Age:	66
Profession:	Learning and Development Consultant (retired)
Habitat:	Small village near Bristol, England.
Highest qualification:	MSc. in Advanced Learning Technology from Lancaster University.
Interests:	Music, Songwriting, Home recording, Home audio, Immersive audio, Popular culture, Film and cinema, Writing, Reading, Drawing, Illustration, Photography, Science, Computing, Forteana.
Sports:	Nope.
Sense of humour:	Very left field (i.e. frequently described as "weird"). The reason for this will soon become obvious.
Favourite writers:	William Gibson, Becky Chambers, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Martha Wells, Larry Niven, Ursula Le Guin, Jack Womack, Richard Kadrey, Charlie Stross, Adrian Tchaikovsky, James Gleick, and Ed Regis (to name just a few).
Favourite TV shows:	Star Trek (all of it), Murderbot, Twin Peaks, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Babylon 5, UFO, Cowboy Bebop, Monkey (both the original version and the New Adventures), Blackadder, Monty Python, The Young Ones, Pinky and the Brain, Futurama, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lovejoy, and Stargate SG-1.
Favourite films:	2001: A Space Odyssey, Buckaroo Banzai, Forbidden Planet, Blade Runner (both the Original and 2049), Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Danger: Diabolik, Inception, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Fifth Element, This Is Spinal Tap parts I and II, The Wild Robot, The Day The Earth Stood Still (but only the original Robert Wise version; we don't talk about the other one), Everything Everywhere All At Once, Wings of Desire, It Came From Outer Space, Big Trouble In Little China, The Dish, Ghost in the Shell, Ghostbusters, Tron, Flow, Dune (the Villeneuve trilogy, although I still have a fondness for David Lynch's movie), The Princess Bride, Apollo 13, and all of the work of Jacques Tati. Oh, and I'll happily watch any kaiju movie you can find for me, no matter how bad it is.
Other films I'll always end up watching if I stumble across them while channel surfing:	Diamonds Are Forever, Sneakers, My Neighbour Totoro, The Iron Giant, Communion, Starman, the Men In Black trology, the Bill and Ted trilogy, the Deadpool trilogy, The Matrix (just the first one, not the sequels), Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the Hunt for Red October, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Favourite Podcasts:	The Infinite Monkey Cage (RIP), The Life Scientific, The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, Book Shambles with Robin and Josie, The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Tea and Jeopardy, The Art of the Score, A Good Read.
Favourite beverage:	Coffee.
Would spend sudden fortune on:	A much larger house with even more solar power capacity, its own library, a better home cinema set-up, and a separate building with a heavily soundproofed recording studio with enough room for a whole band to play in, plenty of space for gear storage, and which would (of course) be fitted out with a proper 48-channel desk and a nice selection of kick-ass equipment.

As you may have realised (especially if you Google me) there are quite a few folks called Chris Harris about. So here are a few details to help you decide if you've found the person you were looking for.

No, I'm not the speedway rider and Top Gear presenter. I've never been a Texas State Senator. The guy with the domain name is a Canadian wildlife photographer. Furthermore, I would like to state for the record that I have never, at any time, had anything to do with Chris Moyles. I have never been a professional wrestler. Nor am I a New Zealand cricketer. I wasn't Bristol's famous pantomime dame, either. And given the fact that Spotify list most of my music under a completely different Chris Harris (and when I pointed this out to them, their response was that no, they hadn't made a mistake, and I didn't know what I was talking about) even the music of mine which you might have heard will be stuff that most people think was made by someone else—who is presumably earning streams and possibly even money from my work. I feckin' loathe Spotify. With a passion.

Nevertheless, these days I'm very much enjoying being a musician and a front-of-house sound engineer and I can normally be found beavering away in my own home recording studio...

This used to be a bedroom. It isn't any more.

...or in someone else's.

