There are lots of odd things I can’t stop myself from doing, like fiddling with the soft wax you find at the top of a burning candle, walking in time with music on my headphones, trying to mimic the way my youngest son chews his bottom lip whenever he draws, and trying to guess the exact moment the cinema lights are about to dim. But high on my list of things I can’t stop doing you will find dreaming up monsters. Whether it is creating my own or enjoying other people’s creations, monsters have occupied my imagination for a great deal of my life. Come to think of it, they’ve probably occupied too much of my life, but there’s not much I can do about that now.
It all started in 1979 when I was seven years old and I saw my first real monster. I must have seen lots of cartoon monsters and aliens on the TV by then, but up until this point in my life they had never got inside my head like a real monster should. But one night I was watching the BBC show Top of the Pops with my parents and the music video for “Another Brick in the Wall” by the legendary rock band Pink Floyd came on the screen, and everything changed…