Paul Waters’ career highlight is either being a New York nightclub cook and making Pelé his dinner, or smuggling a satellite dish into Cuba to make the BBC’s first live programmes from the island.

He’s an award-winning BBC producer who’s reported or made programmes on all sorts from around the world, for newspapers, BBC Northern Ireland, Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, the World Service, Channel Five, Times Radio and BBC Sounds.

He now makes and presents arts programmes, co-hosts the We’d Like A Word books and authors podcast, and organises the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival and the Chiltern Kills crime and thriller festival. His debut thriller, Blackwatertown, was set on the 1950s Irish border. He’s currently writing a contemporary Irish-Indian crossover.

Paul is from Belfast, where he was in cross-community peace groups. He’s since taught English in Poland, designed computer systems in Dublin, presented podcasts for Germans, driven cabs in Kent, busked in Wales, taught Irish legends in Hindi, and produced the BBC’s first live coverage of the 9-11 attacks in America.

When he’s not in India or Ireland, he lives in Buckinghamshire, where he’s involved with the Milton’s Cottage Museum, where John Milton wrote Paradise Lost.