Before he was a writer, blogger and author, Paul Smith was an award-winning radio producer and manager, a trainee rocket scientist and almost, but not quite, inventor of the portable toaster.
His writing career began at the age of 14, with a monthly astronomy column for his local newspaper. It was so successful that the editor entirely failed to inform him when it was dropped for a feature about second-hand cookers.
Paul has blogged for pleasure over the past ten years and, since leaving the radio industry in 2007, has also blogged for money, for the likes of the Guardian, Holy Moly and Bitterwallet.
In March 2009, he had an idea to test whether relationships formed through social media networks had value in the real world, and embarked upon the Twitchhiker project - an attempt to travel to the opposite side of the planet within 30 days, relying entirely on the goodwill and generosity of people using Twitter.