It's always been there. Thunderbirds has always been an element in my life ever since that most important point of growing up, just as I hit secondary or 'High' school. Aged 10, and with vague memories of a puppet show shown in black and white (which was Stingray) being on the telly when I was five years younger, I sat down to have my tea on a normal Friday evening. On my Dad’s recommendation, my brother and I put on BBC2 instead of Blossom on Channel 4.

I’d love to say the rest is history. But it took a few weeks and a lot of stealing my younger brother’s comics to really get into it. By then I’d learned all the names of the boys who flew the fabulous Thunderbird machines, and I devoured every piece of information on them I could find. The early part of the 1990s was extremely good for any Thunderbirds fan, with reprints of retina-scorching Frank Bellamy comics, how to make your own Tracy Island all over Blue Peter, and books and toys cluttering the high street shops. Although not a good time to be a poor Thunderbirds addict, it felt as though everyone was on the same level, and it was even thrilling to hear the ‘FAB featuring MC Parker’ remix of the theme that emerged at that time! Believe me, that remix is the funniest set of samples you will ever hear. I tracked it down in a local record store, on vinyl five years ago. It was worth all the pennies they were asking for it!

Perhaps it was the very fact that the bubble burst and suddenly nobody else was mentioning Thunderbirds anywhere anymore that really kept me hooked. The comics continued to feed my habit until 1995, when I technically started to 'grow out of it'. It was by no means gone, but it was soon time to look at the bigger picture, while keeping my obsession an apparently embarrassing secret. (Looking back, I know now that everything is extremely embarrassing until you hit, oh, 23...!) One thing it did inspire me to do was to write better and more interesting Thunderbirds stories. I kept the actual reason why I was jotting down notes from the Holiday programmes and new technology programme Tomorrow's World a mostly secret secret. It was a private project, to keep the situations interesting for the Tracys. Even though they were no longer on the TV (for what felt like forever) writing provided a link to them. Thanks to this, Thunderbirds never really went away, even though I (mostly) grew up and things changed around me.

You can only imagine my surprise when I went online, and slowly but surely, found fans of a similar obsessiveness to my own. There were huge fans of other shows, like the X-files, and Star Trek, out there. Discovering that other people actually did what I had always been doing, writing about characters they loved and shows that had ended far too soon, came as something of a relief! The first story I ever posted online was 'Underwater Empress' in 2001, and it's being reposted here as a slightly re-edited version, which will be open to more changes as the sequels take shape. I had lots of fun writing it, and I hope you all enjoy reading it just as much. I am looking forward to the day when the mythology I've had in my head for a very long time takes shape on paper, and becomes the cohesive, exciting arc I've always hoped it would be. I haven’t written up nearly a fifth of what I intend to get to - even if other people have covered similar ground!

I've always suspected we all have the same stories for our heroes going round and round in our heads. I guess it's all in the delivery. So there has been a long while of reading and trying out different ideas to get started right here, right now.

It has taken a few more years to get to this point. Real life has a habit of interfering, sometimes in a good way, other times I've needed the boys to visit and touch base, to remind me what they can show me. And thanks to the show I've met lots of new people with similar interests, and often very different ideas. International Rescue is always there, and I wouldn't be without them.

To quote our favourite aquanaut: Here I go again!

Real life allowing, that is...

Thank you, and FAB.