Concordia

Summer

2015

I spent a few brilliant months making

tea and doing photocopying, and making

more tea. You really can’t make people

enough tea. I won the patronage of the

then editor, a fierce Glaswegian man

called Charlie Wilson who, as well as

being a tea drinker, had previously edited

The Times.

According to Fleet Street legend, he

had seen off the print unions single-

handedly when the Times was moved to

Wapping by Rupert Murdoch 10 years

earlier. Despite his fierce reputation,

‘Gorbals’ (as he was known in Private

Eye) was a decent man. He secured me

a place on the prestigious Mirror Group

graduate training scheme – on which, I

hasten to add, phone-hacking was not

part of the curriculum.

I spent two years working as a news

reporter for various Mirror Group titles,

and also for the Independent which,

strangely, was partly owned in those days

by the Mirror Group.

I was on the 18th floor of the Canary

Wharf tower when it was fiercely shaken

by the South Quay bombing in 1996 and

also in the same building working for the

Daily Telegraph five years later during

9/11, when we were evacuated after the

attack on the Twin Towers.

I spent most of my eight years in

newspaper journalism working for

broadsheets (in the days before the

Indy and The Times had moved to

a tabloid format). The tougher and

often journalistically sharper tabloid

environment was certainly an eye-opener.

My first day at the Daily Mirror

happened to be the day after the death

of Diana, Princess of Wales. It wasn’t

the best of starts. I was immediately

reprimanded by the then editor Piers

Morgan for being late although I’d

actually just cancelled a week’s holiday to

help out! I was then immediately sent to

doorstep the Fayed family.

I loved newspapers, but the future didn’t

look very bright for journalists, and my

senior colleagues were adamant that the

best years of Fleet Street were in the past.

I wasn’t convinced I was hungry enough

to get to the top, or indeed confident

about my future earning potential. Even

fifteen years ago, things were starting to

look fairly bleak as more people started to

consume news on the internet.

It wasn’t all bad, though. I was sent by

the Daily Telegraph to the Maldives for

10 days in 2000 to cover Miss World, a

trip which got me my favourite byline

from Paradise Island. I still have Miss

Singapore’s business card somewhere...

Around the same time I decided to

do an executive (i.e. part-time) Masters

in Business Administration (MBA) at

Cranfield School of Management, which

was expensive, but money well spent.

I would thoroughly recommend this

course and business school to anyone.

I started a job 10 years ago working

as an analyst for a then small company

called Econsultancy, which produced

research about the fledgling internet

marketing and ecommerce industries.

This was a great mixture of writing and

business which was becoming more of

an interest.

I loved the

esprit de corps

of working

for a small and entrepreneurial business

and the world of the internet was a

fascinating field even if not an obvious

career choice after studying Latin and

Classical Greek at university.

The founders were generous and

shrewd enough to give me and other

senior members of the team shares in the

business, a move which ensured stability

for the company and also meant that we

remained loyal and motivated.

The company, now around 80-strong,

was recently acquired by Centaur Media

PLC, a business which is trying to become

more digital and less reliant on print

media advertising.

Following the acquisition, I am still

very much on board as Econsultancy’s

research director, managing a growing

team of analysts and responsible for the

research and content which drives our

subscription revenues. The atmosphere is

a little more corporate these days, though

I still don’t have to wear a tie.

It hasn’t been a textbook career

path by any means but I do believe

that we all have to be more adaptable

than ever. Career changes can be a

daunting prospect but also kick off

exciting new chapters.

I’m delighted that I’m still in touch with

numerous people I met at school and, at

the time of writing, am looking forward

to a school reunion in June, 25 years after

we left.