I’m obsessed with words. Always have been.
As a kid, I’d read cereal boxes with the same interest as The Beano. Books and magazines were never ‘finished’ until I’d read every word. Captions, credits, contents—even page numbers. If it got printed, it got read.
This all-or-nothing spirit never left. When studying Multimedia Journalism at Bournemouth University, one assignment meant speaking to ‘someone in the public eye’. Some students quizzed lecturers or firefighters, others local DJs. I doorstepped Sir Ian McKellen, and later graduated with First Class Honours, plus the Mike Matthews Award for Features Journalism.