I remember in 1996 falling in love with the Chinese divers. These were people on 20 metre and 10 metre platform boards, doing stuff that you couldn't believe. Then when you saw them afterwards they were about the size of my leg. That was just sensational.
To be a good sports journalist takes many things, but the main thing it takes is the ability to listen and follow your nose - see something, sense something and follow it.
If you want to be like me, work hard and believe in it, and if you don't believe in it, get rid of it.
If I was switched from whatever I'm doing, and I was, for some reason, made the chief football writer in any newspaper, then I'd retire. I'd go back to being a barber.
First of all I have to ask myself what am I trying to say and who am I trying to tell the story to. So if it's just 300 words going in the Independent it's very much where, what, who and when - fantastic. If there's a little bit more scope, if I've been given 1500 words by the sports editor, and I can have a little bit of fun, then I need to maybe entertain, include some different stuff.
Before computers were everywhere I used record books, the old-fashioned way. I loved to cram, and I still love to cram, anything I write with extra facts, stuff I picked up. At the same time, especially in this day and age, you've got to make it sound like, or read like, you've not just been Googling because that's not fair, that's not right!
When you're at an Olympic Games watching someone you've known for a long while and he or she has done something, even if it's only coming in the top 50, then you have a monumental night.
My talent is working very hard and having a decent nose. A good nose for a story and the ability to get a little bit dirty sometimes, to get a little bit physical sometimes chasing a story. And to feel it, I mean I feel it.
