Author · E-Learning Designer · Football Content Strategist
Novelist, football predictions writer and e-learning designer with 25+ years across corporate L&D, iGaming and creative entrepreneurship. Founder of Whatchan.co.uk. Songwriter. Always building something.
Two families. Two wars. One sky.
November 1916. A German airship falls in flames towards the Essex marshes. The Englishman who shot it down lifts a brass compass out of the mud, and reads the name engraved on the back.
The Hoffmanns keep an instrument-maker’s workshop on a German lake. The Hartleys keep a boatyard on a Kent shingle. Twice the century sets them against each other: the fathers over one war’s cold North Sea, and a generation later their sons in the same summer sky over Kent. Between the two houses pass a compass and a water-stained diary, carried back and forth across the Channel for sixty years.
Kindle · Paperback · Hardback · Amazon UK & worldwide
For readers of All the Light We Cannot See, Birdsong, The Nightingale and The Book Thief.
Born in Cleethorpes, raised on football, and entirely impossible to put in a single box. His working life began with a spell in the Royal Navy, where he learned what precision and accountability actually mean under pressure. What followed was eclectic: a Happy Hardcore record shop, live music events across Grimsby, and remixes that earned recognition from a proper dance label. These weren’t distractions from a career; they were the foundation of it.
Then came more than two decades at BT Group as a Learning & Development Specialist. This is where his instructional design credentials were forged: at scale, under pressure, with real organisational stakes. He trained thousands of employees, led international assignments in Kolkata, and was at the centre of BT’s shift from classroom delivery to digital e-learning.
Since leaving BT, Adrian has built a parallel career as a football predictions writer and content strategist for the iGaming industry: thirteen-plus years of ghostwritten match previews and editorial planning delivered to tight deadlines. On Boxing Day 2019 he founded Whatchan.co.uk, a daily football TV listings resource that now serves thousands of fans every month from his base in Shumen, Bulgaria.
In 2025 he published two novels, released seven records with The Village Rejects, and launched a free Learn Bulgarian in 60 Days course. In July 2026 came the biggest project yet: The Same Sky, a 162,000-word epic of two world wars. The pace doesn’t show any sign of letting up.
“The thing no one tells you about building several careers simultaneously is that the skills cross-pollinate in ways you never expect. Twenty years of making complex ideas accessible to non-technical audiences turns out to be exactly what good content strategy requires.” Adrian Dane
Full training lifecycle at BT Group: needs analysis, curriculum design, interactive module builds, change management at scale, and offshore team alignment across two extended Kolkata assignments. Proof the skills are current: a complete 60-day Bulgarian language course designed and published from scratch.
Explore the Bulgarian course ↗Thirteen-plus years of ghostwritten match previews, predictions and betting analysis for the iGaming industry, with full editorial ownership of a major platform’s predictions strategy across the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup. Founder of Whatchan.co.uk, the daily answer to “which channel is the football on?”
Today’s fixtures on Whatchan →Three novels in under a year: an epic of two world wars, a four-episode sci-fi saga, and a cosy village mystery, alongside seven releases written for The Village Rejects. Creative work produced to professional standard, on deadline, entirely self-directed.
The books ↑ · The music ↓
Between radio channels, in the frequencies nobody monitors, something has been transmitting. The question isn’t whether the signals are intelligent; it’s what they want. The entire four-episode saga.
Buy on Amazon UK
In the village of Foxwood, a retired headmistress is found dead with a will that leaves everything to her cats. Warm, clever, and significantly more sinister than it first appears.
Buy on Amazon UKFootball from the terraces, with pilgrimages to Old Trafford. What began as passion later became profession.
Trained at HMS Raleigh; learned what technical precision and accountability look like when the stakes are real. Honourable medical discharge.
Team leadership by day and commanding large audiences by night, building the public-facing confidence later used in training delivery.
A Happy Hardcore record shop on Freeman Street, Grimsby, live events, and a recording opportunity with Go Mental Records.
From 999 call handler to Learning & Development Specialist: training at national scale, two Kolkata assignments, and BT’s classroom-to-digital learning transformation.
Launched Pics2Vids.co.uk, then on Boxing Day 2019 founded Whatchan.co.uk, now serving thousands of UK football fans monthly.
Thirteen-plus years of ghostwritten predictions and sports content: high-volume, deadline-driven, with full editorial ownership of a major platform’s strategy.
Two novels published, seven Village Rejects releases, and the free Learn Bulgarian in 60 Days course, all in one calendar year.
A 162,000-word epic of the two world wars, published in three editions with its own companion site, thesamesky.uk.
Running Whatchan, writing predictions content, producing music, writing books, and open to the right freelance projects.
Independent, self-built and actively maintained, with the same promise as everything else here: practical, honest content for real readers.
Independent British sports analysis and long-form journalism under his own byline: match reports and in-depth features across football, cricket, boxing, golf, rugby, darts, tennis and Formula 1. The named counterpart to thirteen years of ghostwriting.
Read The Sports Guru ↗
British news for Brits in Bulgaria: Bulgarian news rewritten with a British angle, plus a growing library of practical guides for expats, all reported from his adopted home city of Shumen.
Visit Shumen.UK ↗If you need someone who can design your e-learning programme, build your onboarding experience, develop your content strategy or write your sports content, let’s talk. A decade of fully remote, autonomous delivery from Bulgaria (UK +2 hours): brief in, finished product out.
A musical collective built around one songwriter’s vision, powered by rotating guest musicians and vocalists. Every song written by Adrian Dane: blues, rock, and something harder to categorise. Two full-length albums and five singles so far, with a second, rawer project, The Knackered Skint, running in parallel on YouTube.
Select a release to listen via Bandcamp. Also on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube.