About Us

What's This New Look site all about?

A: Sadly our old hand-built site, created over 10 years ago, was about to fall apart. Believe it or not we are not professional web designers…  In fact it’s a wonder that it didn’t self-destruct years ago as it had become increasingly difficult to maintain. It also wasn’t very friendly for users of tablets and smartphones.

The old site will be missed. It was like an old friend, albeit a slightly mad old friend with memory troubles, wonky legs and a habit of falling down the stairs, so it had to be retired.

We hope you like the new site - it should be a lot easier for you to find, read all about and, hopefully, compare and buy our products, especially if you live outside the UK. What’s more, we’ve managed to retain almost all of our quirky features – you find links to a lot of them on the Rough Guide To Radioactivity Information page and we’ll be adding more as we go along. The new site makes it easier for us to add and update products and we’ve also got a nifty facility for running special offers and promotions, so keep your eyes peeled for some great deals. There’s more. The Contact Us link at the bottom of the page should make it much easier for you to get in touch; please feel free to have your say with the Comments and Ratings features on the Product pages.

If you would like to pay by cheque/order by post, just drop us a line and let us know what you are after. Please send it (together with payment) to R Maybury, 73 Penrith Road, Thornton Heath, Surrey CR7 8PN. Cheques made payable to R.Maybury, please...


Who are we?

A: Well, let me introduce ourselves. Based in London, UK, we are Rick and Jane Maybury.

Rick was a technology journalist for more than 30 years and wrote for the The Daily Telegraph and its website for over 20 years. He also edited and contributed to a number of magazines and publications, and currently curates our sister site Dustygizmos. There's even  a  section devoted to vintage Geiger Counters and atomic oddities. If you are at all interested in old gadgets and electronic whizwangs click the button below.


 


Jane has also been known to do the odd journalistic stint. Prior to that, she worked in publishing, and also for an arthritis research charity in Holborn, before becoming a full-time mum and working part time at a local school. Seven years ago, she gave that up to devote her time to running anythingradioactive's web site.


How did it all start?

A: Back in April 1986 we were touring the USSR when we started hearing rumours of an industrial accident somewhere in Russia. Of course, back then, no one told you anything and it wasn’t until our plane was parked on the tarmac at Gatwick Airport’s furthest-flung outpost being greeted by grinning firemen with hoses, clearing immigration in record time ("JUST GO, JUST GO!!") and finally meeting our friends who were waiting for us, that we found out something major had occurred at Chernobyl. 

It was then that Rick’s interest in all things nuclear started to blossom. Back then Geiger counters were quite hard to come by, so he decided to build his own (which still works today).

Fast-forward to 2005: Jane, having been previously diagnosed as having an overactive thyroid decided to have it sorted out by means of a radioactive iodine treatment, which involved taking a simple tablet. The only downside to this was that she was to remain impressively radioactive for around a month afterwards. As you can imagine, this produced some rather interesting clicks on Rick’s old DIY Geiger counter and resulted in the invention of that ever-popular game, radioactive hide and seek!

This prompted thoughts of one day setting up a web site to deal with all things nuclear as it were - radioactivity gets a really bad press, no-one ever mentions the fun side - and so, finally, the idea of anythingradioactive.com was born. Thanks for visiting: we hope you like it and may your Geiger counters never tick in anger...


Jane & Rick