Whether you work in news, sport, politics, whatever, it's exactly the same; a story is a story, is a story. I consider myself first and foremost a journalist.
I worked very hard as a young journalist learning the trade and asking questions, understanding what a story is and being able to present that in a way that people would find interesting.
It's a lot of luck and being in the right place at the right time, that's what I think. Obviously you need to be noticed by people to be given the opportunities, and I think you do have to work hard.
I didn't go to university. They offered me a job as a junior reporter and I went off to work for the Southern Reporter. They sent me to college to do my NCTJ, which is a professional exam for journalists, and I started work as a print journalist purely because I was just a pest. They couldn't think of anything other than giving me a job to stop me hanging around.
TV depends very much on the pictures that you see on your television, and all the other things that come up on the screen, whether it be GFX, the studio or the pictures of the game.
As a presenter, while I might suddenly want to start talking about something completely different, I have to stick to what we've agreed in order for all these other people to get their bits into the programme. So you have to be quite disciplined.
Leading up to a live event you need to do your homework and go to bed early. Sometimes it's very tempting to go out with everybody else, They're all going to a party or going out for a nice meal and you think 'oh well I'd like to go', but sometimes you think 'no, if I'm going to be sitting in front of a camera under a light in everybody's home tomorrow I don't want big bags under my eyes and not really know what I'm talking about'.
The more you get, the better you become' and therefore over the years you become more experienced and you learn how to deal with it. You know what can go wrong, and you also learn how to react if things go wrong.
