I remember having to crawl under a camera when a few of us were doing interviews with Mrs Thatcher. She stopped and boomed out “you look like a giant mouse”. Getting interviewees names wrong live on air is pretty embarrassing too.

Follow your strengths and your interests and be prepared to try anything. You may want to be a showbiz reporter but if you are good at sailing that may be an intro.

There are no substitutes for hard work but at the same time don’t over work just for the sake of it.

Journalism is probably the only job in the world where if something is boring, it’s a good reason not to work on it.

I wrote some articles and edited some publications at school and university starting about age 13, but I was never a dedicated ‘hack’.

The key is to get a job. While at University in the US I was a stringer for the IPS Interpress Wire Service, I got to cover some big stories and I got paid a little.

In the UK I was lucky to get a job at the BBC External Services thanks to a man called Leslie Stone, who had an eye for unconventional talent. It was good timing to come into the jobs market when new TV channels such as TV-am and Channel 4 were starting up.

I am very proud of the innovative and much copied political coverage which we have built up for Sky News. More than 20 years on I am still the only reporter ever to have had the temerity to “doorstep” the Queen and get some views out of her.

I started thinking I’d like to be a journalist when I was a teenager. It seemed like a good fit with what interested me and what I had an aptitude for.