Nick for those of us who have not yet had the opportunity to meet you in person can you tell us a bit about your life and career? 

I was born and brought up in Bristol where I went to the Cathedral School and then worked in Bristol initially for a building products company doing anything and everything and then joined Imperial Tobacco at a very interesting time.  They were attempting to diversify so I was working in their diversification department as a business development researcher and researching anything from frozen food to breweries and egg markets and companies! Interestingly I still use some of the techniques and approaches that I learned then. That ultimately took me to London and I was there for some four years in the late sixties. Several things stick in my mind such as the men got 40 cigarettes a week - free - women got 20; doing theatrical things such as seeing the musical 'Hair' and a load of other plays and things and performing in a revue, going to the original Hard Rock Cafe - a friend of mine managed it - and going to Jamaica with a girl I met at a party, who I'm still in touch with and see occasionally either here or over there.

After about four years of a bit of hedonism I decided to fulfil a long standing ambition of getting a degree, so I got  a place to read Commerce and Business studies at Birmingham University and apart from three years in Cheshire have worked in the Midlands ever since. Most of my time has been spent in marketing and business development and strategy, with a large part of my career spent with Dunlop. For the past 18 years or so, I've been working as a marketing and business consultant and in the last four years or so have increasingly specialised in the museum and visitor attraction sector so I bring some very practical insight into my role of trustee at the Herbert.

I'm also a trustee of the British Postal Museum and Archive that is currently based in London but is planning a £20 million relocation to Swindon and have recently been involved in finding and recruiting new trustees. I live in Kenilworth with my partner Jill and a very smelly and old mongrel terrier, Mr Timmy. My interests include my family history, industrial archaeology and of course the arts and the Herbert!    

Outside your role of Deputy Chair, you maintain a strong interest in the arts. Why do you think it is so important to our lives? 

Not an easy one to answer but an article by Tom Cronin of Whitman College in Washington highlights for me why the arts are important in life. Poets, artists, playwrights, and composers can be the sources of truth, order, harmony, and meaning and can pose questions in their work that others may not be able to. Artists, using the term in its broadest sense, can unlock our imagination and stir us to pause, think and reflect on life and ultimately perhaps to take action. 

Through the arts, we can see the world and the human condition differently and in seeing the world through a particular work of art maybe see a truth we might not have understood before. 

Artists can raise questions and compel us to think about issues we might otherwise choose to ignore.  Imagination and a sense of discovery are often as important as knowledge. Rousseau said that the world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. Creating is an exploration of the possibilities, it is a free speculation, a learning to be ourselves. "Painting," said Picasso, "is just another way of keeping a diary." 

Being able to think in different ways and to sense the possibilities may inspire the economist, physicist, engineer and political scientist to see interconnections and hypothesize about variables in ways they may not have considered. The arts can free us to think and dream and enjoy life. 

One of our roles at the Herbert, I believe, is to awaken and heighten the aesthetic curiosity in the visitor and to encourage them not only to appreciate the collections but also perhaps to try their hand at one or more of the creative arts. In doing this they can perhaps become more free, more natural and they will sense truths and meanings that cannot be grasped in other ways. The creative arts we celebrate and practice are of course in many ways merely an apprenticeship – the larger creative art is how we lead our lives. 

What do you feel is your greatest achievement? 

Ah, the classic job interview question! I'm not sure there is any one achievement I would single out as 'the greatest'. How long have you got? They would include being the first member of my family to go to university; triumphing over a stammer when I was 16 but that was also down to a brilliant speech therapist and many years ago doing the Lyke Wake Walk – 40 miles across the North Yorkshire Moors in less than 24 hours – my feet were humming the following day! As for more recently winning a third development consultancy project with a major Midlands heritage attraction - we did the first one in 2002. 

What was the last book you read?  

I usually have several books on the go. I've just finished 'Editor' by Max Hastings, describing his time as editor of the Daily Telegraph and how he transformed it. It's a great read and a marvellous insight in to how newspapers work and are run and how someone who is brought in from the outside can overturn long established restrictive working practices - Hastings was not the classic newspaper 'hack' and had no experience editing papers beforehand. It's also quite gossipy and so rather fun! I'm currently reading Evelyn Waugh's novel 'A Handful of Dust' and waiting on the bedside table is Selina Hastings's biography of Somerset Maugham. 

Who is your hero? 

That has to be Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the pioneer Victorian engineer who achieved much but had some spectacular failures. Of course, his legacy is still very much with us including his Great Western Railway from London to Bristol and beyond, the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the Great Britain, the first screw driven iron ship. He was both a man of his time and before his time in that the engineering techniques of the time could not match his vision.

And, finally, what was the last thing that made you laugh-out-loud? 

A joke, related in Ned Sherrin's autobiography and unrepeatable in polite company  about Victoria Beckham's supposed birthday present  to David Beckham - along with a few other jokes of equal merit!