Jim has had a 25-year passion for comedy filmmaking ever since he discovered that he could combine the images he was drawing (pastels mainly) with sounds he’d captured in jars. More recently he turned to making simple comedies for the “interweb” helping companies achieve notoriety despite their crushingly dull products and services.

He owns and runs Twist & Shout Communications, based in Leicester and, of all places, Dallas, TX. His stand up career seems to have peaked at “reassuringly mediocre”, prompting the Loughborough Echo to write “Jim’s avuncular style and material made us all feel like a hot mug of Ovaltine for some reason”. Nice.

A self-confessed disciple of new-marketing Guru Seth Godin, Jim tries to spread the word at every opportunity that we, the people, have the means of production at our fingertips. We no longer need a mill owner to employ us – we can make things on our own out of zeros and ones.

Jim also likes to sing Karaoke when away from home of course, and continues his search for Arne Saknussemm’s map to the centre of the earth, to prove his point that chocolate and gravity are, in effect, the same thing.
His presentations:
Give yourself permission to start. Be specific. Be good.
In what seems like an explosion of creative businesses recently, Jim helps creative businesses and freelancers clarify what they need to get customers to part with large amounts of money for what seems to most people like colouring in for a living.

He has a lot to say about handling clients, and when to take the idea off the table. The key is education – make sure you have a logical, robust process that solves problems and you’ll always be able to defend your creative decisions. In fact – he’d go one further than that, and encourage you to develop a cause. A crusade against the mediocre. Join him. If only because he looks a little silly in that ridiculous helmet all on his own…