About the Author

Hi there! 'Tis I, the not-so-great Paul "Paul.Power" Varley, and one of the few people in the world who apparantly does not posess a dark and shadowy past (mind you, if it's dark, how can it be shadowy?). I'm sorry, I seem to be rambling.

Um, yes, anyway. I was born in London in April 1985 (you can work out the age for yourself), but I didn't live there long, moving to Manchester when I was eight months old. My mum's from Manchester and my dad's from Leeds: these factors, together with an inordinate fascination with the Yorkshire Tykes soundbank, combined to give me my broad Generic North of England accent. I moved to Swansea when I was four, and I've lived there ever since (not counting university time at Cambridge, where I'm studying Maths).

I first became interested in Worms back in... ooh... I'm not certain exactly, though as my first Worms game was Worms 2, and Armageddon hadn't been released at the time, you can pin it down approximately to between the release of those two games. I didn't think I'd like it at first (I've never been especially partial to violent games) but the whole cartoony atmosphere and essential charm of Worms 2 quickly won me over. My computer couldn't handle WA when it came out, so alas I had to skip that, but by the time WWP was released, I had a new machine and I was back in the Worming saddle.

I appeared on the Team 17 Forum in a cloud of postaholic randomness back in 2001 (Although I played offline Worms for some time, I was a late arrival to the online community). Since then, fuelled by the twin burning ambitions of causing as much entertaining yet completely off-topic banter as possible and getting that little number below my name as high as possible, I have become a big regular on those Forums.

Art was always my worst subject at school. Well, Art and Games joint, but in the end I actually grew to find Games reasonably acceptable. I took the first chance I could to drop Art (Back in year 9). My only artistic skill was a passion for taking scale measurements of everything so I could work out how to draw things (I'm a mathematician. Go figure). Oh yes, and I could draw a mean wicker basket. I also always liked drawing cartoons: they were poorly drawn, but I created various random characters in my youth. Spike the Spider was a particular favourite. I'm digressing, though.

Yes, cartoons. I started to see a rather large proliferation of cartoons on the Team 17 Forums, and decided to grab a slice of the action. I began to create my own style by the traditional method of taking the style of someone I liked (MonkeyForAHead was the particular "donor" in this case) and altering it a bit. And thus, the road was set for the original Boot Camp drawings. From this point on, you can read The History of Boot Camp if you wish to know more on that subject.

Anyway, what can I finish with? Well, my hobbies include reading, playing computer games (The Worms, SimCity and Sonic series come near the top of the list), surfing the 'Net, being a railway enthusiast (not trainspotter. There is a difference), maths, science, and watching and occasionally playing sport (Cricket's a particular favourite). I dislike... um... Maggie Thatcher, overly pretentious people, anime/manga (you may have noticed that my style's about as far from said styles as you can possibly get), uh... big dogs? Smokers? Fundamentalists? Formula One? TBH, it takes quite a bit to rile me. You're probably getting rather bored now, so I'll stop here.

If you wish to send me an e-mail, then here's a hint: prv21_at_cam_dot_ac_dot_uk. I'm sure you can work out what to do.