Tim Bradford was born and brought up in Lincolnshire.
Tim played left-half in his school team's creaking 2-3-5 formation which was cruelly exposed by the ball-playing strikers of Faldingworth Juniors (think England v Hungary in 1953 except with tiny people and East Midlands accents). At the age of 10 he already knew he would never play football at professional level.
Since 1990 Tim has been creating satirical features and cartoons When Saturday Comes. He has also been a regular illustrator for The Guardian for many years. Tim has been involved in various web projects, especially One Touch Football and WSC and Dot Two. In the mid 90s he also did weekly sports cartoons for The Observer and wrote film reviews for NME.
Tim's first travel book Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?, was published by Flamingo in 2000. The follow up, The Groundwater Diaries– in which Tim walked the routes of London's buried rivers – came out in 2003. His latest book, a comic memoir about growing up in the East Midlands, called Small Town England (Ebury Press), comes out in April 2010.
Tim now moves with his family between North London and Co. Clare in Ireland, depending on weather patterns and how his trees are doing. His paintings are heavily influenced by the Doolin shoreline, Venezuelan rural art, Egyptian funerary portraits, Irish pubgoers and East Midlands skies. If pressed he would describe his work as pop folk art.