Matt O'Connor

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Born	1967
Occupation	activist
Spouse	Nadine O'Connor

Matt O'Connor (born 1967, Manchester, England, UK) is the founder of the fathers' rights group Fathers 4 Justice in the UK. Denied access to his children by the family courts, O'Connor created Fathers 4 Justice to demand reform of the family courts and government policy on parental access.

In his GQ magazine^[wp] feature on O'Connor in June 2006, Will Self^[wp] said of O'Connor: "He is fiercely intelligent, charmingly foul-mouthed and has a fantastic turn of phrase ... few could equal O'Connor when it comes to taking a conversational thread, yanking, unravelling and generally running with it."

O'Connor is founder of the Covent Garden^[wp] ice cream parlour Icecreamists^[wp].

Family

He has three sons. He is married to Nadine O'Connor.

London Mayoral campaign

In January 2008, O'Connor was selected by the English Democrats^[wp] as their candidate in the London mayoral election^[wp]. However with one week to go before the election, on 25 April 2008, O'Connor announced to the BBC and Vanessa Feltz^[wp] that he had decided to pull out of the race citing lack of media coverage.

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Matt O'Connor is a designer, communicator, author and political activist. He is the founding father and frontman of one of the most controversial and high profile pressure groups of modern times, Fathers 4 Justice.

Career Highlights

In 2005 he was GQ Magazine's 7th Top Communicator in the UK, GQ Magazine's 92nd Most Powerful Man in Britain, Esquire Magazine's 35th Most Powerful Man In Britain Under 50 and one of twenty people shortlisted for the Royal Society's Great Briton of the Year Awards.

In 2007 Matt O'Connor published his first book Fathers4Justice The Inside Story through the Orion Publishing Group and sold the motion picture rights to his life story to Buena Vista pictures, part of the Walt Disney group.

In 2008 he was a candidate in the London Mayoral Elections.

In 2009 he launched his extreme ice cream brand "The Icecreamists" in Selfridges flagship London store.

In 2011 The Icecreamists won Event Magazine's PR Event of the Year Award for the launch of Baby Gaga breast milk ice cream.

His second book The Icecreamists was published in the summer of 2012 by Octopus Publishing.

Since 1998 he has been the Creative Director for several major ice cream brands in the UK including Cadbury, Britvic and Del Monte. As creator of the UK's first National Ice Cream Week, he launched the Daniel Craig ice lolly in 2009 and in 2011 sailed the World's First Amphibious Ice Cream Van on the Thames past Parliament.

He is also Creative Director for award-winning Italian Gelato brand Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano which he created and launched in 2009. In 2012 Antonio Federici was included on the list of Britain's Coolest Brands compiled by the CoolBrands Council.

In Spring 2013 he will launch a new political platform powered by people, not politicians.

Matt is a frequent speaker in the media, at business conferences, The Oxford Union and at schools and universities across the UK where Fathers 4 Justice is now taught on the National Curriculum.

Founder, Fathers4Justice

Founder of Fathers 4 Justice

Founded by Matt O'Connor in 2001, Fathers4Justice was described in The Independent as "The most spectacular protest group of modern times". They became infamous for their "Superheroes" campaign which saw fathers scale national landmarks dressed as iconic superhero characters in protest over the separation of children from their fathers in secret family courts.

Fathers 4 Justice: Protest at Parliament (13 September 2004)

In 2005 O'Connor was GQ Magazine's 7th Top Communicator in the UK, GQ Magazine's 92nd Most Powerful Man in Britain, Esquire Magazine's 35th Most Powerful Man In Britain Under 50 and one of twenty people shortlisted for the Royal Society's Great Briton of the Year Awards.

In 2007 he published his first book Fathers4Justice: The Inside Story through the Orion Publishing Group and sold the motion picture rights to his life story to Buena Vista pictures, part of the Walt Disney group.

In 2010 Fathers4Justice agreed a set of pre election promises with the Conservative Party which were subsequently broken. As a result, in July 2011 O'Connor staged an eight-day hunger strike outside the Prime Minister's home. In September 2011 Fathers4Justice staged their second protest at Buckingham Palace^[wp].

In March 2012 Fathers 4 Justice launched Children 4 Justice with a new film and in July 2012 the ASA banned a national newspaper advert by Fathers4Justice which accused Mumsnet of publishing 'anti-male hatred' on their website. In May 2012 O'Connor was banned from entering London during the State Opening of Parliament.

The government subsequently failed in an attempt to ban him from going within 100 metres of any venue at the London 2012 Olympic Games. In November 2012 the government outlined proposals to give fathers shared parenting rights.

Fathers4Justice is the world's largest equal parenting campaign group with 36,000 registered families in the UK. It is also the third highest supported campaign group in the UK behind Greenpeace & Amnesty International (Conservative Party Polling 2011) and their position on Equal Parenting enjoys 84 % public support.

Founder, The Icecreamists

Founded by Matt O'Connor, The Icecreamists were launched in September 2009 with a 3,500 square feet 'God Save The Cream' ice cream installation at Selfridges flagship London store on Oxford Street.

In 2011 they opened 'Scream' their second installation in London's Covent Garden and 'Queens of the Dessert', the world's first gay ice cream bar pop-up.

Their creations have consistently whipped up public outrage from the ice cream the Sex Pistols tried to ban in 2009, 'The Sex Pistol' made with 'Viagra' and flaming Absinthe administered through an IV drip by a nurse to the world's first breast milk ice cream, 'Baby Gaga' in 2011. Within hours of the launch, Baby Gaga was banned by Westminster Council and pop-megastar Lady Gaga threatened to sue The Icecreamists for trademark infringement denouncing the ice cream as 'deliberately provocative and nausea-inducing'.

In 2011 Baby Gaga^[wp] Breast Milk Ice Cream was No 6 in the top 10 list of most shared, commented and liked Facebook articles of from UK news outlets – ahead of the death of Osama Bin Laden and the London riots. It was also the No 3 most commented news article on Facebook in the UK in 2011.

The third ice cream in their trilogy of extreme flavours was the 'Holy Water' Pistol in 2012. Described as a 'Vice Lolly', it was made with Holy Water imported from Lourdes, moulded in the shape of a firearm and stored in a sub-zero gun cabinet. The Icecreamists have attracted a series of rave reviews with Time Out Magazine saying, "This is the place for brilliant ice creams" and the Evening Standard describing them as "Kings of ice cream and masters of controversy." In 2011 The Icecreamists won Event Magazine's PR Event of the Year Award for the launch of 'Baby Gaga' breast milk ice cream.

In June 2012 The Icecreamists published their first book Ice Creams, Vice Creams & Other Guilty Pleasures written by Matt O'Connor and published by Octopus.

Co-Founder, Agitator

Co-founded with his wife Nadine O'Connor, Agitator is a British Innovation label working outside of the straightjacket of conventional norms with a kaleidoscopic portfolio of ongoing commercial and social projects. From iconoclastic brands and PR stunts to what The Independent called "The Most Spectacular Campaign Group of Modern Times", Agitator regularly commands global headlines with rule-breaking, attention-grabbing ideas and its unique brand of 'creative extremism'.

Agitator's work has included:

The UK's first National Ice Cream Week 2009

The Daniel Craig^[wp] 'Licensed to Chill' Ice Lolly, Del Monte. Brand leaps from bottom to top of of Kaizo Advocacy Index which measures the on-line reputation of the world's top 20 brands. Said Kaizo, "Del Monte Licks Opposition with Reputation-Saving Product" (2009).

• Flake 99 Rollercoaster Viral, Blackpool (2010) (Size: min.)

• World's First Amphibious Ice Cream Van, Cadbury (2011) (Size: min.)

