MORE ABOUT BOBBY DAZZLER PUBLISHING LTD

Adrian Bradbury, Director

The Present

I established Bobby Dazzler Publishing in March 2006. At the time I was Deputy Headteacher at St Marychurch CE Primary School in Torquay. I'd already written seven plays for schools I'd worked in, but I had a desire to take on larger-scale projects. Noting that the children I taught only seemed to want to talk about football (even when I was teaching them History), I wrote a book about our local club, Torquay United FC. They've since been relegated from the Football League, though I'm fairly sure I wasn't to blame. The book was a mixture of education, football and fun, designed to develop reading and curricular skills while having a good laugh. Marketed through Ottakars (now Waterstones) it sold extremely well, and was featured on ITV's Spotlight news programme as well as in local press and radio. Following the success of this book I was asked to write a similar book for Everton FC, and produced Everton: True Blue. The third football book reached the shops in August 2009. Rather than concentrating on a single club, it's a year in the life of the Premier League, with added features and activities. It's called English Premier League: The Footy Book 2009. Why not buy it from this website by going to the Football Books homepage?

At the same time I was working on a second, different type of project. With the aim of developing performance skills as well as reading, I wrote a play for only two actors - parent and child, brother and sister or two children in class. It was a humorous, slightly anarchic version of Jack and the Beanstalk. It went down very well with the kids in school, so I wrote another one in a similar vein, this time based on the Cinderella story. That also received rave reviews, so I've now written a series of humorous two-person scripts to support the English and History curriculum at Key Stages 2 and 3.

Over the past three years I've also been writing fiction and non-fiction texts for UK publishers Oxford University Press and Harper Collins.

The Past

Originally from Manchester, I graduated as a teacher of secondary PE and Music in 1979. After working in a Worcester Secondary Modern school I moved overseas, teaching English as a Foreign Language in 8 countries: Germany, Italy, Sweden, Indonesia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Libya. Most of my EFL work was company-based, working with well-known names such as Fiat Auto, Siemens AG, Citibank, Hong Kong Bank, Kuwait Oil Company, Squibb Pharmaceutical, Fairchild Semiconductor and Royal Air Force of Oman.

After coming back to the UK in 1994, I returned to the state school system at Windmill Middle School in Worcestershire, before moving down to Torquay in 1999. I achieved brief fame (in my own house) when in 2004 my photo was featured on the front page of the Times Educational Supplement, publicising an apparently unique job swap I undertook for a year with the Deputy Head of another local school.

I now spend my time writing, teaching in primary schools, helping people with their English, drinking tea and grinning stupidly at the squirrels in our back garden.

Adrian Bradbury,  Director, Bobby Dazzler Publishing Ltd.