Like all good stories, this one starts in Wakefield.

My big brother played in a punk band called 0800 Ragu, and my first piece of writing was a review of one of their gigs in a village hall. I was 7. Good on the Huddersfield Chronicle for publishing it.

While still at school I started reporting on professional rugby league games. Then the newspaper League Express asked me if I could help subedit and design for them on a Sunday, so I did.

I admired sports journalists like David Conn. So when he put a call out for info about the financial state of rugby league, I sent him an email detailing everything I knew on the subject. He used it all in an article. So I asked him for a job at the Guardian. He must have felt cornered, because he agreed.

I wrote pieces about Mo Farah’s golden postbox by day and slept on mates’ floors by night. But when I realised I couldn’t afford to rent a room of my own, I went and volunteered in India. It was pretty ineffective work and I burned my face off with a pressure cooker, but the charity ended up giving me a job at head office. My boss said she had ‘taken a punt’ on me, which was reassuring. I learned a ton in the next three years, and worked on some stuff I’m still proud of, including (in hindsight) a very nervy live interview on BBC World News.

I took a pay cut to join Save the Children. I arrived as an all-rounder, became a pretty good copywriter, and grew into a creative leader.

Over the following decade I created comms that changed the minds of politicians and the public, informed government policy and helped raise millions of pounds to make the world that bit fairer. Among all that was a smattering of interviews, podcasts, MCing events, and leading appeals for smaller charities.

Would you like to see some of it?