The David Hasselhoff^[wp] 'Hoffsicle' Ice Lolly, Del Monte (2011)

Botanical fruit water, Freau (2011)

R White's Secret Lemonade Licker advertisement, Britvic. (2012)

Cadbury Golden Lolly Stick Campaign, Covent Garden (2012)

Cadbury Ice Cream London 2012 Olympic Campaign (2012)

Agitator Services

Agitator offers a diverse range of service including Band Naming & Creation, Intellectual Property Development, New Product Development, Recipe & Menu Development, Creative Direction for Brands, Copywriting, Campaign Creation & Development, Public Relations including TV, Media, Social Media and Online Campaigns, Media Training, High Profile Public Events, Strategic Advice for Brands and Creation & Development of Social & Political Campaigns.

Creative Director, Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano

Designed, developed and launched by Matt O'Connor in 2009, Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano is an authentically smooth Italian gelato inspired by a traditional recipe from the Italian Riviera. Winner of 'The Best Ice Cream in the World' Award 2009 at the International Ice Cream Consortium Awards, in 2012 Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano was included on the list of Britain's Coolest Brands compiled by the CoolBrands Council.

In 2010 O'Connor's 'Ice Cream is Our Religion' campaign attracted global publicity after the Advertising Standards Authority banned one advert depicting a pregnant nun eating gelato just days before the Pope's visit to the United Kingdom.

Publications

• Fathers4Justice: The Inside Story, Orion Publishing 2007, ISBN 0-297-85306-6
• The Icecreamists: Boutique Ice Creams and Other Guilty Pleasures to Make and Enjoy at Home, Mitchell Beazley, 2012 ISBN 1-84533-706-9

Matt O'Connor's personal account of his fight for father's rights after losing contact with his two boys Daniel and Alexander in a secret family court after separating from his wife. Fathers4Justice: The Inside Story gives the inside track on some of the most audacious protests ever seen in the UK. These included powder-bombing Prime Minister Tony Blair^[wp] in the House of Commons and their infamous 'Superhero' campaign which saw Batman scale Buckingham Palace, Spiderman close Tower Bridge for a week and superheroes climbing into Downing Street behind the backs of the police. The group even took the National Lottery off air when they staged a live protest on BBC1 in front of an audience of 11 million people.

Now the concept of 'Fathers Rights' has finally been recognised and long overdue reforms are being discussed.

Find out how one man took on the fight for father's rights by taking on the government with just a handful of other dads, a ladder, and a lot of lycra.

The Icecreamists: 'Ice Creams, Vice Creams & Other Guilty Pleasures' Octopus Publishing June 1, 2012

The new book from The Icecreamists features over 80 ice creams, vice creams and other guilty pleasures. Includes recipes for their infamous 'Baby Gaga' (Breast Milk) and 'Sex Bomb' (Viagra & Absinthe) ice creams, enabling readers to recreate the authentic Icecreamists experience at home.

Quotes about Matt O'Connor

"If ice cream was rock'n'roll, then Matt O'Connor would be its Keith Richards." The Sunday Times Style Magazine

"King of ice cream. Master of controversy." Liz Hoggard, The Evening Standard

"A verbal machinegun." Cole Moreton, The Independent

"An attention-seeking mastermind..." Andrew Mueller, The Independent on Sunday

"...fiercely intelligent, charmingly foul-mouthed and a fantastic turn of phrase. Few could equal O'Connor when it comes to taking a conversational thread, yanking, unravelling and generally running with it." Will Self^[wp], Author & Journalist, GQ Magazine

"...he displayed great humour, eccentricity and innovation in raising awareness of a very serious social issue." The Royal Society, Great Briton of the Year Awards, 2005

"O'Connor and Fathers4Justice have taken communication to a new pro-active level." GQ Magazine's 7th Top Communicator in the UK, 2005

"Mastermind of some of the biggest political stunts of recent years." Esquire Magazine

