![]() ![]() Halfway through our chat, Clough came in and interrupted us, and stopped the tape. I was interviewing Martin O’Neill at the City Ground, when they were a mid-table Championship side, and we went into the first-team dressing room when all the players had gone home, looking for a quiet spot for an interview. I was at Radio Trent, it was my first job, and it was there that I really learned that you have to behave on other people’s terms, not your own - any organisation will have their own culture and agenda that you have to follow. One of the most important was early on in my career. What have been some of the most memorable moments? You’ve had an incredible career in football since your time at UoN. I was roughly the same age as the players at the time, and it was in the era when you not only commentated on the games, but you went for a few beers afterwards - so I became good friends with a lot of the side, and Cloughie became a big part of my promotion, as he gave me so much time for interviews. To this day, Martin O’Neill is still one of my closest friends in football. Within a few months, I became the regular Nottingham Forest reporter - not only working on the games, but pretty much living at the City Ground, interviewing players and the manager, Brian Clough. I did my first voice-over over somebody’s shoulder during a news bulletin, and I did a late-night rock show during my first three months there, but I was always volunteering for any sports-related coverage that was available. That’s probably why I never got that 2:1… I thought I’d blown any chances of employment, but then he said, “I think the only thing I can do to keep you away from there is to offer you a job.” I asked what degree I needed for it, and he said, “You don’t need a degree to make tea!” So just before I sat my last exams, I was given a role at my dream organisation - which, admittedly, took a bit of motivation away from my studies. I managed to harass him to the point where, about two-and-a-half weeks before I sat my first final, I got a phone call telling me to stay away from the studios because of building regulations. They were building the studios in Castle Street during my final year at uni, and I made it my business to loiter with intent around the building site and get to know the Programme Controller, whose office was based there. Your first break is always your biggest break, and mine was with Radio Trent, which came on air the day I graduated. You stuck around Nottingham for a few years after graduating. If there’s anything to learn from my era, it’s that however good your degree may be, all the other stuff on your CV means so much too - your experience is an indication to prospective employers of your keenness to get out there, learn the ropes, and become part of a team. I also joined DramSoc, and became involved with writing and acting in a comedy which was loosely based on the humour of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which we took to the Edinburgh Festival for two years running. I became the editor of the university newspaper, and I was knocking on any possible door that I could to get experience within the media. Then, during my three years as an undergraduate, I set about putting together a media CV of my own. The Industrial Economics course at Nottingham was a little more practical than theoretical, so in the absence of an offer for a media course, I - a little reluctantly - followed in my father’s footsteps. My father, who was making a living in marketing at the time, encouraged me to take an Economics degree, because my school career was going reasonably well. I applied for a couple of them, but I didn’t receive an offer. How did you end up at the University of Nottingham?īack in the late seventeenth century, when I was applying to university, I think there were no more than four media courses across the entire UK. ![]()
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