Welcome to Zero Degrees and my journey to meet the people I feel are the most interesting, influential or important in the world.

I have always had a desire to spend some time driving around the UK getting to know the real Great Britain. While I was mulling over the possibilities I suddenly realised that it was the home of Stephen Fry and I began to wonder if he would be willing to let me buy him a drink. He is a person I have long admired and even if he was only able to spare the time to shake my hand it would be one of those moments in life I would not forget.

That thought evolved into who else I would like to meet as I travelled, both in the UK and the rest of the world, and I began to wonder what would happen if I was to write to a number of people I either admire or am fascinated by and ask them for a few moments of their time. What’s the worst that could happen, they say no or don’t answer at all?

I sat down and started on my list, thinking of interesting people, and quickly came to realise that I was not only populating it with people I was a fan of but also people that have had an influence on me in some way or another. Not agreeing with them or their own philosophies did not make them any less interesting.

This site will serve to chronicle my journey. It contains my growing and changing list, my attempts to contact the people on it and, hopefully, the stories of what happened when I finally did meet them.

But, unfortunately, I noticed that virtually every name on my list was of a celebrity. It makes sense that I would only think of people that I know of and obviously I only know of them because of their fame or infamy but I was disappointed. As fascinating as the people on my list were I thought that there must be a hundred others out there for every one of those celebrities that was equally as fascinating and had their own amazing story to tell. If I was to travel the world and truly get a sense of each country and its people then I had to get outside the realm of celebrity.

To that end I am also hoping that visitors to this site will be able to suggest people that either they would like to meet or that they feel I should meet. The only criterion is that they (obviously) be alive so that I can write them a letter begging a few moments of their time. Just follow the links for both my list and the suggestion list.