Michiel Blijboom is a journalist and photographer from Amsterdam. 

His favourite punk song is ‘Criminal Mind’ by The Ruts. 

He prefers Blackpool to Saint-Tropez.

Originally a headbanger, Amsterdam - born & bred Michiel Blijboom got bitten by the punk bug in 1979, and was fully baptised seeing the U.K. Subs supporting the Ramones. Both bands would stay among his favourite punk outfits ever. Blijboom has been a sports journalist for about 35 years, covering everything in football, from World Cup, Euro and Champion League Finals, to games by the likes of Dagenham & Redbridge. Apart from football, he did - among other things - the Iron Man Triathlon in Hawaii, the Royal Regatta in Henley-on-Thames, the K1 kickboxing finals in Tokyo, the Grand National at Aintree as well as the official world championship schnitzel eating in which he competed (and failed). Apart from sports he wrote about showbiz, thus traveling to, for instance, the Eurovision Song Contest in Zagreb, the Miss World Pageant in Cyprus, Oscar Night in Hollywood and the Cannes Film Festival. Along the line he interviewed A-listers like David Coverdale, Rowan Atkinson, Johan Cruijff, Sylvester Stallone, Slash, Ronaldo and good old Lemmy. He worked for well-respected Dutch publications like Panorama, HP/De Tijd and Veronica Magazine and published a string of books about motor gangs, football hooligans and The Beatles. Yes, that needed a bit of a punk injection! Now he’s made Punk at Sea, a photo book about the Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, working with Earth Island Books.