Loath to admit it though I am, I’m quite clearly nearer the exit point of my career than the entry. I started 35 years ago at Autocar and if I’m still in the game 35 years from now, I’ll be one of a tiny handful of people who have somehow managed to earn anything at all as a motoring journalist in their 90s.
But I doubt it – I was born in the shallow end of the gene pool and while I’d love to emulate the unique achievement of MotorSport’s Bill Boddy and still be filing copy at the age of 98, I really don’t think that’s too likely.
So at times I like to think back to where it all started. And for me it was the issue of Autocar published on June 29, 1988, which was not the first on which I had worked, but was the first in which my work appeared, along with my name. Even though I had access to as many copies as I liked in the office, the thrill of knowing I could walk into any newsagent in any high street in any town in the land and pick up a magazine which carried my name on a bylined story and – if you knew whom you were looking for and squinted – my face in its photographs, excited me beyond my powers of description. Every time I passed one, I’d go in and casually browse through a copy, wanting to grab every passer-by and say nonchalantly, ‘that’s me, you know.’
