Petford grew up in Hayes West London, before moving to the Hiltingbury district of Chandlers Ford where he went to The Mountbatten School, a comprehensive, near Southampton.

His maternal grandmother was Ashkenazi Jewish and her daughters, Nick's identical twin aunties, were long-standing variety and music hall performers.

Nick Petford left school at 16, training as a refrigeration engineer and then working in retail, before doing an Access Course in Science at Southwark College.

His contributions to the media on volcanoes include appearances on Sky News, BBC TV and Radio, the Richard and Judy show and National Geographic's "Top 10 Natural Disasters".

[13] In 1977, Nick Petford co-founded Strate Jacket, Southampton's first punk band, although he only featured in the first line up and left before they released their first single.

[17] This is a reference to a Students' Union event in 2014 hosted by Simon Brodkin as Lee Nelson, where he agreed to crowd surf and join in a speed drinking contest.

These have included criticising local journalists who had reported on financial irregularities at the former Northamptonshire County Council;[23] describing himself as a 'cavalier chancellor'; [24] and retweeting individual student viewpoints, that dismissed UCU's criticism of the speed drinking and crowd-surfing incident.

The podcast versions, including the final one with Glen Matlock, Bob Harris, Jah Wobble and Richards Coles, on Punk music, are available on Spotify.