After completing a PhD in Chemistry at Imperial College, David returned to his hometown in Hong Kong to hone his business skills. When he returned to the UK, via Singapore, he did a stint at Hilton Group's Racing Division, where he picked up a tip or two about the world of horse racing.

David, married with two children, has now settled down to a more sedate life, writing investment content for the Fool and producing our regular podcasts. For his sins he is also the company's media personality and can often be heard sparring with the likes of Danny Baker and Jon Gaunt on BBC Radio London.

After managing to scrape just two A-Levels together at college, Maynard worked for a year as a Poll Tax clerk and then for six years at the local authority's IT department in the murky world of ICL mainframes and COBOL programming. He relocated to Kent to join a financial services firm's IT department and there discovered the joys of stock market investing.

After reading every investment book ever written and writing a couple of articles for Analyst magazine he joined the Fool in 1999. He ran the Fool's Qualiport portfolio for many years and is now the lead analyst for Champion Shares, our share picking newsletter. His hobbies include keeping his wife in a good mood, fighting for space on trains and sleeping.

Jon originally started a degree in biotechnology, but became disillusioned with a placement making toothpaste, so dropped out. Eventually, he picked up a degree in Cultural Studies, followed a few years later by a Masters degree in IT, after which he spent 8 years working at a university, lecturing in computing and doing research into web search engine technology, followed by nearly four years developing robotic laboratory automation systems for the pharmaceutical industry.

Jon's other previous jobs have included - wine merchant, community worker, record shop assistant, croupier, double-glazing salesman, bar tender, market researcher, actor and fire-eater. (One of those is a lie - and it's not 'fire-eater'.)

Jon now works in the Community department of the Fool, dealing with customer service enquiries and performing 'conflict resolution duties' on the discussion boards. In his spare time he keeps several tarantulas, reads voraciously, listens to a frighteningly eclectic range of music, and cooks a great deal of curry.