BIOGRAPHY

Daniel King was born in Slough (the Britwell Estate) in 1969 and lived there for the first ten years of his life before moving, with his parents and two brothers, to Yateley, Hampshire.

He excelled at underachieving and in 1985 left Yateley Comprehensive aged 16 with just one GCSE.

His first full-time job was stacking shelves in a local supermarket (Gateways) before going to work as a hod carrier on various building sites.

After seven years, and one futile attempt to become a postman, he went back to school as a mature student and took an Access Course at Farnborough College of Technology.

This gained him a place at The London College of Printing (Elephant & Castle) and launched a high-flying career in magazine journalism – Model Railway Enthusiast – the latest in a long line of ruts.

Terrible job – worse than hod carrying.

In 1999 he applied for and got a staff-writer's job on the Paul Raymond publication, Club International and within a year had been promoted to Deputy Editor (of a staff of two, which included him and the actual Editor). A year later he become the Editor of Mayfair and a year after that he left the company to go freelance – much to his surprise.

Luckily, in 2001 he had seen his first book published, The Burglar Diaries, and he was able to use his new-found free time to write eight more, seven of which were published by Serpent's Tail, the other by Byker Books.

In 2005 the Head of Comedy at the BBC set her staff a challenge to find a book that could potentially be turned into a sitcom. Two of her staff came back with The Burglar Diaries and the BBC acquired the rights. Two established television writers turned down the chance to adapt the book into a pilot, fearing the difficulty in finding humour from house breaking, so Danny took one step forwards and landed the job.

Thieves Like Us (the name was changed by the BBC) aired on BBCThree in 2007 and ran for six episodes but was not picked up for a second series.

Danny then adapted his forth book, The Pornographer Diaries, into a stage show and saw it performed at the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival by Have A Word Productions.

In 2008 Serpent's Tail was bought out by a larger company, Profile Books. At first all Serpent's Tail authors received written assurances Profile had no intention of interferring with Serpent's Tail's editorial policy but that proved short-lived and within a year Danny and several others were told their books would no longer be considered for publication.

He spent the next three years submitting manuscripts to other publishing houses with little success before deciding to release several new books on Kindle (and also Print-On-Demand).

Besides books he has written a number of screenplays and saw his first go into production in 2010/11. Wild Bill (co-written with Dexter Fletcher) was released for the cinemas in March 2012 (to pretty good reviews it has to be said) and starred Charlie Creed-Miles as an estranged ex-con father reconnecting with his sons.

He is currently working on further screenplays (ten at the last count) and hopes to see more of them made but that's very much in the lap of the Gods. Writing films is easy. Finding someone rich and brave enough to put up an enormous chunk of cash to see them made – that's quite another.

After 17 years of living in London (Balham, Tooting, Crystal Palace and Stoke Newington to be precise) he moved to lovely leafy Chichester, West Sessex where he now lives with wife Jeannie (an NHS Physiotherapist) and their two young children.

Today he divides his time between writing and childcare – both of which allow him to jump in the car and go off to the seaside at a moment's notice.