Joe was raised in Brighton, England. He went to Cambridge University and then, for want of any better ideas, taught English in Spain, France, Canada and, from 1987 at Christs College, New Zealand.

In 1998, Joe left the classroom to become a newspaper columnist. He writes weekly columns which are syndicated to various daily newspapers in New Zealand, appears weekly on breakfast television as a raconteur and makes after dinner speeches all over the country. He has been voted columnist of the year at the Qantas Media Awards three times.

Joe blasts every topic with plain language comic prose which has led to his columns being syndicated throughout New Zealand and induced international publishers Simon and Schuster to publish 2 collection of his columns, “Fun Run and Other Oxymorons” and “Bedside Lovers and Other Goats”, throughout the rest of the English-speaking world. Now a freelance writer, Joe often appears on television and National Radio and weekly on national TV on TV One’s “Breakfast”.

He has written 9 books, compilations of his regular columns. “Just Walking the Dogs”, “Sleeping Dogs and Other Lies”, “So Help Me Dog”, “Sit and Barking”, “Dogmatic”, “Doggone” and “Unmuzzled”.   More recently, he’s released two books — the first,” Land of Two Halves”, tells about his experiences hitch-hiking from one end of the New Zealand to the other. The second, is about his experiences hitch-hiking around England.