"...when historians look back on British Society at the start of the third millennium they will accord an important chapter to the men in tights." The Times Newspaper, January

"Fathers4Justice? The worst campaign group I have ever heard of." Downing Street Press Spokesman

Matt O'Connor is the founder of Fathers4Justice - those self-styled "Suffragents" who dress up as Batman and Superman and scale cranes and buildings or flour-bomb the Prime Minister in pursuit of "fathers' rights" - and I just don't know what I think about them. Do they have a just cause? Are all fathers really "superheroes" to their kids? Don't those polyester costumes chafe? If dads are so cool, how come mothers always end up doing it all? So I phone Mr O'Connor to request that we meet, and initially get quite an earful. He is jaded, he says. He is cynical, he says. Most journalists, he adds, are "cunts". Some are even "complete cunts". As it is, he's got the News of the World sniffing round, "trying to stitch me up, waving £ 25,000 cheques at my ex-wife to dish the dirt". Still, I don't think he can resist the publicity, or any publicity, which has always so defined the movement, and almost within the hour he has contacted me with a number of suggested dates. When I turn up, I smile in what I hope is a very pleasant and un-cunty way. As one of those overstretched mothers who has to do everything round here while also doing everything else, this takes some doing. Matt O'Connor lives just outside Winchester, in a rented property that is part of an old mill and is beautifully situated overlooking the river Itchen. He says, later, that he can spend hours just watching the river. I do think he can be quite thoughtful when not being angry. He is 39, and groovier than I had expected, much less chavvy, much less lager-loutish: groovy hairdo; groovy specs; groovy Philippe Starck watch; groovy bright pink polo shirt with the collar upturned a bit. He got that from Eric Cantona, he says. "I've always loved Cantona. I love that Gallic arrogance. I'm attracted to rogues and eccentrics." He actually disbanded F4J back in January after the Leo Blair hoo-ha, when The Sun claimed that a group of disaffected members had planned to kidnap the Prime Minister's then five-year-old son. He said at the time he'd created "a Frankenstein's Monster". Now he claims the Leo story was a load of tosh. "It was a Labour Party stitch-up," he says. "What better way to discredit F4J?" Since re-grouping they have disrupted the National Lottery show - "The Family Law Lotto: Next Time It Could Be You" - and tried to disrupt the Queen's birthday parade. They had a guy all ready to throw himself at her carriage but at the last minute he failed to get over the barrier. I say that sounds less like direct, non-violent action and more like a pretty dangerous stunt to me. Can't you get shot for throwing yourself at the Queen? "I know, I know, fucking dangerous," he says, "but it's like fucking Vietnam round here. Every day I get up and it's arm-to-arm combat." There is quite a lot of aggressive male stuff going on here. And this, I think, is what worries me the most. I mean, how much of this has to do with being a father? And how much is it about not letting a woman get - as they might perceive it - one up on them? How much of this is actually about power and ego and retribution? This is my worry but, being something of a creep, I just keep on smiling as un-cuntily as I can. Naturally. Inside, his place is rather smart and, yes, masculine. No Batcave as such, which is a trifle disappointing, but black leather sofas, huge state-of-the-art telly, Union-Jack-decorated electric guitar, biographies of Mandela and Gandhi, framed Evening Standard splash saying: "Powder Bomb Attack On Blair!" It's Matt who thinks up all the japes. The first was when 200 F4J members dressed as Father Christmas and turned up at the Lord Chancellor's office. "I was first though the revolving door. I just hoped everyone else was behind me or I'd have felt a right..." Idiot? Twit? Silly Billy? "...cunt!" He is, possibly, more imaginative visually than he is linguistically. He's a designer and marketing consultant. He has designed bars and restaurants. He helped Unilever launch Viennetta. He designed the packaging for Loseley ice cream. He adores ice cream. He quotes Voltaire: "Ice cream is exquisite - what a pity it isn't illegal." He says that in an ideal world he would combine developing ice cream flavours with being a revolutionary. We think of revolutionary ice cream flavours. Lenin & Lime? Che GeGuava? Gandhifloss? We