for companies and decided to work for good causes instead. Promptly left, first for Oxfam and then for ActionAid.

PROUDEST BOAST: Probably having raised £25,000 for the homelessness charity Shelter through our Audioscope events – and having managed to put on a festival every year since 2001 without facing financial or mental ruin.

WORST WEAKNESS: Buying records. I don’t understand how the recorded music industry is collapsing when I’m doing my level best to sustain it on my own. I’ve been known to forget which I own and buy them twice just in case. I’m sure that I have about 100 albums that I have never even listened to.

LESSONS LEARNED: People can be just incredible, even in the harshest circumstances. I was inspired by a trip on which I visited a centre that helped asylum-seekers, and met a man who used to be a doctor in Armenia. He witnessed a political assassination, was forced to flee, was refused asylum here, lived alone on the streets of London and finally contracted hepatitis C. He battled on, living on £35 of vouchers per week, unable to see his family, but undeterred and fighting on. In Ethiopia with ActionAid I met a woman who made over 1,000 tiny, hand-sawed Coptic crosses every day to sell to support her eight children.

DULLEST JOB: My dad gave me a job when I was 16 painting storage containers in industrial bright orange, for 10 hours a day. The wages were £1 an hour (slave labour!) and the paint was so indelible that I think I’ve still got some under my fingernails now.

GREATEST SHAME: A weakness for anything involving William Shatner (except Star Trek, thankfully).

LIFELONG HERO: From writing, John Berger; From film, David Lynch; From music, Michael Rother; From art, Ed Ruscha. Old, weird men doing things differently from everyone else. I think I must aspire to old weird mandom.

OLDEST FRIEND: The other Audioscope organiser, Simon Minter. At one point, we were working at the same company, living in the same flat, playing in a band together and doing the festival. We pretty much spent the remaining time watching horror movies together as well.

FAVOURITE DREAM: To live in New York and be able to just hang around in coffee shops reading books. I’m basically a Sex and the City character.

BIGGEST REGRET: Not having enough time to do everything I would like to be able to. Damn you, time!