Andrew Marr
"At 21, I was a nervous, new and spectacularly incompetent young journalist, who had just trained in
Newcastle and had joined The Scotsman newspaper in
Edinburgh. I was renting a room, drinking too much and dreaming of one day being a columnist, propounding my own views. Though I'd been to University, I was still unsure of myself and of course, pretty short of money. Most of the other people I was working with seemed a lot older, bearded men smoking pipes. I tried a pipe, but kept being sick. So I gave up smoking, which seemed pretty hard: I saved every penny from cigarettes to buy music, which in those days meant cassette tapes. But I wasn't very disciplined: I vividly remember going drinking with friends, staying up all night talking about our futures, and staggering back into work without any sleep for another day. Over lunchtime, I sank gently onto my typewriter: when I woke up, the circles of the keys were neatly imprinted all across my face: I still had a little to learn about journalism!"