laugh. He has a big, fat, generous laugh. He's possibly good company, in other circumstances. He says he is currently working on a campaign for Jubilee strawberries. "Forget Elsanta," he says, "they're fucking shit compared to Jubilee." I'm not sure that particular slogan will make it to the posters. I say that if I were his mother, aside from doing everything round here, I would make him wash his mouth out with soap and water. He says: "I don't know why I swear so much. I'm not proud of it. It's just letting off steam though profanity, the manifestation of primal stress." I don't know. I don't mind the C-word that much. But it is exhausting after a while. He makes coffee and we sit at the window with the river burbling by. There's a pinboard covered in photographs of his kids: Daniel, 10, and Alexander, eight, from his first marriage and his new baby, Archie. Archie is six months, "and such a sweetie. Sleeps through the night and everything." Archie's mum is Nadine, Matt's girlfriend. Nadine lives nearby. Matt and Nadine do not yet live together because Nadine is not yet divorced from her estranged husband, with whom she is locked in a bitter dispute over their five-year-old daughter. Matt says: "It's better to have a bit of distance until things are resolved. I don't want to get dragged in more than I have to." Does Archie ever stay here? I ask. No, he says, "But I stay at Nadine's a lot." I put it to him that, probably, mothers are better at looking after children, particularly when they are young. It is, after all, the mother who tends to recast her life to look after small children while, of course, also doing everything round here. I expect him to go off on one, but he doesn't. He says: "There is a debate about that. But I think the role of gender is changing. A third of fathers now provide childcare. Still, a large number of fathers are very traditional. Very young children are probably better off with their mothers but should see their fathers for the same amount of time." What does he want exactly? He says he wants the law changed such that "equal parenting is presumed", whereas at present "the pendulum swings with the mother". I persist. Yes, I say, the law is skewed towards the mother, but maybe it has evolved that way for a reason. "Oh?" he queries, suspiciously. I suspect I'm about to negate all the effort I've put into my delightful smile, but what the hell. I say that according to the CSA's figures for the last quarter up to March, 440,000 fathers had to be charged directly to pay for their children, and of those 127,000 (29 per cent) still did not pay. Now, he does go off on one. "Stop. I must fucking well stop you there. Look, there are shit dads just as there are shit mums. Let's not demonise dads and Madonna-ise mums. There are good dads and bad dads, good mums and bad mums, period." Much as he fist-thumps the table, I'm afraid I can't let it go. You must see, I continue, that the negligence of many fathers has to undermine your insistence that 50/50 custody should be the norm. You can't ignore the fact that many absent fathers have no intention of raising their kids, which is hardly superheroic, whichever way you look at it, or however many rooftops you jump about on in capes. He says: "The number of men who pay goes up massively if they see their children. Seeing and paying for your children are not unrelated issues. And when I talk of child support it's not just as a cash cow, but it's about love and care and bringing them up to be good adults." Financial provision, I say, has to come into it. "Look," he says. "I financially support Nadine's daughter. That does stick in my craw." Your point being? "You do have to support a child on both counts... but if you push dads out they'll think: why should I support this woman who won't let me see my children?" I say I agree that mothers can be mean-minded and spiteful, too, and that they can maliciously deny fathers access to their children. That's unforgivable. But you can't carry on as if fathers are never to blame. Well, you can, but it's very annoying and not especially constructive. Plus, as I understand it, if a father is not allowed to see his children, or is given very limited access, there is usually a jolly good reason for it. Courts don't want to wipe fathers out of children's lives. He says, changing tack slightly, that the trouble with the courts is that it is all so adversarial, with both parties having to discredit the other, "and if they didn't hate each other to begin with, they will by the end". That thin line between love and