Gérard Rudolf

Gérard Rudolf was born in South Africa in 1966. He says he's of a generation regrettably too young for the Rolling Stones and thankfully too old for Michael Jackson - a kind of "cultural car crash zone. But we did have The Clash, The Pistols, Patti Smith, Springsteen and Nick Cave."

He grew up in the comatose suburbs of Cape Town and Joburg during the darkest years of Apartheid. "A rubbish time and place for all concerned. But we had Desmond Tutu, Steve Biko, André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, the plays of Zakes Mda, the poet Mongane Wally Serote and many others to tell us the real score."

After completing high school he was faced, along with thousands of other South African males, with the cheery choice of two years compulsory military service, six years in jail for conscientious objection or skipping the country. Lacking the funds and passport for the latter option and the bollocks for conscientious objection he resentfully joined the army, an experience he says that galvanised in him a general dislike for the Great Outdoors and awoke in him a fathomless distrust of any brand of flag-waving patriotism and nationalism. After completion of his military service he joined a drama school.

He spent the next 15 years as a successful actor in South Africa. Cursed with itchy feet, a curiosity for what's beyond the next bend in the road, a staggeringly low boredom threshold and, it must be said, for the love of a woman he dropped his life in Cape Town about three years ago and headed for the UK.

He writes because he's got no choice and as "a means to orientate myself on the map." He is currently working hard on a collection of poetry and short prose tentatively titled Godspeed the Punch Line.