Old Habits (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781530240647)

Ben Trebilcook is a screenwriter and producer. The son of a District Nurse and a long-serving City of London Police officer, commended for bravery and awarded the Freedom of the City of London, Trebilcook grew up around those who worked in law enforcement and espionage around the globe. Born in 1975, in Royal Greenwich, Trebilcook knew from a very young age he wanted to work in the film industry. First seeking a special effects career, he soon decided against it, after awkwardly entangling a model's beautiful long hair in a ceiling-suspended vacuum cleaner during a shampoo commercial. Trebilcook, whose elder brothers followed their father into a police profession, found writing was less hazardous. He did, however, idolise his father, who had been machine-gunned by armed robbers, stabbed and even blown up by the IRA. When the Bruce Willis movie 'Die Hard' was released in 1988, he thought it could actually be based on his own reluctant-hero dad. He focused on the action genre, with his ultimate goal to write a 'Die Hard' movie for Bruce Willis. Having begun a career in producing and writing for the screen, penning a previous draft of 'Mission: Impossible 3' and an acclaimed 'Die Hard 6' spec, (Old Habits Die Hard), Trebilcook was sought by a friend to work to work within the education service, where he later became a qualified mentor and seclusion officer, managing the behaviour of permanently excluded teens. With every one of his disaffected students extremely challenging, there was a period of time when the majority were vicious gang members and refugees from war-torn countries, including Afghanistan, Angola and Somalia. After ten years experience working in a Pupil Referral Unit, in south-east London, he felt confident and qualified enough to write a novel fusing together his upbringing and knowledge of an education service often unknown to the general public. Trebilcook continues to balance his work in film with working with disaffected and vulnerable teenagers in South London.