Michael Thexton

And he was doing, you know, he had been doing dangerous things for years.

And they sort of got used to it and accepted that that was what he did.

You know, it was the thing that made him who he was.

And they couldn't sort of ask him not to do it.

But it was obviously...

shattering for them and you know it was shattering for for all of us my older sister who was closer in age to me she was just sort of two and a half years younger than him so so the two of them had been a pair for quite a while before I turned up she told me not long ago actually that she lied to herself she couldn't bear to admit that he was gone you know she would

You know, I spent a year, I guess, working in the training department of the firm that I was in because I was good at exams.

So the idea was I would help the next lot.

pass their exams.

And then I was supposed to go on and be the rising star of the firm.

And during that year, I just realised that what happened next in an accountancy firm just did not appeal to me at all.

And I thought I will do something more interesting with my life.

I mean, I might have thought that anyway.

It became less acceptable to just follow this

this path that was laid out for me because Pete wasn't there anymore.

And I mean, you know, the sad thing is I obviously wasn't going to become a mountaineer.

That was impossible because I don't have the head and heights.

What I decided to do, rather sadly, was become a best-selling novelist.

I read a book by Geoffrey Archer and thought, well, that looks pretty easy.

And so I wrote a book and a friend of mine read it and he said, well, I don't think you should leave your day job.