Mike Phillips was born in East London at a time when all the TV programmes were in black & white and you could get a pocket full of sweets for less than a penny!

He doodled all the time, copying pictures from his favourite comics. He doodled right through his school years, which probably explains why he’s so bad at math, and even when he left school at 16 years old and started work in the printing industry, he doodled.

Then, one day, he sent his doodles off to some doodle experts and they said “These aren’t doodles, they’re illustrations, you’re not a doodler, you’re an illustrator and we’ll give you cash to put them in our books!”

This sounded like really good idea, so Mike said “Yes, please!” and he’s been illustrating children’s book for the past 11 years from his home in North Devon, which he shares with his wife, Liz, his 3 children, Ben, Hannah and Olivia, 3 cats, a dog and lots of seagulls.