David Bradley: Killer, Lover, Player, Puller

You may have reached this page looking for “David Bradley”. Well, here I am, freelance science journalist, sometime photographer, and wannabe rock god, David Bradley. Who did you expect?

Don’t tell me! You were hoping to find out all about David Bradley the Shakespearean actor who plays Argus Filch in the Harry Potter movies? No, you mean you were actually looking for David Bradley star of gritty 1960s working class degradation movie Kes, who changed his name to Dai because of the nomenclature clash with the Filch guy, who is a lot older? There are various other David Bradleys in the acting business, including one who tends to go naked in most of his roles for reasons that would become immediately apparent should you venture into that part of the net.

Perhaps you were hoping to find information about the PC architect David Bradley who worked at IBM in the 1960s who invented the computer user’s ultimate get-out clause - Ctrl-Alt-Del - which reboots your PC. No? Well, how about the various Professors who share my name. These include:

David M. Bradley - Robotics Masters Student at Carnegie Mellon University
David Bradley - Ross Professor of Tropical Hygiene Emeritus, LSHTM, London
David M. Bradley - Mathematician at the University of Maine
David A. Bradley - Physicist, University of Exeter
David Bradley - University of Chicago vision researcher
David Bradley - Acoustic scientist at Pennsylvania State University
David P. Bradley - Economist at Newcastle University
David Bradley - Brain specialist, University College London
David Bradley - Professor of Mechatronics, University of Abertay, Scotland.

Of course, between the scientists and the naked movie star, there’s a heavy emphasis on the handling of various instruments and thixotropic fluids. Then there’s the David Bradley who hosts a fascinating trolley bus museum on the web, several photographers, a chocolatier (I’m sure my wife would prefer that DB to the aforementioned naked actor), and the boss of publisher Atlantic Media Company. Another of my namesakes, from my hometown, scarily, was a mass murderer. News just in, there’s a country music artist called David Bradley too and he’s also from the North of England…

I do not intend to change my name by deedpoll just to avoid the association with actors or tractors, photographers or porn stars. I suppose something like Davide Braudleigh is probably quite unique, but it sounds a bit like French aristocracy and we all know what happened to them.

So, what lessons can one draw from this brief sojourn into the world of David Bradley? Perhaps there are psychosociological implications for having such an apparently common name. Maybe the biggest lesson is simply never to do a vanity search on Google, or maybe it’s that we should take heed of the Bard when Juliet asked Romeo, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet”.

This article was originally inspired by a conversation with uber technology writer Wayne Smallman, who has nothing to do with PC architecture (he’s a Mac man, as it happens), a brand of tractor, a trolleybus musuem curator, nor a porn star (yet), nevertheless he’s very clued up on personal branding a subject close right at the core of this post and as such has written about how to market your personal brand like a porn star. Wayne’s name seems pretty unique, and although you’ll find it all over the web, that’s usually just him. Not a porn star in sight.