Geoff Thompson

Geoff Thompson (born 26 January 1960) is a BAFTA-winning writer, film-maker, spiritual teacher, and martial artist.

He has written prolifically in a wide range of genres, including books on spirituality, self-help, self defence, and martial arts, and scripts for film and stage.

Geoff Thompson was born on 26 January 1960 in Coventry, United Kingdom.

Thompson had been a student of martial arts since a child and gained a high rank in Karate.

His fear of violent confrontation despite being a highly ranked martial artist encouraged Geoff to become a night club bouncer in order to confront his fear.

His experiences on the night club door, combined with a life-long desire to be a writer, led to him writing the manuscript of his first book Bouncer.

Thompson says this was written on the toilet of the factory in Coventry where he worked as a floor sweeper, and he was encouraged by workmates to write down the bouncer stories he shared during lunch breaks.

Thompson left his factory job and became a full-time martial arts instructor, teaching martial arts during the day and working as a bouncer at night.

He eventually found a publisher for his first book Bouncer (later re-published as Watch My Back), and shortly afterwards quit working as a bouncer - partly due to his notoriety since publishing his book - to focus on martial arts and writing.

Thompson became a world renowned martial artist specialising in 'reality' martial arts and self defence, based on his experience at the night club door, and co-founded the British Combat Association with Peter Consterdine.

Thompson became famous as a self defence instructor and in particular for his concept of "The Wall".

He taught seminars in the US for Chuck Norris.

In the 1990s, Thompson wrote and presented a wide range of martial arts and self-defence DVDs.

In 1995, he and his self-defence school featured in the Channel 4 documentary Passengers.

He holds the ABA Boxing Instructor certificate and high-level coaching awards for wrestling, a 1st Dan in Judo (1997) under world champion Neil Adams, and an 8th dan in Shotokan Karate.

Geoff is a Joint Chief Instructor of the British Combat Association.

Geoff Thompson was also the first instructor to name and extensively teach "the fence", a technique in real-life defence involving keeping your hands in front of you in a non-threatening manner so as to protect yourself in case a situation escalates but without provoking violence.

He wrote the script for a short film Brown Paper Bag, based on his own brother's problems with alcoholism that eventually led to his death in 1999, and this won Thompson a BAFTA award in 2004 for Best Short Film.

Thompson began writing for film with his script for the short film Bouncer in 2003, which went on to star Ray Winstone and was nominated for a BAFTA award.

Geoff went on to write the film script for the feature film Clubbed (2008), based on his autobiography Watch My Back, starring Colin Salmon.

His work Romans 12:20, directed by the Shammasian Brothers and starring Craig Conway, (2008), has been adapted into a feature film, Romans (2017), starring Orlando Bloom.

Thompson has written successfully for stage, including the play Fragile which is semi-autobiographical and showed in Coventry.

Alongside writing, for many years Thompson was a spiritual teacher and coach, drawing upon his own experiences as a martial artist and of personal problems that he had contended with, which inspired his self-help books.

He wrote the screenplay for the feature film The Pyramid Texts (2015), starring James Cosmo.

Thompson made his directorial debut in 2015 with the short film The 20 Minute Film Pitch.

Thompson produced a popular podcast on spiritual guidance and self-help for a number of years, and in 2016 he presented a TED talk entitled Conquering Fear.

In 2020 he released an autobiography, Notes from a Factory Floor and the spiritual self-help text The Divine CEO.

Thompson has written and co-authored more than eighty books.

Thompson began his martial arts training in the Eastern arts including karate, aikido and kung-fu.

However, during his time as a nightclub doorman, he found that what he had learned was inadequate for the reality of violence.

Thompson came to realise that the techniques encouraged and practiced in touch-contact and semi-contact martial arts were not always suitable for self-defence.

Though he utilises a small core of these techniques as part of his teachings, Thompson prefers full-contact martial arts and combat sports such as boxing, Muay Thai, judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Greco-Roman- and freestyle wrestling.