Chris with Portishead's Adrian Utley in The Big Room at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Box, 2025

Chris tracking bass in the control room at NAM Studios, Wiltshire in 2026

The Big Room's reputation speaks for itself. But look above my left hand in that photo of me at NAM. The framed picture on the wall commemorates the fact that K T Tunstall's breakthrough album Eye To The Telescope was recorded there.

I was born in 1960 in the town of Lytham St. Annes, in Lancashire. Being born on 11th August meant that I got a total solar eclipse for my birthday way back in 1999, which was a once-in-a-lifetime experience in all senses of the word.

I led a depressingly rootless childhood. My family moved about a lot as my father pursued his career and it was unusual for us to stay in one house for more than three years. From Lytham we moved to Yarnfield, in Staffordshire and then to the village of Stone. In 1968 we moved to Stafford, where I went to Burton Manor County Primary school and then King Edward VI Grammar school (now the High School). One of my English teachers there was Craig Thomas, who decided to give up teaching shortly afterwards; I couldn't possibly comment on whether his experience teaching us was a deciding factor in that. In the middle of my "A" levels the family was uprooted once again and we moved to West Wickham, a suburb of London. I finished secondary school at John Newnham High School in Croydon, where one of my classmates was Kirsty MacColl.

I was miserable there. I'd lost all of my childhood friends. I didn't fit in, I felt utterly out of place, and I was extremely lonely. Somehow I still managed to do well enough academically to get a place at the university I'd chosen, to take physics at Imperial College (which is Brian May's alma mater, kids). But my parents were unwilling to pay for me to move into student digs, so I had to spend three or four hours every day commuting from home to South Kensington and as a result, my scholastic efforts crashed and burned. I dropped out of university and instead as the 1980s got under way I found myself working for Post Office Telecommunications in London. By the time the company had become British Telecom, I'd moved to Milton Keynes, where I worked in their training division. For a while I had an office in the Mansion at Bletchley Park, which had recently become famous when its role in breaking German military codes during the war finally became public knowledge thanks to Reg Jones's bestselling book Most Secret War. The Mansion is the best place I've ever worked; I really enjoyed my time there. I was working with some great people, and I ended up falling head over heels in love with one of them.

Chris and Heather in front of The Louvre, Paris 1991

Heather and I got married a couple of years later but sadly, life in the 90's wasn't as good and a few years after that she walked out. I was utterly devastated, and my life went into free-fall. I was traumatised just as thoroughly as I had been by my childhood illness and abuse. So much so, in fact, that at the end of 1994 I came very close to killing myself. Something stopped me; I don't know what it was.

The following year I got a job working in the South West of England at Filton, where I helped lead a team developing Computer Based Training (CBT) for the Royal Air Force. I got to play with all sorts of big boys' toys including top-line flight simulators (and as you can see here, occasionally, the real thing) and I had a whale of a time. People were paying me to do stuff like this?

Chris in a C-130J

I cut all ties with Milton Keynes, sold my house there, bought a much nicer one in Gloucestershire, and began the slow process of rebuilding my life. Recovery wouldn't begin to happen for several more decades, but at least I'd found myself a safe haven. Apart from a brief stint living and working in Tampa, Florida (it's been a hard life but let's face it, you're not going to turn down the opportunity to see not one, but two launches of the Space Shuttle, are you?) I've lived here ever since. The new job meant that the amount of travelling I did skyrocketed. Half my life was spent living in hotels. At one point I was flying across the Atlantic between London Gatwick and Atlanta Hartsfield once every fortnight (which rapidly earned me a platinum Delta card) and I also travelled regularly to Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands but the most important thing that I learned from doing so was how much I appreciated coming back to the peace and quiet of a place of my own. I should have moved here years before I actually did. It feels like home in a way that nowhere else I've lived ever has and it won't be long before I will have lived here for half my life.

