Ilfracombe man's autobiography - My Art Is Where My Ohm Is.

THERE are many words that could describe William Webb's career as a well-travelled telecommunications engineer and consultant but mundane certainly isn't one of them.

Challenging or hair raising are more appropriate, even downright dangerous could be applied on some occasions.

His experiences could almost be the stuff of a Hollywood movie.

Now retired, he can look back on a colourful career that took him to more than 40 different countries, working in conditions and cultures so very different to that of the UK.

But he chose to focus on just four countries — Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Libya and Zimbabwe — for his new collection of memoirs, entitled My Art is Where the Ohm is.

It reveals some of the hazardous methods he had to resort to, just to get to work, like landing by seaplane on a crocodile infested river and being hauled by a crane from the deck of a supply ship to the top of an oil platform.

Another time he had to run an American blockade to get to work in Libya.

As well as dealing with culture clashes and mind numbing bureaucracy, he also endured the terror of being driven through the night with a fractured leg during a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Nigeria and being robbed at gunpoint by army deserters.

Mr Webb, of Ilfracombe, was motivated to put some of his experiences down on paper after being diagnosed — quite wrongly as it later turned out — with cancer.

His aim was to prove that his life as an expatriate contractor had been more interesting than that of many celebrities whose autobiographies line book shelves.

A glimpse at the prologue of his book promises that from the outset.

He said: "I had met kings and princes and danced in a royal palace. I had met such interesting characters as Colonel Ghadaffi and Idi Amin.

"I had also been shot at, robbed at knife point and arrested and hospitalised in more foreign countries than I care to remember.

"I had travelled thousands of miles by land, sea and air in almost every mode of transport known to man. I decided that my story was worth writing."

It begins in 1969 when he is 32 years old, having completed 10 years as a radar technician in the Royal Air Force.

His first appointment as a radio and radar technician in Saudi Arabia began rather inauspiciously with chronic dysentery.

As well as the searing heat, and getting lost in a sand storm, he also witnessed the barbaric workings of the country's justice system when an elderly man was beheaded beside a plane he had attempted to hijack.

On another occasion Mr Webb was bundled unceremoniously into the street with half a hair cut when the local mullah banged on the barber shop window. Apparently, he was furious that the owner hadn't stopped work to obey the call to prayer.

In the 1970s Mr Webb went to Nigeria where the sight of dead bodies on the roadside became a daily occurrence as a result of accidents.

In a bid to ease traffic congestion in Lagos the Government issued a decree stating that vehicles with even numbered registrations could only drive on certain days of the week and odd numbered registrations on the others. Sunday was open to everyone. The system worked well until nearly every driver acquired both odd and even number plates.

Traffic offenders were also whipped unless they could provide the necessary bribe or "dash".

His next two jobs saw him working in Libya where, on one occasion, he ran into Idi Amin on the stairs of a hotel and, with the help of an interpreter, updated Colonel Gadaffi on the progress of his work.

A communications post followed in Saudi Arabia where a tiered wage system was employed.

Although he was content with the salary, he was paid less than a Saudi worker — irrespective of ability — and lower than an American employee.

His next appointment took him to trouble torn Zimbabwe where he was approached many times by white workers asking for help to get their money across the border.

He recounts an hilarious episode in a police station following an upset with a man selling a poorly carved hippo.

Not so funny is another story in which he inadvertently drove into the middle of a pride of lions while sight seeing.

*My Art is Where the Ohm is retails at around £65 or £30 direct from the publisher, Authorhouse.