His role began to be shown with his collaboration with John Cooper Clarke, playing keyboards and co-producing his discs alongside producer Martin Hannett.

Both formed The Invisible Girls in Salford to be the Cooper Clarke's backing band in the rest of the years.

However, the band also helped to relaunch the careers of former Penetration singer Pauline Murray, with whom they released one album and two singles between 1980 and 1981, and of Nico, of Velvet Underground fame.

This was followed by postdoctoral positions at Oxford and Sussex, as well as a teaching fellow post at the Manchester Photon Science Institute.

In 2010 he joined the Atomic and Molecular Physics group at Durham University where he worked as a postdoctoral researcher until 2016.