MEET JR

Raised on a ranch in Colorado, JR won a Fulbright Scholarship to Latin America after university and gained firsthand experience of carnival, cholera and military coups. Between blackouts and water shortages, he also freelanced for the New York Times.

He later worked on Fleet Street and Wall Street, with stints in Peru, Mexico and Brazil before settling in Britain. Now 34, he has lived in the UK for most of the past decade.

His first book is "True Brits: A tour of twenty-first century Britain in all its shin-kicking, bog-snorkelling and cheese-rolling glory".

Elsewhere, his writing on subjects ranging from male escorts and estuary English to the controversial World Economic Forum has been published on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Times to the International Herald Tribune.

His humiliating shin-kicking debut was broadcast to the world by CNN.