hate. Is this what it's all about, really? I ask why he decided to bring F4J back. It did attract a lot of publicity, did initiate an ongoing debate about fathers' rights, but hasn't it now had its day? Even the japes now seem rather stale and adolescent. Why have you brought it back, Matt? "That's the question I keep asking myself," he says. "I've got a successful business, a lovely girlfriend, lovely kids, why don't I just get on with my life?" Why not, indeed. "I'm just so angry at the system. I'm just so absolutely burning with a sense of injustice." Angry at the system? Or just angry? Could it be possible you're an angry person and just need somewhere to put that anger, somewhere to put that primal stress? He says no, absolutely not. "Believe it or not, I'm generally really happy when I'm not talking about family law. It's family law that makes me so angry and frustrated." He says that when he split with his ex-wife, Sophie, and Sophie didn't want him to see Daniel and Alexander, he had to prove in court that "it was in their interest to see their father. Of course it's in their fucking interest to see their father!" Matt is bright enough, but I don't think he can see that too much anger can be self-defeating, particularly when little children are involved. I think that if I were a judge I would spend a lot of time knocking people's heads together. Maybe this is why I'm not a judge. Anyway, has he always been angry? He grew up in Thanet, Kent, which, he says, was horrible. "It's basically a giant cauliflower. There's nothing but cauliflower. That's all they do in Thanet, grow cauliflowers." His late father was headmaster of a Catholic school. "I've been told not to say too much about him," he says. "He was an archetypal Irishman from County Kerry. He wasn't around a lot." How so? Drink? Women? "I think he liked his rum, bum and banjos, yes." His mother is an English teacher who would also like him to wash his mouth out with soap and water. "She says I show a lack of imagination when it comes to my profanities." He went to art school, created his own successful design business and married Sophie at 27. He accepts, now, that he was "a lousy husband". He drank. He womanised. He sometimes wasn't home for days. He was, perhaps, his own father all over again. The marriage went pear-shaped, Sophie asked for a divorce and sought, through the family court, to cut his contact with their sons to a minimum. "I thought the family court would be even-handed, but every time I went I got screwed." Do you blame Sophie for trying to reduce your time with the kids, considering what you were like at that time? "No, I don't blame her, but I should still have had the right to see my kids!" At the same time, he says, his business partner died and his design company went bust. He was, he says, suicidal, and even stood on Waterloo Bridge looking down at the Thames. It was the thought of Daniel and Alexander that stopped him. He wasn't going to give up, he decided. Instead, he was going to stay and fight. To his credit, he turned his life around within the year. He stopped drinking. He started to rebuild his career. Sophie finally allowed him unregulated access to his sons. He is now close to both of them. But the anger did not dissipate, and in 2003 he founded F4J. And he knew how to market a cause. "I understood that if you can catapult stuff into the headlines, good or bad, then you've created something that gets ingrained in the public consciousness as a brand," he says. At this point we are joined by Michael Cox, a barrister, one of the founding members of F4J (four sons from a first marriage) and the group's "legal brain". When I'd initially spoken to Matt on the phone, I'd asked if I could somehow get a glimpse into how F4J actually works. Could I observe one of their meetings or something? Michael is the meeting, it turns out. He's come for a "strategy meeting". Before the "meeting" kicks off, I ask Michael how he felt when Matt disbanded F4J. "I was gutted," he replies. "There is no other credible agency for change. The hopes of a lot of fathers were riding on Matt." Credible? I query. Was it, particularly towards the end when it became that "Frankenstein's Monster" and seemed to largely be peopled by extremists, men with convictions for domestic violence, men with restraining orders against them, even men who hadn't bothered to see their children in their allotted contact time? To be honest, chaps, even those who sympathised with your cause probably wouldn't have wanted to be in the same room as you. It just made you want to draw