Andrew Oldham was born in 1975 in Bolton. His early years comprised of go carts with a school eraser for a brake, a sister that tied him to lampposts and a dog whose urine rotted lead pipes. It came as no surprise when at the age of 7 he was asked to write a story for an exam and preceded to travel to Mars. It was taken under advisement that he should have the creativity drummed out of him, instead his Mum made him grilled cheese on an enamel plate and the dog pissed on his tonka trucks. He knew at that point he would never grow up to be a tonka truck driver, especially after the release of Digby.

Described by the poet, Ian Parks as, "An emergent writer of originality and skill". He first performed on the poetry scene in the 90s at the Magazine and Charlotte in Leicester to packed out audiences, where he combined comedy poetry with his love of useful useless tales. He went on to be a regular on the Liverpool performance scene, and was the first resident poetry compere at the Hub Cafe as Shorten Moriarty & Irwell Holmes ("A poet and an astronaut" - Poets Get paid) who competed badly in poetry boxing matches. During this same period he toured and performed with Bongo Sherbert & The Electrified Yeti Wobblers (voted the second worst band name in the mid-90s by Making Music and known for their rendition of the Wok Song). He went on to play with HB Pencils and the Pritt Stick Addicts and the triad dance group, PsychoBilly (with underground hits, such as, Screaming at the Sun, All Loose and Floppy and The Weekenders). He spents 5 lost years working behind the scenes during the nineties rave scene, with his involvement in several dance events in the Midlands, including Pandora's Box. Andrew also was a roadie for several acts during the same period, such as, Blur, Manic Street Preachers, Pulp, Ozric Tentacles and The Prodigy.

In the late 90s he emerged as Andrew Oldham and was amongst the first writers to utilise the web for fiction, and penned Neuter. In 2002, he designed, co-managed and took part in the biggest international writing project to that date, Quickshift (28 writers, 8 different countries) and delivered a paper on the project at Nottingham Trent University Conference, Incubation 2, QUICK-SHIFT - a community-designed collaborative writing project.

He has worked for BBC GMR & BBC North, a freelance journalist and he has worked in an abbatoir. They are similar jobs. Andrew now writes fiction and non-fiction, he edits and is an active voice in the world of Literature, Film & Arts and has acted as a script supervisor/editor on several productions ("A visionary writer" - Manchester Evening News). He continues to be the Managing Editor for Incorporating Writing ( ISSN 1743-0380 ) and the Prose Editor for Red Ink (ISSN 1751-1496) and the founder of Incwriters.

His poetry, plays and prose have been syndicated in the USA, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Australia. His poetry to date has been translated in Urdu and Polish. Andrew's plays include The Charlie Manson Room (showcased by Theatre and Beyond at Brighton Pavilion, part of The International Brighton Festival 2002) and Mockingbird (developed with the aid of The Contact, Manchester). Mockingbird was long-listed for the Sphinx Award 2007: Brave New Roles, cited for its powerful and distinctive female characters. During the nineties he founded the physical theatre company, Out from Under, and read on the regional and national performance poetry circuit as Bongo Sherbert, Shorten Moriarty (buried beneath a flag stone outside the British Museum) and Irwell Holmes. He worked during the same decade with Bolton Octagon Theatre, Contact Theatre, Leicester Rep, English Touring Theatre Company and Rocket Theatre Company as a playwright and actor.

His Television credits include the BBC drama Doctors and a number of pilot episodes for the Independent sector (working with likes of Leslie Grantham and Derek Fowles). Film credits include the short film, Divine Blonde (2004) and Pleasing Nehru (development script with Roshan Seth, written in 2002-2003). His work has been broadcast on BBC R4 and Piccadilly Key103. Andrew's publishing history includes the critically acclaimed crime story collection Next Stop Hope (Route ISBN 1 901927 19 9 ) described by Leeds Guide as "An immensely entertaining mixture of drama, grit and humour. An energetic bag of tricks that never fails to entertain, your next stop should be the bookshop" . His poetry has been published worldwide, selections of his work can be found in The Slab (ISBN 0954695909), The Interpreter's House (UK), Gargoyle (USA), Big City Lit (USA), Aesthetica (UK), Tadeeb (UK & Pakistan), Poetry Greece and Poetry Salzburg (Europe), Grain (Canada) and Dream Catcher (UK).

Andrew's awards include the North West Vision's New Feature Film Writers' Development Scheme Award 2005/06 (he reached the final eight writers in the NW). He is a prior recipient of an ACE Award, a Peggy Ramsay Foundation Bursary 1999 and was nominated for the Jerwood-Arvon by the novelist Michele Roberts in 1999. He was short-listed for TrAce/Alt-X Hypertext Award 1999 for his interactive story, Neuter (awarded at the Associate Writing Conference in New York in the same year), this material was included in the programmes at the at University of California Santa Barbara and the University of Minnesota. He has been shortlisted for Paines Plough Ticket to Write 1998 and was recently shortlisted for the Sphinx Award 2007: Brave New Roles. He is the only Poet to date who has been nominated for The London International Award 2000, and to be the only Poet Laureate for Bolton Town Centre. He has been poet in residence for Flintshire in North Wales, and for Buxton Theatre with John Lindley (where he performed on stage with John and a musician to bring poetry to life).

After becoming disabled in 2003, Andrew returned to writing for the page and now lectures in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University and Screenwriting at UCLAN. He specialises in the writing of Ray Bradbury. He continues to write for stage, screen, radio and page; fiction and non-fiction. He continues to promote Literature and work in Digital and Real Time Publishing.