Ben Hatch started out as a tea boy in the Royal Bank of Scotland. He became a recruitment consultant, sold advertising space the lawnmowers, worked in a video shop, as a postman and on the MacDonald chicken sandwich station before finally becoming a journalist on various local papers. He quit reporting to become a novelist in 1997. He has written two works of comedy fiction, The Lawnmower Celebrity and The International Gooseberry. Ben was tempted into travel writing by his wife Dinah who lives in Brighton.

Dinah Hatch went into travel journalism after deciding that crime reporting for regional papers involved just a few too many evenings talking to dodgy people in dark alleys. Since then she has worked for a wide variety of national newspapers, magazines, trade publications and websites and writes extensively on the travel industry.