My name is Paul Donnelly and I'm a 7th degree black belt. I started training at the beginning of 1973 under Bob Howe in the Warwick Club. I trained there for a number of years and took my first dan in 1975. Then I opened my own club in 1978. I've never practiced any other form of martial art.

Bob Howe had a major influence on my practice. He's a very rare person and that is why he commands so much respect.

I am the T.A.G.B.'s Liason Officer and represent the Central Midlands area on the T.A.G.B. Committee, so I look after the clubs in my region and the instructors who run them. I also run referees and umpires courses for the T.A.G.B..

I started the T.A.G.B. together with other members of the Committee. We held a meeting whilst on a coach in Nottingham and we weren't happy with the way things were going. We decided to form the T.A.G.B. and have never looked back since then.

One of the happiest memories for me was the first world championships. Everyone in the martial arts told us that we'd come unstuck and lose money, but they were wrong. It was proff that we could handle things on a world wide scale. I remember Bob Howe and me standing at the top of the bleachers and watching all these countries marching in. I thought "Bloody Hell – we've done it!" We'd come from a coach in Nottingham to a world championships – and no-one thought we could do it.

The T.A.G.B. is run professional with the intention of building and maintaining a high quality of practise. It runs without figureheads and is intended for instructors and students – the people who like tae kwon-do and want to be good at it.

There's nobody in the T.A.G.B. that we let get too big for their boots. Everybody is helped, encouraged and pushed along but no one gets carried along by their own ego. Not a lot of people know it, but our Chairman, Dave Oliver, doesn't even have a vote on the committee! We use him as a mouthpiece so a lot of people have come to regard him as the T.A.G.B.. This is because Dave's skill is in communication and we have pushed him in that direction.

Everyone on the committee is quite good at what they do and by themselves they would have been reasonably successful, but as a team, we each slot in together. I'll give you an example: when we have a competition, to the outsider nobody seems to be running anything, yet everything falls into place. This is because we all have a job which we planned out months ahead and no-one tries to meddle in anything else.

Every member of the committee has had a good influence on me, and I'd like to thank them for that.

My personal ambition is to continue doing what I'm doing. My ambition for the T.A.G.B. is to see the dinosaurs of the T.A.G.B. – people like me – being replaced by younger people. Many in the martial arts are full of their own importance and it worries them when someone in their association is coming up to their level of importance, or surpassing them in popularity. The T.A.G.B. has never looked ai it in that way.

If I was going to sell the T.A.G.B. to a new student, I would say that it gives more opportunities to more people than just about any other association. If you are interested in sporting competition, then the T.A.G.B. is renowned. We fully support all our teams and send them all over the world. Also, all T.A.G.B. students know that their instructor has gone through a particular regime to get where he/she is now. It's not just that they've got a certain grade; they've been on a course and been properly vetted. So if you show any kind of potential, then your instructor will see it and you'll get an absolutely fair deal.