A recruitment consultant once described my CV as ‘interesting’. He had a point.
I started out professional life conventionally enough first as a lawyer and then as an investment banker in the City, both of which, I think it is safe to say, I loathed.
The world of orthopaedics was next where I helped set up a company which looked after professional footballers from the waist down, specialising in anterior cruciate ligament rehabilitation.
Sadly, football and footballers failed to inspire and so, at the tender age of 29, I took myself off to drama school, emerging two years later into the arts world where I have worked very happily ever since as an actor, voiceover artist, writer, photographer and film producer.
During that period my wife and I bought a farm in Devon where, during the ten years of our tenure, we raised Highland cattle (cute looking but temperamental and armed with horns designed to disembowel the cocky), Greyface Dartmoor sheep (very placid but ultimately easily led astray by our evil Jacobs) and, my favourite of them all, British Lop pigs.
Being not only a farmer but also a food producer (we ran a meatbox scheme and supplied two London pubs) gave me a thorough grounding in and appreciation of what goes into good food. Namely, good soil, grass and time. Ultimately, nature knows what it’s doing and we tampered with it as little as possible.
We said goodbye to farming at the end of last year and now live in West London and Berkshire where we are lucky enough to live on the Highclere Estate of Downton Abbey fame.
Despite no longer driving a tractor in anger, food and good living remain an abiding passion and I constantly scour the country for new opportunities to bring pleasure and joy into my life.
Chaz Oldham, August 2018