Geoff Thompson is a BAFTA-winning writer, filmmaker, teacher, and self-defence instructor. He has written several books on self-help, self-defence and martial arts, and has written many screenplays for short and feature films.
Film
In 2004, Thompson won a BAFTA award for 'best short film' for his screenplay "Brown Paper Bag". Thompson's first feature filmClubbed, starring Colin Salmon, is an underworld drama set in the early 1980s and is based on his autobiography Watch My Back. His work , directed by the Shammasian Brothers and starring Craig Conway, has finished production and was shown at a private screening in London on 23 January 2008. It toured the film festival circuit in the early part of 2008. It has been adapted into a feature film, Romans, starring Orlando Bloom. He wrote the screenplay for the feature film The Pyramid Texts, starring James Cosmo. Thompson made his directorial debut in 2015 with the short filmThe 20 Minute Film Pitch. His first short film—Bouncer —starred Ray Winstone. 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.
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. He holds the ABA Boxing Instructor certificate and high-level coaching awards for wrestling, a 1st Dan in Judo under world championNeil 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.
