[1][2] After education at St John's School, Leatherhead, Surrey, he gained a degree in engineering and then went on to work for the Marconi Company and for the Courtaulds Group.
[2] In 1992 from a base in Macclesfield, Cheshire, Matthews founded Club Sirius, a dating agency for single professionals, which quickly became very profitable.
[2][3] Other ventures included aviation company Cav-Air of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and boatyard Seastream in Southampton, England.
[1] In 2001 Seastream purchased the former Irish naval patrol boat Deirdre for conversion to a large yacht, renaming her Tosca IV.
[1] Piloting an EC130 helicopter registered N450CM, Matthews died aged 54, along with his aide Jim Beauregard, when it crashed at Sauk Prairie after hitting power lines over Lake Wisconsin on 6 August 2004.