As the story goes, Bazza ended up in recruitment comms because he didn’t much like the idea of getting a proper job after University. So, the next best option was to write about other people’s.
Since then, he’s written all kinds of copy for all kinds of clients. From recruitment and employee comms projects for UK household names, to consumer-driven above the line, retail, TV, radio, web copy and more, for some of the world’s biggest businesses. His career has taken him from junior placements at ad agencies in London, right through to Head of Copy level stints in agencies across Manchester and the north via a short time at a pan-European agency in Brussels, and finally to running his own creative studio by the beach up in the North East. Phew.
His work has been read, watched, viewed, played, listened to, scrolled, consumed, clicked on, linked to, copied, pasted, talked about, argued over, and remembered by millions of people across the world.
You’re probably already one of them.
But… when he’s not writing completely pretentious rubbish about himself in the third person, you’ll find him in the North Sea at Tynemouth if there are any waves, out on his mountain bike if there aren’t, or reluctantly watching Peppa Pig for the 18 millionth time with one of his four kids if he doesn’t manage to escape from the house unseen.
As is tradition over here at the Roost we asked Baz if he could only listen to, watch, read and own one thing for the rest of his life, what would they be? Here’s what he had to say...
“Man, don’t ask me that… it’s the toughest question in the world. What I do at the minute is just let Spotify make all the decisions for me – their personalised Discover playlist digs up all kinds of awesome stuff for me every Monday morning. This week’s soundtrack has mostly been by Eluvium, an ambient producer from Oregon… next week’s will be something entirely different. If I had to pick one record, it would probably be A Storm in Heaven, Verve’s first album, for lots and lots of reasons.”
“As for one thing to watch, I don’t get to check out much telly these days other than Peppa Pig, as I’ve mentioned. Bah. I probably know most of Daddy Pig’s lines off by heart though, so that’s something. One thing I definitely try to catch are the eleven World Surf League tour events each year… how mad is it that you can actually watch an entire surf contest, completely live, shot from the water in places like Fiji and Tahiti?! I remember when you had to wait a month for the next magazine to come out before you found out who won. I’m not sure I could watch a film over and over and over again, so for this one I’m gonna pick the video of Kelly Slater and Rob Machado in the Pipe Masters Semi Final on the North Shore in Hawaii, December 18th 1995. I still get the shivers every time I see that thing.”
“Reading is another tricky one as I don’t get as much time to get stuck into a book as I’d like. What keeps me occupied most at the minute is the journalism at the New York Times (there’s a lot to write about these days), however I’ve got a bunch of books racked up on the Kindle that are biographies (of famous surfers, mostly) and travel accounts from people who’ve cycled across countries or around the world. One day I’ll find the time to do the same. However, for this bit, I’m gonna choose a book called Barbarian Days by a guy called William Finnegan. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2016 and is an account of growing up surfing in Cali and Hawaii, with tons of world travel chucked in. I’ve almost finished it and I already want to start it again!”
“Ok, one thing to own… my 6” Lost Bottom Feeder. You might need to Google that one, but I’ll probably end up being buried with it when the day comes.”
