John-Paul Flintoff

Catch John-Paul Flintoff on Do Radio: Where To Next? with Mike Warwick 15th - 21st June 2026.

John-Paul Flintoff is a writer, artist, and journalist whose work moves fluidly between the page, the sketchbook, and the stage. Across a career that began at the Financial Times and the Sunday Times Magazine, he has written eight books, published in sixteen languages, weaving together story, visual art, and performance to help people find their voice and make their mark.

Trained in classical rhetoric and in theatrical improvisation under the legendary Keith Johnstone, John-Paul brings a rare combination of technical craft and emotional honesty to everything he does. Some of his most personal work has grown from his own experience of clinical depression, when he turned to drawing as a way of processing what words could not reach - work that became A Specky Man Has a Breakdown, an illustrated sketchbook as unflinching as it is tender.

At the heart of his work is a belief that creativity is not a luxury but a lifeline - a way of reconfiguring our inner world by acting on the outer one. He asks not simply how we recover from our hardest experiences, but what they might be trying to teach us, and how vulnerability can become a kind of strength.

In conversation with Mike, John-Paul reflects on mental health, identity, and the vulnerability and courage it takes to look at yourself clearly - exploring how art, humour, and human connection can turn even the darkest experiences into something generative and alive.