• WHAT I’M CALLED: Howie Watkins
  • MY AGE IN YEARS: 43
  • WHAT I DO: I am best known as the resident scrapman at Orinoco – the Oxfordshire scrapstore, dedicated to banishing boredom and saving the world. We take waste materials from industry and make them available at the lowest possible cost for art and creative play. When I’m not playing, I am a natural historian and science writer. I was a television presenter, I fronted the BBC TV children’s wildlife show The Really Wild Show.
  • WHERE I LIVE: I live in Headington
  • WHO I LOVE: My wife Ali and my daughter.
  • HAPPIEST YEAR: If I really had to pick one, I’d say 1993. It was the year when I got my break on the Really Wild Show, I loved my day-job working and living in a zoo, I had loads of mates who were just as carefree as I was. No, it was 2004 when Ali and I got married. No, 2005, when my daughter was born.
  •  DARKEST MOMENT: Pretty much all of 2001 was pretty dark. Foot and mouth disease closed the countryside and made it impossible to work, I lost a load of contracts and my business spiralled. In the end I had to declare myself bankrupt and start all over again.
  • PROUDEST BOAST: I was once James Bond. While in the Seychelles filming for the BBC I got confused about the currency and put a massive bet on the roulette table. The croupier had to look to his boss to get approval to take the bet before he spun the wheel, it was just like the movies… oh, except that I lost.
  • WORST WEAKNESS: Pizza
  • LESSONS LEARNED: It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all possible doubt.
  • DULLEST JOB: One as a temp, I had to help an engineer take a photocopier apart.
  • GREATEST SHAME: Once, when drunk, I hit a friend for no reason. Laid him out. I just thought it would be funny. It wasn’t, it was nasty, bullying and 10 years later I’m still apologising for it.
  • LIFE LONG HERO: Charles Darwin, for putting his scientific discoveries forward despite them contradicting his beliefs.
  • OLDEST FRIEND: Jane Myham. We met in primary school.
  • WIDEST SMILE: ‘Why do anarchists only drink herbal tea? Because property is theft!’ It’s my favourite joke.
  • FAVOURITE DREAM: I wish I were a polyglot, able to speak and understand all languages.
  • BIGGEST REGRET: Drinking too much in my 20s, eating too much in my 30s and now in my 40s not doing enough to undo the damage.