When a press agency contacted me to say that they thought these pictures should be published, I was thinking maybe they'll show up in a cruise related magazine or something. Nothing quite prepared me for waking up the next day to find that they'd been featured in nearly every national newspaper in the UK. My neighbour texted me early in the morning to say that his wife was reading this article in the Metro on the train to London. I knew then that I had an interesting day ahead.

I'm pretty much against everything that the Daily Mail stands for, so although it was nice to see these photos reaching a wider audience, I knew that they would provoke a grumpy reaction from some people too. As expected, there were pages of negative comments under the online version of the Daily Mail article - but nobody does negativity quite like that newspaper and some of it's readers.

Unlike the other national newspapers, The Sun emailed me directly to ask permission to use the photos. That was a surprise. I politely declined as a protest against their reporting of the Hillsborough disaster, and they were very nice about it.

If you haven't looked at the Love Boat Rejects section of my website yet then a quick explanation is needed. I was a photographer on board American and Italian-based cruise ships in the 1990s. We'd take loads of pictures of the passengers in different locations and try to sell them in the onboard photo galleries. At the end of each cruise, I would have a quick look at all the unsold prints and keep any that I found funny or unusual. I named the collection 'Love Boat Rejects'. I'm now very grateful to all these passengers for not buying their photos!