Television proved to be a huge part of James’s childhood – defined no more prominently by the letters he wrote to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (they never replied), and later on by the identical Power Rangers outfits worn by he and his brother. If time wasn’t spent laughing at Ren and Stimpy, or hiding behind the sofa during Are You Afraid of the Dark, it was writing stories about his toys and turning them into stop-motion films. 

Despite the allure of the arts, James’s head was swayed by the beach-life on the south coast and went on to study Advertising and Marketing Communications at Bournemouth University. Following graduation, he began his professional career at Substance, a boutique London-based agency that creates marketing campaigns for film and TV. His first duty was to write in-character MySpace pages for Family Guy’s Peter and Stewie Griffin; a fact he recalls somewhat reluctantly, as it shows his age. After taking some time out to travel the world, he went on to work for Twentieth Century Fox’s theatrical marketing department, and then headed back to Substance – joining the company’s senior management team. 

James’s job sometimes meant having to read movie screenplays, as a starting point for developing marketing campaigns. One particularly terrible script, however, triggered something else. “At the very least”, he thought, “I could write something as bad as this”. From that moment on, any spare time (train journeys, vacations, the early hours) was spent learning to be a writer. With a family feature screenplay and a bunch of half-written film and television spec scripts under his belt, James decided to take things to the next level and enter the Nickelodeon Writing Program. 

While he’s equally flabbergasted and excited by being chosen as one of this year’s writers, he also knows that his younger self would have found the whole thing absolutely mind-blowing – especially now that he’ll have a chance to ask the Turtles why they never replied to his letters.