Matchstick skills mean business

A former offender from Mid Wales has set up a matchstick model-making business after learning the skill more than 20 years ago while serving time in prison.

Michael Anderson, from Newtown, set up Anderson Family Matching Company with the help of the Dyfed-Powys Probation Service.

The 44-year-old was introduced to making matchstick models while in jail in the 1980s.

He said he had been inspired to turn his hobby into a full-time occupation after doing a skills for life course, run by Coleg Harlech, in Gwynedd.

Items he has made from matches include Romany caravans, jewellery boxes and tobacco tins. He is currently working on a 1m-high grandfather clock.

The father-of-six said: "I learnt how to match while I was incarcerated during a long prison term when I spent two-and-a-half years inside at HMP Highpoint, Suffolk.

"I was taught by one of the oldest cons I have seen in prison, he was about 70. He was an old forger and he took me under his wing and I found I had a talent for it."

He went on to explain the work that goes behind making a matchstick model.

"You have to look at every single match and see which way it is going to be placed." he said.

He added: "It gives me immense pleasure, I lose myself from all the troubles and trials and tribulations of the world when I'm matching."