your own kids closer. Matt says: "We went to such extraordinary lengths to try to vet people. On our membership form it said: 'Please tick if there are any allegations against you.'" Michael says: "None of the dads started off mad. They became mad though not seeing their children." Matt says he did all he could to contain it. "I'd be up at 3am on the phone to the police, telling them about a member who was planning to firebomb somewhere." Michael says: "Have you got children? Can you imagine what it would be like not to see your child?" I say I don't see how firebombing would help. Matt says: "For the last year all I did was shovel shit. There were people joining at meetings and giving cash and that cash was being pocketed." Matt further says that F4J is different now. "We're not a membership organisation any more. We're just campaigning, and I'm going to run it tighter than a duck's arse." Time for the "strategy meeting", which takes place on a blanket on the bank of the river. It is a very pleasant way to have a meeting. Aside from equal rights for fathers, what they also want is an end to secret family court hearings. They think they should attend one, see what happens. "We want to sit quietly at the back, to bear witness," says Matt. "We want to do the Quaker thing and make injustice visible," says Michael. "What are they going to do?" asks Matt. "Bang us up, even though Harriet Harman is saying the courts should be more open? They're fucked. I don't mind a stint inside, anyway. It's a civil liberties issue." Do means always justify ends? "Our means always justify our ends," says Michael. And that's the meeting over with, really. The afternoon dwindles away without much further rancour. We are joined by Nadine and Archie. Archie is totally scrumptious; a really happy gurgler. Are you a different dad this time, Matt? "Yeah," he says. "I've grown up." Nadine and Matt actually met at an F4J meeting when Nadine came along to hear the other side. She is shy, quiet, seems very nice. She may be in over her head, she may not be. She seems to be behind Matt all the way, "although he is constantly on the phone. I'm trying to make him turn it off at weekends." A rich irony, I suppose, if running F4J means he spends less time with his kids. We chew the fat. We talk about Matt's autobiography, which he is writing. Should he call it Napalm Dad or Who's The Daddy? Also, Harbour Pictures, which made Calendar Girls, has bought the film rights to his story. Who should play him? Matt says he's been asked that a lot. He says: "Those that are unkind say Johnny Vegas, while those who are less unkind say Ricky Gervais." Michael suggests Richard Griffiths. "What, Pie In the Sky? That Richard Griffiths?" exclaims Matt. "Fuck off!" I think he is truly wounded. He does appear have quite an ego. I think, possibly, he needs F4J as much as it needs him. Anyway, we part amicably. He even, a couple of days later, sends me some Jubilee strawberries. I'll say this about Jubilee strawberries: they make Elsanta taste just as Matt said they would. But I don't know, did we get anywhere? Are they revolutionaries? Or just embittered men who can't stand not getting what they want? I suggest you decide. Why do I have to do everything round here?

– Matt O'Connor: The man behind Fathers4Justice, The Independent on 4 July 2006

Personal life

Matt lives in Hampshire with his wife Nadine, children Phillippa and Archie and their Labrador, Cocoa and Irish Wolfhound, Kerry.

External links

• Linkedin: mattgoconnor
• Fathers 4 Justice; The Inside Story, 2007
• Fathers4Justice
• The Icecreamists
• Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano
• Agitator
• Jason Hatch
• fathers 4 justice (June 19, 2002) (Size: 61:10 min.)
• Matt O'Connor: Lessons from history, BBC News on 11 March, 2005 (When Matt O'Connor decided he wanted to protest about the one issue that mattered to him most, he looked to history for how to go about it. He spoke to People Power, a BBC documentary examing what makes ordinary people want to protest, to give his views on running a succesful campaign.)
• Matt O'Connor: The man behind Fathers4Justice, The Independent on 4 July 2006 (Matt O'Connor was a divorced marketing executive with a chip on his shoulder. Then he had an idea: to campaign for fathers' rights by staging a string of high-profile stunts. Soon, he and his polyester-clad friends were splashed across the papers - and polarising public opinion. The angry young man who founded Fathers4Justice doesn't like talking to journalists, but he made an exception for Deborah Ross...)