Moving here resulted in a significant levelling-up of my professional abilities that included going back to university and to my surprise and delight, this time I absolutely loved the experience. I specialised in educational psychology, training design, and CBT and I finally learned about the theoretical grounding behind the work I'd been specialising in for the past twenty years. It was a revelation, and I took to academia like a duck to water; if I hadn't been so burned out from autism, I would have followed up the masters with a doctorate; my supervisor had pretty much begged me to do so, but at the time I decided that I didn't have enough left in my tank to do the work and I'm still positive that I made the right decision. Once I'd acquired letters after my name, I found myself developing a successful career as a training consultant and learning and development specialist. I started being asked to give talks at conferences and I really didn't see that one coming. Since those days in Filton I've worked in the public sector, the private sector, and I even spent some time doing postgraduate teaching in academia, which was great fun. And believe me, being addressed as "Professor" will do wonders for your self-confidence.

Eventually I started another relationship, with Rebecca. Although we're not together any more, we're still good friends. We went through a lot together and through her I discovered aspects of myself that I didn't know existed, including learning how to be a father to her twins; Rob and Ruth are two of the most amazing people I've ever known and I couldn't be prouder of them if they were my own kids.

Rob, Chris, Becs and Ruth: July 7th 2007

Somehow during all of this I'd managed to make a few sensible decisions which meant that I'd paid off my mortgage just after I turned fifty and by the time I was sixty I could afford to retire, so I did. These days I'm comfortably off and I don't miss working at all. So now I live in a very nice house covered in solar panels in a village set in picturesque countryside on the southern edge of the Cotswolds, a little bit north of Bristol and I spend my time in my own studio, making music.

I've always known I that I'm not even remotely neurotypical but it wasn't until 2025 that I realised just how different I was. I've moved my account of my neurodivergent journey to its own dedicated page, because it was in danger of taking over this one.

Here, I'll just say that I was recently diagnosed with complex PTSD. I have also now finally realised that I'm Autistic; I also have ADHD. Each of those conditions on their own would make anyone's life a challenge, but coping with the way all three interact together has been a real struggle—all the more so because for most of my life I had absolutely no idea about what was wrong with me. But after sixty-six years, several courses of therapy, and the help of some very dear and understanding friends I have finally started to figure out who the authentic me really is. I can't say I'm very optimistic about my future, but at least I now have a workable set of tools to deal with it.

If I was to try and sum myself up in a single word, I'd like to think that the word would be "creative."

I've immersed myself in many hobbies over the years, and they have all been connected with the arts in one way or another. I think this is because I have always needed to be involved in things that made life better for me and for other people in some way. I'm sure that my c-PTSD has been just as instrumental in driving me in that direction as being Autistic has, because even when I was a small child, if I discovered that doing something could filter out all the overwhelming stimuli and regulate my overloaded mind so that I could escape what was happening to me, I'd prioritise doing that above everything else to a degree that often flirted with compulsion. Interests became obsessions, and I wanted to be as good as I possibly could be at all of them.

My first obsession was drawing. I used to draw a lot—cartoons, portraits, landscapes—and as I got older, a little graphic design. Not only has this helped me cope with the trauma I went through, it also eventually became something that I was very good at. And by that, I mean I was good enough to end up doing some work for a few bands, including the rock group Motörhead. For some reason people don't believe this and when the writers for the BT staff magazine in Milton Keynes found out and wrote about me, their article concluded with the line "and he looks so normal..." but it's all true (and I've just realised that a comment like that suggests that my ability to "mask" my Autism so that I could fit in to normal society—a behaviour that I've written about elsewhere—must have been a lot better than I've been giving myself credit for).

It turns out that for an Autistic person, obsessions come and go. They will often fade away to nothing—sometimes over years, sometimes in the space of just a few hours. As I got older, my preferred means of distraction and escape switched from drawing to video games, then sex, and to drinking, and increasingly to music. But these days, my drawing board is set up in the conservatory and I've started sketching again. If you're interested in seeing what I do, I've put together a graphics page about some of the stuff I've produced over the years.

