Background
Mike Bullen was born on 13 January 1960 in Bramhall, Cheshire, England. His father, Alex, was a chemical engineer and his mother, Joan, a housewife. Bullen was raised with his sister Jane in Solihull, where he attended Solihull School. At the age of 18 he was accepted to Magdalene College, Cambridge to read economics. He did not enjoy the subject, so switched to history of art. Despite his public school background, Bullen felt out of place at Cambridge among students who did not come from the urban West Midlands, later stating that "Half the students were debutantes who spent a lot of time brushing their hair; the other half ended up working in Sotheby's." His first experiences of writing came when he was a child and wrote a newspaper for his neighbours. At Cambridge, he dramatised a Johann Wolfgang von Goethe novel.
Following his graduation, Bullen began a career as a media planner buyer for an advertising company. The job did not excite him and he has described it as "pretty pointless". He quit the job to go backpacking in South East Asia. On his return he applied for a position as a radio producer at Radio Netherlands Worldwide, having previously worked for a hospital radio. He eventually began freelance work for the BBC World Service, where he was a presenter and producer for the magazine programmes On Screen and Outlook.
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