1. What are the contents of your pockets right now?

Wallet, car keys, two conkers.

2. Have you ever had a nickname?

Yes. 

3. When did you first realise you were an archaeologist?

I kind of fell into it, and have been stuck with it ever since.

4. What's your earliest memory?

A pair of red shoes. They had buckles.

5. If you could pursue another career, what would it be?

Actor, writer, journalist, gravedigger.

6. If you could be world dictator for a day, what would be your first edict?

“See all these CCTV camera’s? Get smashing”

7. What has been your most interesting discovery?

That there’s a lot to discover. Life is constantly surprising.

8. What wouldn't you do for money?

Ticket inspector/car parking attendant/work for the police/work for the army/work in an abattoir.

9. What do you wish you'd paid more attention to in school?

A more useful careers guidance would have been good. Other than that, I try not to look backwards too much. It’s very hard. Regrets, I’ve had a few.

10. Archaeology... what's the point?

Daft question. You may as well ask “what’s the point of intellectual curiosity?”

11. What frustrates you the most about archaeology?

Academically, it can get lazy. “Some kind of skull cult” is a phrase I’ve read many times, and it still makes me laugh. It's such a wide ranging subject with disparate writers and thinkers. Some good, some bad. Commercially, I can only quote Jean Paul Satre “Hell is other people”.

12. What is the best thing about your job?

It's always changing, I work out doors, I’m not stuck in an office with the same people for all eternity, you’re excavating things that haven’t been seen or touched since they found their way into the ground; you’re excavating past, often dead civilisations and trying to work out what made them tick, the reasons they did what they did, trying to figure out how their material objects reflected their view of the world. How cool is that?

13. What would be your advice to prospective archaeologists?

For god’s sake, don’t do it. Not unless you’re from a very rich family and can retrain, because you’ll be paid peanuts and get treated like an idiot by halfwits.

14. If you could go back in time, what period would you visit?

Phew, big question. Probably pop in on the people at Avebury and Stonehenge, see what their actual use was for. Pop over to Catal Huyuk, same reasons. Then I’d travel forwards and give Wellington a good kick in the bottom. A great man, but a bit of an arse.

15. What is your ideal holiday?

Anything with good friends. Doesn’t have to be abroad. Good company is all that matters.

16. What movie, television, or literary character do you most identify with?

Avon from Blake’s 7.

17. What part of your archaeological tool kit could you not live without?

Uzi 9mm.

18. If you were an animal what would you be?

A wolf, maybe an owl. Something like that.

19. If you were in a band what would it be called?

The Sue Ryder Suicides.

20. What question should we have asked you?

“Would you mind if I gave you £1,000,000?”

Julian Thorley, a long-time commercial archaeologist who works all over Britain.