From as young as I can remember, I was always told by my newspaper industry family, that one day I would be working ‘in the print’.
I was still 15 when I began at The Daily Telegraph in London, but advertising accounts (yawn) wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I was keen to break into writing. Still in my teens, I saw a sandwich board on Fleet Street, advertising for a Trainee Journalist, and to the horror of my family, I accepted the job at a small publishing company in Soho, which then, was still the hooligan district of our capital, full of ladies offering their services.
On my first day, somebody dumped a ye olde ten-ton typewriter onto my desk, and threw a camera round my neck, saying: “You’d better learn how to use those” – and: “you’re on the early train to Cardiff tomorrow. Make sure you come back with some stories!”
When I later moved up to the Midlands, I secured a job as Features Editor on a local newspaper and went on to work for the PR part of a large advertising agency. PR pretty much stood for (as is often does today) ‘Poor Relation’, so, in a moment of madness in 1996, I decided to go it alone, working up in the attic at home.
I’ve always been interested in anything good that can come from reducing, disposing of waste responsibly, or better still, reusing it. I’ve been working for my main customer pretty much since I started almost 30 years and have the pleasure of working with two other companies for 18 and 12 years respectively. Yes, they all agree that my invoices aren’t too frightening.
I am based in the UK, but am a regular attendee at WEFTEC, and come over to the US to make site visits in order to write up case studies. Well, somebody has to do it. After all these years, I still love getting stories published and help generate interest and enquires for my customers.