JOURNALISM

Participatory Journalism: On top of his participatory books Stafford has also performed stand up comedy at the Edinburgh festival, appeared as a circus clown and fire eater at Gerry Cottle’s Circus, worked as Gordon Ramsay’s sous chef, appeared as a disc jockey on Virgin (now Absolute) Radio, performed as a Shaolin Monk at the Liverpool Empire, ran with the Olympic Torch in Greece for the Athens 2004 Games, faced a one on one tackling session with Jonah Lomu, ran 12 times with the Bulls in Pamplona, completed the formidable Cresta Run and finished 11th at the World Air Guitar Championships in Finland. All these adventures appeared as features in Esquire, The Mail on Sunday, Sky and other publications.

Ian wrote sports interviews, features and live reports for The Mail on Sunday from 1998 to 2014 and also from 1988 to 1992. In this time he covered 7 Olympic Games, 4 Rugby World Cups, two football world cups, 5 Commonwealth Games, world and European championships in all Olympic sports, test matches, world boxing title bouts, tennis and golf majors. He has also written for The Times, The Independent (“The Monday Interview”), The Scotsman (“The Friday Interview”), Daily Express, Sunday Express and Today.

He also wrote the “Player” column in Esquire magazine and contributed to Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, FHM, Live (Mail on Sunday supplement), High Life (British Airways), Sky (Delta Airlines) and Scanorama (SAS).

In this time he was voted Sports Reporter of the Year, Sports Magazine Writer of the Year, twice Highly Commended as Sports Magazine Writer and twice Highly Commended as Interviewer of the Year at the Sports Journalism annual awards, as well as Highly Commended at the British Press Awards.

He still writes extensively for various international publications.

“A VERY FUNNY BOOK”

Brisbane Courier and News