Evil Surfer

“My hair is as light and fluffy as a kitten’s coat,” he wrote, no doubt causing some of the newspaper’s older readers to choke on their Bran Flakes. “One day I shall be hailed as a lonely prophet of the nonsense of shampoo.” A week later, the BBC’s Andrew Marr announced that he was following suit Soon, newspapers’ diary columnists were weighing in. Let’s get the hair out of the way first. A month ago, The Times and Spectator columnist Matthew Parris caused something of a stink by coming out as a shampoo refusenik. For 10 years, he declared, he had been washing his hair with nothing but warm water and finally he was ready to report back on the results. Guys like Tarik, who usually never get recognised but would stand by you to the death I get to come home from war zones People like Tarik have to live in them.. Private Eye.Name the one career ambition you want to realise before you retireTo keep on going round the world, to get better photographs and to keep coming back alive.If you didn’t work in the media what would you do? Aid worker, landmine clearance or mercenary.Who in the media do you most admire and why? Photographers Tom Stoddart and Les Wilson, who are great at their job but remain down to earth.

In 1997 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to everyone in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines I was just one of thousands of people involved in the ICBL. My dad was I hospital being treated for cancer at the time but when I showed him the story in the newspapers the look on his face was something I will always treasure.And what’s your most embarrassing moment?I was in Cambodia on the back of a motorbike with fellow photographer Tim Page driving I had dysentery. Let’s not go there.At home, what do you tune in to?I like good documentaries, anything with David Attenborough, Have I Got News for You, South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons.What is your Sunday paper? And do you have a favourite magazine? All of them. He has been locked up without charge for a year and a half by the Asayesh Kurdish security service. Tarik’s only crime is being a Turkoman, a group which the Asayesh is trying to force out from Kirkuk.And the worst? Sometimes you can’t. If you are faced with a thousand kids like Awlia at the same time, all you can do is take the pictures and hope they will help to get attention.How do you feel you influence the media? I’m not sure that I do.What’s the proudest achievement in your working life? I have been covering the landmine issue since 1992 and still do. Before Diana got involved it was almost impossible to get any newspapers to take notice.

I recognised the symptoms and knew the child was dying from dehydration and diarrhoea. Fifty dollars, some rehydration medicine and three days later he was a different kid. I’m trying to get an Iraqi friend, Tarik Ramadan, released from prison in Iraq. I photographed him and a picture was used full page in the Express. I came across Awlia, a one-year-old Afghan boy, in a refugee camp in Pakistan who was in a bad way.