Before Day One

First interview at BBC Radio Nottingham. I was working for The Lincolnshire Times and had - always have had - a great broadcasting voice. My news editor pushed me off to the place his son in law was running as News Editor and we met up down the local. I had so much booze poured down me that I had to ask permission to leave the one and a half hour interview with the manager Colin Walters to go to the loo. A sign of times to come. The news editor, Tony Cook, had a famous test: new journos had to get drunk and then read the news while listening to the playback head through headphones on one of the big tape machines. That meant hearing back what you had read moments earlier. Not the easiest of things to do while sober. Oddly enough, it was one of the finest newsrooms I have ever worked in. And work we did. Great fun too. Never seemed to notice that the best years of my life were slipping by as I worked nearly every night and every other weekend.