My greatest obsession will always be music. Nothing else comes close. I enjoy listening to all styles, from classical to heavy rock, from pop to electronica. I'm not sure "enjoy" is sufficiently hyperbolic to describe the effect that music has on me. In her book A Different Sort Of Normal Abigail Balfe describes music's capacity to light her nervous system up "like a Christmas tree" and that phrase describes its effects perfectly.

Indeed, having music around me when I'm on the go has been extremely important to me for more than forty years: I bought my very first Sony Walkman in 1984 (I still have it, and it still works!) and wearing headphones in public was a revelation. The Walkman let me choose the soundtrack of daily life. More importantly, I now understand that the way the music drowned out the noises around me meant my stress levels, which I was experiencing thanks to sensory overload, plummeted. I was treating my autism without realising I was Autistic. These days I have a grand collection of music players for a wide range of physical media as well as a ridiculous collection of wired headphones. My current mp3 player has a quarter of a terabyte of albums stored on its microSD card and if I could find one that had even more storage available, I'd buy it without a moment's hesitation. As I type this, I've got a CD playing on the big system in the living room (it's Antipop by Primus, since you asked).

You're probably thinking from what I wrote above that what I listen to music with is a significant part of the audio experience for me, and you'd be absolutely correct.

When I listen to a piece of music I become totally absorbed in it. I absolutely love the immersive audio experience and I have a full 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos setup in my living room, which will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody who knows me. When I met Dr Andrew Scheps at Real World in 2026 he said, "Stereo is cool; immersive audio is life-changing" and I completely agree with him. Andrew is currently investigating the use of immersive audio in treating PTSD, and from my own experiences in that regard I strongly believe that he's on to something very significant.

Chris with Dr Andrew Scheps in the Big Room at Real World Studios 2026

My fascination with home audio technology has been inextricably linked with my love of films as much as it has with that of vinyl and CDs. Perhaps more so; these days I'm completely obsessed with the movies. My first trip to the cinema when I was little was a terrifying experience, but by the time I was eight I'd grown to love everything about the silver screen and as an adult that love has become an all-consuming passion. My first date with Heather was a trip to the local cinema. If you need me to provide any evidence that I'm Autistic, all I need do is to show you my living room and the shelves of DVDs and Blu-Ray discs in there. Some friends of mine once suggested that I must have had the Internet Movie Database surgically implanted in my brain, because my Autistic mind soaks up film trivia and end credits information like a sponge and getting to see my own name appear in the credits for a film was one of the high points of my life. My Autism also meant that, long before the pandemic struck, I preferred to watch films from the comfort of my sofa rather than sitting with other people in a noisy, overwhelming movie theatre. My home setup has been expanded and upgraded over the years to provide the best big-screen experience that I can afford. You can find out more—so much more—about all that on my films page.

I write, play, and produce my own music, too. I've done so since the 70s, when all I had to work with was an acoustic guitar, a cassette recorder, and some pots and pans from the kitchen that could be used as a makeshift drum kit. As you can see from the photo at the top of this page, these days my approach to home recording is rather more sophisticated; I play lots of different musical instruments and—inevitably—computers are involved in the creative process as well. I've become good enough at the recording, mixing, and mastering process that people have started asking me to work on their music, too—and paying for me to do so. I really didn't see that coming. Me, a professional session bass player? Apparently so...

Playing bass in the Wood Room at Real World with Peter Gabriel's bandmates Rob Brian on drums and David Rhodes on guitar.
(Photo by Alan Pinder)

For the last fifteen years or so I've been a regular participant in the dual songwriting challenges of February Album Writing Month (where the target is to write 14 songs in 28 days), and its sister site 50/90 (where the target was to write 50 songs in the 90 days between July 4th and October 1st—unfortunately that challenge no longer takes place for a variety of reasons that we don't need to go into here).

