At the very start of my career, I count myself lucky to have met a man called Rick Wood and his crazy accomplice ‘Tommy’.

They were a couple of pretty wild Aberdonians, who were making films for the oil industry during its boom and were looking for crew.

My business partner ‘Rocky’ and I were still at university but they agreed to take us on for £40 each a day and regularly dispatched us to rigs in the middle of the North Sea.

I will never forget, flying out on a Chinook chopper with huge headphones on, listening to “Islands in the Stream” and nearly crying with excitement. I could not believe this was happening while all our fellow students were sat back at Uni swotting

Rick’s greatest gift was being able to impart passion to his trainees. I will never forget hearing him explain the ‘beauty of light’ and the importance of sound and what a difference these things make to the feel of a shot, the atmosphere.

It meant that literally any filming job I went on from then on, no matter how mundane the subject might have sounded, became an exercise in making it look and sound as good as possible and that made every job I’ve done since worth doing - so thank you Rick for that.