Steve is active outside work. A keen watcher for sports, he is a season ticket holder at Charlton Athletic. He was formerly a Latin American ballroom dancer, winning silver medal at the Gay Games in Amsterdam in 1998. He collects and rallies old British cars. His two dogs, Calvin and Jasper stop him having a lie in any day of the year.

Steve occasionally performs in drag at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern fundraising for the Terrence Higgins Trust, the UK’s largest sexual health charity. He's been involved with THT for a long time, and was until recently the head of its advisory board.

Steve met his husband Ian in 1994. They were together for 27 years until Ian died in 2021. Ian’s passions were Egyptology and Doctor Who. Steve is in discussions with the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, where his late husband studied, to donate his collections of books on Egyptian archaeology and endow a small library for students.

Steve lives between his houses in London, Kent, and Cape Town.