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Founded on its principals’ unrivalled experience in general sport, motorsport and automotive, Diagonal Comms delivers strategic, sophisticated, authentic, effective, media-savvy, no-nonsense communications based on peerless expertise and a passionate commitment to understand, and deliver against, our clients’ challenges and objectives.
Matt Bishop
Managing Director
Joe Downes
Business Director
Tim Holmes
Ann Bradshaw
Ben Weller
Digital Marketing
Director
Heather Giles
Project Director
Loraine Fayomi
Financial Director
Gerren Scapens
Account Executive
With a rich and varied 30-year career in top-tier motorsport, including extensive journalism experience working for Autosport, Motorsport and F1 Racing among others, followed by senior leadership communications roles within McLaren’s and Aston Martin’s Formula One operations, working with world champions Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, Matt Bishop has carved out a reputation as an immensely capable strategist and communications expert, with considerable hands-on experience of crisis communications management.
He is also a passionate advocate and ambassador for diversity, equity and inclusion, since he was one of the founders of W Series, the women-only single-seater racing championship, and is a founder ambassador of Racing Pride, which was established in association with Stonewall and seeks to support and further the rights and interests of LGBTQ+ people in motorsport generally.
During his 10-year career to-date, Joe has held senior positions in both the sports journalism and communications industries. After graduating with an MA in Multimedia Journalism, he quickly rose through the ranks at the Daily Mail, helping transform the title’s digital offering and reporting on a range of major sporting events around the world. He made the switch to communications when he joined W Series at the start of 2020, helping the fledgling motor racing series negotiate the COVID-19 pandemic.
Armed with a keen eye for a story, an enviable contacts book, the ability to spot the latest trends, and expertise in media relations and women’s sport, Joe was then recruited by global sports and entertainment agency CSM to work across multiple accounts.
Tim Holmes is a career communicator in the automotive sector, with extensive experience in motorsport and a specialism in product, corporate and business areas. A former news journalist and specialist automotive writer, Tim has a 30-year history in automotive communications both at senior management and board level, in national and international roles, and for a variety of global brands including Alfa Romeo, Nissan and Ford Motor Company. He is also a former Communications Chairman of the UK’s national trade body for the automotive sector, the SMMT.
Ann Bradshaw has worked full-time in motorsport since 1971 after giving up her career in journalism to take on a race-organising job in the sport that she and her entire family loved. Over the years she has gone back to her journalism roots, writing for Autosport magazine as well as working in many different areas of the sport. Her Formula One career encompasses many years as a Senior Press Officer within the Williams Formula One team in its world championship-winning heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, working closely with racing legends such as Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, and she has also worked for the Lotus, Arrows and BMW-Sauber teams, as well as Formula One itself.
For 16 years she worked on a freelance basis for BMW across its various worldwide motorsport programmes including touring cars, sports cars, rallying, single-seater racing with Formula BMW, as well as Formula One. Her skills running event press offices were honed when she was Head of Press and Public Relations for the RAC MSA (now Motorsport UK, the British motorsport national sporting authority) and ran the press office for the British Grand Prix and the RAC Rally. Since then she has been invited by Grand Prix organisers in South Africa, Australia, Malaysia, Mexico, Abu Dhabi and the USA (Indianapolis and Austin) to run their event press offices. She is passionate about diversity in the sport and was proud to work as a Press Officer for W Series.
Having started his career as a videographer, over the past decade Ben Weller has added strategic and managerial abilities and responsibilities to his media skill-set, and he now heads up Diagonal Comms’ digital operations. Nonetheless, he remains an excellent videographer and still wields his cameras in action from time to time. He has an abiding interest in a wide variety of sports, particularly combat sports and motorised sports, and, alongside a capable and expanding team, he has become an industry expert in the art of applying the latest content creation and digital marketing practices to delivering powerfully against the marketing, commercial and comms/PR objectives of a wide variety of sports rights holders.
Since achieving a first-class honours degree in video production, Heather now has more than 10 years of experience in video production and digital marketing. Her professional career started as a video producer before she progressed into wider digital marketing, including the management of departments and client accounts. Heather now heads up the operational side of everything concerning digital media at Diagonal Comms – from managing shoot schedules for content creation to project delivery, timelines, and client meetings. In addition, Heather manages a growing team of graphic designers, videographers, photographers, and web developers.
After studying Accounting and Management at Kent University, Loraine went on to achieve a Masters in Finance at Lancaster University. Whilst impressing during her studies Loraine has now grown a career surpassing five years working in finance. Loraine achieved her ACCA membership in 2021 and has since then worked as a chartered accountant, The latest part of her journey is leading the financial side of Diagonal Comms, heading everything internal account management and client financial relations.
After working in motorsport as a journalist, Gerren got his first taste of a communications role in rugby, and he has gained vast experience in the 18 months since he graduated in Sports Journalism (BA Hons).
Gerren spent much of 2023 in the TOCA paddock covering every round of both the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) and British F4 Championship for multiple websites as a reporter and editor. He discovered a love and natural flair for communications in his next role as Media and Communications Intern at Ealing Trailfinders Rugby Club, providing content and comms for the RFU Championship’s leading club.
Combining the skills and experience he has acquired from the professional roles he has held to-date, various multimedia projects undertaken during his degree, and combining those with his passion for sport and automotive, Gerren is now ready to take the next step in his sports communications career at Diagonal Comms.
George joins Diagonal Comms having worked in various motorsport-focused media roles over the past four years.
He picked up his first content creation and management role at the end of 2020 in the sim-racing Esports space before starting as a journalist in junior category racing in 2022. His work, which included producing news stories, race summaries, and podcasts, and conducting interviews with racing drivers, required him report to on multiple esteemed series across the single-seater ladder, spanning FIA Formula 2, the final step before Formula 1, to grassroots Formula 4 competition and multiple series in between, making him extremely well versed in junior competition.
At the start of 2024, he expanded his skillset to include motorsport videography and photography. He produced high-quality social media content at circuits across Europe, focusing on raising the profiles of clients competing in the GB3 and GB4 Championships.
Having gained a wealth of knowledge across a plethora of motor racing paddocks, George starts his first full-time role in PR, communications, and content creation with Diagonal Comms.