Keith Hann was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in June 1954 and educated at the city’s Royal Grammar School and St John’s College, Cambridge, where he spent six years obtaining precisely one degree. He also won a number of academic awards despite failing to attend lectures, rarely meeting essay deadlines and spending most of his time in pubs and / or asleep. Following a period of postgraduate research in British Imperial history, conducted mainly in the Coach & Horses on Kew Green - chosen for its plausible proximity to the Public Record Office - he decided to seek his fortune in the City. He is still looking for it.

After five years on the comprehensive graduate trainee programme at stockbrokers Capel-Cure Myers, during which he never advanced beyond his initial placement in the research department, Keith moved to Edinburgh for 36 hours with brokers Wood Mackenzie in 1983. Having successfully reminded himself what he liked about Scotland, he returned to London and entered the glamorous world of financial PR with the then market leader Streets Financial. He worked on some of the most successful flotations of the mid-1980s and rapidly became the lead account handler for many major UK plcs.