I think it's safe to say that I have become more than a little bit obsessed (there's that word again) with taking part in FAWM. Doing so hasn't just had a huge effect on my skills as a songwriter and also as a musician, audio engineer, and producer. It has also helped me boost my musical output to around 100 new tracks each year and it's even helped me to develop a singing voice that I'm comfortable with inflicting on other people, something which I would have dismissed as being utterly ridiculous before FAWM. The idea of performing on camera would have seemed equally far-fetched but during the pandemic I would live stream from my bedroom studio on my Twitch channel once or twice a week. Having said that, the lack of any visible financial return after putting in hundreds and hundreds of man-hours of work made no economic sense whatsoever, so now I don't do that any more.

With taking part in FAWM and Fifty/Ninety I've become confident enough in my own abilities to have started offering my music to the general public, and much to my surprise, it's proved rather popular. If you fancy listening to what I do, the best place to start is my Bandcamp page. There, you can also get a copy of the eBook I wrote about getting very carried away in 2022 when I ended up writing not just fifty songs for Fifty/Ninety but 117 of them. The book (and the album of some of those songs that comes with it) is called A Grand Adventure.

The music I create has been shaped and moulded by the music that I've listened to for pretty much my whole life. On my Page o'musicians you can find out about the artists I love.

Photography has been a big part of my life for sixty years. You'll find lots of stuff about that elsewhere.

Then there's reading: As I said earlier, I could read before I started school. Books have always been my most reliable means of switching off the outside world and pausing all the ruminating thoughts and destructive thinking. I love books with a passion. I'm a committed bibliomaniac and if you read Robin's book you'll find me in there when he visits the Cotswold Book Room. Look up the definition of the Japanese word tsundoku and the associated illustrations will look very much like my house. In normal circumstances, I can't go into a bookshop without buying a book, and my house is full of stacks of paperbacks and hardbacks. Even buying a Kindle a few years ago has done little to stop the growth of piles of physical books on all available flat surfaces in the house (apart from the ones already occupied by stacks of CDs, that is). Every year I buy a tremendous amount of books and I usually spend at least an hour a day reading through them. So many books, so little time...

On my books page I used to go on and on about my reading habit, then I switched to using Goodreads, but when it became clear just how vile and toxic Amazon is as an organization, I deleted my Goodreads account and all the reviews I'd written there, switched to buying books from the Cotswold Book Room, my local charity shops, from Hive, and from World Of Books and started writing reviews for my own website instead. You can find out what I thought about all the books which I read in 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 in the links.

I also enjoy birdwatching (identifying, classifying, and recording things? That's like catnip for Autistic people!) It's handy living where I do, because the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust headquarters and reserve at Slimbridge is a few minutes' drive from here. I joined the WWT in 1997, and I've been in the RSPB for nearly 50 years. My parents lived in north Norfolk, which is also prime birdwatching country. When I would go and stay with them, I would try whenever I could to go walking on the beach at Cley or Salthouse. There, you can see all sorts of birds—even the occasional Flamingo! After living inland for so long, I'm still terrible at identifying waders and the like, but I'm getting better. My mum was a great birdwatcher; she was the sort of person who could say, "what's wrong with that blackbird on the drive?" and when you looked, it would turn out not to be a blackbird at all, but a perfectly healthy ring ouzel.

Finally, as if you hadn't already realised, I spend more time than is good for me in front of my computer. It's a trait I share with a lot of other Autistic people. I first put together this website back in 1996 and maintaining the blog here has been a part of my routine since 2003. First and foremost, I use it as a diary, but it's also proved to be a useful repository for the piles of trivia and other Internet rubbish I accumulate every day (even if many of the links on earlier pages no longer lead anywhere). It's all archived here for you to browse through, should you wish to do so.

The discipline of coming up with something every week or so for more than two decades also led me to discover that I really enjoy writing as a pastime in its own right. I think I've become quite good at it. I've even written a few novels (as part of the sadly now defunct National Novel Writing Month event, commonly referred to as Nanowrimo) and usually I have a bunch of short stories in various stages of development. You never know; one day I might even start trying to get some of them published. If I do, you'll hear about it on the blog.

Chris