Bernie Friend is an award winning sports journalist and one of the UK's funniest new travel writers. His first book, Cycling Back to Happiness, is released on April 28, 2008, by Pen Press.

Born in 1971, Bernie was raised as a guilt ridden Catholic, before finding an escape route through the pews to spend days smoking crafty cigs and fishing on Southend Pier, before elevating himself even higher by taking his place on the sacred North Bank at Roots Hall, home of the mighty Southend United.

Never encouraged to make a living out of writing by clueless school careers advisors, he took his first job as a 17-year-old, opposite the Queen's back garden in Hyde Park, working for an insurance company. Bored out of his brains, he took 29 days off sick in seven months - and he did well to give them that much loyal service.

After starting and dropping out of a media course at Southend College, Bernie's creative juices were finally allowed to flourish after joining forces with future toy shop owner Paul Wohl. The duo started up a free monthly music fanzine - The Scene - with a print run of 10,000 copies, which were dumped around colleges, shops and live venues across Essex and London, via the boot of Paul's clapped out motor.

Interviews with indie heroes of the day, Ride, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine and Mudhoney, caught they eye and gave Bernie his first foot on the slippery media ladder. Helping Carter USM run their fan club (stuffing envelopes) and working part time for the band's Ladbroke Grove press officers, Bad Moon Publicity, Bernie soon left behind his rock 'n' roll lifestyle for the calmer waters of the Yellow Advertiser newspaper, tapping out news and sports stories into an eye stinging blinking computer for the best read budgies and rabbits in Essex, who would sleep soundly, warm and safe on a snug bed of his reports.

Five years later, via a bizarre interview with Prince Charles at a Canvey Island youth club, he transferred to the Southend Evening Echo, where, like the proverbial bad penny, he has rolled backwards and forwards, with stints at Sky Sports and the Sun filling the sandwich.

At the Echo, he has been a news, features and sports writer, winning awards and respect for his honest assessment of Southend United's struggles in the Football League basement, which earned him the nickname 'that prick with the long hair who knows nothing about football' among the players.

The overpaid donkeys were obviously smarting from too many ratings of five out of 10 and being told they were more at sea then Southend Pier in the match report following another trashing at Hartlepool. But he did inspire one player (who is still playing today) to dress up as Bernie at the players' Christmas party - he went as a tramp.

At Sky Sports, Bernie helped launch a successful football website, in-between dribbling over Kirsty Gallacher at the canteen coffee machine, and has written football reports for all the national newspapers. Nowadays, he can be found at home in Leigh on Sea with his beautiful bride Katie, daydreaming about more obscure travelling adventures, while working as a newspaper sub-editor.

Bernie's claims to fame are a 100 per cent goalscoring record on the hallowed Roots Hall turf - two goals in two games. He has also clocked up around 600 football matches, ranging from the murky depths of Division Seven in the Southend Sunday League, right up to the giddy heights of Essex Intermediate reserve team football.

He has an unhealthy Doctor Who obsession (of more than 400 books, a Cyberman voice changing helmet, which is the ultimate bank robbery accessory, and numerous models, which have never left their prestine boxes) and enjoys pulling funny faces at himself in the bathroom mirror.

Other jobs have included digging holes, pulling pints, spinning records, delivering letters, selling market stall hats, number crunching and getting sacked for illegally swearing and smoking at his desk, all in the same breath, before becoming a journalist and writing his first book 15 years later.

His only remaining ambitions in life are to sit on Richard and Judy’s couch and spend an evening playing drunken Trivial Pursuit with his hero and life's inspiration Tom Baker.